
The original programmer has given authorization to modify this game. 
So, anyone with programming chops is welcome to add new levels, refine the controls, adjust the music/instruments, etc....

One easy approach to creating more levels is to simply use the letters of the alphabet as the background paths
for the characters to follow (as opposed to the 1 through 9 that the arcade game uses as backgrounds).

A to-do list of refinements for this game:
- Fix 'remaining men' counter (it currently ends the game with one man displayed in the reservoir).
- Add sound when diamond appears.
- Decrease speed of enemy when in digger form and decrease max duration that enemy inhabits that form.
- Replace piano sample with the other instrument sample that's already included in the game.
- Remove the splash screen before each level so that player no longer needs to press a button to begin play.
- Add Pause feature to the second controller button (similar to the Amiga version of Ms. Pac-Man arcade).
- Add music for when player is being chased by the letter's entourage.
- Possibly add option to have action freeze for a few seconds if player grabs bonus item on an already-claimed letter.
- Add random pauses to the enemies (especially the diggers) to match the A.I. of the Mr. Do arcade machine.

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2019

Just a quick note to let you know that your letter reached me successfully.

Thank you for your kind comments regarding Bob's Garden. I enjoyed the arcade games Dig Dug and Mr. Do! as a youngster and as they had long since disappeared from my local arcade, I decided to write versions for the Amiga from memory alone. I have since been able to play the games using MAME and think that the originals are superior, but my versions are still quite fun.

I've had a quick look and don't seem to have copied the source code for Digger / Bob's Garden to a PC, so I'll have to see:
- If I can find the disk with the source code.
- Whether the disk is still readable.
- If one of my Amiga's still works.
- If I can still transfer disk images (ADF) to a PC.

Fingers crossed as it has been over 25 year!, and I'll let you know how I get on in due course.

Kind Regards,
Justin

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I've finally got around to transferring the disks. I'm surprised that most of the hardware still works after this length of time. The power supply on my SyQuest EZ135 no longer works - now powered from an external CDROM Molex connector. The Squirrel SCSI adapter takes a bit of reinserting into the A1200 before it will work, and the DOS formatted EZ135 disk has bad sectors towards the end of the disk... But it works. I have other disks, but they were formatted for the Amiga.

Transferring disks with this setup is easy once I remembered how to get it going. Double click on the PC135C dos driver icon and the EZ135 disk is mounted as a normal device. Disk masher isn't needed and I can just read ~ 100 Amiga disks alternately from df0: and df1: using a program I wrote a long time ago. Plug the drive into a SCSI cable on the PC and the disks can be copied off and then renamed. I've found a few disks with bad sectors, although they may have always had them. I just need to spare a few tens of hours to transfer the rest of my disks across. I should also transfer the stuff I did on the Atari ST, although they're already DOS formatted disks.


Please find attached three disk images:
Amiga Power cover disk 47 - Contains DerringDo. I noticed this Mr Do! clone whilst looking for Bob's Garden. I feel there is something lacking in the gameplay compared to the arcade game (as is the same with Bob's Garden), but it's a fairly good copy.

BobDiggerSource:
The source code  / image files / sounds for Digger and Bob's Garden.

LECasm Release 1b
LECasm assembler disk. I'm not sure if this is any use to you, as the assembler / editor executables are on the previous disk.

I have got newer versions of LECed, LECasm and CacheClock, but they're probably of little use any more. I also started work on Mr Do's castle, but it looks like I didn't get much further then drawing some sprites.

I think I've played Yukidaruma before, along with other arcade games I'd never seen before including Dig Dug 2, and Do Run Run. I'm not very good at these and can only marvel at YouTube recordings of other people playing them.

Kind regards,
Justin

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The source code disk has enough to assemble Bob's Garden. Please find attached: LECed V1.2 and LECasm V1.2. These versions seem to the be the same as on the source code disk.

Swapping out / adding extra samples and adding extra levels is fairly straight forward, and the comments in the code should hopefully be sufficient. There should be little issues in adding extra levels, although at a minimum the place where the Extras emerge, the central square where the monsters come out and Bob's starting square should all be connected otherwise the alien intelligence may not work.

I took a quick look at Mr Do!, and it is written in Z80, although I have yet to determine where the level definitions are stored. There doesn't appear to be a lot of free space in the ROMs, so adding extra levels may be very tricky. I believe you are mistaken about the source code in MAME. MAME works by emulating the hardware, so there is no Mr Do! source code as such, only some files explaining how the hardware is constructed. E.g. executable code ROMs from 0x0000 - 0x7FFF, background / foreground video RAM from 0x8000 - 0x8FFF, dip switches locations, graphics ROM banks, etc. The way that MAME works is by utilising a Z80 (or whatever processor) emulator that uses a fetch / execute cycle reading each instruction from the ROM, executing it and then reading the next instruction from the ROM. Another part of MAME reads the data from the video memory RAM (background/foreground/sprites, etc) and constructs a display for the user. Inputs from the user (Joystick, DIP settings, insert coins) cause values to be put into main memory or possibly into hardware registers that the Z80 reads in due course. This means that modifying Mr Do! requires a bit (lot?) of reverse engineering of the ROMs to determine how the levels are constructed. If I have a lot of spare time, I'll take a look.

I'm sure there are lots of disk imaging software solutions about. I remember using one for the PC a long time ago but I've forgotten it's name. I now normally use an ancient copy of WinHEX which still does the job and is useful for USB drives, hard disks, etc.

It's nice knowing that someone's still interested after all these years.

I think you'll find that my Outlook icon is one of the animation frames from the arcade version of Mr Do! and I've been using it since 2006!

Regards,
Justin

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