First, while traveling to another one of Vanessa’s mystery planets on the map, I received a radio transmission from a creature on Girande who requested a Gradient Filter, which apparently can be found on the planet Gnarsh (although a Gradient Filter sounds like it should come from the planet of Adobe CS5000).

Next, that particular dot on the map turned out to be Firthe, a all-water world inhabited by an advanced amphibious race possessing a complex array of flailing appendages covering their bodies.  I chose to visit one of their chemical laboratories — their knowledge of chemistry far outranks that of humans — and learned I can purchase a Particle Catalyst from them, for an particular assortment of goods I of course did not have on me.

Better Living Through Engineering

Sticking around a bit longer, I learned these Firthians have been evolving themselves through genetic engineering. Thousands upon thousands of years ago they were attacked by an alien race (perhaps the same one which made that warship Vanessa Chang rode on), and defending themselves led to their breakthrough advances in chemistry and biology.  Eventually they adapted their bodies to withstand not only the deepest depths of their oceans but being out of the water as well.  They plan to eventually perfect this to be able to live naturally in the void of space (they’ve avoided space travel so far, from fear of encountering the war-like aliens again).  They could build a Super Space Suit for me that incorporates their advances into a human-adapted withstand-any-environment piece of high-tech fashion.  So I have yet *another* built-it recipe for which I don’t have all the necessary components yet.

Next I traveled to another mystery dot, discovering the aforementioned Gnarsh.  Gnarshians possess a melodious language (with many local variations) and a strong urge to kill Gnarshians of other clans (a centuries-long war is ravishing the planet). My ship computer suggested they would not be hostile to alien visitors however, so we attempted a landing (that decision is rail-roaded by the text, by the way.)  I was promptly attacked by a Gnarshian ship!

I failed in both attack and defense. Fortunately, I was able to turn tail after the attack and the game represented the damage by having me waste turns repairing the ship, instead of by loss of cargo or life.  Obviously, I’ll need some ship upgrades before I can visit Gnarsh properly (and find that Gradient Thingy).

Was It Something I Said?

Next I discovered Storage Station 7.  Another unfriendly welcome!  The asteroid-sized space station immediately started blasting at me.  Once again, neither my ship’s attack nor defense was up to the battle.  Also once again, damage is reckoned by phases burned up repairing the ship.  Yet another subtle hint my wimpy ship needs better firepower.

That’s enough of being shot at for now.  I can see that playing multiplayer would be big help with these construct-a-special-item recipes.  I’m piling up recipes, but getting the right goods through wheeling-dealing at planetary marketplaces hasn’t really been possible because at I usually didn’t have the right good(s) to do a profitable exchange.  I guess I’ll have to do some backtracking to previous marketplaces, but it’d be much nicer to meet up with a fellow player to do some goods exchanging.

I did peek at Dan’s map that has all the planets named, and I’m close to Cordethar, so next session should see me visiting that apparently plot-important place…

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…I remembered that my notes were on the expanded version of the map, which you get to by pressing PageUp. Doh! The dangers of returning to a project after six months…

No Cthulhu Helmet for me

So now that I was back into text-booklet-flippin’ business (yes, it would be easier to use the DOS version + the Kit + the HTLM version of the passages, which would keep everything on 1 computer, but this is the Apple II blog, for frak’s sake). I reloaded my game and headed for Baphi, because I now had Mind Shield and figured I could take on the full vision that helmet in the abandoned colony could give (I was warned last time that its imparted knowledge would probably drive a human mad).  Unfortunately once I got there, investigating the abandoned colony was no longer an option – it was a one-shot deal apparently.  I was also unable to visit the nearby planet at 389-R, told I would need a Tri-Axis Drive Booster to venture that close to the edge of the galaxy.  I’m guessing this Booster is another object you have to find a construction recipe for and assemble out of various items using a special action code.

