A new retro RPG, written in Assembly for TI-99/4a!!!

MazinKaesar · 14 February 2008, 01:07

Surfing the Net I found the website of a guy who's creating a retro-looking RPG, in Ultima stile. He's writing the game in pure assembly for the TI-99/4a!!!

Here it is his website: http://www.adamantyr.com/crpg/

He also had posted a list of games he used for inspiration... well, there are some well-known classics like Ultima or Final Fantasy (the first, for NES), but there're many games I never heard before like Gates of Delirium, Dungeons of Daggorath (both for TRS-80!) and Legends 1&2 (by SSI) for TI-99/4a!!

Here's some screenshot of Realms of Antiquity, his "old looking" game...

Marcuz · 14 February 2008, 02:33

Dungeons of Daggorath i've tryed some years ago, and beside the difficult controls, was amazing

MazinKaesar · 14 February 2008, 12:37

I'm very interest in Gates of Delirium (here's a nice blog by a guy who is playing it). Really I don't like Ultima itself, but I love many of its clones

I'm going to save the pages of the blog and I'll use them later as a walktrough ^^

Marcuz · 14 February 2008, 12:42

the link is broken methinks...

MazinKaesar · 14 February 2008, 14:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

the link is broken methinks...

Corrected. In the blog you must search for the "Gates of Delirium Live" posts.

Marcuz · 14 February 2008, 16:54

it looks a great game... i've spent all my patience for these games with Crawl! last year, but i love the colour key of this one.

MazinKaesar · 14 February 2008, 17:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

it looks a great game... i've spent all my patience for these games with Crawl! last year, but i love the colour key of this one.

Do you mean Dungeon Crawl?

Marcuz · 14 February 2008, 17:42

yep... a great game except for the experience cap that could have been higher (or the difficulty lower...)

MazinKaesar · 14 February 2008, 18:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

yep... a great game except for the experience cap that could have been higher (or the difficulty lower...)

I liked Ultima clones as much as I hate Roguelike games... it's like a real D&D playing: a dungeon-only adventure is quite boring... better explore outdoors!

macce2 · 14 February 2008, 18:59

@MazinKaesar

I totally agree. Many (too many!) rpg games are dungeon-only..
Btw, I liked Ultima6 very much, and I'm currently playing Ambermoon.. really amazing rpg game, I think! :-)

Marcuz · 14 February 2008, 19:57

well i agree too, on the fact that RPG in theory are way better than dungeon crawls.

but it is also a fact that the majority of RPGs i've played steered me toward the character building and far away from the role and fun. there are very few rpg games that have given me more than that on computer: only the little experience i have in pen and paper rpg was satisfactory in that respect, and i don't even think to anything more recent than the basic DnD!

henceforth i came to like, even if i do not play them a lot, the straightforwardness of the crawl games, they at least do not fail at being rpg, as they don't even try

btw, i'm half a mind to abuse of Telengard right now...

28 February 2008, 05:11

That is a very sharp looking TI99/4a game. Only dungeon crawl I can think of for that system is Tunnels of Doom (which I have yet to really give a go).

Quote:

Originally Posted by marco pedrana

btw, i'm half a mind to abuse of Telengard right now...

Yikes

~telengard

23 May 2008, 20:51

Hello all,

Thank you for your kind words for my efforts. I'm at a new job, so I haven't been working on it as much as I should, but I'll be getting it done!

Adamantyr

MazinKaesar · 24 May 2008, 11:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adamantyr

Hello all,

Thank you for your kind words for my efforts. I'm at a new job, so I haven't been working on it as much as I should, but I'll be getting it done!

Adamantyr

Good luck for your new job! We are waiting for your game!!!

oneshotdead · 25 May 2008, 03:51

Damn. What a lovely website. I wish more people would make sites like this.
Oh, and I loved the Avernum series...

