*ALL PHYSICAL COPIES ARE SOLD OUT*: REALMS OF QUEST V (Digital version is available)

[Ghislain]

Here's a compilation of my most recent graphics work which has been focused on a review of the monster images.

[Ghislain]

My publisher Double Sided Games has dedicated a portion of his booth at World of Commodore 2018 in Toronto (this weekend, Dec 1-2) to showcase Realms of Quest V. He also spoke about it during his panel as well. The game is being received quite well according to him.

I really wish I still had a CRT television because an emulator or HD TV does not do justice to these graphics. There's a certain _je ne sais quoi_ in regards to the warm glow of the phosphor on these old televisions.

[cbmeeks]

Sorry if this has already been answered....but will there be a cart release of this game?

[Ghislain]

Sorry if this has already been answered....but will there be a cart release of this game?

Thank you for your question, and I certainly understand the passion and desire among retrogaming enthusiasts who like to see their games on their favorite mediums like cartridge and cassette.

When I started to work on Realms V, my intent was to make a game that worked on an SD card reader first and after I got it into a fully working and fairly debugged state, I would make a floppy disk version so that it would run on actual hardware that was available in the VIC-20's heyday. And there were many computer RPGs back in the 1980s that spanned several floppy disk sides. So I am certainly following a retrocomputing tradition in this regard.

realms5.jpg (32.72 KiB) Viewed 13241 times

Plus, it's much easier to distribute this game in digital format, SD card and/or floppy disks. The bottlenecks for a cartridge version would be to convert it so that it would actually work as a cartridge game (which may or may not be possible given that a lot of technical design decisions that I made early on may affect this) and the actual manufacture and production of physical cartridges. While there have been recent cartridge releases for the VIC-20, this game has over 600KB of content.

But to answer your question, it's not very likely that a cartridge version of this game will be produced. Now if my publisher came up to me and said that they'd like to also distribute such a version and they have the technical resources to do so, I wouldn't stand in the way, either. Their inaugural release (Abbaye des morts) happens to be available on cartridge (albeit for the C64). I know that more and more C64 games from the past are being converted to .CRT format, but this is a VIC-20 game.

The SD card readers that have come out in recent years have been great for Commodore enthusiasts. Realms V makes full use of this medium. And with JiffyDOS enabled, the game loads almost instantly anyhow.

[orion70]

I really like the way the game "fills" a Commodore CRT monitor... mine is definitely waiting for this
Also, Double Sided Games should change its name into "Several Diskettes Games" after your effort..

Edit: it's impressive how your revised portraits seem to be at a higher resolution compared to the old ones (particularly referring to the weretiger here). Pixels just disappear. How did you obtain this effect?

[Ghislain]

I really like the way the game "fills" a Commodore CRT monitor... mine is definitely waiting for this
Also, Double Sided Games should change its name into "Several Diskettes Games" after your effort..

Edit: it's impressive how your revised portraits seem to be at a higher resolution compared to the old ones (particularly referring to the weretiger here). Pixels just disappear. How did you obtain this effect?

Thank you! The slightly resized VIC-20 screen size of 23*26 means more things can be displayed, of course. As for how I am able to make the images look better lately—I use GIMP’s cartoon effect to give an image thicker black lines, I adjust the brightness and contrast levels followed by touching up the pixels. After doing about 350 images, I’ve gotten better at knowing what resultant image will look good in 44*88 multicolor pixel format.

I don’t look at my early discarded images as wasted time because this has been all a learning process for me.

[cbmeeks]

But to answer your question, it's not very likely that a cartridge version of this game will be produced.

That's certainly understandable.

SD cards are nice...but I'm really old-school and I like disks, carts and tape. Especially for the nicer games like this. SD is fine for a boat-load of cheesy one screen ports but an epic adventure needs to be seen the way it was meant to be seen. In physical media like we had in the 80's.

So my next question then becomes...are you planning on doing a nice boxed version like that Ultima V you pictured? With goodies like a cloth map, dice and other trinkets?

Looking for another excuse to fire up the VIC-20 for Christmas. hehehe

[Ghislain]

SD cards are nice...but I'm really old-school and I like disks, carts and tape. Especially for the nicer games like this. SD is fine for a boat-load of cheesy one screen ports but an epic adventure needs to be seen the way it was meant to be seen. In physical media like we had in the 80's.

So my next question then becomes...are you planning on doing a nice boxed version like that Ultima V you pictured? With goodies like a cloth map, dice and other trinkets?

Looking for another excuse to fire up the VIC-20 for Christmas. hehehe

I don't disagree. While I will certainly prefer to play my own game on SD card, I do intend to support a multi-disk version which is the format I decided to go with. And yes, I intend to have the game published in a cardboard box, along with "feelies" as well.

[orion70]

(drooling)

[Ghislain]

I just finished a monster graphics review where I re-made quite a few images. Since this is a big game whose primary content will come from graphical images, I definitely want to make the game look as great as possible. I even re-made the player portrait images for the ogre (male and female).

I also decided to implement some compression so that I can feature more content such as slideshow 'cut scene' images.

[Ghislain]

I just programmed poisonous marshes that appear on the map as well as they effects of poison as you travel (you lose 1 hit point for every step you take).

Poor Arwenne just couldn't make it back on time.

At this point, the game mechanics are almost completed. I just have to program a few odds and ends like the effects of walking through molten lava, how alignment affects spellcasting and the final monster encounter.

I can't wait to get started on writing the manual!

[cobracon]

Wow!!!! Your work is amazing. I am stunned. Cant wait for this to come out.

Do you still have the others forsale of download?

[Ghislain]

Wow!!!! Your work is amazing. I am stunned. Cant wait for this to come out.

Do you still have the others forsale of download?

Thank you. Yes, I believe that binaryzone.org still sells Realms of Quest III & IV on their website. I don't expect this arrangement to change any time soon.

I started to work on the manual. Here is the first page where I delve into the technical details of system requirements and how to boot the game.

Fans of the VIC-20 will certainly recognize the VIC-Men from the Friendly Computer's user-friendly manual who are appear at the bottom. I currently use these as placeholders for what will certainly be VIC-Men versions of a fighter (brandishing a sword and shield) and a wizard (wearing a wizard's hat and waving a magic wand).

[Ghislain]

I just finished programming the final encounter for the game. I'm so close to being finished, that I can taste it.

I'm hiding the final boss monster's name so as to not spoil anything. And of course, I have to playthrough the entire game twice to make sure that everything works properly and that the game is not broken. And there are a few minor odds and ends that I still have to do. And then, there is the manual that I have to write as well.

But today feels like a major accomplishment nonetheless.

[Kweepa]

VIC-Men versions of a fighter (brandishing a sword and shield) and a wizard (wearing a wizard's hat and waving a magic wand).

Awesome.