I then travelled to/discovered Hemindore, whose sentient monkey inhabitants live in tree-villages AND drive flying cars (they have their scientific priorities straight).  I learned some of their history, and gained some Phase Steel from investigating a underwater city ruin of theirs.  Next on the discovery train was Fiara, yet another Darscian colony, this time on a planet with extreme gravity (Hal Clement is calling), which spurred them to invent their anti-grav tech.  I also learned that explorer Vanessa Chang (whose map-data I’ve been using to head to all these ‘unknown planet’ locations):

a) Crash landed on Fiara in a ship seemingly and ominously built by large, war-like race
b) Headed for the planet Cordethar when she left Fiara
c) Buried a perished crew-member on Koursh

Regarding the last bit of Vanessa news, the game encourages me to be a grave-robber: if I’m ever on Koursh and find the burial place of Chang’s crew-member, I can enter the special action code B8YH9A to dig him/her/it up.

Quit Exploring So Much!

I headed to the next nearest un-named planet dot on the galactic map, and discovered Gen, suffering ominous vision-y nightmares on the way.  Interestingly, as I mucked about on Gen, the game had me read a passage that reminded me I should go to the planet Cordethar.  The game phrased it as “you are realizing you are forgetting something…”   Hello, game, I don’t know where Cordethar is yet, discovering shit is the only way I’m going to make progress.  I hope this is a nudge to keep players somewhat on track of the main plot, and not an indication of an actual time limit.  I believe Star Saga: Two has some actual turn limit for completing the game, but I couldn’t find mention of any such thing in the Star Saga: One manual.  Nevertheless, I may take a peek at the map Ben linked to it in a comment on the previous post, which has all the planets named, just to make sure I’m not too far way from Cordethar.  Anyway, it’s interesting that the game has some kind of feedback for being on track of the major plot.

Beat the Teddy Bear, Join the Club

So there’s a spooky, cowled, medieval-ish order of mysterious monk/cult figures called the Brethren on Gen……and I’m gonna be one of them!  Unfortunately, you need to know the correct answer to a certain question when you visit their temple.  This is another case of computer-only interaction with the game, where you enter your answer directly via typing. I thought maybe “dream” or “dreams” might be it, since visions seem to be part of the uber-plot.  I was wrong:

The examiner kicked me out after this.

Another element of Gen culture is ‘trundling’ which apparently boils down to treasure-hunting in a cave.  I’m given the option to try this out in an ‘already cleaned-out’ Titanic Cave (suitable to noobs, natch).  When I tried this, I encountered and must battle a giant Teddy Bear.  Yes, a Teddy Bear.

Fortunately, with my Exploder, Inertia Control Belt, and Mental Shield, I kicked his fuzzy ass (and learn that Mental Shield is a combat item – again I should checked for this on the Status Screen!).  Defeated, he went away, pouting. He was guarding a message scrawled on the cave wall: “Tell the Brethren: ‘I do not know the answer.’”

OK, that’s helpful, but this is the first passage that has felt throwaway, and like the clumsy, surreal illogic of the sloppier of the era’s adventures and RPGs.  Why would this helpful info be scrawled on a cave that’s been Trundled recently?  And why guarded by a giant Teddy Bear?  I’d be less judgemental if they’d played it for laughs or *something*.

Enlightenment through Audrey II

I returned to the temple, gave the answer, and was preliminarily accepted into the order!  If I successfully “undergo an ordeal”  I can truly enter the Brotherhood.  Role-playing wise, Laran might balk at joining these people, even given his already being branded a heretic.  But I said, “full anathema ahoy!” and accepted undergoing the ordeal.

I was left alone in a desert, told something about ‘facing my fears.’  When I took off my blindfold, I faced a huge, venus-fly-trap like plant.  I was given several computer-only choices of action, one of which is climb inside the carnivorous-seeming plant.  I did this, which turned out to be the right choice, as the plant protected me from the heat by gulping and not digesting me.  The brothers returned, and I was further initiated into the Brethren. The whole sequence as pretty cool, and made up for the non-sequitur Teddy Bear.

OK, I’m out-of-town and away from the Apple II for the rest of the week, but I’m hoping when I return to finish up Star Saga: One.

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Playing just Laran Darkwatch, I fell into a much more enjoyable groove with the game.  Darkstar is a heretic “Reverend High Councilor of the Final Church of Man”.  His heresy comes from believing, based on years of study, that the central religious text of his order, The Holy Text Files, is incomplete.  His secret goal is to find the lost Seventh Holy Text File, somewhere beyond the Boundary (the Final Church also believes travel beyond the Boundary is sacrilege, so Darkwatch is *doubly* a heretic).

