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

timthreethreethree@gmail.com
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347: Dink Smallwood: Achievement Unlocked Edition (Modification) Author: Tim Maurer Release Date: September 2, 2014
"I'm complicit, aren't I? I made the achievement list. My God, the terrible power."

I wasn't so keen on jumping into developing another D-Mod after "Malachi the Jerk." This is why I didn't make a D-Mod for the "Dink's Demise" contest that was announced on December 28, 2013, which was cancelled after receiving only one entry (a D-Mod Leprochaun called "horribly broken" and ultimately decided not to release). It's too bad; I thought that was an interesting theme, and I had a couple of neat ideas for it, but I was really burned out at that time.

But "Achievement Unlocked Edition" wasn't exactly a new D-Mod. It's just a modified version of the original game by RTSoft. I've seen a remark or two on the forum expressing surprise that nobody had ever done this sort of thing; well, here you go. As you may infer from the title, this modification adds "achievements" to Dink Smallwood. These, of course, are tasks you can do in a game that are recognized with a little banner that pops up on the screen, as seen on Xbox and Playstation consoles and Valve's Steam service.


The achievements menu on the title screen.

There was a conversation on the forums about trying to get Dink onto Steam, and it occurred to me that if it ever did get there, it would probably have achievements. Now, I'm generally not a huge fan of achievements - I mean, they don't do anything. Rarely do I go out of my way to get them. What they're good for if anything is as an excuse to spend more time playing a game you really like. At their best, achievements remind me of the self-imposed challenges we used to put ourselves through as kids. Actually, I remember Nintendo Power magazine suggesting such challenges back in the 90s, and even assigned point values to them! Anyway, when I thought about Dink Smallwood with achievements, I thought, "Hey, that'd be an interesting reason to revisit the original game." Then I thought, "Hey, you could add achievements to the game as it is." Then I thought, "Hey, *I* could add achievements to the game as it is." And so I did.

I started out by asking on the forum about ideas for achievements Dink might have if it had any. This seemed like a better way to get a response than to just come right out and say what I was doing. Most of the ideas I got this way came from Skorn. Everybody was credited in an accompanying text file, though. Excited by the idea, I knocked the thing out in six days. Six full days of work, mind you. I implemented 27 achievements, two secret achievements, and several unlockable extras. I wrote text for the achievements menu - one set for things you'd yet to achieve, and another for achievements you'd completed. I tried to be clever, to give some incentive to play and earn the achievements.

There wasn't a big response when I released it. A few people thought it was cool, but there were also a couple of people who came out and said they didn't see the point. My biggest hope for this project - that it would give people a reason to revisit the original game that they may not have played in a long time - might not have come true. This is the first D-Mod I've covered without a single review, after all. Still, this project does seem to have had an influence on the community. After I released this, Paul Pliska went back and added achievements to "Mayhem," and Dan "Max Gamerscore" Walma included achievements in "Cast Awakening Part 5: Revolution." Paul's achievements menu was much nicer than my simple solution, but Dan's was actually quite similar.

Fairly early on in the process of writing COTPATD, I planned to wrap things up at the end by returning to the original game and doing some arbitrary tasks such as reaching level 32. After I finished "Achievement Unlocked Edition," I realized that I had given myself a pretty good excuse to put that sort of exercise right into one of the writeups. What follows is a series of notes written as I play the game and attempt to earn all of the achievements. I'll be running a stopwatch to see how long it takes me (I'll stop it when I stop to take down these notes).

I wonder if anybody else is going to enjoy reading this, or if only I find this idea amusing. Oh well, I'll be entertaining at least one person (me).

--

00:00:55 - Achievement 1/27 Unlocked: "I am NOT a pig farmer - Kill the pigs before feeding them (10 points)." I always thought it was hilarious that you could do this.


Dink, you so crazy!

00:01:42 - Achievement 2/27 Unlocked: "Something to Talk About - Murder Chealse (10 points)." When I first played the game back in 1998, this really disturbed me. During development, I implemented this achievement after I couldn't figure out a way to track another idea I'd had.

00:02:35 - Achievement 3/27 Unlocked: "Poultry Punisher - Kill Quackers (10 points)." Despite the stopwatch, this isn't a speedrun. I usually hit Quackers as soon as I see him to save time, but this time I did it in front of Ethel for extra laffs.

00:04:00 - I killed my first enemy, a pillbug. This version of the game counts the enemies you kill for an achievement later. Respawned enemies don't count.

