Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays all the DMODs of 2003
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It has now been one year since I started this project. I've covered 150 DMODs from over five years in that time. I probably would've gotten farther if I hadn't taken a few months to make a new DMOD of my own. I'm still not halfway done, but I'm not that far off now.
149: Dinkablo II: Shadow and Flame (Demo) Author: Firelake Release Date: April 2, 2003
"Hit Diablo once for me."
This isn't a sequel to Kevin Zettler's barely-started alpha "Dinkablo" - I'm not sure how that would even be possible. Instead, it's based on Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo II, a game that I've played, although not in a very long time.
The first "Dinkablo" had little in the way of content, but it was still an interesting curiosity. Bunniemaster managed to recreate the town from Diablo closely enough that it was easily recognizable even though it had been a long time since I'd played that game. Unfortunately, "Dinkablo II" doesn't really manage this kind of trick. Instead, the areas are pretty generic Dink maps, but you're told they represent areas from Diablo II. Quite a bit of the map is made up of a series of nearly identical marsh areas, each marked with a sign like "Dark Forest" or "Cold Plain." Sure.
Here's one of the more interesting screens. Most of the screens look like this, but without the stones or the sparkle.
At the start of this one, some people urge Dink to go through a warp and go destroy Diablo. Who are these people? We have no way of knowing. The people Dink meets on the other side of the warp have never heard of him, so how do the others know to send Dink there? Despite having no clue he is, the people Dink meets seem to believe that he could take on the Lord of Hell.
There's an odd little segment where the game attempts to teach you how to play Dink Smallwood. Not only is this unnecessary, but the game does a comically poor job of this. There's a sign telling you how to move that you must move in order to reach, and another one telling you how to talk to or examine things, which you must examine before it'll say anything.
This could actually be a fairly funny joke, but to assume it is would be giving this DMOD too much credit.
The map is considerably larger than I would have thought. It's laid out reasonably well, but it suffers from quite a few tiling errors, a few of which create major hardness errors as well. There are a few dungeon-type areas that would be decent if it weren't for the tiling errors, but they seem kind of aimless and pointless. Each has a sort of ending you can reach, but there are no bosses, and only one of the dungeons is necessary to reach the "ending."
Although I don't have much positive to say about this mod in general, there's just one thing about it I really hated: its tendency to deliberately trap you in a dead end. There are several wrong paths that will make you restart the game, and they all occur before the first real save point (there's supposed to be a hidden one earlier, but I couldn't find it). Obviously, this is wretched, unforgivably bad design, and anyone responsible for putting such a dead end into a game should be spanked. Hard. With a spiked paddle.
Nooo! I thought I was only doomed temporarily!
...Speaking of spikes, I do want to give this DMOD credit for using the correct walk and death animations for the spiky things. They're called "Rollers" here, which isn't a bad name for them.
Here's an odd little note: the dialogue scripts in this DMOD may be based on the ones from "Dry." I suspect this because an unused script in the story folder is just a script from that DMOD with a few lines changed to be about Diablo.
The readme says that it's "sort of" possible to beat the game. You know what that means!
But Mommmm...
Dink pleads his case with the demon, but she insists that this is the end of the demo and that's all there is to it. Dink glumly concedes that he'll have to do everything over when the full version comes out. Fortunately for him, it never did.
150: Dink's Short Adventure! (Demo) Author: Jeremy Moore Release Date: May 3, 2003
"We are going to begin with a Tutorial."
REPUTATION NOTE: 1.0. Exactly. This is due to one generous soul giving it a 3.
Boy, 2003 must be backloaded. Here we are in May, and "Dry" is the only release so far of any note at all.
1.0 is too high a rating for "Dink's Short Adventure," a title that appears only in the dmod.diz file. Text in the DMOD itself refers to the game as "Keeper's Short Adventure" for some reason. As for the title screen, it gives the title as "Your Title Goes Here," courtesy of Mike Snyder's DMOD skeleton.
This DMOD consists of an unfinished tutorial. I am glad that I played this right after Dinkablo II, because I have the opportunity to appreciate that this mod starts to do a much better job of presenting an unnecessary tutorial on how to play Dink. Text informs you how you should walk (you know, in case you've never played a PC game before) and attack without nonsensically requiring you to do those things first. Of course, I'm using a gamepad, so it's irrelevant to me, but at least it could've been worse.
Unfortunately, that's the best I can say. You're given an option to skip the tutorial, but it doesn't work. If you try to skip it, you'll end up stuck before even reaching what one might laughably call the "ending." After a short movement tutorial, you're told that you have to fight a monster, but all you'll encounter is a bonca with no script attached. You can punch it as long as you like, but nothing will happen, so you have to walk on by. You'll soon come to the game's sixth and final screen, where Dink is permanently stuck on an island where you can't do anything at all.
This is the truest this default line has ever been.
The description informs us that the author had planned a DMOD that was so large, he knew he'd never finish it, so he made this short one instead; incredibly, he didn't manage to finish this either. He can't have thought he was done when the bonca in his tutorial can't even be fought. Even at the height of my youthful cluelessness, I would have thought better of releasing something like this. This one has got a lock on worst DMOD of 2003... I hope.