Before we start Darkwatch’s journey, I’d like to point out the great black-and-white illustrations by Will McLean that are sprinkled thoughout the instruction manual and portions of the booklets:

Take that!

Also, I think I suggested in my last entry I suggested you type in the codes of your desired actions, but standard actions on a planet are listed in a menu you choose from, like this:

Choices, choices

Notice the “*) To enter an unlisted action” option — that’s where you’d actually type in an otherwise unknown action code.  I’ll have more on that game mechanic later.

Darkwatch on the Move

So, the first five turns of the game are plotted out for you in the booklet entries, teaching you how to interact with the Game Master (henceforth the CGM) work. This had me traveling to the planet Medsun, where the natives have emotional telepathy.  They don’t understand some forms of human thinking like mathematics, but they have a black magic-like power called Phrmm.  I wanted to explore that further, but the first-turns walkthrough had me leave Medsun for Wellmet, where there’s a set-piece of all the players meeting in the same tavern (whether they’re played by humans or not), where a mysterious figure gives them star maps.  These star maps expand the game board (you switch to the other, larger map) and show the locations of previously unknown planets (just their locations, they are unnamed).  At this point, you are free to travel at will.

My character booklet suggested I check out Cathedral, a world connected to the finding of the Holy Text Files, so I set off there.  Looking for clues in a promising-looking ruin, I was attacked by a hungry dog (kind of prosaic for a space adventure, eh?).  I was able to scare the dog away with an Exploder weapon I bought at Wellmet, but he managed to seriously maul me first, I had to rest and heal for several turns.  I then (doggedly?) went back to the ruins again, figuring the dog had had enough, but no!  Once again I was viciously mauled before the Exploder scared the mutt away.  The combat results each of these times showed my attack succeeding but my defense failing, so obviously I needed to upgrade my melee defense.  There’s a force field for sale on Wellmet for just such a need, but to purchase it I needed some trade goods I didn’t have yet.  I’d have to travel around and do more trading in order to get the goods that’d allow me to get the item that’d allow me to slip past the mutt.

Market goods

I travelled to one of the suggestive ‘unknown planet’ dots on the expanded map and discovered the planet Jaquer.  It was actually an asteroid belt instead of a planet, inhabited by a race called the Darscians.  After spending some turns to learn their language, I found out their history.  They were visited by the technologically superior ‘Mentor’ race, who genetically engineered the Darscians to be non-violent, and gave them the tech of space flight.  I also learned the names, but alas not the locales, of the other Darscian planets and what goods they sell.  It looks like I could get all the goods I need to buy the force field from Darscian worlds, if I can find the goods the Darscians want to trade for.  I spent some additional turns studying Darscian tech and gained an item – an Inertia Control Belt – for my troubles, but wasn’t sure what the Belt was for.  Additionally, I learned I could buy a ‘cargo drone ship’ that would allow me trade with any Darscian world no matter where my ship was – that could end up being very handy, but I couldn’t afford it yet.

Next I discovered the planet Withel, whose inhabitants have a class divide between those who are poor and those who can afford to have machine parts integrated with their bodies, all cyborg-like, by the planet-bound Constructor machine.  There’s also a social stigma for not being able to have your shiny bits maintenanced yearly by the Constructor.  Social worship of this planet-bound machine (I guess they haven’t figured out a way to move it?) has keep the Withelians from being a space-faring race.  The Constructor was gifted to them by a superior alien race.  Could this be the same advanced race that helped out the Darscians?  My sci-fi trope sense says yes.

Gameplay Among the Text Passages

Additional time spent on Withel won me plans for a human-usable Universal Translator (I otherwise have to burn some turns learning the language of each new race I encounter).  The plans are basically a recipe of what goods/items I would need, and a special action code to enter when I actually want to build it, once I have the needed components.  This introduces the gameplay element of hidden info — unlisted actions you have to enter manually.

My time on Withel and Jaquer brings up another gameplay point.  I’m usually exploring all options on each planet, but if I were playing multiplayer, I assume there would be a bit of time pressure from wanting to complete your quest before the others — and that this would keep me from dawdling at each planet when I really need to find an advantageous trade market (which I haven’t yet).