00:05:05 - Achievement 4/27 Unlocked: "Clearing the Crops - Save SmileStein's farm (10 points)." I used that silly talking pillbug as a boss in "Malachi the Jerk." Enemies that give you an achievement, like this one, don't count towards the total enemy count.

00:06:25 - Achievement 5/27 Unlocked: "Something for Nothing - Rescue a random guy (10 points)." Well, not quite nothing. You do get a gold coin for saving this dude from the wandering jerkass knights. I also hit level 2 here.

00:09:27 - I got my first powerup. There are 63 in the game, if I counted right. I hope I counted right. There's an achievement for getting all of these, too, so the game counts them for you.

00:12:18 - Killed Martridge's cave bonca. I mention this because I feel like some games would put an achievement here. Personally, I don't like achievements you get in the normal case of a game - they feel even more pointless than usual. As such, there's only one achievement like that in this D-Mod (beat Seth).

00:13:27 - Burned down my first tree. This is the last of the three "X all the Y" achievements. The variable that keeps track of this is called &smokey. The total tree count is 172 (trees that reveal a secret stairway don't count). You have to burn down all of the copies of a screenmatched tree for this. It's possible to exceed this number a bit by using the hardness error to visit the unfinished area, but I decided not to force the player to do this.


The FIRst of many. HAW!

00:17:55 - Achievement 6/27 Unlocked: "Steroids are Dangerous - Kill the big pillbug (10 points)." I did really poorly at this fight here and almost lost. Whoops.

00:19:17 - Achievement 7/27 Unlocked: "Karl Marx Hates Your Guts - Sell an AlkTree nut (10 points)." Yeah, some of these are pretty trivial.

00:20:34 - Reached level 3. There's an achievement for maxing out the level. I imagine that not many have put themselves through the grind of getting to 32 in the original game.

00:27:11 - Achievement 8/27 Unlocked: "Domestic Violence - Kill Jack (20 points)." Dink is a little weak for this at this point, but the old "punch him through the wall" trick carries the day. I'm disappointed with myself for not calling this one "Jack Attack" instead. Very disappointed.


C'mon, Auntie, I should think the little banner down there makes the answer to that question pretty obvious.

Dink actually has a response to that question - "I guess I just killed your husband." But it doesn't display due to a missing quotation mark. I meant to fix this bug from the original game and even left a comment in the script saying that I had, but I didn't. Whoops.

00:28:40 - Achievement 9/27 Unlocked: "A Simple Job - Complete the burglary quest (10 points)." Ah, the pointless little burglary thing now almost has a point. By the way, you don't have to kill the knights to get this. There's really no benefit to killing them anyway.

00:30:06 - Whoa! I'd forgotten that I fixed the purple bonca bug.

Incidentally, I love the exchange between Dink and the prisoner. "You probably deserved it." "No, actually I didn't." "Oh."

00:37:24 - Herb boots bought. Oh yeah. There's also an achievement for having all the different weapons in your inventory at once. It was easier than keeping track of all the different things you'd bought.

00:38:50 - Reached level 4. Experience in this game is super weak.


00:44:45 - There's a tree near KernSin that's tricky to hit.

00:48:36 - Reached level 5. Actually, the experience gets pretty decent in KernSin. Decent for now, anyway.

00:49:05 - Achievement 10/27 Unlocked: "Heartless dink - Kill George (10 points)." Poor George, he only wanted to be friends. I never, ever did this on my normal runs, but hey, you must obey the achievements. They control you. They control us all.

01:00:13 - Achievement 11/27 Unlocked: "Parade of Death - Carry out the Cast's plan (10 points)." It was tough to implement this because the villagers that walk across the screen (the "parade") at the start are inexplicably given brain 16 in the original script. Actually, the way I've got it set up now, It's possible to get the achievement without killing everybody since they change brains when you attack them. I should fix that.


Such a hero.

01:02:07 - Reached level 6. The goblins give good experience. Too bad Mog doesn't, even though an experience value is set in his script.

01:04:31 - Achievement 12/27 Unlocked: "Treely Worthless - Try to burn the invincible tree (10 points)." That damn pun-making tree.


01:08:15 - I'm not sure I ever stuck around to see this line before after reading the "Dink Worship Center" sign.


01:08:49 - The most hidden powerup in the game is near Windermere. Why would you think to bomb this random rock?

01:14:35 - There's a pushable rock in eastern Windermere. It serves no purpose at all. What an oddity.

