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237: If Ducks Ruled the World Author: Wesley McElwee Release Date: September 26, 2006
"I've got a bad feeling about those ducks."
As we come to the 4th place DMOD, we see a familiar name. Wesley McElwee is the author of the "Friends Beyond" trilogy, at least the last installment of which I was quite impressed with. This is Wes's first DMOD in quite a while. Let's take a look at DMOD authors who released something after a long hiatus.
--DMOD authors with the longest gap between new DMOD releases (5+ years)--
1. Tim Maurer - 13 years, 6 months, 19 days (Crossroads: 7/13/00 - Malachi the Jerk: 2/1/14)
2. Bill Szczytko - 12 years, 3 months, 28 days (Dorinthia 2: 2/20/00 - Dorinthia SE: 6/17/12)
3. Scratcher - 9 years, 8 months, 29 days (Bincabbi: 11/4/02 - Lost Forest Romp: 8/2/12)
4. Paul Pliska - 8 years, 5 months, 25 days (Triangle Mover: 2/8/04 - Dink Gets Bored: 8/2/12)
5. Metatarasal - 6 years, 8 months, 14 days (The Scourger: 11/19/05 - Quel: 8/2/12)
6. Wesley McElwee - 5 years, 10 months, 10 days (FB3: 11/15/00 - IDRTW: 9/26/06)
7. SabreTrout - 5 years, 1 month, 4 days (Basilisk Smile: 9/26/06 - Valhalla: 10/30/11)
Let me know if I missed anybody.
Yes, Dink has a way of drawing people back in, but Wesley got in on this trend early. Incidentally, as of right now, it'd take at least the return of the author of "Evil Empire" to unseat me from the top of that list.
There's an alternate, even longer title to this DMOD. It's "The Ducks Are Coming and They Are Trying to Take Over the World."
Try to pronounce that acronym. It's fun!
Despite an assurance otherwise near the start, this DMOD is about ducks. Scheming, evil ducks. This is an idea that goes all the way back to "Lost in Dink," or maybe even to the original game if you think those ducks in Windermere were somehow responsible for creating the weird duck cult (as is implied in "FIAT"). Even after all this time, ducks plotting to take over the world is still pretty funny.
I liked IDRtW a lot; it's my DMOD of the year so far. It doesn't seem especially failure-themed, although there's a novel mechanic that is used to trigger an alternate bad ending. IDRtW uses get_time_game, a function new to 1.08, to determine how long you've been playing. If you take more than 60 minutes to reach a certain point, the bad ending happens. I should mention that the way Dink Smallwood keeps track of playing time is pure evil if you're working with a time limit. Going back and loading a save (or dying, which has the same effect) will not result in your play time going back to what it was when you made the save. Even quitting the game without saving doesn't help. For this reason, I abandoned an idea to have a speed run achievement in "Dink Smallwood: Achievement Unlocked Edition."
In this case, however, 60 minutes is fairly generous. I got the good ending on my first try, although I'll admit I got some help from the lovely HTML walkthrough that's included. I didn't lean on it too hard, though. I did miss a secret you have to find in the first 13 minutes.
In the bad ending, the ducks successfully complete their evil plan... to turn the whole world greyscale, so everybody will see it just like they do! Oh no!
The DMOD doesn't jump right into duck-fighting, though. Dink is sent by a particularly apathetic version of King Daniel to solve some ill-defined "disturbance." This turns out to be a conflict between two neighboring goblin villages, where the mountain goblins (called "Rockies") keep cutting down all of the forest goblins' trees. Of course, it turns out that all of this has been engineered by the ducks.
Goblins can speak English just fine in this DMOD. They can talk just like a local TV ad.
There are some very funny situations in this one. My favorite bit is a guard who won't let you into the forest without a sword. There's a sword in plain sight right behind him.
Dink: Are you sure I can't just grab that sword?
Guard: Afraid not, rules are rules.
Dink: Perhaps you could grab it for me quick.
Guard: No can do, who would guard the entrance?
Dink: I could.
Guard: But you don't even have a weapon to guard it with.
To get past the guard, you have to sneak by when he falls asleep. This is determined by the time of day, using another new 1.08 function: get_time_real, which gets the time from your system clock. You can give the goblin boring books in order to increase the amount of time in the day in which he'll be asleep.
There's no actual snoring sound, he just emits a stream of Zs.
The treasure chests in this DMOD are all locked, and Dink can find keys to open them. This doesn't really work as intended, though. Keys found on the map return when you come back to the screen, so you can get all the keys you need at once.
There's an item called the warp crystal that enables Dink to travel instantly to several locations on the map. It's very handy for completing the game quickly, and it's just a great feature in general.
