Dink Smallwood history (with the long-lost worst DMODs ever for download!)
I'm getting back into Dink Smallwood. It's fun to revisit it, and the new frontend sure is convenient. Back when I first played it, you had to use command line arguments to play or make DMODs. I'm going to reminisce about the "old days," and I'm sorry if you already know about this stuff. If you're interested, though, I have managed to track down copies of my legendarily bad DMODs from the beginning, and I'll have a link in this post.
I believe I first encountered Dink in 1998, when it was still pretty new. I had a subscription to PC Gamer Magazine, which came with a disc of demos (and occasionally some full games) each month. By the way, Coconut Monkey was the mascot of PC Gamer back in the day, in case you were wondering where my username and other references come from.
The demo of Dink really grabbed me, even though neither the gameplay nor the graphics were anything special even for the time. What grabbed me was the unique sense of humor and the way the game was open to the player doing almost anything. I've played quite a few games that were funny, but I've never seen a sense of humor like the one in Dink before or sense. I could go on with my feelings on the game, but I'm getting off-topic.
I ordered the game ($14.95 + 4.95 S&H) and played through it pretty quickly. I still have my pressed disc. I don't think it was the first release (1.02?) I think it was 1.03 or 1.04. Early versions had some weird bugs - I think at one point the Herb Boots simply didn't work.
RTSoft's website led me to what was then the place to go for Dink news - Mike Snyder's Dink Smallweb. Snyder (who often went by Wyndo) was totally crucial to the game's early success and there being a Dink community at all. Of course the main draw of the game (the initial adventure being quite short) was the incredible degree to which it could be modified, but making DMODs was at first a nearly incomprehensible mess. Mike made the skeleton, which made it much easier to create a DMOD (Actually, I believe he even came up with the term "DMOD" in a conversation with Seth Robinson). It was directly to his website that I submitted my early DMODs - he'd accept anything.
I was 12 years old, had no idea what I was doing, and was making the DMODs for the wrong reasons: I thought just getting something - anything - out there to get some recognition was a good idea. Of course, as incompetent as I was then, it's amazing I managed to make anything at all; remember, making DMODs was HARD back then, using the clunky original DOS map editor and having to do scripts in an ordinary text editor completely separately.
Anyway, some time around 2001 I had them removed from the Dink Network; this was a good move. However, a few people on the forums were upset, claiming either that they had liked them, that they had historical value, or that reducing the amount of available DMODs was always bad. Well, I managed to find copies of all four on an old archived copy of Snyder's site on archive.org, which saves copies of every website its crawler bots can reach.
(Edit: This was unnecessary; they can still be found at Snyder's site below.)
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/smallweb.html
They can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ef0z2libfdtlgk0/nMZs7iXI3f
The Dmods are the Dink Smallwood Forever Trilogy (Forever, Infinite, and Unlimited) and 2001: A Dink Odyssey. Fair warning: Don't download them if you want to have a good time, an acceptable time or even a non-aggravating time - I cannot stress enough how bad they are. I'm posting them only as items of historical interest because I've seen people around here searching for "lost" DMODs before.
Unfortunately, a lot of really old DMODs don't work correctly in V1.08 Aural+ for some reason. The main problem (I observed this even in Search for Milli Vanilli) is that control will sometimes mess up and you'll either freeze for a while or be unable to stop walking in the same direction. In addition, these particular dmods sometimes load the wrong graphics, and will crash whenever you punch anything (I swear, when I released them they weren't THAT broken). Amusingly (this should tell you how bad they are), three out of the four dmods can be completed without ever doing this. The one that can't is Unlimited, which is just a series of fights.
Back to general Dink history: Snyder had an in-universe "Timeline" of the DMODs going at one point. You can find it here:
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/chron.html
One thing I find amusing about that list is that, unless I'm mistaken, every single DMOD on it that wasn't complete at the time was never released at all. I bet most of them were never even in development. One of them had the same name as a totally different DMOD Redink1 would later make, however.
