Donkey Kong Remixed

[ChrisP]

Just got to L21 on 5+1 settings.

I missed the kill screen because I was stupid and trusted the hitbox on a wild barrel to be forgiving. (Argh.)

I enjoyed myself.

Oh, hey, new world record too.

One thing though: I don't understand the point of the blue hammers on the barrel board. They don't change the dynamics of the board in any way that I can discern. They're just kinda clumsy. The girder above you is too high for a jump from below to hit anything, and jumping just isn't a dynamic that you'll ever find valuable when the primary purpose of the hammer on a barrel board is to clear out barrel traffic and/or get points. If anything they're just obnoxious due to the habit we're all in of tapping on the button when the hammer is getting near expiration. (Oops, I jumped over the barrel instead of smashing it...)

I could imagine, once in a blue moon, catching a climbing fireball that you otherwise wouldn't have caught, but that's about it. I think you should just leave the brown ones.

[Sock Master]

Nice.  I think it's reached gameplay being pretty fair.

Yeah, I'm thinking I won't leave the blue hammers in.  They're really nice on the other boards, but don't really contribute much to barrel boards.   There are a few things you can do, like jump over a barrel then hit it with a hammer.  You can hit barrels on girders above in some places but the girders are pretty far apart on this one.  On the other girder boards they're closer - you can even hit barrels right out of DK's hands when he's releasing them.  The idea was to get them 1/4 of the time to add variety.

Good point about tapping the jump button when the hammer is about to run out.. this interferes with that precautionary strategy.

Was there any noticeable difference in the L3,L4 wild barrels?   I didn't change them much, but they're slightly tamed.

I missed watching the world records live, but it was very interesting to see the next day.  I did catch Dean's game a couple of days earlier and that was amazing to see live.   So much amazing gameplay almost all at once!

[Sock Master]

I put together a DK Remix demo of two more boards; the reverse barrels stage and the alternate cement/pie stage.

I'm mostly curious to hear if the cement stage is fair or unfair.    I think the rest of the stages in the game are pretty well balanced.

Yes, the new cement stage is more random because the fireballs can spawn in 4 places.   No, the spawn points are not as easy to control and even then it's never 100%, but the hammers should be good for clearing the way.   I'm curious how well the randomness plays out.

You can get the 2nd demo here:
http://users.axess.com/twilight/sock/dkremix/dkrdemob.zip

Thanks!

[Sock Master]

An updated version (v1.2) of the 2nd DKRemix demo is up.
The update includes fixes to a few jump bonus detection bugs and a conveyor timing issue that were discovered by DaLar.

Hopefully, that is it for bugs and glitches.

[Sock Master]

One thing I didn't change up until now was the kill screen.

But I figured...this is a remix, I might as well remix the kill screen too.

When you reach L22, the game flips into psycho mode and really lays it on - fast timers, fast barrel releases, tons of blue barrels, tons of wild barrels, tons of bombs - and not just straight down

Just psycho enough that it is possible to survive a while.

[marinomitch13]

Beautiful! 

[ChrisP]

Really liking the second demo! Many interesting situations on the new pie factory.

I had one idea to getting the "full" version going in MAME, but I don't know if it's feasible: the D2K romspace is 64KB (the ROM, dkongx.zip, contains just one file "d2k12.bin."

What about putting Remix into that file, and then running it in MAME as D2K?

[Sock Master]

It is nice how the new pie/factory, while similar to the original one comes up with quite different gameplay scenarios.

It ought to be compatible with D2K's ROM mapping, but there's some weirdness going on there.  D2K has scrambled ROMs and mapping.


Ah, I think I need to quit for a bit or catch up on sleep...  I just did something evil and I feel maybe a bit dirty.   I just added a 3rd color of barrel... on a whim..  They bounce after falling down the edges of girders.   It was real easy, and damn it looks cool in the "funnel"/"center hole"/"spring+barrels" stage; mesmerizing even.   Like a big percolating lava lamp.   Full of murder barrels.   ...Yep, It's time to stop messing with the game.

[ChrisP]

Yeah, that's what I was afraid of. I think there is some sort of encryption at work in the D2K ROM, but I don't know the nature of it.

Just for fun, I dumped the (merged) dkong z80 code into the d2k12.bin just to see what would happen. I got the bootup sound (boi-oi-oing), and the rug pattern, but it stopped dead right there (no surprise). Another problem is that the game is all soft dipswitches, which wouldn't be compatible with the way you have Remix written (it uses the physical switches).

[Sock Master]

I made a new revision to Demo A, with the latest changes added.

Some tweaks to the Rivets Elevator board, with the added escape ladder to the sitting duck zone.
I even added the new 'kill screen'.
And a new type of barrel, for fun, but I might remove it if it doesn't add to the game.

[tilt]

New idea: You know how you have to backjump before the rivet girder falls?  Well I think that as long as you jump off to a different girder before it hits the bottom, you should be able to survive.  I think this would provide a whole new survival mechanic that would make things even more fun.  The question is: Is it even possible to add in?

[tilt]

... also:
WOULD A WALL JUMP BONUS STAGE BE POSSIBLE?? 

[Sock Master]

There's a technical complication with trying to do that.  The rivets floors can only be drawn at 8 pixel (size of a tile) steps, so they can't fall smoothly like Jumpman falls.   After the very first step of falling, Jumpman is already 7-8 pixels detached from the floor and can't jump any more because he's in free-fall himself.
If the floors could fall in 1 pixel steps, like the elevators then it might have been more possible.

There is one major style of bonus stage that is missing and that is a springs bonus stage.  Well, there is no elevators bonus stage either.   But I couldn't think of a way to make those work as bonus stages.  I don't know if it's really worth the effort to.   I stopped adding anything major when I used up my ROM space allotment.   I already went over my romspace a while back and have been busy shrinking/condensing code to get it to start fitting again.

[Sock Master]

I've been quiet about DK Remix updates for a few weeks because I've been trying to work out how to get a plug-in board to boot up DK Remix on an unmodified DK board set.
Yesterday, I finally got a hand-wired prototype to boot up the game.   Huge relief to see it working.

I still have a way to go because I'd also like the board to be able to save high scores, let you play original DK ROMs without having to remove it, maybe allow the possibility of supporting more than one extra game ROM, and hopefully allow saving high scores in regular DK too.   Hopefully I can pull that off.

[danman123456]