The Dink Network

I'm called Tim. I've been playing Dink since it came out, when I was a young, dumb kid.

timthreethreethree@gmail.com
Private Message

Hah, don't worry about it, Skull. Remember whom you're talking to! Author of Dink Forever right here, man. I invented super-crappy.

About Dink HD: You guys were right, it's quite buggy and a some mods will crash at times. I have a more general problem, though, with quite a few DMODs that seems to be totally random: they won't show up in the add-ons menu. The only way I was able to play some of them is by downloading them from the URL using the program itself. Does anybody know what causes this or have a workaround for it? I'd like to be able to play the mods I have in the folder, but I don't know any way to do so.

--The Smallweb DMOD Competition--

The first four DMODs released on Snyder's site (which is pretty much the only record I can find of DMOD releases in 1998) that weren't by either Seth or Mike were all released on July 3rd as part of a competition Mike hosted. There were cash prizes (half of the cash was donated by Seth), but since Dink's popularity hadn't picked up much yet (I think it was that very month that the demo was featured in PC Gamer Magazine, which is how I and many others found the game), there were just four entries and only eleven people voted. I'll cover these DMODs in ascending order of how they placed in the contest.

009: Dinkopolis Author: Kevin Bugin Release Date: July 3, 1998

There isn't a lot to recommend this DMOD, and it might even have been the worst one available for a little while, but I've got to say a few things to be fair to the author. First, they hadn't had much time to learn DMOD authoring - this came out at a time when resources were so few that making a DMOD that was at all functional was a bit impressive. Second, it was made for Mike's contest, which had a strict deadline that wasn't long after it was announced. Finally, even this is so much better than my early stuff that you'd pretty much have to be a moron not to recognize it. You'll hear this a lot out of me; sorry to be repetitive, but I'd be remiss not to point it out. In fact, go ahead and assume that I think every DMOD is better than everything I made in 1998 unless I say otherwise. If I'm significantly praising the DMOD, odds are good you can go ahead and also assume I think it's better than anything I made period.

There's a thin story here about Dink being put in a place called "Dinkopolis" by an evil Wizard who looks like Martridge but turns out to be his twin brother. The place itself turns out to be a dream, which is a somewhat cool concept. However, while you're told that you can't escape, the truth is that nothing could be easier. You don't have to fight the monsters, except if you happen to end up on a certain screen that locks, and you can actually just walk right out.

Ideally, you'd walk left at the start into town and talk to the people (and pig) there to learn about what there is of the story, then go southeast and encounter a trapped girl, fight Milder and escape the dream, but there's nothing to force you to do any of this, and you can easily miss everything except the fight against Milder, which you're free to ignore and walk past.

Dinkopolis isn't just simple; it's also full of problems. Hardness problems are everywhere, lots of the map doesn't make sense, the weapons have odd HUD graphics that don't fill the boxes, and the author sometimes used "say" for exchanges instead of "say_stop," resulting in conversations that fly by without any control. Trees turn into pillbugs, although that could be explained by the fact that you're in a dream - I was going to say it was clearly unintentional, but there's actually a character who refers to the phenomenon. There's one rather frenetic MIDI and you're given the throwing axe (3000 gold in the original, and only unlockable by fighting a pair of dragons) from the start, making fighting everything very easy.

I think the author was learning as he went along, because the DMOD improves a lot after you get out of "Dinkopolis." The second area has a map that, while it's nothing special, makes sense, and has few of the odd hardness errors that were all over the first part. Furthermore, you're actually required to go fight the wizard boss by a bombable rock that works exactly as designed. You'd be advised to pick up the stat-boosting potion, life upgrades (which leave hardness behind, a bug that was also in my DMOD), and Hellfire spell that you find, too, because if you just go straight to "Wildridge" he will kill you almost immediately with Seth's "greater harm" attack that directly subtracts life points from Dink.

