Realms of Quest: 20th Anniversary Edition

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:24 am

I finally had enough time to download and have a first look at the game, and once again I must say a big THANK YOU, GHISLAIN!!!

Will play it extensively ASAP...

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Thu Aug 04, 2011 2:26 pm

orion70 wrote:I finally had enough time to download and have a first look at the game, and once again I must say a big THANK YOU, GHISLAIN!!!

Will play it extensively ASAP...

Well, you're welcome!

What do you think of the loading times? Do you find them to be tedious?

I wonder how many Unexpanded VIC-20 users with disk drives there were back in the day?

A question to you and everybody else: has anyone solved any of the Realms of Quest games yet?

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Fri Aug 05, 2011 12:34 am

Ghislain wrote:What do you think of the loading times? Do you find them to be tedious?

Nope. Mainly because I load from the Final Expansion

.

Ghislain wrote:I wonder how many Unexpanded VIC-20 users with disk drives there were back in the day?

Not many, at least in Italy. I remember people started talking about disk drives a few years later, in the C64 era.

Ghislain wrote:A question to you and everybody else: has anyone solved any of the Realms of Quest games yet?

Not yet!

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Fri Aug 05, 2011 8:31 pm

orion70 wrote:
Ghislain wrote:What do you think of the loading times? Do you find them to be tedious?
Nope. Mainly because I load from the Final Expansion .

I playtested it on a real VIC-20 w/disk drive. Loading times are not overly long when switching from traveling to combat, but it does make one want to play the non-portrait graphics version after playing for some period of time. So at least the player has the choice between the two modes. But I'm glad that I finally was able to implement those graphics, it's always bothered me that I never made use of them.

So now I'm revisiting Realms of Quest I, a game I coded just 20 years ago this month. I'm currently revising the game menu.

It seems that all the early classic CRPGs have a similar premise. Why break with the formula?

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat Aug 06, 2011 10:56 am

Off the top of my head, here is the list of the various versions of REALMS OF QUEST:

Quest Realms (1988 incomplete) -- my first attempt at creating a CRPG. Was supposed to be for the Commodore 64
Realms of Quest (1991) -- released in 2000 on my Geocities homepage
Realms of Quest II (1993 incomplete) -- was released in the form of proof of concept demo on the Psytronik disk release for Realms of Quest III in 2009.
Realms of Quest II (2004) -- released for the Minigame Compo. You could save your game to tape.
Realms of Quest II: Special Edition (2006) -- improved version released for the Minigame Compo. This time, you could save your game to tape.
Realms of Quest II: Mega-Cart Edition (2007) -- released on the Mega-Cart in 2009. I removed the save game feature to implement a user-friendly menu.
Realms of Quest III (2009 enhanced graphics) -- released commercially by Psytronik. Features saehn's graphics artwork. 32K of RAM expansion is required.
Realms of Quest III (2009 original graphics) -- released commercially by Psytronik as well as into the public domain. Features the original graphics designed by me. 32K of RAM expansion is req:uired.
Realms of Quest III: Dunjon Crawler (2009 enhanced graphics) -- released commercially by Psytronik. W/saehn's graphics. Stripped down "dunjon-only" version requires 16K of RAM expansion.
Realms of Quest III: Dunjon Crawler (2009 original graphics) -- released commercially by Psytronik. W/my graphics. "Dunjon-only", needs 16K of additional RAM.
Realms of Quest IV (2010 unfinished) -- was supposed to be for the Commodore 64. I did design an extensive list of monsters, spells and character classes, but because of the scope of this project and lacking spare time, I abandoned it. I may revisit this sometime in the future and decide to make it for the VIC-20 instead.
Realms of Quest II: Anniversary Edition (2011) -- to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the original Realms of Quest game, I decided to revise and revamp the first two games. This edition is a more complete version because I combine the Minigame versions from 2004-2007 along with the monster portrait graphics I designed in the aborted 1993 version.
Realms of Quest I: Anniversary Edition (2011 coming soon hopefully). This revised edition will preserve most of the mazes, monsters and game mechanics of the original. However, the text, keyboard controls and display will be vastly improved. Current hit points will be udpated during combat (they aren't in the original version).

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun Aug 07, 2011 9:37 am

So I'm modifying 20 year old code. One of the major revisions is to improve the visual interface. This is how the 1991 version looks like:

And this is how the 2011 version will look like:

I prefer the latter.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Aug 09, 2011 5:15 pm

As shown in the screenshot just above, the game will use proper names for it's list of spells. So the game no longer uses short names names like HARM(1), HEAL(3), KILL(6), etc in favor of more descriptive ones.

