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--Crazy Old Tim Plays All the DMODs--
Directory
1998 | HTML version
1999 | HTML version
2000 | HTML version
2001 | Article version
2002 | Article version
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2010
2011-2015
Sorry to anybody who was looking forward to a "Crazy Old Tim Plays All the DMODs of 2013" topic with just one DMOD in it, but I've been planning it this way from the beginning. With just 9 DMODs, I can't justify giving 2008 its own topic. This topic will cover 2009's DMODs as well, for a total of 27 DMODs.
===2008===
Whatever magic it was that made new authors want to release so many DMODs in 2007, it did not travel to the new year. After an entire decade of pretty consistent activity, 2008 was the first year to see the release of fewer than 10 DMODs. There was a DMOD contest, but it received just two entries. Anybody at the time could hardly be faulted for assuming that the whole "Dink" thing was finally winding down, although that isn't how things actually turned out.
280: The Hero of the Time (Demo) Author: Skull Release Date: January 26, 2008
"You bloody wizards!"
Man, just get a load of the description of this one:
Dink Smallwood is Pub/bar's owner. He is just going to dance when he is teleported to Ice Age.
The Tree of Life has died and the Cure of World has been stolen. Therefor, the World is destroying.
Dink Smallwood of course must save it, as he is from Future and has been teleported to Past. (Ice Age) as I mentioned before.
"He is just going to dance when he is teleported to Ice Age." I hate it when that happens.
That's... a colorful title screen.
This is an old project that Skull decided to release before moving on to other things. This fact, combined with this DMOD's very low rating, had me worrying I'd have to give him another DFMAOB for the road, but it actually isn't THAT bad.
"The Hero of the Time" is a very short demo that consists mostly of cutscenes, broken up by a couple of extremely short gameplay segments. Dink is given sky-high stats that make the combat a breeze. As I've said before, "too easy" bothers me less than "too hard," especially in a short game where you don't have too much time to get bored by the lack of challenge. The only things Dink does in the gameplay segments are fight some blue stone giants, visit a house or two and fight a woman who has magical powers but doesn't seem to bother using them in combat.
I'm not sure whether this particular recolor has been seen before.
The cutscenes are pretty well-staged, though the English is on the poor side. In the distant past, the Tree of Life protected the world by guarding something called the "Cure of World." What did this cure do? The DMOD doesn't tell us. Regardless, when the Ice Age came the tree was killed by the cold, and somebody stole this apparently important item. Some wizards (apparently there were wizards during the Ice Age) responded to the threat by pulling Dink Smallwood from the future to go get the Cure back. I guess they know about the future hero because they're... time wizards, or something? I dunno, this raises too many questions. Exactly how much do these damn wizards know about the future? You'd think they'd have known somebody was going to steal their precious thingy!
The wizards were also really bad at coming up with names.
So Dink, apparently being the best hero in all of the future whom they could have picked, is pulled from a time in which he runs a bar. I think there have been at least two other DMODs that depicted Dink as an owner of a bar or inn. Some further cutscenes show the scheming villains, a knight serving an unseen figure he calls the "Master" and some ducks who report to him. Apparently the ducks and pigs (not shown) are to be elevated in society when he somehow uses the "Cure of World" to rule said world. Maybe it's a cure for the condition of insufficient tyranny.
Puffs of flame continually come out through that hole. Maybe the master is a dragon with indigestion and he's standing behind that wall.
I can't believe I've said even that much about this one. It's over in a flash and doesn't leave much of an impression.
281: Hide-n-Seek Author: Endy Release Date: March 28, 2008
"Ready or not, here I come!"
"Hide-n-Seek" is not to be confused with 2004's "Hide-and-Seek." It still amuses me how similar those titles are.
In this DMOD, Dink plays a simple game of hide and seek with 5 women. The locations of the girls are randomized on each play, which is a neat trick. The maps are randomized as well, which would be really impressive if it changed the actual shape of the field in any way, but it's actually just the decoration (trees and flowers) that changes. Still, I guess that would help keep it fresh if you wanted to play it again for some reason (I did play it twice just to confirm that the randomization works). The map looks quite good and has some interesting features like a tiny island with a bridge and some unusually-shaped plateaus.