01:15:42 - Achievement 13/27 Unlocked: "Walk on Water - Find Koka Isle (20 points)." Hey, I was proud of myself when I found it way back in the day.


01:16:04 - Achievement 14/27 Unlocked: "Riverwalk - Exploit the hardness error (40 points)." I had to put some invisible objects on the map in order to detect this. It's a little fussy.

By the way, that brings me to 200 points, which unlocks the first extra, music select. Any time during the game or at the title screen, you can listen to any of the MIDIs in the game, including an unused track called "Lively" that has appeared in several D-Mods.

01:18:06 - Reached level 7. Koka Isle is a lot of fun.

01:20:00 - Achievement 15/27 Unlocked: "Bow Before Me - Purchase bow lore (10 points)." This is a kind of lame one I added after another idea fell through. For example, a "speed run" achievement doesn't work because the way the game keeps track of time, it would absolutely have to be a single-segment run.

01:29:03 - Reached level 8. Even the basic bow with lore is a good way to take out stone giants.

01:30:43 - There's a tree in the "Edge of the World" area that can't be burned down because of map hardness. It isn't counted, of course.

01:35:52 - Secret Achievement: Seth Rules. I added a couple of achievements that don't give any points. The first one is for finding a secret in the original game that I haven't seen talked about... well, ever, actually. I'm sure people know about it, but here it is anyway.


You can walk right through the trees here...


...and find a hidden message spelled with duck heads.

01:36:11 - Secret Achievement: One Forty-Tree. I added a tree on Screen 143 AND a way to get there. What fun. Read the "Malachi the Jerk" writeup if you have no idea why I did this.


It really ties the screen together.

01:38:22 - Achievement 16/27 Unlocked: "Loose End - Meet the ice wizard (20 points)." This guy adds some very interesting loose ends to the story. A handful of D-Mods have picked them up, but not to the degree I'd have hoped.

01:42:06 - Reached level 9. Really though, Hellfire is a very good way to kill stone giants.

01:46:54 - Arrrrgh. It turns out there was a huge oversight on my part, and trees burned down by hellfire don't count toward the total. I am so very dumb. I'll work on an update right after posting this.

01:58:17 - I went and burned down the inaccessible trees in the unused area... and it fell one short of making up for the trees I burned down with hellfire. This is what I get for releasing a buggy D-Mod. Incidentally, it turns out there's also a normally-inaccessible pillbug out there, so it's possible to exceed that counter by one as well. I'm not going to worry about the trees - it's necessary to do at least a few runs of the game to get all of the achievements anyway.

02:02:25 - Achievement 17/27 Unlocked: "Smokey's Nemesis - Burn down every tree (50 points)." Never mind, I found a tree I had missed. Again, I promise I'll soon add a version that fixes the bug and a couple of other issues I've noticed.

02:03:00 - Reached level 10. I had to go back and get the throwing axe at this point. I'm going to stop noting every level up for a while.


02:09:22 - Achievement 18/27 Unlocked: "Once a Farmer, Always a Farmer - Feed the darklands pig (10 points)." Finally, a reason to still be carrying around that sack of feed!

02:10:00 - Achievement 19/27 Unlocked: "Some Pig - Kill the darklands pig (20 points)." It was great to have a chance to make a Charlotte's Web reference.

02:11:44 - Achievement 20/27 Unlocked: "Genocide - Kill every monster at least once (50 points)." I seem to have miscounted the enemies. I ended up with 369 of 366. I should have one extra because I killed the inaccessible pillbug, but that's still two extra enemies.

02:17:27 - Achievements Unlocked: 21/27: "Pig Farmer to Hero - Defeat Seth (50 points)" and 22/27: "Powerful Pugilist - Defeat Seth using only your fists (80 points)." The name of the latter achievement is a "Malachi the Jerk" reference. To earn it, you have to beat Seth using just your fists - weapons, magic and herb boots are disallowed. For this reason, I put most points in this run into attack instead of my usual preference, defense. Fighting Seth this way would be damn tough if you weren't allowed to use elixirs. As it is, it isn't so bad.


Defeat the pale evil!

At this point, I've got enough points to unlock the second extra, colored blood. Simon Klaebe released a graphics pack of several different blood colors; now you can pick which color you want all blood to be. The setting is remembered when you load a save.


Blue blood? I guess that was a noble stone giant.

02:21:45 - Returned to the King. This should be the last of the powerups, but I'm 2 short. I must have missed something... ugh.

