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

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 5:52 pm

I also noticed that if I activated EASYLOAD on MEGA-CART, the intro did not work properly (it just stayed stuck at a blank screen).

Not a big issue, one just has to make sure to disable EASYLOAD if they want to see the intro. Otherwise, they can still play the game without seeing the intro (by pressing the SPACE bar at the first loader screen to skip) and the game will load properly if they want to use EASYLOAD.

Of course, one should place EASYLOAD on page 0 of the VIC-20's memory to make sure not to interfere with memory pages 1 and up where Realms III will be loaded.

I also tested Realms III with a regular 16K crtridge -- the intro worked perfectly and the 16K version (Dunjon Crawler) also worked.

I'm pretty satisfied now that everything works OK. Hopefully no more changes will be needed.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 12:57 am

Ghislain wrote:I set 36869 to start at 5120. And 192*2*8 (because of double height chars) plus 5120 makes 8192 -- which makes it the upper limit of memory for the VIC chip.

The reason why the splash screen DID appear correctly in the emulator is because VICE doesn't care about the 8192 memory location limit of the VIC chip.

This has been corrected in the current beta of VICE. All accesses of the VIC chip beyond 8191 are now correctly mapped to the character ROM. Older versions only did this, when POKE 36869,255 was used.

@Archmage:

saehn wrote:I [...] imported a BMP into Mike's MiniPaint [...]. Version 1.0 will soon be publicly available, ...

Version 1.1 is in the works, which will then be feature complete. I'll post that into the said thread, most probably this weekend.

Edit: done, see here. V1.2 in the OP is the most recent release.

Greetings,

Michael

rhurst · Post by **rhurst** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:25 am

I also noticed that if I activated EASYLOAD on MEGA-CART, the intro did not work properly (it just stayed stuck at a blank screen).

Interesting, did you try F5 for TURBO OFF before attempting to load the game and get the same result? Just curious ...

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 4:58 am

rhurst wrote:Interesting, did you try F5 for TURBO OFF before attempting to load the game and get the same result? Just curious ...

I'll test that out later today (w/TURBO OFF). It's not a big deal, just that I expected some conflicts with such software. And besides, only the intro seems to be affected. The main game program looks and runs fine with it.

Even Epyx FASTLOAD had to be turned off for some C64 games.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 12:09 pm

The deadline before final submission to Psytronik is 2 days now. Actually the software part is completely done, but I keep re-submitting new updates almost every day. Even when I say "I'm done" I think of something I'm dissatisfied with and I want to change it. It's a struggle to resist making changes, and I think I should allow myself to be satisfied with the current version. I understand George Lucas when he says that a movie is never finished--only abandoned. Of course, he is a jerk about it and denies a DVD release of the original theatrical release of Star Wars--the actual version that the public _really_ wants. Then a few years later he puts out a sub-par letterbox (not anamorphic) release out a few years later which cannot be viewed on actual widescreen high-def TVs. You know that when he puts out Star Wars on Blu-Ray, he will force everyone to buy the Special Editions first and then put out the originals a few years later.

To me, the greatest sense of accomplishment with Realms III that I felt was when the inventory management system was completed. There was a huge weight lifted off my shoulders when I finally had it working. There wasn't much in the way of debugging that part, but it was quite time consuming to implement because it connected the whole game together. Items can be bought, sold, used in combat, used in non-combat, etc. Plus the party's inventory pool of un-equipped items had to be stored in 10 universal slots. Each slot could either be a weapon, piece of armor, shield, potion or special magic item.

Programming an RPG is basically programming an inventory management system (along with a map + combat, of course). Without a good inventory management system, you severely limit it's scope.

The last things I programmed for the game were combat followed by spells. I had the most fun programming these because the realization was dawning on me that everything was coming together. After I submitted the game to Psytronik, I then thought that it would be good to make a modified 16K version (instead of 32K which only a handful of VIC-20 users have) and that took me about 6 weeks to do (I think? These past 8 months have been a haze for me--thankfully, I posted almost all of my thoughts during this process in this thread).

I then did an intro with really bombastic music. Afterwards, I started working on Side 2 where it is a collection of all the VIC-20 games I ever made. And then I did hi-res splash screens for a lot of these games. Now I'm at the point where I'm dissatisfied with one of these splash screens (the hockey one) and I really want to re-do that 1 screen, but it's not the end of the world if I don't. Maybe it should be good enough?

