I see that, I can't really see any where to use the magnet in that room, not unless you can get under the trapdoor. Hence why I suggested using the pick on one of those rocks, more likely the smaller one on top.
Swapped wasn't quite what I was suggesting, that would put the diamond at the top of the crystal mountain where the word box still speaks of the green eye of the yellow god. On the matter of complexity, puzzles in this game vary wildly in that regard, sometimes you have to hike miles with objects while other times there use is right there. This seems to have no bearing on how far into the game you are.
Other objects that would do better in other positions include the pick which could be replaced with the graveyard key, or the oil (for maintaining the labyrinth). This would remove the problem cause by the fact you can use the dry ice to bypass what your supposed to need the dry ice for. You would have to enter the labyrinth, you would have to get the key/oil otherwise you would blow the game.
As I said I don't entirely trust NOOTRAC to give away all the games secrets. I would imagine, for example, that if you use it at the start of the game and go to, say, the crazy labyrinth all the gate will be intact. If you do it after you've cleared the labyrinth they won't. Who knows what other secrets the game may reveal if you perform the right action which the map hides from you? The fact that the text box is solid is telling though. Is that more solid that the one in the crazy labyrinth which you can drop into if you can get past the troll skeleton?
It might be more exciting but it's much less realistic. Why would someone's grave have a strange trapdoor and further passages leading off it?
Since when were cartoons realistic? It was billed as the Ultimate Cartoon Adventure so expecting realism is like expecting the Coyote to catch the Road Runner.
Ah, yes the title, I get back to that presently. (I hope)
Obviously I wasn't referring to the primary reality of cartoon logic (although if Dizzy walks off a ledge he will fall without having to look down to confirm he's walked off a ledge).
The point is it simply invites questions without answers forthcoming, like this one:
What's 8-bit?
And why does Nintendo seem to manage it so much better than Spectrum, Commodore or Alan Michael Sugar Trading does?
The Legend Of Zelda is an 8-bit game, it seems much richer in detail than this one, somehow they seem to have made the memory go much, much further and I'm not quite sure how. Compromising on graphics might be one factor but I struggle to see it as the only one.
DCT - The amount of memory on 8-bit computers was hardware dependent. the same as today. Home PC's had a built in amount of usable memory, for example either 9K or 41K for the Spectrum (7K was used for the screen memory). Then the graphical quality on some systems could be selected depending on how many colours you wanted / how high resolution you wanted. For example, in one 8 bit byte, you could describe 8 pixels in 2 colours (i.e. each bit is one pixel, black (0) or white (1)) or you could describe 1 pixel as one of 256 colours, so with a given amount of memory allocated to the screen, you can have 2 very different looking screens. (There were graphical modes between these extremes as well of course, e.g. 2 pixels in 16 colours, but the Spectrum had no such graphical modes, the resolution was set to 256x192 pixels and then each 8x8 character block had one byte to describe the colour - 3 bit colour x2 (8 colours) each for 'on' and 'off', 1 bit for 'bright' and one bit for 'flash' - hence the famous issue of colour clash) On a console, the memory was held on the cartridge, so could vary from game to game, plus any 'load times' to access more memory from the cart would be negligible, so games could look (and be) bigger. On home computers, you had to load in more data from a tape into the memory which was slow and a pain (for example Gauntlet on the Spectrum loaded, I think from memory, 4 levels at a time, so you had to keep starting and stopping the tape!) As for what's 8-bit - this is the size of the byte that the CPU could deal with at a time, i.e. a number between 0 and 255 decimal. The more bits you could load in, the more complex the instruction could be ad the quicker the computer can be - for example, to load a value into a register on an 8 bit, you would send the instruction to load the register in one byte, then the next byte would be the value, thus the instruction takes 2 clock cycles to load, whereas if you had a 16-bit CPU, you could process the same instruction in only one clock cycle.
Thanks for that I think I may have to read, read and read it and to unpick it but in short 8 bit does not equal the full memory capacity of the game. Which leaves me wondering if Dizzy could have been a bigger, if slower game. Going off Spellbound I'd say 'yes' but going off other tricks I know they played such as spreading Crystal Kingdom across two Amiga discs I can't be sure.
DCT - the fact that a CPU is 8-bit or 16-bit doesn't directly relate to the memory of the system the CPU is in, except in as much as higher bit CPUs could usually address more memory - for example the Z80 CPU in the Spectrum was an 8 bit PC and could only address 64K (16-bit address) - 16K was ROM, leaving the 48K maximum RAM (but they did produce the 16K RAM version as well for about £50 less, RAM was expensive in those days!) The 128K Spectrum could still only address 64K and paged in and out the extra memory as required. The speed of the game and the size are pretty much unrelated (unless the programmer used a lot of compression in his code that then had to be uncompressed on the fly whilst the program was running), but back in those days, CPUs were pretty slow (in comparison to today) so you didn't really have any spare clock cycles to play with, so that was an unusual state of events. But I don't think Dizzy needed to be any bigger, I think that it is about the right size, plenty of gameplay and not too much walking for hours on end to get from a to b (I remember one game on the Spectrum, I can't remember the name of it, but it's selling point was that it had a ridiculous number of locations - hundreds if not thousands - but it was an incredibly tedious game as there was nothing you could do in 99% of the locations) And don't forget, when it was released it was only £1.99, so I thought it was excellent value for money!
The technical stuff continues to go over my head. My main point continues to be the Oliver Twins complaining about the memory.
