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[ALL PHYSICAL COPIES SOLD OUT!] Realms of Quest V for the VIC-20 (digital version is available)

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
More touched-up images:







 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I did a bunch of touch-ups (which I won't post here), but I completely re-made the image for Axe Beak for which I much prefer it to the original:

 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
Patron
Joined
Mar 22, 2013
Messages
12,736
The Roper reminds me of Patrick from Spongebob, also the Slug picture makes it really hard to visually decode what you're looking at (Centipede has a similar problem, but not as bad)
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
The Roper reminds me of Patrick from Spongebob, also the Slug picture makes it really hard to visually decode what you're looking at (Centipede has a similar problem, but not as bad)

I might go do another round of review. Some images are easy to do, others not so much.

More image re-do's and touch-ups:



 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
The first iteration of reviewing the monsters for random encounters is finished! Here were the final new versions of images/touch-ups that I did:





 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I started to program the City Module. In the game, there will be 19 cities that you can explore.

The following screenshots denote the player entering the famous metropolis known as "Bighy Woods"






(the player has traveled to the pub to find out the latest gossip. Unfortunately instead of encountering people, he just sees trees there. I haven't programmed the townspeople into the game yet).

I intend to allow the player to interact with the townspeople, opening secret doors to get into certain areas and even get NPCs to join your party.
"A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him." -- Ezra Pound
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I'm currently working on the townspeople portraits and conversation menus. The following depicts the player approaching a beggar and starting a conversation with him.



 

Tito Anic

Arcane
Shitposter
Joined
Dec 27, 2015
Messages
1,679
Location
Magalan
I started to program the City Module. In the game, there will be 19 cities that you can explore.

Bite bigger than you can chew, no? Maybe 4-5 cities but with more content?
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
Will there be keywords or the Talk option just gives one-line hints?

The way that converations work in the game is that you choose an option, and then the appropriate text appears. For example




There won't be any typing, so you just choose from this list of keywords to have conversations. In total, there's going to be close to 190 people that you can talk to while exploring the cities (10 townspeople for city, more or less).

It's obviously not going to be as elaborate as Ultima VII as far as conversing goes, but it does provide some context and atmosphere in the game world.

(I did just change "Talk" to "Info" -- which is just a catch-all term to further along the conversation. Obviously, this guy is just asking for money. But he does allude to a Civil War having occurred).
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I started to program the City Module. In the game, there will be 19 cities that you can explore.

Bite bigger than you can chew, no? Maybe 4-5 cities but with more content?

We'll see how fast I can produce content for one city. If it takes something to the order of 8 hours or so, then I could probably produce one city per week based on the spare time that I have to work on it. And unfortunately (for the game), my wife is about to give birth in a few weeks and I actually will start a new job soon as well.

Hopefully, real life won't get in the way of me working on this game. But since I don't play video games, I am just making one.

But say what you want about being unemployed, it certainly frees up a lot of free time to work on one's pet projects.
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
10 townspeople for city, more or less
Maybe diversify them a bit? Make a few big cities with 15-20 and let the other (small) ones have 5-7?

Well, there are another 20 villages or so that basically just have an inn (so effectively, just one NPC in those). Villages won't use up much data or programming.

The way I structured the data files for the cities, they can have up to 10 people. I could create some cities that have less, of course.
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
The way I structured the data files for the cities, they can have up to 10 people.
Maybe you could have cities with two "districts" (each a separate city file)?
10 people just seems too little for a big city.

I'm designating about 8KB per city (this is an 8-bit game. Even a fully maxed out VIC-20 has limited resources):

1 KB for the 32*32 map
1 KB for miscellaneous city data
3 KB for 3 unique graphic portraits (the other 7 townspeople will use generic stock portraits for guards, regular folk, etc.)
4 KB for conversation trees (each townsperson will have approx 400 bytes worth of conversation text)

My previous games did not have cities and townspeople to talk with at all. I'd rather implement this type of feature in a modest way. If I were to make a follow-up, then I could probably make the cities more elaborate.