149: Dinkablo II: Shadow and Flame (Demo) Author: Firelake Release Date: April 2, 2003
"Hit Diablo once for me."
This isn't a sequel to Kevin Zettler's barely-started alpha "Dinkablo" - I'm not sure how that would even be possible. Instead, it's based on Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo II, a game that I've played, although not in a very long time.
The first "Dinkablo" had little in the way of content, but it was still an interesting curiosity. Bunniemaster managed to recreate the town from Diablo closely enough that it was easily recognizable even though it had been a long time since I'd played that game. Unfortunately, "Dinkablo II" doesn't really manage this kind of trick. Instead, the areas are pretty generic Dink maps, but you're told they represent areas from Diablo II. Quite a bit of the map is made up of a series of nearly identical marsh areas, each marked with a sign like "Dark Forest" or "Cold Plain." Sure.
Here's one of the more interesting screens. Most of the screens look like this, but without the stones or the sparkle.
At the start of this one, some people urge Dink to go through a warp and go destroy Diablo. Who are these people? We have no way of knowing. The people Dink meets on the other side of the warp have never heard of him, so how do the others know to send Dink there? Despite having no clue he is, the people Dink meets seem to believe that he could take on the Lord of Hell.
There's an odd little segment where the game attempts to teach you how to play Dink Smallwood. Not only is this unnecessary, but the game does a comically poor job of this. There's a sign telling you how to move that you must move in order to reach, and another one telling you how to talk to or examine things, which you must examine before it'll say anything.
This could actually be a fairly funny joke, but to assume it is would be giving this DMOD too much credit.
The map is considerably larger than I would have thought. It's laid out reasonably well, but it suffers from quite a few tiling errors, a few of which create major hardness errors as well. There are a few dungeon-type areas that would be decent if it weren't for the tiling errors, but they seem kind of aimless and pointless. Each has a sort of ending you can reach, but there are no bosses, and only one of the dungeons is necessary to reach the "ending."
Although I don't have much positive to say about this mod in general, there's just one thing about it I really hated: its tendency to deliberately trap you in a dead end. There are several wrong paths that will make you restart the game, and they all occur before the first real save point (there's supposed to be a hidden one earlier, but I couldn't find it). Obviously, this is wretched, unforgivably bad design, and anyone responsible for putting such a dead end into a game should be spanked. Hard. With a spiked paddle.
Nooo! I thought I was only doomed temporarily!
...Speaking of spikes, I do want to give this DMOD credit for using the correct walk and death animations for the spiky things. They're called "Rollers" here, which isn't a bad name for them.
Here's an odd little note: the dialogue scripts in this DMOD may be based on the ones from "Dry." I suspect this because an unused script in the story folder is just a script from that DMOD with a few lines changed to be about Diablo.
The readme says that it's "sort of" possible to beat the game. You know what that means!
But Mommmm...
Dink pleads his case with the demon, but she insists that this is the end of the demo and that's all there is to it. Dink glumly concedes that he'll have to do everything over when the full version comes out. Fortunately for him, it never did.
150: Dink's Short Adventure! (Demo) Author: Jeremy Moore Release Date: May 3, 2003
"We are going to begin with a Tutorial."
REPUTATION NOTE: 1.0. Exactly. This is due to one generous soul giving it a 3.
Boy, 2003 must be backloaded. Here we are in May, and "Dry" is the only release so far of any note at all.
*******This DMOD, "Dink's Short Adventure,"******** ********Has been awarded the prestigious********* ****DINK FOREVER MEMORIAL AWARD OF BADNESS***** **********On this day August 16, 2014********
1.0 is too high a rating for "Dink's Short Adventure," a title that appears only in the dmod.diz file. Text in the DMOD itself refers to the game as "Keeper's Short Adventure" for some reason. As for the title screen, it gives the title as "Your Title Goes Here," courtesy of Mike Snyder's DMOD skeleton.
This DMOD consists of an unfinished tutorial. I am glad that I played this right after Dinkablo II, because I have the opportunity to appreciate that this mod starts to do a much better job of presenting an unnecessary tutorial on how to play Dink. Text informs you how you should walk (you know, in case you've never played a PC game before) and attack without nonsensically requiring you to do those things first. Of course, I'm using a gamepad, so it's irrelevant to me, but at least it could've been worse.
Unfortunately, that's the best I can say. You're given an option to skip the tutorial, but it doesn't work. If you try to skip it, you'll end up stuck before even reaching what one might laughably call the "ending." After a short movement tutorial, you're told that you have to fight a monster, but all you'll encounter is a bonca with no script attached. You can punch it as long as you like, but nothing will happen, so you have to walk on by. You'll soon come to the game's sixth and final screen, where Dink is permanently stuck on an island where you can't do anything at all.
This is the truest this default line has ever been.
The description informs us that the author had planned a DMOD that was so large, he knew he'd never finish it, so he made this short one instead; incredibly, he didn't manage to finish this either. He can't have thought he was done when the bonca in his tutorial can't even be fought. Even at the height of my youthful cluelessness, I would have thought better of releasing something like this. This one has got a lock on worst DMOD of 2003... I hope.