Mike bowed out of the scene relatively early and made a browser-based game called Lunatix Online (It was a little bit like Kingdom of Loathing, if you're familiar with that). There were a lot of Dink sites back then - Gary Hertel's Dink Darkwoods was a significant one - but my favorite quickly became Dan "redink1" Walma's, which became the Dink Network, which went through several incarnations and domains before ending up here. Dan and Talmadge are to thank for the "Dink community" exploding like it did for a while, and I think it's pretty dang impressive that it still exists after fifteen years.
BY THE WAY: Since there isn't a lot going on in the Dink community these days, and since I'm taking to going back and playing this game with a greater fervor even than I had back in the day, I had a kind of crazy idea: I'd play all - yes, ALL - of the DMODs available about as thoroughly as I could and write about them at some length, first writing about the core game itself. I'm a fairly experienced writer and I think I could make it interesting.
I just thought I'd ask and see if anybody would want to read something like that or not. If nobody's really interested, than I'd feel silly spending my time on it. Thanks for reading my rambling post, assuming that you did.
I believe I first encountered Dink in 1998, when it was still pretty new. I had a subscription to PC Gamer Magazine, which came with a disc of demos (and occasionally some full games) each month. By the way, Coconut Monkey was the mascot of PC Gamer back in the day, in case you were wondering where my username and other references come from.
The demo of Dink really grabbed me, even though neither the gameplay nor the graphics were anything special even for the time. What grabbed me was the unique sense of humor and the way the game was open to the player doing almost anything. I've played quite a few games that were funny, but I've never seen a sense of humor like the one in Dink before or sense. I could go on with my feelings on the game, but I'm getting off-topic.
I ordered the game ($14.95 + 4.95 S&H) and played through it pretty quickly. I still have my pressed disc. I don't think it was the first release (1.02?) I think it was 1.03 or 1.04. Early versions had some weird bugs - I think at one point the Herb Boots simply didn't work.
RTSoft's website led me to what was then the place to go for Dink news - Mike Snyder's Dink Smallweb. Snyder (who often went by Wyndo) was totally crucial to the game's early success and there being a Dink community at all. Of course the main draw of the game (the initial adventure being quite short) was the incredible degree to which it could be modified, but making DMODs was at first a nearly incomprehensible mess. Mike made the skeleton, which made it much easier to create a DMOD (Actually, I believe he even came up with the term "DMOD" in a conversation with Seth Robinson). It was directly to his website that I submitted my early DMODs - he'd accept anything.
I was 12 years old, had no idea what I was doing, and was making the DMODs for the wrong reasons: I thought just getting something - anything - out there to get some recognition was a good idea. Of course, as incompetent as I was then, it's amazing I managed to make anything at all; remember, making DMODs was HARD back then, using the clunky original DOS map editor and having to do scripts in an ordinary text editor completely separately.
Anyway, some time around 2001 I had them removed from the Dink Network; this was a good move. However, a few people on the forums were upset, claiming either that they had liked them, that they had historical value, or that reducing the amount of available DMODs was always bad. Well, I managed to find copies of all four on an old archived copy of Snyder's site on archive.org, which saves copies of every website its crawler bots can reach.
(Edit: This was unnecessary; they can still be found at Snyder's site below.)
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/smallweb.html
They can be found here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ef0z2libfdtlgk0/nMZs7iXI3f
The Dmods are the Dink Smallwood Forever Trilogy (Forever, Infinite, and Unlimited) and 2001: A Dink Odyssey. Fair warning: Don't download them if you want to have a good time, an acceptable time or even a non-aggravating time - I cannot stress enough how bad they are. I'm posting them only as items of historical interest because I've seen people around here searching for "lost" DMODs before.
Unfortunately, a lot of really old DMODs don't work correctly in V1.08 Aural+ for some reason. The main problem (I observed this even in Search for Milli Vanilli) is that control will sometimes mess up and you'll either freeze for a while or be unable to stop walking in the same direction. In addition, these particular dmods sometimes load the wrong graphics, and will crash whenever you punch anything (I swear, when I released them they weren't THAT broken). Amusingly (this should tell you how bad they are), three out of the four dmods can be completed without ever doing this. The one that can't is Unlimited, which is just a series of fights.