02:45:00 - Achievement 23/27 Unlocked: "Treasure Hunter - Find all the powerups (60 points)." Whew, I DID miss something. I was afraid that was another bug.

Now all that's left to do is grind. Grind, grind away. Hoo boy.

02:49:17 - Reached level 14. Hey, there isn't much other progress to note at this point.

02:58:06 - Reached level 15. The game wasn't really designed to make reaching the upper levels plausible. The exponential curve is steep as hell. The dragons and stone giants give by far the best exp with 400, and it takes 19,600 points just to get from 14 to 15.

03:08:58 - Reached level 16. Obviously the Darklands are the best place to grind, but respawning takes too long to stay there. I've been going on trips to the Ice Castle every time I clear it out. That seems to take about the right amount of time to allow a respawn.

03:19:32 - Achievement 24/27 Unlocked: "Fully Loaded - Have one of each weapon (60 points)." Yes, I finally earned enough gold from grinding to buy the flame bow. The bow doesn't do me much good at this point, but at least going to get it was a change of pace. I included this achievement because it was the closest thing I could think of to matching the "get lots of experience" achievement with a "get lots of gold" achievement. As you can tell by the fact that I'm still level 16, it's not particularly close.

Now I have enough points for the third extra - you can buy the Dinksaber from the Edge of the World shop for 4000 gold. It's the same as a light sword, but more fun.


Fsssh!

03:23:50 - Reached level 17. I've started listening to a podcast to pass the time. Specifically, the Videogame Generations podcast by Dink legend Mike Snyder, in which he talks about games with his daughter. It's cute.

03:37:26 - Reached level 18. I'm not sure what I was thinking. The levels keep getting longer. Having this achievement probably dissuaded anybody from even trying to get them all, which is a shame because I put some effort into a feature for getting them all. I dunno how I'd fix this. Maybe I should just scale it back to reaching this level.

03:49:58 - Reached level 19. This stuff is gonna leave an image on the back of my eyeballs.

04:06:30 - Reached level 20. I'm going to say it - "Achievement Unlocked Edition" is a bad D-Mod. This is proof.

04:29:38 - Reached level 21. I mean, I'm not sorry I made it. It's interesting conceptually, and it may have caused a few people to think about what kind of features you can put in a D-Mod. But as a thing to actually play? Yikes.

04:47:09 - Reached level 22. Really, I'm sorry. I should have known better than to release something like this.

Incidentally, respawning in this game is kind of weird. The DinkC reference says "5 minutes," but screens don't seem to respawn in the order you cleared them. In addition, after I went through the same few areas enough times, they refused to respawn at all for quite a while.

05:30:19 - Got 100,000 gold. I didn't even know the counter expanded until I played "Green Voice in My Head." I'm level 24 at this point, but I stopped feeling like there was any point to making a note every time I leveled up.

I gave up on the stopwatch because I kept forgetting to start it again. Level 25 is the level where, if you've gotten all the golden hearts, the second healthbar will reach the end of the screen.

...Okay. I gave up shortly before reaching level 26. Obviously if I can't make it, I can't expect anybody else to either. Releasing this D-Mod or add-on or whatever with this achievement in it was obviously a big mistake. I'll probably simply take it out entirely in an update soon. If this thing is even worth updating. Man, I'm pretty bummed out about this.

The other achievements left are finishing the game at level 4 and going through the whole game without saving, buying bow lore, the light sword/dinksaber, bow lore or hellfire, or using an elixir. I know these are doable because I've done them, but the latter might be extremely frustrating and cause you to give up if you die against Seth and have to start over. Maybe for playability's sake I should also remove the prohibition on saving from that one, I dunno. Let me know what changes you think I should make.

There are two more extras. One of them is the respec system from Malachi the Jerk. For the other, you go talk to the King, who has some new dialogue about having gotten all the achievements. Dink demands to know what he gets for his effort.


What do you want, some kind of trophy?

After talking to the King, if you start a new game, the guy who demands a toll on the bridge will become possible to kill. If you do so, a lot of the game content changes from that point on. What I've done is taken the content from this topic where I made fake screenshots imagining a silly alternate story direction for Dink Smallwood and actually put that content into the game. Dink must pay for his crime of murder. You can also meet Charlie - he demands 100,000 gold for that little house. If you're crazy enough to actually raise that (please no), it becomes yours and is lightly furnished. If you want to see this mode, you can go ahead and copy a save file with the number 99.


A scene from the alternate story.