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210: Apex (Alpha) Author: Matt Tetreault (Hance) Release Date: February 13, 2005
"While I must say it is interestingly Dmod you've created."
Hance's first DMOD "Bishop's Quest" was the most unpleasant experience I've ever had playing Dink. It was characterized by endless, incomprehensible cutscenes, most of which would break if you ever pressed the space bar or the talk button on your gamepad. It also required you to "play along" and pretend things had to happen in a certain order even though they didn't. Nothing in it really worked as you'd expect from a video game.
When I saw that his other DMOD was marked an "epic," the biggest fear I immediately had was that it would actually be long enough to earn that designation. That thought was almost enough to make me break out into a sweat. Well, I needn't have worried. I finished the DMOD in under 45 minutes. I've played longer "romps." I think Hance designated the mod an "epic" to reflect how much respect he thought it deserved, but that wasn't a big success. With a rating of 5.6, "Apex" is easily the lowest-rated DMOD with the "epic" label.
I will say that "Apex" is definitely a better DMOD than "Bishop's Quest." This is awfully faint praise, of course, but it was a relief that it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It has most of the same problems as the author's first DMOD, but to a considerably lesser degree. For example, some of the things that are meant to be obstacles to progress actually function as such. Cutscenes are shorter and less frequent, and only a few of them have the space bar problem. The heavy-handed yet impossible to understand religious themes from "Bishop's Quest" are absent here.
Everybody's favorite phrase "The God" does make one cameo appearance, though.
There is one area where "Apex" is even worse than "Bishop's Quest," unfortunately: the mapping. While an effort was clearly made to make the screens look interesting by putting a lot of different stuff on them, this mod remains a visual nightmare. Tiles are the biggest problem.
A cave looks like this...
Or worse, like this.
I want to cry, I really do. What is that fire tile doing there, anyway?
There are some screens that manage to look interesting.
Hance re-uses content from DMODs by other authors in odd ways. I'm not talking about the graphics from Carrie's "Golden Buddha" - that's fine. I'm talking about stuff that's pasted in wholesale and no longer makes sense in its new context. There's a scene where you have to get on a boat that takes a script directly from "Stone of Balance." It's hard to figure out how to get on the boat; for some reason, you have to talk to a crate. This brings up the transplanted script, which still contains many of the original lines of dialogue from "Stone of Balance," where Dink was arguing with an old guy about oars. Some of the other character's lines appear even though there isn't anybody around to be saying them!
Straight from "Stone of Balance." Who, exactly, is speaking here? There's no indication that this is a talking crate of some kind.
This copying even extends to the accompanying text file. The following passage is taken directly from the readme for "Cast Awakening Part 1: Initiation:"
"And please don't cheat. There *really* isn't any need to. Some parts *are* challenging, but none of the enemies can run as fast as Dink, and can usually be avoided with proper planning."
This text doesn't really apply to this DMOD. I can't imagine what it's doing here. The text also demonstrates that Hance was aware of the problem with cutscenes that don't freeze the player, because he includes this warning:
"DO NOT USE THE SPACE BAR
Let the script go by it self."
I am totally incapable of grasping the fact that he knew about this problem, but chose not to fix it (this is the second version of the DMOD). I just can't even imagine how that's possible. What in the Hell is even going on here? Hance continues to be an unsolvable mystery.
"Apex" is about Dink's quest to return the 6 golden eggs to King Ducklin and Queen Ducklinda of the Kingdom of Apex. They were stolen by the evil Domar, who has cast a spell of infertility upon the land, animals and people. All of this is presented in a somewhat more comprehensible way than "Bishop Quest's" plot. Actually, I like the infertility spell. It's not one of your typical evil spells, but it would create a huge crisis nonetheless. Unfortunately, while you're told about the infertility spell, you never see any evidence of it. Crops and such seem to be growing just fine.
Somebody named Gunter tells Dink what's going on near the beginning; unfortunately, talking to him causes Dink to stay frozen, one of the DMOD's worst bugs. You've got to ignore the guy who's supposed to be the one sending you on the quest in the first place.
The game progresses through several different areas in a linear fashion. Each area has a few different errands for you to run, but it's confusing because the game doesn't really keep track of what you're doing. You're supposed to bring items to certain characters, but you can usually "give" them the items before you've even found them, meaning that there's no point in actually finding the items at all. Similarly, characters constantly reference conversations that the player may or may not have already seen. There's exactly one order the player could do things in that would make everything make sense, and there's really no way to know in advance what that order is.
Here, we see the DMOD depending upon the honor system for plot progression. It thinks it's a choose your own adventure book!
Some of the items don't work either. The firebow is added as a spell instead of an item, and trying to use it just causes Dink to stand in place and draw the bow. One particularly funny case is an ordinary egg. If you use it, Dink says, "here is an egg," and for some reason, it vanishes! Maybe the egg knows it shouldn't exist due to the infertility spell, and acknowledging it as an egg reminds it to stop existing. Anyway, you can get as many copies of the egg as you want, like every item in the DMOD.