If this game had been a 'non-published' release I probably would not have motivated myself to work on it so much. I've been wanting to do a game like this for over 20 years but kept putting it off. Imagine being a 14 year old kid scribbling ideas for a computer RPG across several pages. And that kid would start an RPG, but having not much computer time (I had to go to a friend's house to use his Commodore 64), these RPG dreams did not go very far--they were a limited success at best.

I poured my heart and my soul in "Realms of Quest III", it is the only project that I can now say that I am somehow satisfied with. I did it all for that 14 year old version of myself. All those wasted pieces of paper and hours mulling and thinking about making the ultimate RPG were fulfilled.

Some have said that the METEOR SWARM Wizard spell is too powerful and unbalanced. But I always wanted to see an RPG zap an entire group of monsters and kill them off one by one

My whole RPG programming life had built up to that moment when I had successfully programmed that spell.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 2:00 pm

So, I decided to modify the splash screen for ICE HOCKEY on side 2:

I think it's an improvement over the previous.

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Fri Oct 16, 2009 11:05 pm

I like the new hockey pic...I'm finished painting the new cover - just want to tighten it up a bit in Photoshop.

This is literally a peek...

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 7:27 am

darkatx has really made some amazing artwork for the packaging and the manual! I hope he doesn't mind that I'm displaying some of it here:

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:41 am

I'm putting in some final touches to the manual. For the games on side 2, the manual now states what controls are needed (menu-driven, keybaord, joystick, etc).

I also mention the following forum members (those who participated in this thread from February 8 to today--October 17) in the acknowledgements section:

Kenz, darkatx, saehn, Mike, rhurst, Jeff Daniels, orion70, ral-clan, Kweepa, carlsson, Royas, Pedro Lambrini, d0c, vic user, Mayhem, MacbthPSW, gklinger, Ivanhoe76, adamantyr, Schlowski, 6502dude, yakumo9275, amramsey, MRaider, matsondawson, formater, Centallica, English Invader, nbla000, Moloch, Athlor, DanSolo, Gabriel Angelos, hjustin, Disc Master I, ravenxau, fsporsche, Mermaid and Archmage.

(I think that was everyone--I hope!)

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 5:30 am

Ghislain wrote:Apparently there is a preview for Realms III in Retro Gamer #68.

I can confirm that.

I got #68 at the international press at Munich main station, the preview is on page 99:

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:17 am

Mike wrote:I got #68 at the international press at Munich main station, the preview is on page 99:

Sweet!

I wonder if this screenshot is from something produced from one of their playing sessions, or it's what kenz had sent to them?

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 10:53 am

Just to let you all know, I submitted the final versions of the files to Psytronik today.

There should be a free download and digital, disk and premium editions of the game available at http://www.psytronik.com shortly.

Here is the disclaimer regarding the freeware version:

SPECIAL NOTE ABOUT THE FREEWARE VERSION
-----------------------------------------------------------
The version of "Realms of Quest III" available freely on the internet is a fully-working version of
the game where you can explore it entirely. The differences between the freeware version and the
commercial version are that the latter has the following:

-36 page PDF or printed game manual which includes a map and drawings (instead of a plain .TXT file)
-intro with graphics and music
-enhanced graphics
-a 16K version called "Dunjon Crawler"
-the following games on side two of the double sided disk:

• Realms of Quest (1991)
• Realms of Quest II (Unfinished Demo) (1993)
• Dunjon I & II (2003)
• Realms of Quest II (2004)
• Ringside Boxing (1996)
• Ringside Wrestling (1990)
• Break-Fast (1988)
• Dunjon Master (1990)
• Haunted House (1990)
• Ice Hockey (1996)
• Meteor Zone (1996)
• Napoleon Simulator (2006)
• Paratrooper (1990)
• Vicfall! (1993)
• Vicfall II (1996)
• Vicside Boxing (2004)
• Worm-Out II (1990)

You can obtain the commercial version of the REALMS OF QUEST III package (and all of the bonus features
mentioned above) from WWW.PSYTRONIK.COM

I'm finally done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

saehn · Post by **saehn** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 11:40 am

Congratulations! It's been fun to work on the project with you...

darkatx · Post by **darkatx** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:49 pm

saehn wrote:Congratulations! It's been fun to work on the project with you...

I second that

Post by **Jeff-20** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 2:43 pm

Amazing. Congrats!

Denial

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