Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays all the DMODs of 2004
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193: Sjoerd's Quest (Demo) Author: Sjoerde Release Date: April 20, 2004
"I must go to a quiet place and die. Bye my son.."
In this one, the Dink character is referred to as "Sjoerde." He's also called "Smallwood," though, so we must be dealing here with a character named "Sjoerde Smallwood." I wonder if there's any relation.
Dink certainly has an ornery streak, but Sjoerde is an outright mean dink. I mean, he still does the hero thing, but he finds suffering so funny that I honestly wonder why. Sjoerde does not give a damn. He couldn't give a damn if he was bitten by a radioactive damn and gained its proportional damn-giving ability. I mean, he enjoys an "EVIL LAUGH" while wondering if a woman who died violently suffered any pain. What the Hell, man?
It might look like he's giving a damn here, but he's really just appalled by that tree placement.
Our 'hero' finds himself in an area where people have been getting killed by some kind of monster. To do something about this, he has to talk to a woman at a crossroads and run several errands for her, all of which just involve walking a short distance and talking to somebody. For some reason, you have to make these little trips in a specific order; try to do it in a different order, and there will either be nobody there or you'll just walk into an invisible hard object. Once you've done all your chores, you get to go fight the monster. It's just a slayer.
Somebody built a magic bridge that only appears when it senses the proximity of a sword and then put up this sign explaining the situation. That's what we're expected to believe, here.
I didn't encounter any serious bugs in this one, but it's still pretty sloppy. There's no title screen. A couple of screens don't seal off the edges as they're obviously supposed to. Dink phases into the bridge segments as he crosses the bridge because the depth que isn't set correctly.
What saves "Sjoerd's Quest" from being totally uninteresting is a bit of over-the-top absurdity. For example, there's an old man who gives you a potion. Having fulfilled his only purpose, he announces that he's off to die now. If you follow him, you'll find that, sure enough:
That's what old people do. They die. Also, naming a kid "Old Man" is kind of weird.
If, like me, you find yourself on some crazy quest to play all the DMODs, you may get some amusement out of this one.
--
On May 1, 2004, another Dink Network DMOD contest was announced. The theme was that the player had to be a vampire. Specifically, Redink1 specified that "[t]he main player character must be a vampire, in that they are required to drink/eat blood to live and/or win the game. Not drinking blood will kill the player and/or make the player lose the game." It's not a bad idea for a gameplay mechanic, but people must have found such a specific requirement to be too constraining, because no one submitted an entry. There would not be another DMOD contest until 2006.
--
194: The Apprentice Author: Lennard Smith Release Date: June 7, 2004
"But...but...I've just got home from saving the world"
"The Apprentice" is a romp, but it's the longest DMOD I've played in a while. It's set right after the original game - seriously, it starts with the caption, "ONE HOUR AFTER DINK DEFEATED SETH..." Seth's right hand man, an evil wizard guy, finds out about Dink's victory and decides to take swift revenge on the Kingdom GoodHeart. He raises an army instantly by magically forcing weak-willed goblins to obey him. The few that manage to resist his control are murdered. What I want to know is, if Seth and this guy were such bros, where the heck was he when Dink came around in the first place?
Yay, finally a happy ending for George! Good old George.
...Damn it.
The early cutscenes are pretty impressive, with lots of moving parts. In a couple of scenes, sprites with brains are used to portray the action rather than directly controlling all of the sprites.
Immediately upon getting home after beating Seth (to the house he got when, exactly? Oh, well), Dink is summoned by the King. Dink getting summoned by the King in this way is a thoroughly worn DMOD setup at this point, but it's handled quite differently here. It's obvious that a war between the goblins and the King's army is raging, and that it's not going very well for the good guys. Talking to the king in an underground bunker, Dink is sent off to recruit the help of a powerful wizard named (of course) Lennard. We also get to see Martridge finally do something! Bellowing, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS," he holds off the goblins as Dink makes his escape.
Whoa! Apparently, Mr. Never-Shows-Up-Again is a bad ass!
Once you actually start playing, though, this DMOD has a problem: there are too many dang screenlocks.