Being responsible for some of the worst DMODs ever actually gives me an interesting perspective. Most people would just call this mod crap, and they aren't wrong. However, I know from personal experience what you get when you're a kid who doesn't know how anything works and applies almost no effort before rushing something out with very little testing, and it's something a lot less than this. The map here is a decent size, it has a beginning and an end, and quite a few things work correctly. There are well-defined edges to prevent you from just walking to the edge of the screen and being stopped by nothing. It might seem bizarre to give out such faint praise for such basic things, but doing something like correctly awarding the Hellfire spell or making a bombable rock that works were totally out of my league in 1998.

I guess it's true that reality is largely subjective, because everything depends on your viewpoint. When you're lying in an excrement-filled ditch, even the people trudging waist-deep through the nasty mud just above you inspire a certain amount of envy.

Dink HD: No problems.

010: Pointless Author: Thom C. Vedder Release Date: July 3, 1998

You've got to admire a game that wears its pointlessness on its sleeve like that. Indeed, you're thrust into a weird situation without any explanation at all.

In some ways, this mod is very poor. The map design, while making basic sense and lacking major hardness errors, is very restrictive and sparse. You're given 100 attack and 70 defense at the start (Is this intentional? Who knows?), so fighting things is trivial. Some things are broken - a sign has no script attached to it, a bed and a girl have the same script attached, some conversation choices don't work, and there's one house you can enter but not leave because leaving warps you to a spot where you warp back in no matter which way you walk.

Worst of all, though, is the fact that most people probably never see the part of "Pointless" that has a point because it requires you to walk south through what looks like a solid fence without any hint you should do this. This is obviously awful design, and a far, far worse version of the problem I complained about in Elemental Peace, which is a much better mod than this one.

Despite all its problems, though, I actually have to recommend Pointless to the obsessive Dink fan. As I said above, there's really no reason to download Dinkopolis today, but that's ironically untrue of Pointless. The reason is that despite its myriad faults, Pointless is quite clever and has some seriously funny jokes that made me laugh out loud several times - that by itself is enough reason to download and play one of these silly things.

The jokes are kind of crude, but quick, sharp and effective. "What do you sell here?" asks Dink. "We sell swords. Would you like one?" "Why are there two guys and just one bed?" "Uh... well..." "Do your parents know yet?" Dink's got a surprisingly quick wit here.

Pointless also has a very interesting ending if you manage to find it, which isn't easy. After going through the fence you have to fight some dragons, and the screen will never unlock unless you defeat the one in the middle last. After that and another area, though, you're sent back to just outside Stonebrook from the original Dink Smallwood... just before the game starts.

This is fantastic. I'm serious, this is a brilliant idea and well executed, and even as broken as it is, Pointless is badly underrated when it contains this section. Dink asks the characters he encounters all the questions you'd expect him to ask, and it all makes sense and seems in character. Why did Dink never see Martridge again after defeating the bonca? What caused the fire in Dink's house? Dink demands answers about the things that never got resolved and didn't make sense. He doesn't really get them, but it's still compelling.

Of course, even this segment of the game is quite broken. The screens were ported directly from the original and still contain their original scripts when they shouldn't, which causes you to get stuck if you go to Stonebrook and talk to Dink's mom. Even so, what a neat idea.

In the end, Dink tries to save his mother only to lose her again, and he learns that the cause was a simple accident after all. As silly as the rest of the mod is, this had me getting pretty emotional and thinking about the meaning of the title. Maybe "Pointless" refers to the essential pointlessness of all things in this random and uncaring universe. We search so hard for meaning in everything, but terrible things can happen to us and it often really is just a coincidence.

Or maybe it just means not to take a silly little DMOD too seriously.

Dink HD: For me, this crashed after defeating the Dragons in Dink HD.

011: The Sword of Paranor: Forgotten Realms Author: Black Oaks (Silencer) Release Date: July 3, 1998

It seems to me like this DMOD had a lot of ambition behind it, but it's ambition that goes unrealized. I say this because it acts like it wants to be an epic, with its grand-sounding MIDI, text bitmap intro and ending, and large world map that you visit little of, but it's actually very short and one of the more linear DMODs I've ever seen. There's really not much you can do in this DMOD, and you do it all in a specific order.