A few things do work properly. One thing that works is a set of colored doors and keys taken from "Initiation." This is the main thing that prevents you from just marching straight to the ending - at least, it does on those occasions where hardness errors don't allow you to just walk through the back of the building and get to the warp the door is blocking.
I was stuck for a little while in an area called the Marshlands. This area is a complicated maze, and you can't just walk to the end - you have to find a pickaxe to clear away rocks that block your path. The Marshlands are also full of stone giants and dragons. It's not necessary to fight a single enemy in this DMOD, but it's easy to get killed by the monsters in this area. You'd think that a map of the area would be helpful... that is, you'd think that if you had never seen one of Hance's maps before.
If this mess has ANY relation to the Marshlands as seen in the game, I sure as heck can't tell.
The Marshlands are the apex of "Apex's" attempt to feel like a real DMOD. After that, most of the rest of the game degenerates into a series of short areas where all you have to do is walk straight to a warp. There are a lot of these areas strung together, but they're so short that it all doesn't take very long. Even when you finally run into the villain, all you have to do is talk to him and he'll shrink away to nothing - that is, if you even care to do so. You can just walk past him to the next warp if you want. The ending gets caught up in a weird loop of scenes where a lot of lines are repeated, and the author pats himself on the back a bit by having Dink say he liked the game.
Saying "download my DMOD!" at the end of that very DMOD is an awfully strange thing to do. I guess this is meant to be a message to pass on to others.
I've said before that playing these DMODs feels like interacting with a piece of their authors, but nobody has mystified me as much as this guy. I only became more confused when I looked through his posting history and found this post. He asks for beta testers for "Bishop's Quest," and people mostly just discuss how old they are. In response, he lashes out at the community for attacks and threats that nobody ever made, calling people "dinks" and "possible closet queens." He declares that "Bishop's Quest" "is gonna be the talk of the Network. and will Blow You Away." I don't mean to condemn the guy, I just really don't get it. Old Matt seems to occupy a different universe from the rest of us.
Playing "Bishop's Quest" and "Apex" is like having somebody who doesn't quite know what they're doing tell you a story. It's obvious that they're putting a lot of work into the telling, and they're clearly quite proud of the story, but you feel a deep unease as they ramble on and you catch hardly any of it. The teller keeps forgetting basic rules of storytelling, and you can't even tell what order things are supposed to be happening in. Finally, you resign yourself to it and sort of float along. You still don't get it, but at least the unease goes away.
"While I must say it is interestingly Dmod you've created."
Hance's first DMOD "Bishop's Quest" was the most unpleasant experience I've ever had playing Dink. It was characterized by endless, incomprehensible cutscenes, most of which would break if you ever pressed the space bar or the talk button on your gamepad. It also required you to "play along" and pretend things had to happen in a certain order even though they didn't. Nothing in it really worked as you'd expect from a video game.
When I saw that his other DMOD was marked an "epic," the biggest fear I immediately had was that it would actually be long enough to earn that designation. That thought was almost enough to make me break out into a sweat. Well, I needn't have worried. I finished the DMOD in under 45 minutes. I've played longer "romps." I think Hance designated the mod an "epic" to reflect how much respect he thought it deserved, but that wasn't a big success. With a rating of 5.6, "Apex" is easily the lowest-rated DMOD with the "epic" label.
I will say that "Apex" is definitely a better DMOD than "Bishop's Quest." This is awfully faint praise, of course, but it was a relief that it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It has most of the same problems as the author's first DMOD, but to a considerably lesser degree. For example, some of the things that are meant to be obstacles to progress actually function as such. Cutscenes are shorter and less frequent, and only a few of them have the space bar problem. The heavy-handed yet impossible to understand religious themes from "Bishop's Quest" are absent here.
Everybody's favorite phrase "The God" does make one cameo appearance, though.
There is one area where "Apex" is even worse than "Bishop's Quest," unfortunately: the mapping. While an effort was clearly made to make the screens look interesting by putting a lot of different stuff on them, this mod remains a visual nightmare. Tiles are the biggest problem.
A cave looks like this...
Or worse, like this.
I want to cry, I really do. What is that fire tile doing there, anyway?
There are some screens that manage to look interesting.
Hance re-uses content from DMODs by other authors in odd ways. I'm not talking about the graphics from Carrie's "Golden Buddha" - that's fine. I'm talking about stuff that's pasted in wholesale and no longer makes sense in its new context. There's a scene where you have to get on a boat that takes a script directly from "Stone of Balance." It's hard to figure out how to get on the boat; for some reason, you have to talk to a crate. This brings up the transplanted script, which still contains many of the original lines of dialogue from "Stone of Balance," where Dink was arguing with an old guy about oars. Some of the other character's lines appear even though there isn't anybody around to be saying them!
Straight from "Stone of Balance." Who, exactly, is speaking here? There's no indication that this is a talking crate of some kind.
