Brainstorming

[R'zo]

I have had the idea for some time to write a large scale rpg game that would take advantage of the sizeable amount of switchable flash ram/rom in modern expansion carts like ultimem. I have found out recently that it may even possible to have the game printed to a slightly altered version of the Behr-Bonz.

Working in this format will allow me to produce a nice variety of dungeon maps, chipsets, enemy graphics as well as a nice story line and more.

I have been tossing around a few ideas for the game background and story line.

Ideas i've had so far...

-a typical fantasy game. Explore maps, crawl through dungeons, find items, solve
puzzles..
Fight slimes, minataurs and dragons. For the most part a slightly simplified rip off of
Dragon Warrior 1.

-A dungeon crawl through Dracula castle, perhaps to save a kidnapped damsel. Vampire
Hunter D
style. Battling werewolves, vampires, ghouls, demons etc.

-a thx-1138 meets shadow run sci-fi game. A slave fights for his freedom escaping a futuristic feudal corporate slave compound. Battle drones, androids and ninjas. Hack through the compounds security system.

I am completely open to ideas. What would you like to see?

Very little is set in stone at this point.
I want this to be an overhead map, turn based, menu driven rpg but beyond that I would like to make this the game you want to see.

I would like to do something more unique so I am shying away from the dragon warrior rip, but I am up to try anything.

[orion70]

I have had the idea for some time to write a large scale rpg game that would take advantage of the sizeable amount of switchable flash ram/rom in modern expansion carts like ultimem. I have found out recently that it may even possible to have the game printed to a slightly altered version of the Behr-Bonz

Geez, it's a great time for huge VIC productions! Good to read someone wants to take advantage of modern technology .

-a typical fantasy game. Explore maps, crawl through dungeons, find items, solve
puzzles..
Fight slimes, minataurs and dragons. For the most part a slightly simplified rip off of
Dragon Warrior 1.

Ehm, IMVHO, no. Another huge fantasy RPG is being produced, and I think it's just not the case to have some sort of (further) pumped fantasy RPG for the fully expanded VIC.

-A dungeon crawl through Dracula castle, perhaps to save a kidnapped damsel. Vampire
Hunter D
style. Battling werewolves, vampires, ghouls, demons etc.

Good variant, but not my cup of tea. Vampires always lowered my interest in a game (let alone movies and TV series).

-a thx-1138 meets shadow run sci-fi game. A slave fights for his freedom escaping a futuristic feudal corporate slave compound. Battle drones, androids and ninjas. Hack through the compounds security system.

If I could choose one, well, THIS

but beyond that I would like to make this the game you want to see.

OK, erase the previous answer: THIS

[Ghislain]

-A dungeon crawl through Dracula castle, perhaps to save a kidnapped damsel. Vampire
Hunter D
style. Battling werewolves, vampires, ghouls, demons etc.

Good variant, but not my cup of tea. Vampires always lowered my interest in a game (let alone movies and TV series).

I have to disagree. I love Gothic horror themes. One time I had privately thought of making a Horror themed game for the VIC-20 that would feel like a 1960s-1970s Hammer/Vincent Price/Mario Bava film. In fact, the font that I am using in Realms V was designed by me a few years ago that was actually intended for a graphical text adventure game based on the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe at some point.

Here the Angry Video Game Nerd gives a good introduction and primer to Hammer Films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPPV9YqtipU

[GreyGhost]

Are you asking for ideas about game setting or story line? How about looking at the different styles of RPG and game mechanics. I think it was Rings of Medusa or Eternal dagger that turned me off just because of the movement style(number keys). If it's story line, the post apocalyptic theme is pretty cool, and did very well. AKA WasteLand... or FallOut. I'd love to see someone tackle Wasteland and port it over... or Bards Tale... or the gold box stuff .

[R'zo]

Thelse are all great suggestions, thank you. I hope to see more, these are giving me some nice ideas.

