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

[Ghislain]

******* BETA VERSION 0.2 IS OUT *************

Now with music!

http://www.usaupload.net/d/p0yup6vq26n

[Ghislain]

darkatx was king enough to report a print routine bug that occurred in his environment after I implemented the music routine. Although I did not see this problem in emulator, I've made sure to not use the zero page addresses $53 and $54 anymore. Here's hoping that Beta version 0.21 resolves this issue:

http://www.usaupload.net/d/qtg11n1z83b

Thanks darkatx!

[Ghislain]

Beta version 0.22:

http://www.usaupload.net/d/m6aqhcfgzjh

Added one more tune... added some sound effects for other parts of the game (treasure traps, etc). I also slowed down the music tempo to not make it sound as frenetic.

There are now 6 musical themes:

Seventh Symphony (Beethoven) - title screen and when you reach a victory condition (getting one of the 8 orbs or defeating the final wizard)
BWV 542 (Bach) - baroque organ music sounds GREAT in an RPG (you hear this when walking around on the map)
Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) - when walking around in a normal dunjon
Intervention 13 (Bach) - music that's played when you're at the castle
Toccata (Bach) - appropriate music for when you're in battle
Swan Lake (Tchaikovski) - when you're walking around in the final dunjon

[Ghislain]

REALMS OF QUEST 3 beta version 0.3 is now out:

http://www.usaupload.net/d/ej26ymtj8ie

Changes: Some bug fixes. When the party is destroyed, you automatically return to the main menu. If the active characters is immobile after a battle, the program will automatically select the next available "mobile" character. This will make the game less cumbersome. It now costs 5 GP to rest at an inn.

[darkatx]

Sweet!
I'm currently trying to finish up a small project that I'm working on tonight after I get off work here...then I'll give this Beta a go in the wee hours ...

[Ghislain]

So do you guys think I got carried away in making a game that required 32K. Looking back at the beginning of the thread, this game became one feature creep after another. Maybe I should have kept it modest and under 16K? In my defense, it does have a very intuitive and elaborate menu system.

I still have 2500 bytes free or so and I imagine that I could shave off a few hundred bytes of my inefficient "spaghetti code" if I go over it a few times.

I'm taking it easy now (compared to the past month or so where I would work on this for 6+ hours a day) by just making a few minor changes/improvements every day.

I tested the latest version on a real VIC-20 yesterday and I find that while the graphics look much better on the real hardware, the sound is not quite as good as the emulator--but still good enough. The music can be a bit distracting at times which is why you can turn it off by pressing 0. But when I find myself in a very hectic battle, I'll turn on the music so I can slay a few monsters to Bach's Toccata and Fugue

I'll probably be adding more graphic displays for the dockyard, temple, buy/sell and maybe even the cash/gold option (the latter is more or less a bank where you trade GP for XP). I'll definitely add graphic displays for when your party encounters a "boss" monster. Once I'm down to a few hundred bytes left, I'll probably fill that out with more elaborate and 'user friendly' text.

After all the anticipation for how this game would turn out, it does feel a little bit anti-climactic (at least for me). Not because I'm disappointed (it's better than my initial expectations), but all these months of compiling and testing has made me a bit contemptuous of it (the excessive repetitiveness and familiarity of it all).

Thanks for all of your encouragement these past few weeks. It was an interesting project to say the least and I doubt that I'll ever do something like this again--I'm a bit mentally drained by the process. This is my very first 100% ML game. Once this is all finished, my next retro projects are most likely going to involve writing RR-Net network software for the Commodore 64.

By the way, Realms of Quest 3 source code is now 12000+ lines and counting. Maybe it might Wizardry 1's 14000 lines when all is said and done

[Schlowski]

I've playtestet Beta1 some times, it's great but for my taste a little bit too hard. In 5 tries I never made it out of the first encounter (10 to 12 dwarves every time). Is it only me who is unlucky or is it such a difficult game?

[Ghislain]

I've playtestet Beta1 some times, it's great but for my taste a little bit too hard. In 5 tries I never made it out of the first encounter (10 to 12 dwarves every time). Is it only me who is unlucky or is it such a difficult game?

Dwarves don't usually appear until one of your characters reaches level 2. Were you able to see a group of dwarves for _every_ single encounter?

I know the game is hard, and I actually like it that way. The level of difficulty is not much different than a game like Telengard, Oubliette or Wizardry. Here is a strategy that I used to build my party (portion of a private email I sent to a friend of mine who's testing it):

-----------------------------

...so yeah, if you play Realms of Quest III (even Realms 2) by just trying to fight the monsters without using spells, then you'll get wiped out by a party of orcs.

