[**Commercial Release Is Now Available**] Realms of Quest IV

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Ghislain
Realms of Quest
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Post by Ghislain »

I've got quite a bit done this past week or so, with a lot of good news:

-Kenz from Psytronik said he would be willing to get this game published when it's finished

-darkatx is going to produce some artwork for the packaging (he did it for Realms III)

-my playtester has uncovered a lot of bugs which I corrected.

-the first 8 levels of the dungeon are completed

-the game now has 5 fonts to choose from. One of these are from my unfinished Edgar Allan Poe game:

Image
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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orion70
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Post by orion70 »

Nice font! I like this one best.
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robinsonmason
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Post by robinsonmason »

Psytronik will publish it? Great news - I will get it for sure. Looking forward to it! 8)
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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

orion70 wrote:Nice font! I like this one best.
Thanks. I am pretty close to finishing the game now. I might reduce the number of fonts from 5 to 3 to make room for other features (I am dangerously close to the 170K disk limit). I was able to combine the dungeon, combat and treasure modules into a single 24K program listing fairly quickly.
robinsonmason wrote:Psytronik will publish it? Great news - I will get it for sure. Looking forward to it! 8)
Thanks (PM sent). This and the soon-to-be-released Theater of War (as well as Realms III from '09) will make for a nice trilogy of software releases.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

Now that the 16K version is completely done, I'm adding bonus features to the 24K version--most notably, better 3D graphics.

Instead of only being able to see 2 spaces ahead of you, now you can see 3 spaces ahead. And you can even see what's around the corner:

Image
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

And look at this one.

Image
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
malcontent
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Post by malcontent »

Looking good!
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Ghislain
Realms of Quest
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Post by Ghislain »

malcontent wrote:Looking good!
Thanks. I think I'm almost finished this game. Here's my updated progress report:


1. Party, character and inventory management

100% finished. (previous: 90%). I consider this DONE (barring any bugs that my tester might find)

2. Graphics

90% finished (previous :80%). All that's left to do is a splash screen.

3. Dungeon level design

100% finished (previous: 10%). Considered DONE.

4. Dungeon programming

100% finished (previous: 40%). DONE.

5. Combat

100% finished (previous: 60%). DONE

6. Spells and magic item use

100% finished (previous: 5%). DONE

7. Background music + sound effects

100% finished (previous: 10%?). I did try to implement sound effects these past few days, but I dropped the idea because I found them to be too distracting. Silence during gameplay does create a more eerie-atmostphere, and my game tester basically agrees.


Once the splash screen is done, I'll upload the final beta demo and then start working on reviving my 1989 RPG homebrew on the C64 (which was 90% finished back then) as a "B-side" for my next and final Psytronik release.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
metalfoot76
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Post by metalfoot76 »

Amazing work. Looks like it will be a blast to play, too! I really need to get my creative juices flowing and make something... I'm such a lamer.
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Mike
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Post by Mike »

metalfoot76VIC wrote:I really need to get my creative juices flowing and make something [...]
Albert Einstein wrote:Work is 1% inspiration plus 99% transpiration.
;)
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Ghislain
Realms of Quest
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Post by Ghislain »

metalfoot76VIC wrote:Amazing work. Looks like it will be a blast to play, too! I really need to get my creative juices flowing and make something... I'm such a lamer.
Well, thanks! Barring any major bugs that may creep up, I'd say that Realms IV is now 99.9999% finished save for a splash screen which I decided to put off doing until later.

Right now, I started to look at a very old homebrew CRPG that me and a friend worked on for the Commodore 64 called "Ultimate Quest" (from 1989). All of the major pieces of the game were more or less finished, but all them were disorganized and buggy, and so it was abandoned. It's kind of hard
I uncovered the graphics for the game here:

Image

So I won't alter one pixel from these and will try to maintain as much of the game design and spirit of the original as possible, and thus claim that it's a vintage unreleased CRPG from 1989.

"Ultimate Quest" (for the C64) is going to be the main B-side for the Realms of Quest IV disk.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

Image

Prt of the reason why I'm reviving this is that the logo was pretty neat. I don't think it will not take me that long to finally finish this 25-year old project. In fact, as I'm going over the code I'm able to recollect what I did.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
Realms of Quest
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Post by Ghislain »

Name: Realms of Quest IV: 4-Level Demo Version
Author: Ghislain
Released: September 1, 2013
Requirements: VIC-20 with 16K minimum memory expansion is required. 24K is recommended for better performance (for less disk usage) and greater 3D graphical perspective. A disk drive is also required.
Description: Demo version of the upcoming Psytronik release for Realms of Quest IV where the first four levels of the dungeon can be explored. The attached PDF manual is still a work in progress, but serves as a preview of how the printed version will look like when the whole game package is published.

The long-awaited follow-up to Realms of Quest III is almost completed. As I continue work on finishing Ultimate Quest for the Commodore 64 (intended to be on Side 2 of this Psytronik release), I make the first four Dungeon levels available to everyone.

Realms of Quest IV has the following features:

-10 Dungeon Levels with various riddles, traps and NPC characters who can aid you on your quest (4 levels only for Demo Version)
-Over 100 monster graphic portraits (50 in Demo Version)
-10 races and 12 classes to choose from as you assemble 8 players for your party
-60 magic spells
-Over 135 items (weapons, armor, shield, gems, jewels, potions and scrolls)
-3 game fonts to choose from

The enemy this time are the mysterious Time Lords who threaten the reign of the fairer creatures above the earth. Befalls thus you, brave adventurers, to battle the labyrinth below all our feet, and ensure for yet another generation, that the evils and chaos do not rise. How it can be so, that this peace last forever, none knows. All one knows, is in the Dungeon, lay riches, glory and the immortality of your name.

Image

Download.

Discuss.

YOUTUBE VIDEO.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
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Post by Ghislain »

I've been piecing together Ultimate Quest these past few weeks. This weekend I made a lot of progress -- I was finally able to figure out and reverse-engineer the 25 year old land map I had designed and intended for this game. It was never properly connected to the main game where you start out in a city. So when I half-finished Ultimate Quest, I wrapped it up as a city quest game. This made for a very short playing session--my main game tester was able to solve this last Friday in about 2 hours of play.

But now, once you exit the city, you will be able to travel through this:

Image

How the map looks like on the game screen:

Image
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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Ghislain
Realms of Quest
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Post by Ghislain »

I'm almost finished with Ultimate Quest (for the c64) 25 years after I had originally started it. It was quite an interesting process to piece everything together and write ML routines to speed things up (the maps were loaded from SEQ files in BASIC which made the game run pretty slow). I was so intimidated by this project back then, but thanks to using modern editing tools and an emulator it wasn't as daunting. Not the greatest game in the world, but it will make a nice little B-side bonus game.

Once that is done, I'm going to work on the splash screens for side 1 and side 2.

Looking at Realms IV on side 1, I have about 30 blocks free. I was thinking that I could make a very minimal splash screen for it (or not even one at all) so I could put in background music for Realms IV. The player would need 32K of RAM to have this feature, and the game would effectively have 3 versions:

16K -- dungeon, combat and treasure modules split into 3 program listings which makes for a lot of disk loading. Very basic 3D map view.

24K -- the dungeon, combat and treasure modules combined into a single program listing (for less disk loading). Expanded 3D map view.

32K -- Background music for castle, dungeon and combat (can be turned on or off). The dungeon, combat and treasure modules combined into a single program listing (for less disk loading). Expanded 3D map view.

What do you guys think? Does Realms IV need music? It might be a nice thing to have, but not really necessary.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
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