Post apocolyptic seems to be popular and right up my alley. As in vampire Hunter D the classical horror can easily be tied into a post apocolyptic world. Perhaps Victor Frankenstein could have a more interesting place in this world. He might even be a fresh change from the current over saturation of zombies and vampires.
I also just realized... VICtor Frankenstein

Somehow I have never heard of wasteland but I deffinately need to try it out.
2 elements I like from it.
1-party characters that don't always follow your commands. It sounds like the sort of obnoxious realism I enjoy. I was wanting to do a one person party but this may change get my mind.
2-the persistent world. Changes you make to maps don't reset. There are a few ways I might be able to pull this off. All with there own challenges and complications.

I feel that having this sort of game being mission based would be a nice way to let it's story unfold.

[R'zo]

How about this...

Humanity destroyed the world. An A.I. network created by man to help clean the world up after the fallout sees man as a threat to the world it was created to protect.
Meanwhile Dr. Victor Frankenstein designs you, his creation, forseeing humanities destruction.

You wake up with no memories in a desolate world full of death and danger.
Frankensteins notes will be scattered throughout the landscape.
Your goal: To find the lab equipment and body parts necessary to create your bride and give humanity a new future.

Protagonist: A megalomaniacal A.I. bent on humanities destruction who doesn't want you to succeed or live.

Enemies: Robots, drones, mutants, abomonations, other classical horror and fantasy characters can make there way in there. I am also thinking of a cult of cyborized humans who have given over to the machine.

Setting the ruins of city devastated by war and destruction.

This will be fun.

[orion70]

Hey, now THIS is merging genres . I like it!

[R'zo]

Opinions on the persistent map feature?

The easiest way to do this would be to use the disk drive. Draw the maps to disk, load maps into memory as needed, update the maps on disk as changes are made. This would create more load times which I am trying to avoid. I am also wanting to make the game so that all you need is the cart and your vic to play so I would prefer not to go this way.
I will most likely have a 2k flash chip added for save files. A characters stats and inventory wouldn't take more than 100 to 200 bytes. I could either use the remaining space for multiple save files or variable storage for objects in order to create a semi-persistent map. There would be room for hundreds of byte sized variables, and thousands of bit switches. This could easily allow for a few hundred changeable/moveable objects scattered throughout the game to have stats and addresses stored in I single save file.

So the question is would you rather have...
1- a nonpersistant world with space for multiple files.
2- a semi-persistant world with only 1 save file available in cart. ( if I go this way I will add the
option to back up and load save files to disk so multiple people can still play on the same cart.)

[eslapion]

Just wanna let people know I'm keeping an eye on this thread in case people have specific technical questions.

R'zo indicated this project is destined to allow games to be directly playable from the Behr-Bonz hardware so I can only want to encourage this.

[R'zo]

...I had privately thought of making a Horror themed game for the VIC-20 that w In fact, the font that I am using in Realms V was designed by me a few years ago that was actually intended for a graphical text adventure game based on the short stories of Edgar Allan Poe at some point.

I would like to see that game.

I'very been going back and forth in what kind of game style to make this. Mainly juggling between traditional turn based, a strategy driven action adventure rpg or something more along the lines of talengaurd.

I'very finally settled on a graphical text adventure with "real time" text driven rpg style battles.
The idea is this- The enemy will have a spend stat. Your speed is how fast you can think and type. The enemies speed will count down and commit to action when counter hits 0. If you have not typed your action when this occurs the enemy will go ahead and attack. If you can type your action and hit return multiple times befor the enemies counter hits 0 then you can get multiple actions in befor the enemy can get 1.

Where this gets really fun is that the magic will be done by incantation instead of base cast spell commands or push button action.

Something like this
Player-ooga Booga (return)
Computer-the sky begins to darken.
Player-cali mazu (return)
Computer-Thunder rolls in the disrance.
Player-Thingy magigy(return)
Computer-lightning strikes your opponent.