The final battle against the duck leader is almost a joke. He's impossible when fighting normally, but you can use a sack of feed to lure him to spots where he'll get smacked by a big rock. He'll continue to fall for this, even as he comments that he should probably stop doing that.
Evil mastermind or not, it's still a duck.
The world is saved from certain... er... greyscale. But the King doesn't even care enough to listen to Dink's story. Poor Dink can't get any respect.
If you finish in 45 minutes, the game will show you some screenshots of a future project that either never happened or is "Infinidink." I'd do it for fun if I didn't still have so many more mods to play. I really enjoyed this one.
238: Prelude Author: Joshua Kozloski (Joshriot) Release Date: September 26, 2006
"Marty! The bathtub needs more Mr. Bubble!"
"Prelude" received the same number of points as "Fall of Tahmar" in the voting, but lost the "which one did Redink1 rank higher" tiebreaker. The top three authors were all awarded prizes.
This is the only DMOD ever to take advantage of the MP3 support of 1.08 Aural+ by offering a pack of (almost entirely) original music in MP3 format. A MIDI soundtrack with much simpler arrangements is also included.
I played "Prelude" with the MP3 soundtrack. The MP3 tunes are quite good and give the DMOD a level of atmosphere that couldn't be achieved with MIDIs (at least, not without some work with soundfonts on the user's end). The MP3 support in Aural+ works very well. The songs loop seamlessly, and there's no noticeable lag when loading songs.
Unfortunately, playing in 1.08 Aural+ (as opposed to FreeDink or even Dink HD) seems to break a lot of my screenshots. Some of them come out with all the sprites removed, the text blacked out and almost illegible, or part of the screen simply cut off. I have no idea why this would be, but I had to throw out my shots of some of my favorite moments from the DMOD.
I did manage to get this shot of the unusual title screen. It has the title on it, although it's a bit hard to see.
Dink, who the intro tells us has been running for six years without stopping, comes upon a settlement destroyed by monsters. Everyone is dead except one old man in hiding that Dink finds later. There's quite a story built up here, actually. Apparently magic is a dark and mysterious force linked to the moon and much older than humans. People may think they have it controlled, but the greater humans' magic power becomes, the closer it gets to slipping out of their control. This is what happened to the unfortunate land that Dink comes upon here.
I had to open up FreeDink to get this shot of the intro. It's a pretty neat-looking intro.
This DMOD does quite a bit to stand out from the crowd. In addition to the MP3 soundtrack, there's a new status bar that I quite liked, and savebots have been replaced by save scrolls. When Dink finds a save scroll, you can use it to save whenever and wherever you want, but only once per scroll. It's an interesting way to add a little strategy to saving.
This screen replaces the usual inventory. The "current objective" changes several times throughout the game.
The map, while not obsessively decorated, does a nice job combining new and old graphics to create a slightly dark mood.
The crows, a neutral creature, are by Rabidwolf9; I think this is their first appearance.
Let's get back to the story. We learn that magic was brought to humans by Martridge, who was working as an assistant to the ancient Seth, (!) who called him Marty and made him do embarrassing tasks (!!) when he got fed up and stole the secret of magic.
Ergo, Martridge is pretty ancient himself.
Dink receives his quest from the old man in hiding: to save his granddaughter, Sara. She was in love with a young man who practiced dark magic. When he was forbidden to see her and banished by the fearful populace, his experiments got more reckless until he lost control of the magic, which summoned all of the nasty creatures who killed everybody. We're told there are vampires, orcs... vampire orcs. It's a hell of a buildup. It feels like we're in for quite an epic. We're not, of course, and there are no vampires or anything.
Sorry, there isn't one.
The boss is a fearsome creature known - for SOME damn reason - as the "geezemunk." When Dink wins, the geezemunk explains that he already ate the geezer who gave Dink the quest. Dink is bummed about being gypped on his big quest, but ol' Geezy astutely points out that this is the FAILURE contest and that Joshriot didn't have 5 years to make the DMOD. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what he managed to make in about a month. This is a really solid adventure that took me over 50 minutes.
There are a couple of bugs, though. One involves Dink's magic stat being reset to 2 and isn't a big deal. The other unfortunately makes the DMOD difficult to finish. The Geezemunk constantly spawns enemies, and doesn't bother to check how many there are. If you don't beat him quickly enough, Dink will freeze when you deplete the boss's HP. To win before this happens, I used a powerup called "Crunk Juice" that temporarily gives Dink fast speed and crazy stats. I had to use two of them, actually.
I actually shared a bit of Dink's disappointment, because I was really enjoying myself, and the story was pretty interesting. It's all good, though. If Josh had tried to go for a SUPER QUEST, it probably would never have been finished.