Exercise Does a Body Good

Next I discovered Baphi, a world on which some abandoned industrial waste, I mean, helpful leaking chemicals allowed me to scoop up some Fluid trade goods for free. I also discovered another recipe for a special item — a Ship Shield Generator, which would protect my lowly craft the way the Force Field could protect my lowly body.  Unfortunately, its list of required components was quite long, so it’ll be a while before I can construct it.

Investigating the wreckage of an old colony, I bumbled into and activated an alien exercise machine that pummeled me a tad but also gave me Superhuman Speed – this is the first Ability I’ve earned in the game, a small bit of RPG-like character  development showing up.  I wondered if this would help me in combat against the dog, and checking my Status Display with “Show Combat Category Information” on (something I hadn’t done yet), found my newfound Speed Ability *and* my Intertia Control Built listed as giving a Mobility bonus to Hand-to-Hand combat:

You're in for it now, dog.

I was excited to try out my leveled-up self on Cathedral, but there was more thing to investigate on Baphi, a mysterious space helmet in the wreckage.  Putting it on gave me a strange but incomplete vision as I initiated consciousness-melding with the planet (!).  It was exhausting, but I was told I could try again, in order to see more of the vision, at risk of my mental health.  This was the first time I was offered a choice directly by the program only, instead of by booklet and program:

Hm, this seems a Lovecraftian kind of bargain...

I decided to forgo the extra knowledge and keep my fragile sanity, and return to the helmet later if I could.

Yo Ho Ho

On the way back to Cathedral to see if I’d have better luck vs. that jerk dog, I was stopped by Silverbeard the Pirate who politely demanded I give up 3 trade goods or be attacked!  Seeing as I hadn’t bought any ship weapons nor built by Ship Shield, I guessed it was better to give into the bastard’s demands at this point.

3 trade goods lighter, I landed on Cathedral and headed back to the ruins.  The dog attacked again, and this time I succeeded – the Inertia Control Belt alone giving me the Mobility I needed to successfully defend as well as attack.  Sadly, the ruin’s bounty was totally anti-climatic – plaques that told the history of the Final Church of Man which I, as Laran, already knew (from my Character Booklet).  I’m guessing this is a quest that’s more useful to the other player-characters, but I still feel like there’s something I missed on Cathedral.  I decided to hit one more planet for this session.

Hey, Don’t Touch That

This planet was called Ascension, and its pastoral, insectoid inhabitants are OCD about keeping maintaining its integrity, they “clean up” after any action I take that disturbs things in anyway.  I learned that an advanced ‘Other’ race visited the Ascendants (yesss, I’m seeing a pattern here), giving them a Tech Nullifier to save them from self-extinction (competing Ascendant factions were locked in a deadly tech-race).  I was given my third construct-an-item recipe, for my very own Tech Nullifier (sounds fun to use!), once again with components out of my current reach.

Studying further with them, I gained a Mental Shield Skill!  That sure sounds like something that could allow to me wear the Baphi helmet without turning into a drooling loon.  Something to investigate for the next session.

Is it a Game?

CRPGAddict, on his excellent blog, has an entry on the PC version of Star Saga: One (which I believe is identical to the Apple version outside of the platform it runs on).  He found the world intriguing and loved the goofy but well-done prose in the booklets, but ultimately decided not to play it saying, “great stuff, but it’s a book. I play CRPGs.”

I’d agree that if falls outside all but the widest definition of a CRPG — it’s much more of an adventure game.  As for being a book instead of a game, there’s something to that — you probably could reproduce the whole thing in a book-only format, making the reader keep track of what the CGM does, using otherwise never-mentioned page numbers for ‘hidden actions’ and other tactics used by 80′s books that combined the choose-your-own-adventure format with basic RPG elements, like the Lone Wolf or Sorcery! books.

But it would certainly be even more cumbersome than its existing format, and I think there’s some elements of Star Saga that make it more game-like anyway.  Being able to go anywhere you want on the map in any order allows a greater freedom of action available to you than in, as far as I know, any of those CYOA-RPG hybrids.  There’s also some true gameplay involved in the juggling of priorities, mostly emerging from deciding how to pursue trade — do I pursue goods for weapons?  Or pursue goods to allow me to build the Translator?  etc. When I encountered the angry dog obstacle, that sent me on a mini-quest for goods (so I could buy a defense item), but I ended up gaining a different defense item *and* an ability that helped me overcome that obstacle.  The combat results suggested that the Inertia Belt alone was enough to help me defend against the dog, so it looks any of the three — Force Shield, Belt or Speed Ability — would have helped me — that’s a good sign of a flexible design allowing multiple solutions.  The gaining of an Ability (like a skill) gave a little dash of RPG-ish character development (leveling up) as well.  There’s also hidden, use-when-ready actions like the building of special items. And, as mentioned, against multiple players I suspect there would be even more gameplay decisions of how best to spend your time (fully explore a planet for a possible bonus item/ability, or hurry to a new planet that might have goods you most need).