The girls are not especially good at hiding. To be fair to them, there aren't any great hiding places in the area, but the least they could do is not move around.
Apparently so.
Despite the randomization, the experience is pretty similar regardless of where the girls end up. It's over very quickly. Still, it's a neat trick, and the map is quite nice.
282: Bug Mania Author: Sparrowhawk Release Date: April 10, 2008
"*cough*loser*cough*"
This is an expanded version of my favorite minigame from the "One Screen D-Mod Compilation." It has the original four levels from the one-screen version (each has their own screen now) and two additional levels. The only major change to the existing levels is that clicking anywhere other than on a pillbug in stage 1 now subtracts a point from your score. Unfortunately, this ruins the game for me. Part of the fun of this sort of thing is madly clicking all over the place. Stage 1 in this version is stressful and difficult, which doesn't match up with a game that is otherwise easy, breezy fun. The pillbugs will often disappear right as you click on them, and if you lose a few points you'll never make it in the time limit. The best I did after quite a few tries was 33 of a required 35 points. I could probably have made it eventually, but I wasn't having fun. I commented out the line that removes a point and had a much better time.
I love this title screen, though. The only thing that would make it better is if you could click on and squash the pillbugs here.
The first new level is set on an icy lake. Pillbugs are blown across the ice by the wind, and you have to try to stop as many as possible. Clicking on the ice makes cracks in it, but this isn't a failure condition, fortunately.
Notice the new green-blood pillbug corpses. Real pillbugs have blue blood, but green matches with the idea that these are "bugs" or insects.
The real attraction of this version is the brilliant new town level. It takes place across 21 screens. You press the arrow keys to move between screens and click on doors or other entrances to enter buildings and a basement. Pressing an arrow key causes the screen to scroll as if Dink has walked from one screen to the next. It's beautiful, and I have no idea how Sparrowhawk did it. I also love how characters in the game treat the hammer as a character, showing that what we are dealing with here is not an unseen hammerer but a floating, self-aware hammer. Funny stuff.
Please Hammer, do hurt 'em.
The town stage is full of delightful easter eggs. Clicking on almost everything produces some kind of result - breaking windows, smashing pumpkins, extinguishing torches. NPCs on the screen react to what you're doing, complaining about you wrecking the place. There are a few secrets to find. You're told that there are 191 pillbugs, but due to some extras in the secret areas, I found 205.
One secret area is this dark basement. Unlike the rest of the game, you have to move the hammer along the path or you'll be sent back to the start. Here, Hammer witnesses the resurrection of the Dead Dragon Carcass!
This secret machine unleashes a plague of ducks upon the town. And you thought they had problems before.
It's very easy to finish the town stage in the five minutes you're given if you focus on going for the bugs. Once you beat the game, an option is added on the title screen to go straight to the town stage, and you can play without a time limit if you like to make sure you see everything.
"Bug Mania" is impressive, bewildering, and apart from one design decision I really didn't like, very fun. If you have the same problem with level 1 that I did, you can remove the penalty by commenting out the line "&defense -= 1;" in v1-clicker.c. This is, of course, cheating. I own up to it.
283: The Attack of the Goblins Author: Teej88 Release Date: May 24, 2008
"Matridge... on the Way here I got attacked by a Goblin..."
When I decided that "The Hero of the Time" didn't deserve an Award of Badness, I thought that I might make it through 2008 without giving one out.
Nope.
This one is sub-"Dink Forever" level. It's not the worst out there, but it makes some of Skull's early DMODs look good.
The problems start with the title screen, where I had no idea what to do for at least ten seconds.
Yoo hoo? Buttons?
It turns out that those fancy pictures of King Dan are the start and quit buttons. The quit button says "Please don't qui" when you put your mouse over it. Like Arthur Dent in most of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the button has no T.