Here's a basic strategy if you have a party of level 1 guys encountering 11 ORCS (monsters with 2-16 hit points).

Try to (G)REET the monster first (make sure that the active highlighted character has high charisma). They might even let you go. Failing that:

Have your 2 ogre fighters attack
Have your thief perform a backstab (possible kill, but lowers your AC a lot for that combat round)
Have your priest attack
have your 2 wizards cast magic missiles (2 possible kills).

Now, assuming there are 9 orcs left, and they all attack. If your 2 ogres at the front have 15+ hit points they can absorb and dodge most of the attacks.

The monster attack table works like this:

Character 1 - has a 6 in 21 chance of being attacked
Character 2 - has a 5 in 21 chance of being attacked
Character 3- has a 4 in 21 chance of being attacked
character 4 - has a 3 in 21 chance of being attacked
character 5 - has a 2 in 21 chance of being attacked
character 6 - has a 1 in 21 chance of being attacked.

Of course a dead or immobile character does not get attacked, and the game program would keep rolling the "21 sided dice" until it finds an available character to be attacked.

So let's say characters 1 and 2 lose a third of their hit points and character 5 lost 3.

You can still (R)UN AWAY at this point, failing that, have your characters use a fighting retreat strategy. Perhaps the orc numbers might dwindle enough for them to be taken out by you.

I did that a lot at the start when building my party -- orcs were the most dangerous monsters.

I highly recommend having 2 fighters at the front equipped with 2 handed swords (can do 1-15 damage).

------------------------------

At the beginning, it's a good idea to have your party rest and heal at the inn after suffering a few HP damage or using up some spell points. You're in a party building phase at this stage.

[darkatx]

Personally, I love the game and the look - sometimes I forget that I'm playing it on the Vic20...the graphics catches my kids eyes and they look on in amazement while I have a go at it...sometimes they yell out strategy to me.

I'm spoiled on Wizardry V - I do like ow this RPG has its own flavour to it.

BTW, your artistic skills on this RPG are great...considering how they're stretched...you hardly notice.

More graphics...more graphics!!!

[Jeff-20]

Wait, I know it was discussed on page 2 of this thread, but the answer seemed vague. Exactly how are you drawing the graphic images?

[saehn]

Wait, I know it was discussed on page 2 of this thread, but the answer seemed vague. Exactly how are you drawing the graphic images?

He uses Ultrafont on the C64 and a little BASIC app:

http://sleepingelephant.com/ipw-web/bul ... 2063#42063

[Ghislain]

Personally, I love the game and the look - sometimes I forget that I'm playing it on the Vic20...the graphics catches my kids eyes and they look on in amazement while I have a go at it...sometimes they yell out strategy to me.

I'm spoiled on Wizardry V - I do like ow this RPG has its own flavour to it.

BTW, your artistic skills on this RPG are great...considering how they're stretched...you hardly notice.

More graphics...more graphics!!!

Thanks! I re-used the pirate ship graphics to make one of a 'normal' ship at the castle's dockyard:



I agree that more graphics are needed (and I've the extra memory to afford putting them in) -- it adds a certain feel and richness to the game world.

2288 bytes free. More graphics to come...

[formater]

Excellent work.
Only a Request for the lazy persons (like me).
Is posible add to the disk a Initial balanced army for inmediatly playing the game?

[Schlowski]

You're right, Orcs, not Dwarves... Nevertheless they killed me every time I will give it a new try tomorrow, I think I will call it a success if I survive the first encounter

[Ghislain]

Excellent work.
Only a Request for the lazy persons (like me).
Is posible add to the disk a Initial balanced army for inmediatly playing the game?

I've just uploaded Demo version 0.4:

http://www.usaupload.net/d/w3kxwcdcej6

The main new feature here is that it allows you to save game to disk and select slots 1-9. In slot 1, there is already a party of mid-level adventurers for you to try out You can go to the castle and edit their names at THE GUILD if you like.

I've also modified the chances of obtaining a magical item from a treasure (after combat) -- this is to make the game a little bit easier and a little bit more fun at the same time. As well, the graphic of the dockyard is included here.

If you guys want to keep using your previously-created party, you can rename the RQ3SAVE file to RQ3SAVE1 and you can use that save file in the latest demo.

There is no save game slot number for saving to tape--it's assumed that the player will now at which tape position the game is saved.