Boulderdash Or Some Tips on Downloading An article from Lode van de Velde Did it ever happen to you that you found just the file, program, utility, screensaver or Plus-theme you were looking for, and it's just a click away from downloading. So, there you go, click it as fast as you can with a pounding heart... ... and your browser says coldly: 'File not found on this server.' You start cursing, but believe me, it won't help. (I tried it many times...) So we've got to try something else. We press in the browser's menu and retry and try again, but as you know, computers are even more stubborn than people, so that doesn't work either. But that doesn't mean you can't get it!! I'll tell you exactly how I found my precious Boulderdash on the web (for those C64 people who remember that game...) First of all, what is Boulderdash? Boulderdash is a great (for me, the greatest...) puzzle adventure arcade game I ever had on my old Commodore 64.... and recently, I have it on my PC too thanks to the Internet. The basic idea of the game is to collect enough diamonds in a certain cave to be able to go to the next cave. And as you'll probably guess: those diamonds are not just there waiting to be collected, you have to work for it! I tell you, I played it for years ... actually, the whole family did so!! I think that means it's a damn good game! But that was over 10 years ago. And somehow I had forgotten all about this game until I suddenly bumped into a clone of it at ZD-net. AT this site, you can download lots of stuff, both freeware and shareware. And if you sign up - which is 100% free by the way - you get access to even more free stuff, however they seem to be mostly screensavers. But the 'elephant' screensaver is a real beauty. http://www.zdnet.com Or for immediate sign-up: http://members.zdnet.com/hotfiles/exclusiv.cgi Anyway, I was just surfing and browsing and I entered 'adventure' in ZD-net's software search page to see what it would say and there I found the Boulderdash clone, which I downloaded immediately. However, it was nothing compared with the real one, graphically it was simply the most terrible you could imagine, but it did remind me of the real Boulderdash game, and I knew what my 'quest' was... So, I went to my regular search-engine and entered 'Boulderdash'. However, it seems to be also the name of a place in Colorado too, so I had to add 'game' to it and sometimes I also added 'Rockford', since that's the name of the Boulderdash- character and that proved a lot more successful! I found several 'Boulderdash' web sites with links to Boulderdash versions. And I finally found what I was looking for, after some lousy clones! So, I started downloading. Or, that's what I wanted to do. But my browser told me the file wasn't there. I was terribly disappointed, but I was in the same degree determined to get back my good old Boulderdash! So what did I do? I simply wrote down the name of the ZIP-file on a piece of paper and went back to the search-engine. I entered 'Bould112.ZIP', which is the name of the archive I wanted so desperately and ... I turned out several other places where I could download it... and now I've got my precious game again! Brought to the PC and enhanced by the original C64 programmers as a freeware program, called Boulderoid. (And for the Amiga-guys: there are also many Amiga versions available...) It's just great! I think I'll add it to my homepage. Even though the game is over 10 years old, I think it can still stand proud beside 'Doom' and other hit games... (Though graphically it can't reach Warcraft or so, I think it doesn't matter too much.) So this is my biggest tip: if you know the name of the file you're looking for, just feed it to a search engine, and you'll probably find what you need. (If the file has a pretty common name, like 'time.zip', make sure to write down the file size too, so you won't download the wrong one.) The search engine may also find links to ftp-archive index listings where your program is located. If you don't have (good) FTP-software yet, get the following Freeware one, called 'FTP-explorer' at: http://www.ftpx.com ftp://ftp.ftpx.com/pub/ftpx/ftpx.zip (I also read somewhere that downloading is faster with FTP software than through a browser.) You can also scan many ftp-servers for a particular file or folder using the, also freeware, ftp-Archie : Get it at http://www.fpware.demon.nl/ As for the Boulderdash game, I forgot to bookmark the page where I downloaded it, but if you read this article well, I'm sure you'll be able to find the program...! @~That is a really handy tip; I've also spent ages trying to @~convince my browser that the file WAS on the server (and @~failing)! ... Sue - o -