Back to general Dink history: Snyder had an in-universe "Timeline" of the DMODs going at one point. You can find it here:
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/chron.html
One thing I find amusing about that list is that, unless I'm mistaken, every single DMOD on it that wasn't complete at the time was never released at all. I bet most of them were never even in development. One of them had the same name as a totally different DMOD Redink1 would later make, however.
Mike bowed out of the scene relatively early and made a browser-based game called Lunatix Online (It was a little bit like Kingdom of Loathing, if you're familiar with that). There were a lot of Dink sites back then - Gary Hertel's Dink Darkwoods was a significant one - but my favorite quickly became Dan "redink1" Walma's, which became the Dink Network, which went through several incarnations and domains before ending up here. Dan and Talmadge are to thank for the "Dink community" exploding like it did for a while, and I think it's pretty dang impressive that it still exists after fifteen years.
BY THE WAY: Since there isn't a lot going on in the Dink community these days, and since I'm taking to going back and playing this game with a greater fervor even than I had back in the day, I had a kind of crazy idea: I'd play all - yes, ALL - of the DMODs available about as thoroughly as I could and write about them at some length, first writing about the core game itself. I'm a fairly experienced writer and I think I could make it interesting.
I just thought I'd ask and see if anybody would want to read something like that or not. If nobody's really interested, than I'd feel silly spending my time on it. Thanks for reading my rambling post, assuming that you did.
That's a crazy high amount of dmods to play.
This is true. As I said, the idea is sort of crazy. But I feel like being thorough would be best, as there are some DMODs that probably hardly ever get a look anymore. I wouldn't necessarily play each one to completion, though I'd try for that for the most part.
if you're going to play 343 dmods, I expect you're going to start to get really annoyed and then any new dmods that come up will feel ruined.
But Leprochaun, if he plays them all maybe he can get inspiration or dish some out to the awful authors.
Personally I think it could be very fun. Perhaps you could even put the spotlight back on some older gems or encourage people to try certain D-Mods.
You don't need to look in the web archive. They're still available on his site.
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/smallweb.html
http://www.prowler-pro.com/dmods/smallweb.html
I'll be danged, I could have sworn that site was down by now.
Sounds interesting to me 
Did you mean to write as a review for each or more a blog style?
Did you mean to write as a review for each or more a blog style?
remember, making DMODs was HARD back then, using the clunky original DOS map editor and having to do scripts in an ordinary text editor completely separately.
Wait... Things have changed since?! (I still do both of the above things
)
Anyway, a very interesting read. The earliest version of Dink I've gotten my hands on is the v1.01 demo, dated 11 November 1997. It would be interesting to try a dmod/the full game on that, and see just how broken it would be.
Also, dmods, yeah! I remember some of those being quite okay. Time to go change that opinion, I suppose.
I just thought I'd ask and see if anybody would want to read something like that or not. If nobody's really interested, than I'd feel silly spending my time on it. Thanks for reading my rambling post, assuming that you did.
Hell yeah, that sounds awesome.
Wait... Things have changed since?! (I still do both of the above things
)Anyway, a very interesting read. The earliest version of Dink I've gotten my hands on is the v1.01 demo, dated 11 November 1997. It would be interesting to try a dmod/the full game on that, and see just how broken it would be.
Also, dmods, yeah! I remember some of those being quite okay. Time to go change that opinion, I suppose.
I just thought I'd ask and see if anybody would want to read something like that or not. If nobody's really interested, than I'd feel silly spending my time on it. Thanks for reading my rambling post, assuming that you did.
Hell yeah, that sounds awesome.
Even though I knew most of this history stuff already, it is a very interesting read indeed. Especially your old D-Mods. I had no idea there was still a chance to get them from anywhere. Just a suggestion, but maybe you could upload them back to The Dink Network? Even if they are bad and are broken beyond belief on v1.08, they're still a part of Dink history, and I say they should take their rightful place back here at The Dink Network.
