The Dink Network

Some members of our community have submitted a couple developmental files.

Back in July, toof submitted DinkC Syntax Highlighting for Notepad++ Dark. This takes Sparrowhawk's original DinkC Syntax Highlighting for Notepad++ and makes it work with a dark theme. I was holding off on posting this because I had some sort of plan to... merge the versions together? I honestly don't remember anymore. I sincerely apologize, toof.

In any case, both the original flavor and the Dark version result in the best DinkC editor I've found. Notepad++ is great, and having the 'intellisense' provided by these plugins is really really really wonderful.

About a month ago, SlipDink submitted Checkbit, a method of storing lots (31) of true/false values in one DinkC integer. This was based on a couple fun conversations on the forum here and here.

Lastly, someone else submitted a file just yesterday, but I regretfully rejected that file. If you want to learn more, please view the comments.

It's been a while hasn't it? But after nearly exactly two years it is time for another pollocracy!

Check the comments for the full story.

Guess who's back, back again.

toof's back, tell a friend.

He created an update, 'cause nobody wants to.

See a shiny walkthrough, you want bar chat, and freeze fixes?

For that little bit of fun check out Golden Duck v1.02.

brassweasel just gave us his belated entry for the Plot Twist D-Mod contest (his fifth D-Mod!): The Search (Play Now!).

This is the 7th D-Mod whose title prominently features the act of searching, following The Search for Milli Vanilli, Scar of David 2: The Search for the Scarf, The Search for the Treasure, Christmas Adventure: Search for Santa, The Search for the Green Mushroom, and Search for Mother. In the 5 minutes I've played so far, I think it may very well be the best in that contentious category.

This time around, Martridge asks Dink to find that orb. You know, that one.

It has some nice callbacks to other D-Mod authors and D-Mods, and it's funny. You should give it a go.

toof learned the dark arts of DinkC and is ready to present his Golden Duck.

Fourth-wall breaking narrator that feels fresh? Check.

Very pretty city decoration? Check.

Drinking too many Duck Daiquiris? Check

Recipe for how to make your very own Duck Daiquiri? Check.

Basement rave with stone giants dancing next to humans, RobJ, and a manic pixie poop? Check check check check.

So, if any of that strikes a chord in your Dinked-out soul, be sure to give this a whirl.

Note: this was temporarily unavailable, but now it is back!

And the Lord did say unto Skurn, "Thou shalt make a D-mod". And to the Lord, Skurn thus spoke, "Oh Lord, how shall I make yon D-mod?" And the Lord did reply, "Thine D-mod shalt be no more than 8 megabites, compressed. Thine D-mod shalt be playable. Thou shalt name thine D-mod Jesus Island. Thou shalt submit thine D-mod upon the Divine Network. Thou shalt include bornfree15 in thine credits. Now go forth and do my work."

And thus did Skurn set upon the Lord's work and there was much rejoicing in its fulfillment.*

Recondite was an article that I used to write on The Dink Network to capture whatever random thoughts I had at the time. If my thoughts were butterflies, Recondite was an old man with a net and a penchant for entomological taxidermy. It eventually evolved into a pseudo-blog / status update for many things about The Dink Network that simply didn't fit into a forum message or a stand-alone news post.

It has been just over Ten Years since Recondite Twenty-Seven, and I can't quite comprehend that. Ten Years is a Long Time. That's twice as long as Bill Szczytko spent working on Quest for Dorinthia v2.5!

So read on, fellow Dinkers, and see what this edition entails.

Dink Smallwood HD is now playable in your web browser at http://rtsoft.com/web/dink/, complete with D-Mod support and save game persistence/importing/exporting. It's the full Dink Smallwood experience, in a browser. D-Mods and save games even stay around if you leave and come back again.

This fancy wizardry does require the latest version of a modern browser (such as Firefox 60.0.2, or Chrome 67.0.3396.87), but it even works fairly well with a newish iPhone or Android device (and will automatically use touch controls in those environments).

Additionally, there is now a 'Play' button on every D-Mod's file page which will launch Dink Smallwood HD online and install the selected D-Mod automatically. That means that you, or anyone else, can start playing a D-Mod in as little as 20 seconds without installing anything beforehand (assuming that you have a powerful device, tons of bandwidth, a new browser, etc).

Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that GNU FreeDink has also been available to play in your web browser at https://play.freedink.org/. The GNU FreeDink experience is a little bit different (open source sound effects, upload your own D-Mods, translations of the main game in 12 additional languages, etc.), but it's worth checking out.

PDF versions of Crazy Old Tim Plays All The D-Mods Volume 1 (1998 - 2004) and Volume 2 (2005 - 2015) are now available to download.

I always planned to distribute a free digital version, and I made some attempts to create a kindle / epub / mobi version, but it was very difficult (impossible) to get the formatting correct with screenshots and other content that is present in the book. So, I've decided to just distribute the same PDF documents that are used to print the real book. However, be aware: this may be difficult to read on a phone or on a dedicated e-reader.

Thanks to Mr. Mortal Kombat for prompting me to do this in the fancy Discord chat room.

Renowned Mortal Kombat aficionado, Bluedy has released his few-months-hours-in-the-making second D-Mod Northern Lands (Unfinished) fourth fan work Dink Smallwood Fan Artwork Remastered today.

You are encouraged to take a look what a difference 3 years can make; Bluedy posted a similar fan work just over three years ago fittingly titled Dink Smallwood Fan Artwork.

Also, last but not least, Bluedy has also updated Northern Lands (Unfinished) to 1.10. This fixes an issue where it was possible to never be able to find all 3 crew members needed to set sail, in the north direction, where the second half of the game awaits.

Renowned Mortal Kombat aficionado, Bluedy has released his few-months-in-the-making second D-Mod Northern Lands (Unfinished) today.

Unfortunately, as you might already suspect by the curious use of the term 'Unfinished' several times in this post, Bluedy ran into the 'brick-wall-of-D-Mod-development' that has claimed so many innocent D-Mods over the last 20 years (such as Necromancer, Cloud Castle 3, Cast Awakening 2, Cast Awakening 3, and Cast Awakening 4). Thankfully, as SabreTrout did with Valhalla, Bluedy has released what he as so far, which is decently-sized quest. He even encourages others in the community to maybe finish what he's started.

Mr. SlipDink has updated All that Glitters! to v1.11. This release includes a few minor patches. Let's try to interpret these:

"#01 Inserted post liberation logic into doorman.c"

I don't know what 'post liberation logic' is, but I hope the doorman consented.

"#02 Disabled touch() in scrthole.c and chest.c"

I... can't even. I didn't change this. This is really what SlipDink said was changed, and it is one of the greatest things I've ever read in my entire life. You know, I haven't updates the random quotes that appear at the bottom of the page in a while, but if anything deserves it, this does.

"#03 Adjusted kill time in intro.c/scroll_text()"

twp's scrolling text nightmares have hopefully come to a peaceful end.

Dink Smallwood HD and DFArc have been updated to fix several security issues related with unpacking .dmod files. A malicious .dmod file could overwrite arbitrary files on the user's system, resulting in data loss or malicious code execution. We are unaware of any .dmod files 'in the wild' that exploited this flaw (we examined every D-Mod on The Dink Network), but to be safe you should upgrade to Dink Smallwood HD v1.9.1 and/or start using DFArc 3.14. DinkHD v1.9.1 is not available in the Apple App Store yet, but it is available for all other platforms.

Mucho thanks to Beuc for finding and helping address these issues.

Dink Smallwood HD v1.9.1 also includes a fix related to the DinkC sp_frame command that should make it possible to solve the spinning arrow puzzle in Malachi the Jerk.

DFArc 3.14 also includes a few new and updated translations, and a crash when trying to package a D-Mod that didn't exist.

Ye ol' SlipDink has updated All that Glitters! to v1.10. This release includes at least 24 fixes/improvements/corrections, ranging from changing some dialog and some other wording to eliminating several overlapping lines of white text.

Dark Archon, the editor-in-chief at arhn.eu, put together a short documentary called Dink Smallwood: Two Decades of Duck Decapitation. It covers the history of Dink, going from Seth's Legend of the Red Dragon up through the Crazy Old Tim Plays All The D-Mods books, and includes some snippets of Seth and I talking about stuff. It's quite well put together.

I learned some new stuff, like how the original Dink Smallwood CDs included Warcraft music (!). I knew that there were copyright issues, but I didn't know it was that crazy!