I know that feeling, man.
"I've got a bad feeling about those ducks."
As we come to the 4th place DMOD, we see a familiar name. Wesley McElwee is the author of the "Friends Beyond" trilogy, at least the last installment of which I was quite impressed with. This is Wes's first DMOD in quite a while. Let's take a look at DMOD authors who released something after a long hiatus.
--DMOD authors with the longest gap between new DMOD releases (5+ years)--
1. Tim Maurer - 13 years, 6 months, 19 days (Crossroads: 7/13/00 - Malachi the Jerk: 2/1/14)
2. Bill Szczytko - 12 years, 3 months, 28 days (Dorinthia 2: 2/20/00 - Dorinthia SE: 6/17/12)
3. Scratcher - 9 years, 8 months, 29 days (Bincabbi: 11/4/02 - Lost Forest Romp: 8/2/12)
4. Paul Pliska - 8 years, 5 months, 25 days (Triangle Mover: 2/8/04 - Dink Gets Bored: 8/2/12)
5. Metatarasal - 6 years, 8 months, 14 days (The Scourger: 11/19/05 - Quel: 8/2/12)
6. Wesley McElwee - 5 years, 10 months, 10 days (FB3: 11/15/00 - IDRTW: 9/26/06)
7. SabreTrout - 5 years, 1 month, 4 days (Basilisk Smile: 9/26/06 - Valhalla: 10/30/11)
Let me know if I missed anybody.
Yes, Dink has a way of drawing people back in, but Wesley got in on this trend early. Incidentally, as of right now, it'd take at least the return of the author of "Evil Empire" to unseat me from the top of that list.
There's an alternate, even longer title to this DMOD. It's "The Ducks Are Coming and They Are Trying to Take Over the World."
Try to pronounce that acronym. It's fun!
Despite an assurance otherwise near the start, this DMOD is about ducks. Scheming, evil ducks. This is an idea that goes all the way back to "Lost in Dink," or maybe even to the original game if you think those ducks in Windermere were somehow responsible for creating the weird duck cult (as is implied in "FIAT"). Even after all this time, ducks plotting to take over the world is still pretty funny.
I liked IDRtW a lot; it's my DMOD of the year so far. It doesn't seem especially failure-themed, although there's a novel mechanic that is used to trigger an alternate bad ending. IDRtW uses get_time_game, a function new to 1.08, to determine how long you've been playing. If you take more than 60 minutes to reach a certain point, the bad ending happens. I should mention that the way Dink Smallwood keeps track of playing time is pure evil if you're working with a time limit. Going back and loading a save (or dying, which has the same effect) will not result in your play time going back to what it was when you made the save. Even quitting the game without saving doesn't help. For this reason, I abandoned an idea to have a speed run achievement in "Dink Smallwood: Achievement Unlocked Edition."
In this case, however, 60 minutes is fairly generous. I got the good ending on my first try, although I'll admit I got some help from the lovely HTML walkthrough that's included. I didn't lean on it too hard, though. I did miss a secret you have to find in the first 13 minutes.
In the bad ending, the ducks successfully complete their evil plan... to turn the whole world greyscale, so everybody will see it just like they do! Oh no!
The DMOD doesn't jump right into duck-fighting, though. Dink is sent by a particularly apathetic version of King Daniel to solve some ill-defined "disturbance." This turns out to be a conflict between two neighboring goblin villages, where the mountain goblins (called "Rockies") keep cutting down all of the forest goblins' trees. Of course, it turns out that all of this has been engineered by the ducks.
Goblins can speak English just fine in this DMOD. They can talk just like a local TV ad.
There are some very funny situations in this one. My favorite bit is a guard who won't let you into the forest without a sword. There's a sword in plain sight right behind him.
Dink: Are you sure I can't just grab that sword?
Guard: Afraid not, rules are rules.
Dink: Perhaps you could grab it for me quick.
Guard: No can do, who would guard the entrance?
Dink: I could.
Guard: But you don't even have a weapon to guard it with.
To get past the guard, you have to sneak by when he falls asleep. This is determined by the time of day, using another new 1.08 function: get_time_real, which gets the time from your system clock. You can give the goblin boring books in order to increase the amount of time in the day in which he'll be asleep.
There's no actual snoring sound, he just emits a stream of Zs.
The treasure chests in this DMOD are all locked, and Dink can find keys to open them. This doesn't really work as intended, though. Keys found on the map return when you come back to the screen, so you can get all the keys you need at once.
There's an item called the warp crystal that enables Dink to travel instantly to several locations on the map. It's very handy for completing the game quickly, and it's just a great feature in general.
