Denial

darkatx wrote:If you need some artwork - painted, hand drawn or even pixels I might be able to pitch in as well
This thing looks so cool man!

I'm impressed by everyone's enthusiasm and offer of support and help so far! But just to let you and everyone know, although I make sure to work on the game every day, i think this will be a project that will take months, perhaps even years to complete.

Posting my progress here (to the target audience--VIC-20 users) has been a positive thing and it's an excellent source of motivation. It also serves as a diary and helps me recall certain thought processes as well. Almost kind of like a blog.

ral-clan wrote:As a non-programmer I'm curious to understand what the above two points mean. Does it mean that because you can't store map data in RAM (no room) you are just reading areas of the VIC's BASIC & KERNAL ROM and using the bytes to generate a map (almost a random map)?

Yes--much of the mazes and world will be mathematically generated and I'll be using raw byte data from the VIC-20's rom space to do it. I did this in RQ2 for the main world map. However, in RQ3 the main world map will be designed by hand to make it look the way I want it to.

Also, do you need medieval sounding music for this game? I'd be willing to compose some. I usually compose in a MIDI sequencer, and could provide music in MID format (but you'd have to conver it somehow). Or I could really force myself to learn how to program the music for the VIC in BASIC.

I'd be more than happy to use such music if you submitted it. I was planning to write my own songs as well. I can read good-old fashioned sheet music and then I convert it to VIC-20 values.

I didn't know you were a musician. No problem at all. I was just offering in case that wasn't your thing. However, if you ever need to farm out any of the music / graphic art work, get in touch with me....and no problem with it taking months / years. We all work at VIC stuff in our spare time, so we understand.

I was looking at the link you posted about the TI99 RPG in the works - looks like he abandoned it a couple of years ago - here's a complete site based on QBasic RPGs and other engines that I'm sure you might find interesting

http://www.petesqbsite.com/sections/tut ... sign.shtml

darkatx wrote:looks like he abandoned it a couple of years ago

No: his blog is still being updated (today even)!
http://www.adamantyr.com/

Ghislain wrote:I can read good-old fashioned sheet music and then I convert it to VIC-20 values.

If you'd like background music independent on what's going on, you could also use my IRQ based player. It should work quite fine together with a Basic program I believe. The composer step may be a bit tricky but not worse than typing in all those numbers by themselves.

However I realize background music is a low priority in the development process.

Carlsson's player would be a good idea as he has already described for us a method of converting tracker modules to it. This means one can compose in OctaMED on the Amiga.

I've done a couple of more graphics (even re-did the hobbit). But the big change to the code that I did was to double the height of the graphics. If you're interested in seeing how this looks like, just download it from here:

http://www.usaupload.net/d/enkqg04hifw

Same as before, you load and run it as follows:

-enable all 8K slots in VICE, reset VICE
-LOAD"RQ3.PRG",8,1
-NEW
-LOAD"RQ4.PRG",8,1
-NEW
-SYS8192

Just use keys A through S to view the graphic images.

The only drawback by implementing the double height 'in-context' graphic displays is that I have to change the map display area from 9x9 to 9x10, which will look a bit uneven. As well, it takes away from some of the text display--I'll probably have to create a seperate screen to display the character stats, which is something that I've been thinking that I should do anyway. On the plus side, I can create 'giant' versions of the monsters by re-using the graphic images or even better, the graphic displays in normal mode will mean that the party is seeing the monsters from a distance far away, I'm not sure which way I will go (giant versions of monsters or monsters being viewed from a distance).

All I know is that these graphics look much, much better in double height mode.

ral-clan wrote:I didn't know you were a musician.

Oh, not that good of a musician--just a couple of years of piano lessons when I was a kid and I bought an electric guitar when I was in high school just so I could be in a garage band--that lasted about a week.

Classical music is free domain. You can find the music notes on the Internet. The only problem is finding something with simple instruments (not an orchestra) that fits in with your game.

Also you don't need to play the entire piece you can just play an extract.

I think Medieval or at least "Early" music would be more appropriate than a lot of the 16th to 19th century music normally labelled as "classical" though.

Richard James wrote:Classical music is free domain. You can find the music notes on the Internet.

I was planning on lifting all of the Ultima IV soundtrack note for note and hope that nobody would notice (esp. Richard Garriott!).

Just kidding of course

Didn't someone mention that my Mega-Cart title song is a bit RPG like? Not medieval, but more modern.

http://www.anders.sfks.se/mp3/multicart-realvic.mp3

Of course, I also converted an excerpt of Mozart's Horn Concerto No. 4 in Eb Major as transcribed by Colin Porch. This as an example of classic music on the VIC-20

http://www.anders.sfks.se/mp3/mozart-horn-realvic.mp3

I've done a few more in the same style but none that I have a sound sample available for. However I agree that your game should have something more Early sounding, or perhaps completely different, neo-abstract.

carlsson wrote:If you'd like background music independent on what's going on, you could also use my IRQ based player.

Realms of Quest 2 uses IRQ to play the theme song at the beginning. It just plays one time because I thought that having such a short tune playing over and over would get annoying after a while.

I imagine that there should be no problems by using IRQ to play music in an all-ML program?

No, all my applications so far using the music player have been pure machine language. Actually mixed with Basic is less tested but probably shouldn't be a problem.