Most cities will have guards and you can converse with them.




 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
During your travels into the cities, you will meet the nobility and monarchs who govern them. They expect to be well paid when they give you the pleasure of their company!






Each person you encounter during the game can be conversed with. While I wouldn't say the conversations can be as elaborate as a later Ultima game, the NPCs have their own conversation trees that they follow based on the conversation options that you choose.

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

CODE:

;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
; 012345678901234567890123 15 - Person #2 Monarch
.byte 23
.byte "a STRIKING AND MAJESTIC "
.byte "WOMAN OF NOBILITY",6
.byte "STANDS BEFORE YOU.",0 ; 0 Look

.byte "<hUMBLE tHYSELF TO",5
.byte "i, bARONESS jAKAYLA,",3
.byte "IN THE SERVICE OF OUR",2
.byte "gLORIOUS lEADER, THE",3
.byte "gREAT lORD bANE!>",0 ; 1 Name

.byte "<lORD bANE HIMSELF HAS",1
.byte "REAFFIRMED ME AS",7
.byte "SOVEREIGN OF THIS CITY. "
.byte "'tIS MINE BY RIGHT OF",2
.byte "INHERITANCE!>",0 ; 2 Job

.byte "<hAS THOU PAID THY",5
.byte "TRIBUTE OF 100 gOLD TO",1
.byte "FINANCE OUR STRUGGLE",3
.byte "AGAINST THE RESITANCE?>",0 ; 3 Info

.byte " ",0 ; 4 Give

.byte "<tHY LOYALTY AND",7
.byte "SERVICE HATH BEEN DULY",1
.byte "NOTED. tOGETHER, WE",4
.byte "SHALL DEFEAT THIS",6
.byte "SO-CALLED RESISTANCE!>",0 ; 5 Pay

.byte " ",0 ; 6 Join
;-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I've been working on the portion of the game that keeps track of the progress that the player makes. Basically, the main quest involves assembling 121 pieces of a sacred tablet before facing off against the final boss. You have to talk to the townspeople for clues where the various pieces are located, bribe some officials, beat some minor bosses, etc.




121 seems like a lot, but a lot of them don't require too much time to find them.
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
Eleven times eleven. 121 is an interesting number. Was there any symbolic reference, or is it just the way things worked out?

I decided to change the artifact from an amulet to a tablet -- makes more sense since the assembled image of 121 pieces (11*11 characters of the graphic view screen) is square shaped.




Like I said before, 121 might seem like a lot, but many of them can be found by gleaning the clues from the townspeople. IE: "Yes, I've heard that the young boy was playing with a piece of a broken tablet. You can find him playing about by the trees" etc.

Anyway, like text adventures of old, the tablet is simply a scoring system to measure the in-game progress.
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
To further demonstrate the example, the player searches at the spot that he was directed to by the townspeople, and finds a piece of the tablet.




Of course pieces of the tablet will be obtained by other means throughout the game (like defeating bosses, solving dungeon puzzles, etc).
 

hitfan

Double Sided Games
Developer
Joined
May 15, 2009
Messages
310
I continue programming the city module, and I'm almost done this. After all the features for it have been programmed, I should be able to design the remaining cities (18 after the current one is finished) in fairly quick order as all I will need to do is create the data files that contain all the information for each city (map data, townspeople conversations, hidden tablet pieces, etc).

I also programmed the 'Map' feature for the city module -- which shows a greater view of your surroundings. I intend to program this for the land module which will be very similar and for the dungeon module, it will work like a limited form of automap -- you'll be able to see how much of the current floor that you're exploring (but unexplored areas remain blank). While the save game file doesn't remember your current automap, if you solved the floor in question (ie: defeated the boss), it will show the entire maze. Otherwise, the automap information is reset every time you travel to a different floor if you haven't solved the floor in question.



 

Zep Zepo

Titties and Beer
Dumbfuck Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 23, 2013
Messages
5,233
Why the Vic 20 and not the C64?

Zep--
 

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