So far we have a horseshoe magnet which seems to be a red herring which I suppose is fine if that's true. But we also have a location called The Secret Caves, which is so secret it can be seen but no one has ever solved whatever puzzle should be there to gain access to it... and it does look like there should be a puzzle.
I'm pretty sure 1.99 in 1987 was worth more than 1.99 today. Although I get that it doesn't seem that it can be much more.
Having got the mine we return to it's probable source the mine for a bit of a long shot, though not requiring it. Instead we're going to do another experiment with the ever discouraging horseshoe magnet. The aim here is to get Dizzy to stand in the location where you had to jump to get the platform to fall and then stand on said platform and use the horseshoe magnet while jumping above it. The idea here being to attract the platform back to it's original location. Obviously it's a long shot but in case it works you may want to leave the clove of garlic on the platform before you jump if you want to kill the last bat. Otherwise the chances are you won't be able to go back and get it. If this actually works please tell me so I'll know whether or not Dizzy can continue to the right.
I thought I seen it done with NOOTRAC it takes you to a screen with a bat and an extra a then a wall into a Dizzy 'warp zone' (well what else would you call them. I'm hoping you've at least tested the theory before telling me this.
There is nothing past that screen. I have tried it with NOOTRAC (well, with TROWBRIDGE on the CPC, which does the same thing) and Dizzy just keeps falling until he lands on another part of the map, depending on the angle he falls at. The wall between himself and the bat/life is there to prevent this. Its the end of the world for Dizzy.
As I keep saying I don't necessarily believe that the NOOTRAC trick reveals anything unless you solve the relevant puzzles and again I'm still imagining you have actually tested what I suggested.
For example the area we are currently discussing is the screen where Dizzy needs to jump to get the ceiling above him to drop to become floor ahead of him to proceed. Now, presumably, if you use the NOOTRAC cheat (TROWBRIDGE sounds weird) before you jump the platform is up, if you do it afterwards the platform is down.
Under the same logic (though I know very little of the mechanics of NOOTRAC) if you do it before you can park Dizzy on the platform that would fall and then contiune to the right (or left also) into the Secrte Caves. Unless, of course, you're saying you just drop through the bar to the platform below. Otherwise, I can't see anything stopping you and don't know which wall you're refering too, there's no wall on the Spectrum map that I can see.
Having got the sharp diamond we can return to that area on the crystal mountain with a strange looking floor that turns out to be glass and cut it, apparently with relative ease, so it will shatter and not harm Dizzy and drop onto the (suddenly moving) platform below.
Dizzy can then proceed to the left and find... fantastic! an impassable stretch of water and a boat tethered to the wall. This has got to be the most infuriating locations in the game unless there's a particular way you're meant to play it. You solve a puzzle to reach a seeming inaccessible area only to find yourself faced with another seeming inaccessible area. And obviously you won't have the item with you you need to get in their because in order to get to this point you've hard to traipse all the way from the graveyard with a sodding diamond.
But fortunately not hidden in the same sense as the secret caves are secret or we'd never find it. Mind you that might not be such a probably because although it obviously should make the game unfinishable because of the dry ice oversight it doesn't and Dizzy doesn't really need to come here at all. This is the scene that you find under the statue of the Yellow god in the graveyard that you can reach when you return it's eye that Mad Carew removed, it's a strange twist of fate that he's buried just next door.
Not unlike the cave we've just struggled with we immediately get down there and find our way blocked this time by a rock build up. So we immediately need to leave and go get the pick from wherever we left it in order to proceed. Sometimes I think this whole area is meant to be this game's main red herring given how both the dry ice and the diamond are in the near vicinity of where you need them to solve the puzzle that we've come all the way here to solve. This was a very strange arrangement on the part of the programmers.
Proceeding to the left we find one of the last logically placed items in the age. Under the statue of the yellow god is "A Jewelled Dagger" which is presumably of the sort (if not the same) used by the followers of the idol to slay Mad Carew. If you want to remember where the dagger is just remember the poem.
Having got the dagger we can unmoor the boat and travel with it (as log as we don't let it move from under us) into the next screen a large room full of ice stalactites and water drops and thus a big clearance job. There's nothing else here and the screen can be exited to the left.
Oh, this had better be worth it. Having trekked all over the map to get down here with now passed into our second screen with nothing but stalactites hanging from the ceiling waiting to crack Dizzy's shell.
As a consolation prize there's an extra life if you want it but other than that the only thing to do is to take a leap of faith through a hole in the floor.
At last, upon dropping through the floor Dizzy lands on a elevator platform from which he can leap to the left and claim not only another extra life (someone must think this area is particularly dangerous) but "A Protective Amulet". If he then proceeds to the right he can find the same screen where he discovered the leprechauns wig. Of cause he can't get across but i suppose this is yet another place the dry ice could have been used to shorten the game.
As it is Dizzy has to make his way back where he came from. I wonder how protective that amulet is... {yolkfolk}:animwink:
Having obtained protection we can return to Zaks and eliminate all the energy bolts he is throwing at Dizzy. Apparently Zaks is a very poor wizard and is unable to replace them.
He's also a very large wizard larger than he is in any other Dizzy game it seems and several time larger than Dizzy. Which rather begs the question of why doesn't he just step on him?
Isn't he the same size in Magicland Dizzy? In fact it's the same sprite in both games on the 8-bit systems, just mirrored.
As for the bolts, there are two reasons they are likely as they are. One, the fact you can only carry one item at a time would make it impossible to smash the full flask if the bolts kept regenerating; two the old memory saving problem as it just uses existing enemy code.
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