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

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Sat May 02, 2009 8:27 am

Ghislain wrote:One more thing guys...

I've also decided to change the theme and tone of the game to make it more appealing to the children, for the sake of the children.

For example, in order to get kids interested in retro gaming and the VIC-20, I'll remove references to demons, dragons and other violent monsters so that parents won't keep this game away from their kids.

Anyway, I hope you guys like this new direction for the game

This is a great new direction, but you need to change "Hit" points to "Hug" points.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat May 02, 2009 5:14 pm

Major breakthrough today--I programmed the routines that let the player buy a ship (for 8000 GP) and board, exit and move around in said ship:

And I did it all under 360 bytes!!!!

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Sat May 02, 2009 7:21 pm

My wife just never understood the attraction I had to this game...

This beautiful temptation will ruin many a marriage I fear.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat May 02, 2009 7:26 pm

darkatx wrote:This beautiful temptation will ruin many a marriage I fear.

Heh... thanks. I sent some screenshots to a friend of mine and he replied "They're pretty damn sexy".

I've also put off doing things regarding the house because of the amount of time I spend working on this game as well, lol.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun May 03, 2009 12:01 pm

Here's another sexy swingin' screenshot of what I am working on right now:

I'm not completely done the routines that display the 3D perspective multicolor dunjon graphics, but this will give you an idea how it will look like.

It will work the same way as other traditional 3D rpg games work -- you will rotate (left, right) and move forward. It does take more memory to program it this way, but I think that the results are worth it.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun May 03, 2009 3:48 pm

After several hours and 1400 bytes later or so, the 3D dunjon view (+ being able to move around in it) is finished.

The mazes will be generated using a quasi-shift register with an EOR based on the position when the player first enters the dunjon from above land.

I thought that the maze routines would use up 4000 bytes at minimum. I might also be even to shave off a few more hundred bytes off because I just copied-pasted each view based on "facing north", "facing east", etc.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Mon May 04, 2009 2:47 pm

Are you guys getting bored of my posting updates? I think I would as I wait for me to finally release the damn thing

But believe me, I'm working several hours a day on this game. And I'm having a lot of fun doing it -- which is why whenever I reach a new mini-milestone, I enthusiastically post an update here.

Anyway, I've improved the 3D dunjon graphics by having it now show 2 spaces deep from the player's perspective:

I think that in order to see this deeply into the dunjon, a LIGHT spell will have to be cast. Otherwise, you can only see 1 space deep.

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Mon May 04, 2009 4:09 pm

I really like reading the updates and progress of your work - it gets me all jazzed up!

It reads like a daily journal - some folks might not appreciate this sort of thread until only after the program is complete and released. Great insight on game design and approaching problems as they arise.

Keep up the good work - the dungeon maze looks fantastic!

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Mon May 04, 2009 4:09 pm

That's really great! Gives the dungeon a real sense of depth and makes one want to see what's just around the next corner.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Mon May 04, 2009 6:54 pm

Thanks for all of your support. I"ll be finished before you know it!

3d dunjons now feature ladders!

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon May 04, 2009 10:22 pm

darkatx wrote:I really like reading the updates and progress of your work - it gets me all jazzed up!

It reads like a daily journal - some folks might not appreciate this sort of thread until only after the program is complete and released. Great insight on game design and approaching problems as they arise.

I wonder if we should all do this during development of a program. It would seem like the obvious place to get ideas and feedback.

I now have better access to uploading drafts, but most of my games are done in one night. It would be pointless to post anything, considering I only have four or five drafts in the course of maybe three hours.

However, starting a thread like this may encourage me to produce longer games. I've always wanted to do a game that requires memory expansion even though it would go against my signature style.

I'm also really inspired by this thread. I think several games should be going on at once in discussion. It seems to be what Denial was meant for!

Schlowski · Post by **Schlowski** » Tue May 05, 2009 2:46 am

I really like to take my daily look into this thread, always new and exciting pictures and infos! I'm sure for me this will be the most thrilling new game for the VIC to come

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue May 05, 2009 4:03 am

I wish I had the time and dedication to spend several hours a day on developing VIC software. Keep up the good work!

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Tue May 05, 2009 4:21 am

I'm sure this is going to be one of the best games ever for our VIC.
BTW, are you planning to write an extensive manual? If so, why don't you add a map, a table for creatures and one for the spells, to keep all their features in a single page? The "package" could be in pdf, so everyone could download and print it at will. Me, if I had maps and tables for spells and creatures, I'd print it with a colour laser printer, and plastify the sheets (I'll loose body fluids while playing

).

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue May 05, 2009 4:53 am

Jeff-20 wrote:However, starting a thread like this may encourage me to produce longer games. I've always wanted to do a game that requires memory expansion even though it would go against my signature style.

I'm also really inspired by this thread. I think several games should be going on at once in discussion. It seems to be what Denial was meant for!

Thanks! I've been putting off doing RQ3 for a few years now. Now that I started this thread 3 months ago, I feel that I should commit myself to finishing it.

Whereas I used to be scared of programming in assembly (I only used some embedded ML routines sporadically in my previous games) it seems more like second nature to me now that I'm doing it 100% of the time for this project. I'm certain that when I start to run out of memory (I've 10300 "bytes free" now and counting down!), I will go over the code I wrote at the beginning and find some inefficiencies that ML beginners make. As well, I almost never touched multicolor custom character graphics before, and now it's just as easy for me to implement these as with single color.

Schlowski wrote:I really like to take my daily look into this thread, always new and exciting pictures and infos! I'm sure for me this will be the most thrilling new game for the VIC to come

Thanks! There is such a long tunnel though--realistically, I think I'm at best, 50% finished. True, I might have about 2/3 of the code done, but there will be a lot of debugging once I release 'beta release 1' to you guys. But I've been testing quite a bit as I write the code so hopefully there will be very little of this to do.

carlsson wrote:I wish I had the time and dedication to spend several hours a day on developing VIC software. Keep up the good work!

Thanks! The truth is, I don't really have the time -- I just make the time and take away time I normally have for reading and watching horror movies. Even my regular 'around the house' chores have been severely neglected. But now I'm this far into the development process of this albatross, I feel like what poker players call being "pot-committed". If I don't put the work into finishing the game -- then all the previous work has been wasted.

So right now, while having fun, I'm suffering for my art so to speak

orion70 wrote:I'm sure this is going to be one of the best games ever for our VIC.
BTW, are you planning to write an extensive manual? If so, why don't you add a map, a table for creatures and one for the spells, to keep all their features in a single page? The "package" could be in pdf, so everyone could download and print it at will. Me, if I had maps and tables for spells and creatures, I'd print it with a colour laser printer, and plastify the sheets (I'll loose body fluids while playing Embarassed ).

Thanks! My original plan was a cartridge (though I still might do this after the fact) with a nice package with a printed manual. The free version would offer the manual in PDF format. I still plan on doing a manual, but that will be the very last thing I do. The manual will look like an early 1980s CRPG instruction booklet -- kind of like Temple of Apshai (with black and white drawings). The map will be a single page in the manual since the world is really not that big (64x64 in 2048 bytes).