This is now the spell list:

BOOK OF SPELLS 1
. magic missile
. cure light wound
. protection.evil
. enchanted weapon
. discern location
. sleep spell

BOOK OF SPELLS 2
. lightning bolt
. cure moderate wn
. shield spell
. spiritual hammer
. invisibility
. stinking cloud

BOOK OF SPELLS 3
. fire ball
. cure serious wnd
. fire shield
. luck blade
. wizard eye
. phantasmal force

BOOK OF SPELLS 4
. ice storm
. cure critical wd
. mirror image
. bless weapon
. pass wall
. repulsion

BOOK OF SPELLS 5
. incendiary cloud
. heal spell
. blade barrier
. spell of heroism
. word of recall
. power word kill

BOOK OF SPELLS 6
. meteor storm
. restoration
. sanctuary
. mordenka's sword
. gate spell
. holy word

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Wed Aug 10, 2011 5:46 pm

The original Realms I did not have any textual description of what was going on the screen. You only saw a custom character graphic of the monster you were fighting, without even so much as a name.

So while I doubt I'll be able to make the memory space to show the monster names while you fight them, I am creating a BOOK OF BEASTS (an option that can be loaded from the main menu) which will contain 'blown-up' images of the monsters along with a brief text description for each.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 3:07 am

I continue to revamp Realms I. I've improved the user interface, HP and SP are updated in the display during combat, combat will now report how much damage you and the monster scores. I also redrew the amulet.

Here's a screenshot of a fully 'souped up' character:

(the four pieces of the amulet when it is fully recovered, appears at the upper right portion of the screen).

pianoman · Post by **pianoman** » Tue Aug 16, 2011 12:12 pm

Wonderful revamp of Realms of Quest I, Ghislain!

I have been playing this game on and off ever since I bought your wonderful RoQ III floppy collection, and I estimate that I completed about half the game so far.

Would you be able to know if my saved game would work with your new revamp of the game?

Thanks, and great job on this game!

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sat Aug 20, 2011 3:39 pm

pianoman wrote:Wonderful revamp of Realms of Quest I, Ghislain!

I have been playing this game on and off ever since I bought your wonderful RoQ III floppy collection, and I estimate that I completed about half the game so far.

Would you be able to know if my saved game would work with your new revamp of the game?

Thanks, and great job on this game!

Thank you. You should be able to transfer your save game AQD. sequential file by copying it to the new version as REALMS I.SAVE

So you were able to find 2 pieces of the amulet?

Hopefully I will be able to finish this revised version shortly.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Sun Aug 21, 2011 3:32 pm

I just finished working on the game today.

Name: Realms of Quest I: Anniversary Edition
Author: Ghislain
Released: August 21, 2011.
Requirements: Unexpanded VIC-20 + Disk Drive
Description: Hail adventurer! Welcome to the 20th anniversary edition of the original Realms of Quest I. Nearly 20 years to the day that the original was completed, here is a very special edition of the inaugural game of the CRPG franchise for the Commodore VIC-20. There are vast improvements:

-User-friendly instructions
-A unique name for each of the 36 magic spells
-Much better interface, display and text.

Instructions and a "Book of Beasts" (bestiary) can be read from the main game menu.

Download: here.

Discuss: here.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 1:02 am

Thanks for this wonderful Anniversary Edition. I have a very special directory in my Final Expansion 3 for all your games

.

Ghislain · Post by **Ghislain** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 6:44 am

orion70 wrote:Thanks for this wonderful Anniversary Edition. I have a very special directory in my Final Expansion 3 for all your games .

You're welcome. The commercial version of Realms III was kind of supposed to be my 'definitive' collection of my works on the VIC-20. Maybe once I have enough new post-2009 VIC-20 games created, I can make a second disk-based collection of games, or just merge the new stuff into a 'revised' edition of Realms III (I've pondered making minor tweaks such as making the thief the only class that can disarm traps, creating racial limits for throne attribute power ups).

Sometimes I swear off doing anything for the VIC, but then I get an impulse or urge to make something. I probably should finish that US election game I started, but I had accidentally lost all of my work

It's not a total loss though because I did document and log what I did with screenshots in the thread.

But for 2011, these two revamps of Realms I + II are pretty much the only VIC-20 projects I will make for this year. So in '12, I'll make the election game and then get started on the Edgar Allan Poe graphical text adventure.

orion70 · Post by **orion70** » Mon Aug 22, 2011 10:10 am

Ghislain wrote:... and then get started on the Edgar Allan Poe graphical text adventure.