Generally speaking, I'm a fan of the screenlock mechanic. While it can be annoying, it's an important way to force the player to fight their way through the game instead of just skipping everything. Without screen locks, there's little emphasis on the game's combat. "The Apprentice," however, insists on locking down just about every screen. What's worse, the medium-tough pillbugs that swarm across most of the mod's locked screens are scripted to come back immediately after you defeat them and return to the screen, meaning that these screens are always locked! The open area around the DMOD's town is riddled with screens full of these pillbugs. Putting screens that lock in an open, town-type area like that is almost never a good idea, and when combined with the fact that the pillbugs come back immediately, this makes getting around in "The Apprentice" a truly aggravating chore.
Dink: Master of the one-liner.
As if you're not doing enough fighting, you're required to buy a claw sword for 500 gold - a bargain, but you've only got access to enemies that drop small amounts of gold at this point, so this takes quite a while, particularly if you forget which screens are locked by dozens of pillbugs and keep running into them (*grinds teeth*). After that, there's a segment where you fight many, many slayers, followed by a big boss slayer, and then... the game ends. Some narration tells you that the author was too lazy to finish. You never get to meet Lennard or face the big bad guy. What a letdown.
There's a segment of the map that I don't think you're supposed to be able to get to in this version. It's guarded by a giant tree that claims to be an ent. Because it's the standard pine tree sprite, though, throwing a fireball at it removes its hardness, even though the burning animation doesn't play. If you play this DMOD, don't do this - it goes to a place where the DMOD messes up.
Despite the screenlock frustration and the letdown ending, I kind of enjoyed this one. It has some moments I really liked. For example, you know how healing fountains are all over the place in DMODs? There's one in town here, and it's guarded by two knights, who call it an "enchanted healing fountain" and point out that it is of massive strategic importance in the town's defense and say they've been using it to heal wounded soldiers. This is smart! I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody think this convention through further than being a convenience for the player.
And then there's this crazy, gross old pig farmer you run into.
Dink: What ARE you sucking on?
Hobblefoot: *slurps* A pen
Dink: Eww..There's ink and slag dripping from it
Hobblefoot: That's the way...uh huh, uh huh
Hobblefoot: I like it
Dink: You've got problems Hobblefoot
I ain't gonna lie, this bit slayed me. Just slayed me. Some jokes just work really well in short clips of text that come to the viewer one line at a time. It's something I've noticed while playing old adventure games, as well. Something about that little delay can really deliver a hell of a punchline, even if that punchline is just being really damn silly. It actually made it even funnier that I saw that fifth line coming as soon as the fourth one came up.
This one is worth a go, but I'd advise you to cheat your way out of some of the more annoying screenlocks and not to feel guilty about it.
195: Revenge of the Pillbugs Author: DuckKiller4 Release Date: June 7, 2004
"Because we are sick of you killing us!"
It seems like every group of creatures is getting their revenge. First ducks, then pigs, now pillbugs.
This is actually a revised version of this DMOD. DuckKiller4 took a shot at improving it in April of 2005. If they succeeded, it probably wasn't by much.
It probably isn't fair of me not to give the Award of Badness to a DMOD that has six screens, a handful of pillbugs, and nearly no plot, but I got a chuckle out of this, and I've been handing out so many lately. Let me have this one.
The only thing about this DMOD that really matters is the "intro" with Dink talking to a stationary pillbug. Full disclosure, it is past 3 AM and everything is funny, but this tickled me:
Dink: What the?, where am I?
Pillbug: You must die!
Dink: I SAID WHAT THE, WHERE AM I?!!
Haha, okay, sure little pillbug dude!
I love that Dink seems more offended by the pillbug's rudeness in not answering his question than anything else. As for the pillbug, even when forced to consider Dink's inquiry, it's still intent on getting its message across. It is adorable. Ahahahahah. I am crazy. What am I doing with my life?
Y'know, that boss pillbug actually was kind of tough.
That "magic scroll" does nothing. It's the fireball spell, but you can't get a point of magic until you level up by defeating the boss. Nothing happens when you win, by the way. There are a couple of say_stop lines in its die procedure, but they don't seem to display. I'm not sure why.