There are five screens. Four of them have no background but some poorly-tiled grass. The fifth is an indoor screen with some furniture, but the depth dots are all set incorrectly, and Dink clips behind or in front of everything.
At the start, Dink is dumped unceremoniously into a screen with some barrels and a goblin that is, to be honest, minding its own business. Dink can start a fight with it if he wants. The stats of 15-15-15 you're given are more than enough to kill goblins with your bare hands, but the barrels are all full of strength potions just in case. Further screens give you even more strength potions and some golden hearts. I know I've said that "too easy" usually doesn't bother me, but this is ridiculous.
The goblin's proximity to Dink, we learn, was a sure sign of war. Martridge, who hangs out in a basement unconnected to any kind of structure, tells Dink to go talk to King Daniel, who hangs out in an open field. Danny boy confirms that there's a war, and tells Dink to "go and Sort it out." Gee, thanks, your highness.
The war between Dink and the goblins. How exciting.
Fighting the goblins is easy, but you don't even need to do it. Just killing the slayer is good enough to unlock the screen. You can leave the screen to the north (miraculously, this was my first guess) to find a screen that defies all logic.
What is that yellow splotch about? Why am I talking to a fence?
At first, I couldn't figure out if there was anything to do on this screen. I didn't even see the fence at first, because it cycles back and forth between being a fence and being invisible. Eventually I tried talking to it, and it turns out that it's the author, who claims to be disguised as a rock. "Please Write a Review now.. and Be positive
," he says. Okay, here goes: "The Attack of the Goblins" isn't even in the top 3 worst DMODs I've ever played. Sorry Teej, that's about as positive as I can get about this one.
**The DMOD Drought Diaries**
~Chapter 3: Dink Breaks Free (2008)~
The DMOD releases hadn't exactly been falling from the sky in 2008 already, but at this point they petered out completely for a while. No DMODs were released between "The Attack of the Goblins" on May 24 and "Chasin" on September 13. That's 112 days, narrowly beating 2006's 108-day record (EDIT: Not really, see post below). At this point, unlike in 2006, people started to take notice. Christiaan Janssen referred to this period in his "Everything Dink" article as "The D-Mod drought" and pinpointed May 2008 as the start. Several topics were made in the forums about the lack of new DMODs and the lack of updates on the site in general. "Is Dink dying" discussions had been going on since 1999 (really), but never with this kind of frequency.
The Rise to Power Contest had been announced back in April, but... well, I'll get to that soon, when I talk about the two DMODs that came out of it.
The big news in the Dink community around this time was the release of GNU-Freedink, a platform-independent version of Dink Smallwood that brought the game to users of Linux (itself a GNU project) and Apple's Macintosh operating systems. GNU is about free software - that's "free as in freedom," not the kind of free that Dink Smallwood had already been since 1999. It doesn't even just mean open source, which Dink had been since 2003. Beuc asked Seth Robinson to "freely" release materials so that he could release a "free as in freedom" version of the original game, but Seth didn't have the rights to all the sounds, so some had to be replaced in that version and others are still missing. You can just use FreeDink to play the original version of the game, of course. You are free.
I've been using FreeDink to play the game on my Windows PC for almost the whole length of this project, and I love it. It's fast, it runs smoothly, it ignores some things that crash basic Dink, and I've run into very few compatibility problems with DMODs. I would say that the number of DMODs you can play without major problems on FreeDink is actually higher than 1.08 Aural+. It also allows you to speed up the action by holding tab, which has saved me hours and hours, I'm sure. This feature might come from 2010's Dink Smallwood HD, though.
FreeDink refers to Windows as "woe," because that is how GNU projects are supposed to abbreviate it in order to avoid calling Microsoft's decidedly-not-free operating system a "win." Ah, the wacky world of computing. Anyway, you should all switch to FreeDink if you're not using it already. I will bang this drum all day.