The final battle against the duck leader is almost a joke. He's impossible when fighting normally, but you can use a sack of feed to lure him to spots where he'll get smacked by a big rock. He'll continue to fall for this, even as he comments that he should probably stop doing that.
Evil mastermind or not, it's still a duck.
The world is saved from certain... er... greyscale. But the King doesn't even care enough to listen to Dink's story. Poor Dink can't get any respect.
If you finish in 45 minutes, the game will show you some screenshots of a future project that either never happened or is "Infinidink." I'd do it for fun if I didn't still have so many more mods to play. I really enjoyed this one.
238: Prelude Author: Joshua Kozloski (Joshriot) Release Date: September 26, 2006
"Marty! The bathtub needs more Mr. Bubble!"
"Prelude" received the same number of points as "Fall of Tahmar" in the voting, but lost the "which one did Redink1 rank higher" tiebreaker. The top three authors were all awarded prizes.
This is the only DMOD ever to take advantage of the MP3 support of 1.08 Aural+ by offering a pack of (almost entirely) original music in MP3 format. A MIDI soundtrack with much simpler arrangements is also included.
I played "Prelude" with the MP3 soundtrack. The MP3 tunes are quite good and give the DMOD a level of atmosphere that couldn't be achieved with MIDIs (at least, not without some work with soundfonts on the user's end). The MP3 support in Aural+ works very well. The songs loop seamlessly, and there's no noticeable lag when loading songs.
Unfortunately, playing in 1.08 Aural+ (as opposed to FreeDink or even Dink HD) seems to break a lot of my screenshots. Some of them come out with all the sprites removed, the text blacked out and almost illegible, or part of the screen simply cut off. I have no idea why this would be, but I had to throw out my shots of some of my favorite moments from the DMOD.
I did manage to get this shot of the unusual title screen. It has the title on it, although it's a bit hard to see.
Dink, who the intro tells us has been running for six years without stopping, comes upon a settlement destroyed by monsters. Everyone is dead except one old man in hiding that Dink finds later. There's quite a story built up here, actually. Apparently magic is a dark and mysterious force linked to the moon and much older than humans. People may think they have it controlled, but the greater humans' magic power becomes, the closer it gets to slipping out of their control. This is what happened to the unfortunate land that Dink comes upon here.
I had to open up FreeDink to get this shot of the intro. It's a pretty neat-looking intro.
This DMOD does quite a bit to stand out from the crowd. In addition to the MP3 soundtrack, there's a new status bar that I quite liked, and savebots have been replaced by save scrolls. When Dink finds a save scroll, you can use it to save whenever and wherever you want, but only once per scroll. It's an interesting way to add a little strategy to saving.
This screen replaces the usual inventory. The "current objective" changes several times throughout the game.
The map, while not obsessively decorated, does a nice job combining new and old graphics to create a slightly dark mood.
The crows, a neutral creature, are by Rabidwolf9; I think this is their first appearance.
Let's get back to the story. We learn that magic was brought to humans by Martridge, who was working as an assistant to the ancient Seth, (!) who called him Marty and made him do embarrassing tasks (!!) when he got fed up and stole the secret of magic.
Ergo, Martridge is pretty ancient himself.
Dink receives his quest from the old man in hiding: to save his granddaughter, Sara. She was in love with a young man who practiced dark magic. When he was forbidden to see her and banished by the fearful populace, his experiments got more reckless until he lost control of the magic, which summoned all of the nasty creatures who killed everybody. We're told there are vampires, orcs... vampire orcs. It's a hell of a buildup. It feels like we're in for quite an epic. We're not, of course, and there are no vampires or anything.
Sorry, there isn't one.
The boss is a fearsome creature known - for SOME damn reason - as the "geezemunk." When Dink wins, the geezemunk explains that he already ate the geezer who gave Dink the quest. Dink is bummed about being gypped on his big quest, but ol' Geezy astutely points out that this is the FAILURE contest and that Joshriot didn't have 5 years to make the DMOD. Actually, I'm pretty impressed with what he managed to make in about a month. This is a really solid adventure that took me over 50 minutes.
There are a couple of bugs, though. One involves Dink's magic stat being reset to 2 and isn't a big deal. The other unfortunately makes the DMOD difficult to finish. The Geezemunk constantly spawns enemies, and doesn't bother to check how many there are. If you don't beat him quickly enough, Dink will freeze when you deplete the boss's HP. To win before this happens, I used a powerup called "Crunk Juice" that temporarily gives Dink fast speed and crazy stats. I had to use two of them, actually.
I actually shared a bit of Dink's disappointment, because I was really enjoying myself, and the story was pretty interesting. It's all good, though. If Josh had tried to go for a SUPER QUEST, it probably would never have been finished.
I know that feeling, man.