This is a dumb excuse for a DMOD. Don't download it.
"I must go to a quiet place and die. Bye my son.."
In this one, the Dink character is referred to as "Sjoerde." He's also called "Smallwood," though, so we must be dealing here with a character named "Sjoerde Smallwood." I wonder if there's any relation.
Dink certainly has an ornery streak, but Sjoerde is an outright mean dink. I mean, he still does the hero thing, but he finds suffering so funny that I honestly wonder why. Sjoerde does not give a damn. He couldn't give a damn if he was bitten by a radioactive damn and gained its proportional damn-giving ability. I mean, he enjoys an "EVIL LAUGH" while wondering if a woman who died violently suffered any pain. What the Hell, man?
It might look like he's giving a damn here, but he's really just appalled by that tree placement.
Our 'hero' finds himself in an area where people have been getting killed by some kind of monster. To do something about this, he has to talk to a woman at a crossroads and run several errands for her, all of which just involve walking a short distance and talking to somebody. For some reason, you have to make these little trips in a specific order; try to do it in a different order, and there will either be nobody there or you'll just walk into an invisible hard object. Once you've done all your chores, you get to go fight the monster. It's just a slayer.
Somebody built a magic bridge that only appears when it senses the proximity of a sword and then put up this sign explaining the situation. That's what we're expected to believe, here.
I didn't encounter any serious bugs in this one, but it's still pretty sloppy. There's no title screen. A couple of screens don't seal off the edges as they're obviously supposed to. Dink phases into the bridge segments as he crosses the bridge because the depth que isn't set correctly.
What saves "Sjoerd's Quest" from being totally uninteresting is a bit of over-the-top absurdity. For example, there's an old man who gives you a potion. Having fulfilled his only purpose, he announces that he's off to die now. If you follow him, you'll find that, sure enough:
That's what old people do. They die. Also, naming a kid "Old Man" is kind of weird.
If, like me, you find yourself on some crazy quest to play all the DMODs, you may get some amusement out of this one.
--
On May 1, 2004, another Dink Network DMOD contest was announced. The theme was that the player had to be a vampire. Specifically, Redink1 specified that "[t]he main player character must be a vampire, in that they are required to drink/eat blood to live and/or win the game. Not drinking blood will kill the player and/or make the player lose the game." It's not a bad idea for a gameplay mechanic, but people must have found such a specific requirement to be too constraining, because no one submitted an entry. There would not be another DMOD contest until 2006.
--
194: The Apprentice Author: Lennard Smith Release Date: June 7, 2004
"But...but...I've just got home from saving the world"
"The Apprentice" is a romp, but it's the longest DMOD I've played in a while. It's set right after the original game - seriously, it starts with the caption, "ONE HOUR AFTER DINK DEFEATED SETH..." Seth's right hand man, an evil wizard guy, finds out about Dink's victory and decides to take swift revenge on the Kingdom GoodHeart. He raises an army instantly by magically forcing weak-willed goblins to obey him. The few that manage to resist his control are murdered. What I want to know is, if Seth and this guy were such bros, where the heck was he when Dink came around in the first place?
Yay, finally a happy ending for George! Good old George.
...Damn it.
The early cutscenes are pretty impressive, with lots of moving parts. In a couple of scenes, sprites with brains are used to portray the action rather than directly controlling all of the sprites.
Immediately upon getting home after beating Seth (to the house he got when, exactly? Oh, well), Dink is summoned by the King. Dink getting summoned by the King in this way is a thoroughly worn DMOD setup at this point, but it's handled quite differently here. It's obvious that a war between the goblins and the King's army is raging, and that it's not going very well for the good guys. Talking to the king in an underground bunker, Dink is sent off to recruit the help of a powerful wizard named (of course) Lennard. We also get to see Martridge finally do something! Bellowing, "YOU SHALL NOT PASS," he holds off the goblins as Dink makes his escape.
Whoa! Apparently, Mr. Never-Shows-Up-Again is a bad ass!
Once you actually start playing, though, this DMOD has a problem: there are too many dang screenlocks.