Directory
1998 | HTML version
1999 | HTML version
2000 | HTML version
2001 | Article version
2002 | Article version
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2010
2011-2015
Sorry to anybody who was looking forward to a "Crazy Old Tim Plays All the DMODs of 2013" topic with just one DMOD in it, but I've been planning it this way from the beginning. With just 9 DMODs, I can't justify giving 2008 its own topic. This topic will cover 2009's DMODs as well, for a total of 27 DMODs.
===2008===
Whatever magic it was that made new authors want to release so many DMODs in 2007, it did not travel to the new year. After an entire decade of pretty consistent activity, 2008 was the first year to see the release of fewer than 10 DMODs. There was a DMOD contest, but it received just two entries. Anybody at the time could hardly be faulted for assuming that the whole "Dink" thing was finally winding down, although that isn't how things actually turned out.
280: The Hero of the Time (Demo) Author: Skull Release Date: January 26, 2008
"You bloody wizards!"
Man, just get a load of the description of this one:
Dink Smallwood is Pub/bar's owner. He is just going to dance when he is teleported to Ice Age.
The Tree of Life has died and the Cure of World has been stolen. Therefor, the World is destroying.
Dink Smallwood of course must save it, as he is from Future and has been teleported to Past. (Ice Age) as I mentioned before.
"He is just going to dance when he is teleported to Ice Age." I hate it when that happens.
That's... a colorful title screen.
This is an old project that Skull decided to release before moving on to other things. This fact, combined with this DMOD's very low rating, had me worrying I'd have to give him another DFMAOB for the road, but it actually isn't THAT bad.
"The Hero of the Time" is a very short demo that consists mostly of cutscenes, broken up by a couple of extremely short gameplay segments. Dink is given sky-high stats that make the combat a breeze. As I've said before, "too easy" bothers me less than "too hard," especially in a short game where you don't have too much time to get bored by the lack of challenge. The only things Dink does in the gameplay segments are fight some blue stone giants, visit a house or two and fight a woman who has magical powers but doesn't seem to bother using them in combat.
I'm not sure whether this particular recolor has been seen before.
The cutscenes are pretty well-staged, though the English is on the poor side. In the distant past, the Tree of Life protected the world by guarding something called the "Cure of World." What did this cure do? The DMOD doesn't tell us. Regardless, when the Ice Age came the tree was killed by the cold, and somebody stole this apparently important item. Some wizards (apparently there were wizards during the Ice Age) responded to the threat by pulling Dink Smallwood from the future to go get the Cure back. I guess they know about the future hero because they're... time wizards, or something? I dunno, this raises too many questions. Exactly how much do these damn wizards know about the future? You'd think they'd have known somebody was going to steal their precious thingy!
The wizards were also really bad at coming up with names.
So Dink, apparently being the best hero in all of the future whom they could have picked, is pulled from a time in which he runs a bar. I think there have been at least two other DMODs that depicted Dink as an owner of a bar or inn. Some further cutscenes show the scheming villains, a knight serving an unseen figure he calls the "Master" and some ducks who report to him. Apparently the ducks and pigs (not shown) are to be elevated in society when he somehow uses the "Cure of World" to rule said world. Maybe it's a cure for the condition of insufficient tyranny.
Puffs of flame continually come out through that hole. Maybe the master is a dragon with indigestion and he's standing behind that wall.
I can't believe I've said even that much about this one. It's over in a flash and doesn't leave much of an impression.
281: Hide-n-Seek Author: Endy Release Date: March 28, 2008
"Ready or not, here I come!"
"Hide-n-Seek" is not to be confused with 2004's "Hide-and-Seek." It still amuses me how similar those titles are.
In this DMOD, Dink plays a simple game of hide and seek with 5 women. The locations of the girls are randomized on each play, which is a neat trick. The maps are randomized as well, which would be really impressive if it changed the actual shape of the field in any way, but it's actually just the decoration (trees and flowers) that changes. Still, I guess that would help keep it fresh if you wanted to play it again for some reason (I did play it twice just to confirm that the randomization works). The map looks quite good and has some interesting features like a tiny island with a bridge and some unusually-shaped plateaus.