Marcuz · 25 May 2008, 13:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adamantyr

Hello all,

Thank you for your kind words for my efforts. I'm at a new job, so I haven't been working on it as much as I should, but I'll be getting it done!

Adamantyr

i've read more throughouly the non technical parts of your site, great work indeed, specially that cool review of your inspirations.
i look forward to try your game, it is really promising!

MazinKaesar · 25 May 2008, 23:16

@Adamantyr
But please, not so much random encounters!!!

They were the real plague of the '80 CRPG!!! ...

29 May 2008, 23:54

Quote:

Originally Posted by MazinKaesar

@Adamantyr
But please, not so much random encounters!!!

They were the real plague of the '80 CRPG!!! ...

Yeah, I never liked that aspect of the old games either... 200 hours of game time where most of it is just fighting random encounters to reach some arbitrary level is NOT fun.

My plan right now is to have some fixed encounters in places, but the files will be updated so you can't "revisit" to fight them over and over again, and actual random encounters will be spawned rarely. There is a "spawn" clock, under which a counter is added to at an interval, and a random check against it is made. If the number is under the counter, a random spawn is done. Otherwise it continues to count up. This lets me have some areas that spawn monsters faster than others.

Also, experience will dynamically scale so that hunting weak monsters will get you less or none, to prevent long-scale camping in any one area. My feeling is that if you want your characters to grow, you have to travel and see new things.

Adamantyr

MazinKaesar · 30 May 2008, 18:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by Adamantyr

My plan right now is to have some fixed encounters in places, but the files will be updated so you can't "revisit" to fight them over and over again, and actual random encounters will be spawned rarely. There is a "spawn" clock, under which a counter is added to at an interval, and a random check against it is made. If the number is under the counter, a random spawn is done. Otherwise it continues to count up. This lets me have some areas that spawn monsters faster than others.

Sounds very nice!!!!

Quote:

Also, experience will dynamically scale so that hunting weak monsters will get you less or none, to prevent long-scale camping in any one area. My feeling is that if you want your characters to grow, you have to travel and see new things.

Nice idea too!!!! Even when I mastered in old pen&paper D&D I did not give xp for week monster to high level characters!

oneshotdead · 03 June 2008, 03:48

I think it makes a lot of sense. A character who has slain hundreds of "goblins" should not get the same experience for camping and waiting for respawns of them, as a character who slays his/her first.

This was a fault with many RPGs, where you could camp for more powerful respawns that yielded loads of experience - this would in turn make you yourself very powerful when you had not even progressed the story of the game, or even moved to another area (never a problem in PnP, with a DM).

In some games, it was tempting to do this. If you just needed to "get that edge" you might be seduced into camping "just a few times", and you could rationalise that by thinking "well, I botched that quest back there", or something. But it can get out of hand and break the game...

As MazinKaesar alludes, DnD has a "challenge rating" for monsters, which is compared with the power-level of the party, yielding appropriate experience based on that (well, sometimes - it's pretty complicated).

I'm not really this oldskool, but I love the elegance of this style: minimal GFX, colour, anims - leaving stuff up to the imagination, BUT even moreso if it was "isometricised" (was that a contradiction?), tho' I doubt that would be possible on such a system...

Oh shut-up, oneshotdead!

14 February 2008, 01:07	#1
MazinKaesar Super Robot Pilot Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Modena (Italy) Age: 48 Posts: 870	A new retro RPG, written in Assembly for TI-99/4a!!! Surfing the Net I found the website of a guy who's creating a retro-looking RPG, in Ultima stile. He's writing the game in pure assembly for the TI-99/4a!!! Here it is his website: http://www.adamantyr.com/crpg/ He also had posted a list of games he used for inspiration... well, there are some well-known classics like Ultima or Final Fantasy (the first, for NES), but there're many games I never heard before like Gates of Delirium, Dungeons of Daggorath (both for TRS-80!) and Legends 1&2 (by SSI) for TI-99/4a!! Here's some screenshot of Realms of Antiquity, his "old looking" game...