I say playing through all the D-Mods is indeed a crazy idea. But I still say if you're up to it, then you should. You could write reviews for the D-Mods afterwards. There are some which really could use them.
This honestly made me feel inspired to write a similar "blog" -style review of the original Dink, which I've been planning to do for a while now.
I say playing through all the D-Mods is indeed a crazy idea. But I still say if you're up to it, then you should. You could write reviews for the D-Mods afterwards. There are some which really could use them.
This honestly made me feel inspired to write a similar "blog" -style review of the original Dink, which I've been planning to do for a while now.
Unfortunately, a lot of really old DMODs don't work correctly in V1.08 Aural+ for some reason. The main problem (I observed this even in Search for Milli Vanilli) is that control will sometimes mess up and you'll either freeze for a while or be unable to stop walking in the same direction. In addition, these particular dmods sometimes load the wrong graphics, and will crash whenever you punch anything (I swear, when I released them they weren't THAT broken).
In regards to this, I'm not so sure it's Dink at fault. I don't have any problems, for instance.
It sounds more like a problem with your operating system. For me, on Windows 7, the colours often get screwed up so that an entire dmod looks like the guts of a bonca. On Windows 8, DinkEdit is superslow for some reason (it takes half a minute to load up the hard map of a screen).
FreeDink seems to work somewhat better on these OSs, but still. I mostly stick to playing Dink on Windows XP (where the only problem I ever got was the midi lag that Aural+ fixes).
Crashing when you punch something, or loading the wrong graphics sounds weird, though. Maybe your OS is moving some files from the Dink Smallwood folder somewere else? (Vista/W7 can actually do that - see this thread, for example)
In regards to this, I'm not so sure it's Dink at fault. I don't have any problems, for instance.
It sounds more like a problem with your operating system. For me, on Windows 7, the colours often get screwed up so that an entire dmod looks like the guts of a bonca. On Windows 8, DinkEdit is superslow for some reason (it takes half a minute to load up the hard map of a screen).
FreeDink seems to work somewhat better on these OSs, but still. I mostly stick to playing Dink on Windows XP (where the only problem I ever got was the midi lag that Aural+ fixes).
Crashing when you punch something, or loading the wrong graphics sounds weird, though. Maybe your OS is moving some files from the Dink Smallwood folder somewere else? (Vista/W7 can actually do that - see this thread, for example)
Very old Dmods often have problems with 1.08 hence why there's that massive compatibility list somewhere. For example Dink 007 can't be finished in 1.08. Freedink's 1.07 compatibility mode may help things to work.
The most prolific bug was the one where you hit something and dink.exe crashes. I'm not sure what causes it, however.
The most prolific bug was the one where you hit something and dink.exe crashes. I'm not sure what causes it, however.
Ah, just encountered the punch bug in "infinity"... weird.
EDIT: It's in all of Tim's dmods on 108, indeed. Not on FreeDink, but there are other bugs in all those dmods. *Very* old dmods indeed. =) I had no idea an sp_map() command ever even existed!
EDIT: It's in all of Tim's dmods on 108, indeed. Not on FreeDink, but there are other bugs in all those dmods. *Very* old dmods indeed. =) I had no idea an sp_map() command ever even existed!
Great stuff. I love reading about DN history.
It'll be really interesting to see what you think of the way d-mods have evolved over the years, Tim.
It'll be really interesting to see what you think of the way d-mods have evolved over the years, Tim.
Awesome plan you have there! I can't wait to read up on your thoughts of every d-mod! I suggest you take a walkthrough for those that have one so that you don't get stuck and burn out on it
As for things not working... You really can't use any version of 1.08 for a lot of old d-mods. There was a change made to variable scope that messes up quite a few of them completely. However, you can install multiple versions of the game and play like that, which is what I did
Good luck and have fun with it! Really, really glad to have you back man!
As for things not working... You really can't use any version of 1.08 for a lot of old d-mods. There was a change made to variable scope that messes up quite a few of them completely. However, you can install multiple versions of the game and play like that, which is what I did
Good luck and have fun with it! Really, really glad to have you back man!
