**New Release** REALMS OF QUEST 3 (available for order!)

Royas · Post by **Royas** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 3:26 am

This is really coming out nice. The font choice and layout is pretty ideal I'd say.

.... but why's the bat flying sideways!

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:32 am

I like the yellow frame around the picture and white text.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:08 am

Royas wrote:This is really coming out nice. The font choice and layout is pretty ideal I'd say.

.... but why's the bat flying sideways!

Because the images are 20x40 multicolor... very hard to make it appear upright without having to squish it. Other images such as skeletons, orcs are easy to draw upright because they don't have a large wingspan like a bat does.

Even if it appears sideways, it will have a cool visual when the bat attacks and the image is flipped. And besides, the bat is flying in midair, who says they have to appear upright?

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 6:57 am

ral-clan wrote:I like the yellow frame around the picture and white text.

Thanks... what about the numbers that appear beside the character names (inside the yellow frame), do you think that looks bad?

But I'll also use the other parts of the inner frame to display other information as well...

The game will have 3 world maps--an overworld (main one, manually designed 128x128 using 8K maybe even down to 4K with compression), a middleworld (formless and desolate using the overworld map and 8K of the VIC-20 ROMspace) and an underworld (basically 'hell' of the game, using 16K of the ROMspace to generate the map).

vic user · Post by **vic user** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 7:04 am

I find having the bat displayed sideways, seems to give the feeling of movement, like he is fluttering around, so hope it stays that way.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 7:11 am

vic user wrote:I find having the bat displayed sideways, seems to give the feeling of movement, like he is fluttering around, so hope it stays that way.

Same here. I like the sideways bat (and the fact that it is smiling)!

Oh, and I really like the numbers in the yellow border beside the character names. It prevents the numbers from blending in with the name.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:03 am

Ghislain wrote:The game will have 3 world maps--an overworld (main one, manually designed 128x128 using 8K maybe even down to 4K with compression), a middleworld (formless and desolate using the overworld map and 8K of the VIC-20 ROMspace) and an underworld (basically 'hell' of the game, using 16K of the ROMspace to generate the map).

Scratch that... that's a terrible idea. I had a sense of deja-vu when I posted this because I had already written earlier in this thread:

-128 x 128 'overworld' designed by hand that will use 8192 bytes --- basically each tile will use up a nibble (4 bits)... or 2 tiles per byte.
-128 x 128 'middle world' that is generated by a portion (16K) of the ROM space occupied by the main program.
-128 x 128 'under world' generated by the 16K of rom space of the VIC-20 BASIC and kernal (similar to Realms of Quest II).

Good thing that I have this forum to refer to as I make my game. So far, I've used very little hand written notes.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 8:54 am

When using the VIC's ROM as a basis for world maps, how do you ensure that the map is navigable (i.e. that a cluster of mountains or a river doesn't block navigation to a certain portion)?

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 10:31 am

ral-clan wrote:When using the VIC's ROM as a basis for world maps, how do you ensure that the map is navigable (i.e. that a cluster of mountains or a river doesn't block navigation to a certain portion)?

As with Realms of Quest II, I come up with an algorithm that will PEEK the memory location and then display something as follows:

0-127 grass
128-150 water
151 etc

After that, I navigate the map myself to make sure it looks OK. If not, then I manipulate the memory location a little bit until I get something that I like.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:34 pm

A question to you guys: what does this picture look like to you?

Kweepa · Post by **Kweepa** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:41 pm

An octopus with two buck teeth.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 1:55 pm

I'm starting to feel more motivated to work on this game again now. Although I only have about 8K out of the 32K of the game done so far, I'm starting to see things coming together.

I recently downloaded "Oubliette" for the Commodore 64:

I love the concept of this game, but one thing that irked me about it was it's lack of 'userfriendliness' in some circumstances. For example, the interface to organize the party doesn't allow you to delete characters once they're created. However, I still think it's one of the great early RPG games.

The most important thing for me for RQ3 will be to make the interface as easy as possible to use. In fact, because of the extra memory that I'm working with, I will implement a help feature that will tell you the available commands no matter what the situation (walking around, combat, etc).

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 2:14 pm

Ghislain wrote:A question to you guys: what does this picture look like to you?

Great picture of an octopus, but I also don't know what the two (four?) white pixels are supposed to be.

gklinger · Post by **gklinger** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 2:26 pm

ral-clan wrote:Great picture of an octopus, but I also don't know what the two (four?) white pixels are supposed to be.

Brass knuckles.

rhurst · Post by **rhurst** » Thu Mar 26, 2009 5:52 pm

Davy Jones ... ?

Denial

New Release REALMS OF QUEST 3 (available for order!)