14 February 2008, 12:37	#3
MazinKaesar Super Robot Pilot Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Modena (Italy) Age: 48 Posts: 870	I'm very interest in Gates of Delirium (here's a nice blog by a guy who is playing it). Really I don't like Ultima itself, but I love many of its clones I'm going to save the pages of the blog and I'll use them later as a walktrough ^^ Last edited by MazinKaesar; 14 February 2008 at 12:50.

23 May 2008, 20:51	#13
Adamantyr Posts: n/a	Crpg Hello all, Thank you for your kind words for my efforts. I'm at a new job, so I haven't been working on it as much as I should, but I'll be getting it done! Adamantyr

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14 February 2008, 02:33	#2
Marcuz Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: . Age: 48 Posts: 5,562	Dungeons of Daggorath i've tryed some years ago, and beside the difficult controls, was amazing

14 February 2008, 12:42	#4
Marcuz Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: . Age: 48 Posts: 5,562	the link is broken methinks...

14 February 2008, 16:54	#6
Marcuz Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: . Age: 48 Posts: 5,562	it looks a great game... i've spent all my patience for these games with Crawl! last year, but i love the colour key of this one.

14 February 2008, 17:42	#8
Marcuz Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: . Age: 48 Posts: 5,562	yep... a great game except for the experience cap that could have been higher (or the difficulty lower...)

14 February 2008, 18:59	#10
macce2 Retro maniac Join Date: May 2005 Location: Finland Age: 49 Posts: 1,219	@MazinKaesar I totally agree. Many (too many!) rpg games are dungeon-only.. Btw, I liked Ultima6 very much, and I'm currently playing Ambermoon.. really amazing rpg game, I think! :-)

14 February 2008, 19:57	#11
Marcuz Registered User Join Date: Jun 2002 Location: . Age: 48 Posts: 5,562	well i agree too, on the fact that RPG in theory are way better than dungeon crawls. but it is also a fact that the majority of RPGs i've played steered me toward the character building and far away from the role and fun. there are very few rpg games that have given me more than that on computer: only the little experience i have in pen and paper rpg was satisfactory in that respect, and i don't even think to anything more recent than the basic DnD! henceforth i came to like, even if i do not play them a lot, the straightforwardness of the crawl games, they at least do not fail at being rpg, as they don't even try btw, i'm half a mind to abuse of Telengard right now...

25 May 2008, 03:51	#15
oneshotdead Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: asteroid belt Posts: 273	Damn. What a lovely website. I wish more people would make sites like this. Oh, and I loved the Avernum series...

25 May 2008, 23:16	#17
MazinKaesar Super Robot Pilot Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Modena (Italy) Age: 48 Posts: 870	@Adamantyr But please, not so much random encounters!!! They were the real plague of the '80 CRPG!!! ...

03 June 2008, 03:48	#20
oneshotdead Registered User Join Date: Aug 2007 Location: asteroid belt Posts: 273	I think it makes a lot of sense. A character who has slain hundreds of "goblins" should not get the same experience for camping and waiting for respawns of them, as a character who slays his/her first. This was a fault with many RPGs, where you could camp for more powerful respawns that yielded loads of experience - this would in turn make you yourself very powerful when you had not even progressed the story of the game, or even moved to another area (never a problem in PnP, with a DM). In some games, it was tempting to do this. If you just needed to "get that edge" you might be seduced into camping "just a few times", and you could rationalise that by thinking "well, I botched that quest back there", or something. But it can get out of hand and break the game... As MazinKaesar alludes, DnD has a "challenge rating" for monsters, which is compared with the power-level of the party, yielding appropriate experience based on that (well, sometimes - it's pretty complicated). I'm not really this oldskool, but I love the elegance of this style: minimal GFX, colour, anims - leaving stuff up to the imagination, BUT even moreso if it was "isometricised" (was that a contradiction?), tho' I doubt that would be possible on such a system... Oh shut-up, oneshotdead!

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