Generally speaking, I'm a fan of the screenlock mechanic. While it can be annoying, it's an important way to force the player to fight their way through the game instead of just skipping everything. Without screen locks, there's little emphasis on the game's combat. "The Apprentice," however, insists on locking down just about every screen. What's worse, the medium-tough pillbugs that swarm across most of the mod's locked screens are scripted to come back immediately after you defeat them and return to the screen, meaning that these screens are always locked! The open area around the DMOD's town is riddled with screens full of these pillbugs. Putting screens that lock in an open, town-type area like that is almost never a good idea, and when combined with the fact that the pillbugs come back immediately, this makes getting around in "The Apprentice" a truly aggravating chore.
Dink: Master of the one-liner.
As if you're not doing enough fighting, you're required to buy a claw sword for 500 gold - a bargain, but you've only got access to enemies that drop small amounts of gold at this point, so this takes quite a while, particularly if you forget which screens are locked by dozens of pillbugs and keep running into them (*grinds teeth*). After that, there's a segment where you fight many, many slayers, followed by a big boss slayer, and then... the game ends. Some narration tells you that the author was too lazy to finish. You never get to meet Lennard or face the big bad guy. What a letdown.
There's a segment of the map that I don't think you're supposed to be able to get to in this version. It's guarded by a giant tree that claims to be an ent. Because it's the standard pine tree sprite, though, throwing a fireball at it removes its hardness, even though the burning animation doesn't play. If you play this DMOD, don't do this - it goes to a place where the DMOD messes up.
Despite the screenlock frustration and the letdown ending, I kind of enjoyed this one. It has some moments I really liked. For example, you know how healing fountains are all over the place in DMODs? There's one in town here, and it's guarded by two knights, who call it an "enchanted healing fountain" and point out that it is of massive strategic importance in the town's defense and say they've been using it to heal wounded soldiers. This is smart! I'm not sure I've ever seen anybody think this convention through further than being a convenience for the player.
And then there's this crazy, gross old pig farmer you run into.
Dink: What ARE you sucking on?
Hobblefoot: *slurps* A pen
Dink: Eww..There's ink and slag dripping from it
Hobblefoot: That's the way...uh huh, uh huh
Hobblefoot: I like it
Dink: You've got problems Hobblefoot
I ain't gonna lie, this bit slayed me. Just slayed me. Some jokes just work really well in short clips of text that come to the viewer one line at a time. It's something I've noticed while playing old adventure games, as well. Something about that little delay can really deliver a hell of a punchline, even if that punchline is just being really damn silly. It actually made it even funnier that I saw that fifth line coming as soon as the fourth one came up.
This one is worth a go, but I'd advise you to cheat your way out of some of the more annoying screenlocks and not to feel guilty about it.
195: Revenge of the Pillbugs Author: DuckKiller4 Release Date: June 7, 2004
"Because we are sick of you killing us!"
It seems like every group of creatures is getting their revenge. First ducks, then pigs, now pillbugs.
This is actually a revised version of this DMOD. DuckKiller4 took a shot at improving it in April of 2005. If they succeeded, it probably wasn't by much.
It probably isn't fair of me not to give the Award of Badness to a DMOD that has six screens, a handful of pillbugs, and nearly no plot, but I got a chuckle out of this, and I've been handing out so many lately. Let me have this one.
The only thing about this DMOD that really matters is the "intro" with Dink talking to a stationary pillbug. Full disclosure, it is past 3 AM and everything is funny, but this tickled me:
Dink: What the?, where am I?
Pillbug: You must die!
Dink: I SAID WHAT THE, WHERE AM I?!!
Haha, okay, sure little pillbug dude!
I love that Dink seems more offended by the pillbug's rudeness in not answering his question than anything else. As for the pillbug, even when forced to consider Dink's inquiry, it's still intent on getting its message across. It is adorable. Ahahahahah. I am crazy. What am I doing with my life?
Y'know, that boss pillbug actually was kind of tough.
That "magic scroll" does nothing. It's the fireball spell, but you can't get a point of magic until you level up by defeating the boss. Nothing happens when you win, by the way. There are a couple of say_stop lines in its die procedure, but they don't seem to display. I'm not sure why.
This is a dumb excuse for a DMOD. Don't download it.
