*ALL PHYSICAL COPIES ARE SOLD OUT*: REALMS OF QUEST V (Digital version is available)

[Ghislain]

Content-wise, the game is almost finished. I started to work on some graphics for dramatic cut scenes. I'll probably implement some LZW compression, so I can include as many screenshots as possible.

[prowlr]

Looks amazing. I bought all the other Realms of Quest games and definitely plan to get V as well!

[Ghislain]

Looks amazing. I bought all the other Realms of Quest games and definitely plan to get V as well!

Well thank you! When I first started to work on this game 18 months ago, I was really struggling with how to make the 8 bit graphics look good. I eventually figured out that color contrasts with a lot of blacks and whites really helps in that regard.

For the past few days, I've been doing a graphics review of all 16 player races (male and female) and improved on a lot of them:

The 16 player races are:

Row 1: Human, Elf, Dwarf, Halfeling
Row 2: Dayanorian, Eldar, Gnoll, Gnome
Row 3: Goblin, Kobold, Lizard-Man, Ogre
Row 4: Orc, Sprite, Vurdu-Lak, Zzy-Zzyx

[Ghislain]

Spoiler alert: maybe one of these monsters should be named "The Drumpf", wear a black suit and red tie, have weird blond/orange hair and continuously make the same 3 stereotyped gestures with his right hand.

Just a suggestion...

I’ve been thinking for sometime how to respond to your post from last year and I can say this. There is a major plot in the storyline regarding a faction called the Resistance that is in a life and death struggle against what it perceives as an illegitimate and tyrannical government. But things aren’t quite what they seem as more and more details are revealed throughout the game. A theme of unity through pluralism and multiculturalism is also emphasized. So I probably did draw inspiration by making a certain allusion regarding current events.

[eslapion]

... A theme of unity through pluralism and multiculturalism is also emphasized. So I probably did draw inspiration by making a certain allusion regarding current events.

It was a long time coming but I am glad I encouraged creativity.

[SkydivinGirl]

How can I buy your games now that Psytronik's store has been offline for so long?

Thanks!

Heather

[Ghislain]

How can I buy your games now that Psytronik's store has been offline for so long?

Thanks!

Heather

I hope they go back online soon. They promised to publish Realms V in the future (otherwise come hell or high water, I am determined to see the game properly published in a cardboard box somehow).

You can buy digital versions of the games, however: https://psytronik.itch.io/

Effectively (at least for the time being), physical copies of Realms III and IV are now out of print. Maybe they'll become collectors' items?

Thank you for the support!

[Ghislain]

I've got some great news! Darkatx, who has done physical artwork for Realms III & IV has agreed to do the same for Realms V. I am forever grateful for this contributions as they bring my creations to life. Here's a rough sketch that he provided for me.

[Ghislain]

I recently achieved a major milestone where I've completed all of the work for game content for the cities (all 20 of them!). Here are some screenshots of what you'll see when you enter the city of Veritas and you meet Alania and Titus (they're the ones that will be featured on the game's box cover)--perhaps they will reveal the truth to you? To solve the mystery, you'll have to acquire and play the game, of course

So content-wise, all I've left to do is some images of a the people that appear in the villages (it's fairly simple -- you encounter one person per village). Once these are done, all I've left to do is to refine the already-existing content in terms of text and re-do some graphics. That and programming the final features of the game along with the final counter and the full-screen introduction sequence. It feels very good to start to see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel of this long process which at times felt that I would never get to see.

Here's a collage of the recent graphics work that I've been working on as well!

[Ghislain]

Somebody asked me how far away that I am from finishing this game. I wrote out a rough estimated timeline:

1 week for village content (I'm currently working on this now, I've done 15 villages in 2 weeks, I've 5 left to do)
2 weeks for final boss encounter
4 weeks for odds and ends (teleport spells, features I want to implement, etc)
1 week for fixing some of the dungeons (Ruby Golem has sent me a few updated dungeon content files that I still have to put in)
4 weeks for monster graphics review (I want to re-do some of them)
2 weeks for intro sequence
4 weeks for thorough playtesting (and sort out issues of game balance)
2 weeks for making this into a 4 sided disk game (currently, it's a game that only works with the emulator or with an SD card reader on the actual machine)
6 weeks to write the manual

So that's about 26 weeks, or 6 months--more or less. It might take longer, or it might be a shorter time frame.

While I do get responses on Twitter (and it is increasingly getting attention there) when I post new content regarding this game, I've noticed that this thread has gone silent a bit. Not that I expect an enthusiastic reply here every time I post, and I do recognize that I'm not that very active in the other threads here on Denial (and I apologize for that, but the vast majority of my retrocomputing time is dedicated to working on this). Perhaps it's because I've been working on this for a year a half, so the anticipation is not quite as strong as when I first announced it. It seems like I've been working on this forever.

With getting a potential publisher onboard, it would be good to know the size of the potential audience. I am really trying to reach the computer RPG audience as much as possible as well.

[Schlowski]

I'm following your progress but I'm more of the silent reader type I imagine that there are a lot more of this type here lurking around...

[SkydivinGirl]

Sorry about the silence from me. I don't frequent the site as often as I would like. I'm certainly interested in a physical version of the game. I'd absolutely love to get a collection that includes all the Realms games.

Heather

[vicist]

I don't even play these type of games but I want a copy of this!

[Ola H]

I will definitely buy it It is a one-of-a-kind game for the Vic and the portraits are just getting more and more sumptuous. I admire your dedication and determination!

There seems to be plenty of platform agnostic retro rpg enthusiasts outside our little circle of Vic 20 fandom, so I really hope you can manage to get the word out via twitter and facebook groups.

[orion70]

Ditto
Will definitely add this to my collection, at any cost (well, almost ).