The girls are not especially good at hiding. To be fair to them, there aren't any great hiding places in the area, but the least they could do is not move around.
Apparently so.
Despite the randomization, the experience is pretty similar regardless of where the girls end up. It's over very quickly. Still, it's a neat trick, and the map is quite nice.
282: Bug Mania Author: Sparrowhawk Release Date: April 10, 2008
"*cough*loser*cough*"
This is an expanded version of my favorite minigame from the "One Screen D-Mod Compilation." It has the original four levels from the one-screen version (each has their own screen now) and two additional levels. The only major change to the existing levels is that clicking anywhere other than on a pillbug in stage 1 now subtracts a point from your score. Unfortunately, this ruins the game for me. Part of the fun of this sort of thing is madly clicking all over the place. Stage 1 in this version is stressful and difficult, which doesn't match up with a game that is otherwise easy, breezy fun. The pillbugs will often disappear right as you click on them, and if you lose a few points you'll never make it in the time limit. The best I did after quite a few tries was 33 of a required 35 points. I could probably have made it eventually, but I wasn't having fun. I commented out the line that removes a point and had a much better time.
I love this title screen, though. The only thing that would make it better is if you could click on and squash the pillbugs here.
The first new level is set on an icy lake. Pillbugs are blown across the ice by the wind, and you have to try to stop as many as possible. Clicking on the ice makes cracks in it, but this isn't a failure condition, fortunately.
Notice the new green-blood pillbug corpses. Real pillbugs have blue blood, but green matches with the idea that these are "bugs" or insects.
The real attraction of this version is the brilliant new town level. It takes place across 21 screens. You press the arrow keys to move between screens and click on doors or other entrances to enter buildings and a basement. Pressing an arrow key causes the screen to scroll as if Dink has walked from one screen to the next. It's beautiful, and I have no idea how Sparrowhawk did it. I also love how characters in the game treat the hammer as a character, showing that what we are dealing with here is not an unseen hammerer but a floating, self-aware hammer. Funny stuff.
Please Hammer, do hurt 'em.
The town stage is full of delightful easter eggs. Clicking on almost everything produces some kind of result - breaking windows, smashing pumpkins, extinguishing torches. NPCs on the screen react to what you're doing, complaining about you wrecking the place. There are a few secrets to find. You're told that there are 191 pillbugs, but due to some extras in the secret areas, I found 205.
One secret area is this dark basement. Unlike the rest of the game, you have to move the hammer along the path or you'll be sent back to the start. Here, Hammer witnesses the resurrection of the Dead Dragon Carcass!
This secret machine unleashes a plague of ducks upon the town. And you thought they had problems before.
It's very easy to finish the town stage in the five minutes you're given if you focus on going for the bugs. Once you beat the game, an option is added on the title screen to go straight to the town stage, and you can play without a time limit if you like to make sure you see everything.
"Bug Mania" is impressive, bewildering, and apart from one design decision I really didn't like, very fun. If you have the same problem with level 1 that I did, you can remove the penalty by commenting out the line "&defense -= 1;" in v1-clicker.c. This is, of course, cheating. I own up to it.
283: The Attack of the Goblins Author: Teej88 Release Date: May 24, 2008
"Matridge... on the Way here I got attacked by a Goblin..."
When I decided that "The Hero of the Time" didn't deserve an Award of Badness, I thought that I might make it through 2008 without giving one out.
Nope.
******This DMOD, "The Attack of the Goblins,"****** ********Has been awarded the prestigious********* ****DINK FOREVER MEMORIAL AWARD OF BADNESS***** ********On this day December 15, 2014********
This one is sub-"Dink Forever" level. It's not the worst out there, but it makes some of Skull's early DMODs look good.
The problems start with the title screen, where I had no idea what to do for at least ten seconds.
Yoo hoo? Buttons?
