The Dink Network

Thanks for helping out with your testing efforts Mr. RangerLord. I'm quite grateful for that.

First, when I visit the very first house in thw village, Dink talks about bottles - when interactig with a bookshelf.

Yes, that was part of the Valhalla logic, that I left in place. I figured that was because, it turns out that bottles are rather important (in another house). I'll make some changes for that though. It is rather silly at present.

I managed to talk to the petrified wizard twice.

I'm not certain what you are saying here. I assume you are saying that you spoke to him after he was un-petrified twice? I need some details please. I'm not sure what needs to be fixed here, but I assume it had to do with the use of talk() instead of touch() to start the interactions with the statues. As you may know, using touch() instead of talk() to start a conversation allows you to disable a 2nd touch using [sp_touch_damage(&current_sprite, 0);] as soon as Dink touches the target. So, I'll make that change from talk() to touch() for the 4 statues.

When I enter the screen with the dungeon cell, my health decreases.

Ah, it is supposed to. The idea is that he has been starving and shivering for a few days. Dink even says "I'm growing weaker every day.".I'll add some more transitional text (before Dink speaks) for that to make clear why he has lost health points and also use some visual cues to support that idea.

Also, the stone to flesh didn't disappear when I went into prison despite what the guard says.

The guard says, "I also thought it wise not to touch that green stuff you had in a bottle. It smelled awful..." and I thought that made it clear that the guard DID NOT remove the stone-to-skin balm. I'll reword it a bit.

At the screen in the dungeon exit a rat got stuck in the wall.

Yes, I had that problem once in a while during testing too. I'll try moving around the rats a bit again.

I have a problem with the fact that when talking to nothing, Dink is just silent. I mean, sure, the old messages are boring, but why don't you write new ones?

Talking to nothing? Are you saying it would be a big improvement if I used my own version of certain standard scripts to replace some of the things Dink says by default? I already wrote and used a dnotalk.c for this sort of thing. Is there something else you are talking about here? I'm sort of confused about what you are trying to tell me.

Also, I can pick up logs at the northern town part. Maybe you should take out the script from the ones you can pcik up after the bridge repair quest, because they are useless now.

Well, I thought it was kind of fun to force the player to have to drop them after picking them up by mistake, but I'll change that, since I don't want to irritate the player.

Oh, and when my pack is full, that log near the sign ends up causing an endless dialouge loop.

Oh, well we certainly don't want that. Dink is just supposed to be able to drop it using the backpack checking feature. I'll fix this too.

Also, FreeDink crashes when I reach zero health in the snowy place.

I think I know why. I cannot reproduce this issue, but I made a fix that might prevent it.

The dragon hurts me after I give her the artifact if I walk into it.

That's confusing. Dink should still be frozen in place until the dragon picks up the artifact. He should not be able to "walk into it". I'll add another freeze(1); to the code that get's Dink into the Dragon's lair and another freeze(1) just before he drops off the artifact. Maybe that will fix it.

The final boss was a little... underwhelming. True, he had a lot of hitponts, but he never managed to hurt me. He was fast, but didn't have a pattern. I used the banana weapon to defeat him.

The banana weapon is actually quite formidable, as Karl points out when he says "...the effectiveness of this unique yellow weapon grows with your experience.".That being said though, I recognize that I did not make the final confrontation as exciting or challenging as I wanted to. I think I'll work on that a bit though.

I should mention that I used the walkthrough to get the final items needed for the ending. I don't think I would have found those on my own.

Hmmm. I was hoping that was something the player could discover on their own. Did Dink exhaust all conversations in the town of WarmHearth?

Speaking of it, the ending seems... rushed. I mean the rain effect is cool, but I don't have satisfaction for getting to it. What did Martridge do in the meantime? What happend to the kings who were turned to stone? How did the big bad's defeat affect the people?

Perhaps I'll add another visit to Dink from Martridge. He can help explain how to get to things in the WarmHearth area with a few more hints too, if the player thinks he or she needs help with that. As for the ending lacking some closure, I should point out that the wise one has explained to Dink that all will be well when Dink slays his enemy and I thought that would be enough. I guess I was wrong. Perhaps a few words about how everything wraps up at the end of the game would help here.

I have to say, it was a good D-Mod, but sometimes confusing (I had a rough time navigating the winter area, but at least it wasn't a maze), and the mapping could use some improvement (not bad, but some areas looked boring - maybe you should use more new graphics?), and the ending was lackluster (maybe try giving the boss a better brain and some spells?

Yes, I think I'll work on the final boss battle a bit.

I mean this guy can petrify people, I would love to see what unique spells he coul use.) I liked the music choices. I have to say, this is your longest D-Mod yet, and with a bit of fine-tuning, it could be your best.

Thanks for your kind words and thanks again for your all of your help. I'll work on this dmod a bit more and then release it again.