Sword of Paranor also has a fair amount of problems. You start with a longsword, but you aren't told so and it isn't equipped. There are some strange hardness areas out of nowhere, map transitions that look strange, invisible walls (this is what I'm going to call screens with nothing blocking an edge that don't let you walk that way from now on, for convenience), things that ought to have scripts attached but don't, and hearts that leave behind hardness. This last problem was so common at the time that I think you have to go ahead and forgive authors for it, since the editor had practically no documentation at the time. It's making me appreciate Dink's Doppleganger and the Arithia series more for just getting everything right; Mike Snyder was head and shoulders above everybody else early on.

There are some original graphics in this DMOD, which was a bit notable at the time, but other than that there's nothing interesting at all. You kill some goblins ("orcs" here; fair enough), trigger an event, kill some more goblins, find Dink's uncle, and you're done in four or five minutes, much less if you knew where you were going. I'd say pass on this one.

012: The Slaughterhouse Author: Kevin Kazimir Release Date: July 3, 1998

This was the winner of the contest, so Kevin made off with quite a bit of cash. Nice going, Kevin.

This is another short one, but at least there's only one quite minor bug (if you stick around for several seconds after reading a sign, a debug line "value of passport is 0/1" is left in). Some cultists worhship a leader simply known as HIM. There are some pillbugs and slimes around, but you've got no real reason to fight them. All you have to do is find a few items by examining objects (which you'll learn to do since just about everything has a script attached to it, a nice touch), deliver them to some guy and "fight" HIM. I say "fight" like that because HIM is just a duck who taunts you for a while, claiming you're no match for him, until you punch the stupid bugger's head off. Amusingly, you can go back and tell the guy who helped you who HIM was, but he won't believe you.

It was good for a little chuckle, I suppose, which was good enough at the time to win the contest considering that I'll bet all the judges (who didn't have much time to vote) thought it was impossible to finish Pointless, which probably made them think it deserved a low score by default.

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013: The Scar of David 2: Search for the Scarf Author: Thom C. Vedder Release Date: July 12, 1998

The author of Pointless managed to get another one in under the wire before I came along and stole the Dink community's innocence by making the first truly worthless DMODs. (Yes... Guess what I'm doing next time.) Like Pointless, it has a few lines that made me laugh a bit. Unlike Pointless, it ended up feeling completely and utterly... well, pointless.

It's a bit of an odd phenomenon, making a sequel to somebody else's DMOD, but Mike Snyder was apparently OK with it. Anyway, this seems to have happened at least a couple more times in the crazy world of Dinkerdom.

There's a fairly long intro that has Dink walking around and talking to people, which was a bit advanced for the time. Dink has to look for the Scarf of David, which has been stolen and... look, who am I kidding? This DMOD isn't really a quest so much as a practical joke played on the player, way more so even than the original Scar of David. Dink searches for the scarf, all right, but he doesn't find it. After a bit of busy work (navigate a dungeon filled with pillbugs you don't have to fight, navigate a labyrinth filled with Slayers you really shouldn't fight) and talking to a few people, you'll come to the guy who supposedly has the Scarf (you can pretend to be his dad... awkward), and he will (assuming you don't pick the wrong choice statement and cause the game to hang, which you can do TWICE in this DMOD) tell you there isn't one.

"This is only a demo, Dink."

Wha?

"Actually, I lied. I like messing with your head."

Grrrr! That jerk! But it's called "The Search for the Scarf!"

"Well, did you look for a scarf?"

GRRRR! You win this round, Thom C. Vedder! I'll get you next time, Thom. Next time... *strokes cat*

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Hey, everybody. I'll be moving in the next couple of weeks, so I probably won't have time to update this again until next month. Don't worry, I won't have forgotten about it.