It turns out that those fancy pictures of King Dan are the start and quit buttons. The quit button says "Please don't qui" when you put your mouse over it. Like Arthur Dent in most of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the button has no T.
There are five screens. Four of them have no background but some poorly-tiled grass. The fifth is an indoor screen with some furniture, but the depth dots are all set incorrectly, and Dink clips behind or in front of everything.
At the start, Dink is dumped unceremoniously into a screen with some barrels and a goblin that is, to be honest, minding its own business. Dink can start a fight with it if he wants. The stats of 15-15-15 you're given are more than enough to kill goblins with your bare hands, but the barrels are all full of strength potions just in case. Further screens give you even more strength potions and some golden hearts. I know I've said that "too easy" usually doesn't bother me, but this is ridiculous.
The goblin's proximity to Dink, we learn, was a sure sign of war. Martridge, who hangs out in a basement unconnected to any kind of structure, tells Dink to go talk to King Daniel, who hangs out in an open field. Danny boy confirms that there's a war, and tells Dink to "go and Sort it out." Gee, thanks, your highness.
The war between Dink and the goblins. How exciting.
Fighting the goblins is easy, but you don't even need to do it. Just killing the slayer is good enough to unlock the screen. You can leave the screen to the north (miraculously, this was my first guess) to find a screen that defies all logic.
What is that yellow splotch about? Why am I talking to a fence?
At first, I couldn't figure out if there was anything to do on this screen. I didn't even see the fence at first, because it cycles back and forth between being a fence and being invisible. Eventually I tried talking to it, and it turns out that it's the author, who claims to be disguised as a rock. "Please Write a Review now.. and Be positive
," he says. Okay, here goes: "The Attack of the Goblins" isn't even in the top 3 worst DMODs I've ever played. Sorry Teej, that's about as positive as I can get about this one.**The DMOD Drought Diaries**
~Chapter 3: Dink Breaks Free (2008)~
The DMOD releases hadn't exactly been falling from the sky in 2008 already, but at this point they petered out completely for a while. No DMODs were released between "The Attack of the Goblins" on May 24 and "Chasin" on September 13. That's 112 days, narrowly beating 2006's 108-day record (EDIT: Not really, see post below). At this point, unlike in 2006, people started to take notice. Christiaan Janssen referred to this period in his "Everything Dink" article as "The D-Mod drought" and pinpointed May 2008 as the start. Several topics were made in the forums about the lack of new DMODs and the lack of updates on the site in general. "Is Dink dying" discussions had been going on since 1999 (really), but never with this kind of frequency.
The Rise to Power Contest had been announced back in April, but... well, I'll get to that soon, when I talk about the two DMODs that came out of it.
The big news in the Dink community around this time was the release of GNU-Freedink, a platform-independent version of Dink Smallwood that brought the game to users of Linux (itself a GNU project) and Apple's Macintosh operating systems. GNU is about free software - that's "free as in freedom," not the kind of free that Dink Smallwood had already been since 1999. It doesn't even just mean open source, which Dink had been since 2003. Beuc asked Seth Robinson to "freely" release materials so that he could release a "free as in freedom" version of the original game, but Seth didn't have the rights to all the sounds, so some had to be replaced in that version and others are still missing. You can just use FreeDink to play the original version of the game, of course. You are free.
I've been using FreeDink to play the game on my Windows PC for almost the whole length of this project, and I love it. It's fast, it runs smoothly, it ignores some things that crash basic Dink, and I've run into very few compatibility problems with DMODs. I would say that the number of DMODs you can play without major problems on FreeDink is actually higher than 1.08 Aural+. It also allows you to speed up the action by holding tab, which has saved me hours and hours, I'm sure. This feature might come from 2010's Dink Smallwood HD, though.
FreeDink refers to Windows as "woe," because that is how GNU projects are supposed to abbreviate it in order to avoid calling Microsoft's decidedly-not-free operating system a "win." Ah, the wacky world of computing. Anyway, you should all switch to FreeDink if you're not using it already. I will bang this drum all day.