This copying even extends to the accompanying text file. The following passage is taken directly from the readme for "Cast Awakening Part 1: Initiation:"
"And please don't cheat. There *really* isn't any need to. Some parts *are* challenging, but none of the enemies can run as fast as Dink, and can usually be avoided with proper planning."
This text doesn't really apply to this DMOD. I can't imagine what it's doing here. The text also demonstrates that Hance was aware of the problem with cutscenes that don't freeze the player, because he includes this warning:
"DO NOT USE THE SPACE BAR
Let the script go by it self."
I am totally incapable of grasping the fact that he knew about this problem, but chose not to fix it (this is the second version of the DMOD). I just can't even imagine how that's possible. What in the Hell is even going on here? Hance continues to be an unsolvable mystery.
"Apex" is about Dink's quest to return the 6 golden eggs to King Ducklin and Queen Ducklinda of the Kingdom of Apex. They were stolen by the evil Domar, who has cast a spell of infertility upon the land, animals and people. All of this is presented in a somewhat more comprehensible way than "Bishop Quest's" plot. Actually, I like the infertility spell. It's not one of your typical evil spells, but it would create a huge crisis nonetheless. Unfortunately, while you're told about the infertility spell, you never see any evidence of it. Crops and such seem to be growing just fine.
Somebody named Gunter tells Dink what's going on near the beginning; unfortunately, talking to him causes Dink to stay frozen, one of the DMOD's worst bugs. You've got to ignore the guy who's supposed to be the one sending you on the quest in the first place.
The game progresses through several different areas in a linear fashion. Each area has a few different errands for you to run, but it's confusing because the game doesn't really keep track of what you're doing. You're supposed to bring items to certain characters, but you can usually "give" them the items before you've even found them, meaning that there's no point in actually finding the items at all. Similarly, characters constantly reference conversations that the player may or may not have already seen. There's exactly one order the player could do things in that would make everything make sense, and there's really no way to know in advance what that order is.
Here, we see the DMOD depending upon the honor system for plot progression. It thinks it's a choose your own adventure book!
Some of the items don't work either. The firebow is added as a spell instead of an item, and trying to use it just causes Dink to stand in place and draw the bow. One particularly funny case is an ordinary egg. If you use it, Dink says, "here is an egg," and for some reason, it vanishes! Maybe the egg knows it shouldn't exist due to the infertility spell, and acknowledging it as an egg reminds it to stop existing. Anyway, you can get as many copies of the egg as you want, like every item in the DMOD.
A few things do work properly. One thing that works is a set of colored doors and keys taken from "Initiation." This is the main thing that prevents you from just marching straight to the ending - at least, it does on those occasions where hardness errors don't allow you to just walk through the back of the building and get to the warp the door is blocking.
I was stuck for a little while in an area called the Marshlands. This area is a complicated maze, and you can't just walk to the end - you have to find a pickaxe to clear away rocks that block your path. The Marshlands are also full of stone giants and dragons. It's not necessary to fight a single enemy in this DMOD, but it's easy to get killed by the monsters in this area. You'd think that a map of the area would be helpful... that is, you'd think that if you had never seen one of Hance's maps before.
If this mess has ANY relation to the Marshlands as seen in the game, I sure as heck can't tell.
The Marshlands are the apex of "Apex's" attempt to feel like a real DMOD. After that, most of the rest of the game degenerates into a series of short areas where all you have to do is walk straight to a warp. There are a lot of these areas strung together, but they're so short that it all doesn't take very long. Even when you finally run into the villain, all you have to do is talk to him and he'll shrink away to nothing - that is, if you even care to do so. You can just walk past him to the next warp if you want. The ending gets caught up in a weird loop of scenes where a lot of lines are repeated, and the author pats himself on the back a bit by having Dink say he liked the game.
Saying "download my DMOD!" at the end of that very DMOD is an awfully strange thing to do. I guess this is meant to be a message to pass on to others.
I've said before that playing these DMODs feels like interacting with a piece of their authors, but nobody has mystified me as much as this guy. I only became more confused when I looked through his posting history and found this post. He asks for beta testers for "Bishop's Quest," and people mostly just discuss how old they are. In response, he lashes out at the community for attacks and threats that nobody ever made, calling people "dinks" and "possible closet queens." He declares that "Bishop's Quest" "is gonna be the talk of the Network. and will Blow You Away." I don't mean to condemn the guy, I just really don't get it. Old Matt seems to occupy a different universe from the rest of us.
Playing "Bishop's Quest" and "Apex" is like having somebody who doesn't quite know what they're doing tell you a story. It's obvious that they're putting a lot of work into the telling, and they're clearly quite proud of the story, but you feel a deep unease as they ramble on and you catch hardly any of it. The teller keeps forgetting basic rules of storytelling, and you can't even tell what order things are supposed to be happening in. Finally, you resign yourself to it and sort of float along. You still don't get it, but at least the unease goes away.