The harder the spell the longer the incantation will be. If the enemy hits you befor you can finish the incantation or you enter a typo along the way the spell will be negated.
The advantage of this is that your abilite to cast magic will be dependant on that YOU know the spells. If you start a new game you don't have to wait until you find or unlock spells to use them.

It might also be fun to make a booklet to come with the game. It will Dr. Frankensteins notes book. It will contain story line, game back stories, hint, tips and spells. You would have to take time to read, study and on occasion decifer his notes in order to progress through the game.

I am working on so excited graphics and basic layout ideas and I will probably start a wip post for this game.

I think this is going to be a lot of fun.

[R'zo]

Also the active time would take place outside of battle. If u out sit in a room and this for to long about what to do an enemy may walk in and attack you as well as other game events might occur.

[Ola H]

You have an abundance of fascinating game ideas I find real time mechanics in text games (well, in all games) really cool! The Rats for the C64 comes to mind, but there you use the joystick to construct sentences if I recall correctly.

[R'zo]

Just wanna let people know I'm keeping an eye on this thread in case people have specific technical questions.

R'zo indicated this project is destined to allow games to be directly playable from the Behr-Bonz hardware so I can only want to encourage this.

Questions on windows.
-Is there a minimal size the windows can be? Can they go as small as 256 bytes(1 page per window)?
-Do all windows have to be of equal size or can the window sizes varry?
-also does the Behr-Bonz initiate like a normal cart with Hi/lo byte pointers to the initial routine at $a000/$a001?

The format of this game is requiring me to have the organization of all data and routines for the game set in place before I can even think about coding. Every event, room, object, character, enemy and the routines will have to be carefully mapped and plotted so that every piece of the game can be dropped in and out like a gear in a finely tuned machine.

[eslapion]

Questions on windows.
-Is there a minimal size the windows can be? Can they go as small as 256 bytes(1 page per window)?
-Do all windows have to be of equal size or can the window sizes varry?
-also does the Behr-Bonz initiate like a normal cart with Hi/lo byte pointers to the initial routine at $a000/$a001?

The format of this game is requiring me to have the organization of all data and routines for the game set in place before I can even think about coding. Every event, room, object, character, enemy and the routines will have to be carefully mapped and plotted so that every piece of the game can be dropped in and out like a gear in a finely tuned machine.

Answers on windows:
Is there a minimal size the windows can be?
By default the Behr-Bonz has 128 windows of 16k. They are defined by the lower 7 flip-flips of a 74LS273. However if you don't use the locking system which prevents games from changing the windows by accidental writing to the IO3 region, you could have 256 windows of 8k each. That's the smallest you can get.

It may also be possible to do the opposite, increase the size of windows to 32k each, in which case you'd have 64 windows.

Can they go as small as 256 bytes(1 page per window)? This would require more than 8 bits to manage the windows and the Behr-Bonz hardware doesn't allow that.

Do all windows have to be of equal size or can the window sizes varry? All windows have to be exactly the same size.

also does the Behr-Bonz initiate like a normal cart with Hi/lo byte pointers to the initial routine at $a000/$a001?
By default, the Behr-Bonz resets the 74LS273 to $00 on startup which forces it to present the very first window to the VIC-20 with the lower half visible in the BLK5 area ($A000-$BFFF). In turn, the first window contains the menu of the Behr-Bonz which starts like a normal autostart cartridge.

This requires using the 9 first bytes of BLK5 ($A000-$BFFF) as follows: (RESET address Lo/Hi Bytes)(NMI address Lo/Hi) 'A0cbm'

In the Behr-Bonz menu, these 9 bytes are: $25 $A0 $25 $A0 $41 $30 $C3 $C2 $CD

In any autostart catridge, the last 5 bytes of this sequence must be identical.

[R'zo]

By default the Behr-Bonz ...

Thank you.