In all, it is *largely* a computerized CYOA, but with enough dashes of gameplay mixed in to push it into being more than that — an actual adventure game, with some light resource management/trading elements.  Now, if only the angry, hungry space mutts were guarding valuable things…

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Star Saga: One’s box proudly proclaims, “There’s not another game like it on earth.”  For once, a hyperbolic-seeming catchphrase might be absolutely true.  Published for the Apple II in 1988, the game combines a board game, a mammoth choose-your-own-adventure book and a computer referee to serve up a truly unique science-fiction role-playing-gaming experience.   And it can be played multiplayer (1-6 players) to boot.

Here’s the box contents unpacked:

Players use the colored tokens to track their travels across the boardgame-like map:

Moves on this map and plotted via the Star Saga computer program (called the Computer Game Master), which also keeps track of the players’ stats, inventory, and handles combat and trade.  After you’ve entered in your movement for the turn, the program evaluates your actions, tells you if you reached your destination, and likely gives you a paragraph number or two to look up in the Text Booklets. Now, a computer game telling you to look up paragraphs of prose in a physical booklet was not unknown in this era – text ate up precious amounts of disk space and RAM, so this was one way to deal with that.  The famous 8-bit post-apocalypse CRPG Wasteland had text paragraphs to look up in its printed manual, as did the fantasy CRPG Dragon Wars and the earlier example Temple of Apashi.  But in those games you were taking occassional breaks to look up some descriptive text or a cut-scene type of event.  Star Saga, on the other hand, has you reading paragraphs as a core game mechanic – it’s the way the entire game world and story is revealed.  Some paragraphs end with several possible actions you can take – each choice with a code next to it — that’s the choose-your-own-adventure-book similarity.  Instead of “If you approach the spam asteroid, turn to page 167″, it’s “(GXYBVT) (2 phases) Approach the spam asteroid.”  You enter in the code for your choice during your next turn, and the program responds with info or another paragraph number.

There are thirteen of these text booklets (labeled Book A – M), each around 60-70 pages long:

One hopes this allows a truly epic story to be told, but it certainly makes playing cumbersome, especially if you don’t have a good place for the map near your computer.  In the early 2000′ s I made a “Star Saga Game Kit” for the original Home of the Underdogs site.   Made using the 2000 version of Clickteam’s The Game Factory program, it has a scan of the map you scroll around, allows you to drag and drop the player pieces, write notes, and save the current state of the map (so theoretically, you could trade the save file back and forth with someone via email for long-distance multiplayer).  It was going to include all the paragraphs (which the owner of Home of the Underdogs, Sarinee Achavanuntakul, had laboriously scanned) as well, but stuffing all those scans into one program turned out to be too much for the little Games Factory program, which become sad and buggy under all that textual weight.  Fortunately, Ranger55, another contributor to the Home of the Underdogs site, took the paragraph scans and made them into a stack of HTML files, accessible by a Finder page where you just enter the desired paragraph number.

Amazingly, the Star Saga Game Kit still works in Windows Vista.    I’ll have my Windows laptop running the Kit right by the Apple IIe running the Star Saga Game Master — I will actually flip through the text booklets, though. You can download the Kit at this clone of HOTU (the original site is sadly defunct) – you will also likely need to put this dll in same directory that holds the Kit.

(The irony of my preservation work for this game is that I’ve never gotten round to playing more than a few turns – thanks to this blog, I’m making time to give a true try.)

The Scenario

The year is 2815 AD.  People have been zipping about the stars and colonizing strage new worlds since the invention of the hyperdrive in 2257.  All this space exploration ground to a halt in 2490, however, the year of the Space Plague.  Of alien origin, brought back by some unknown explorer, the Space Plague and wiped out half of humankind.  A scared humanity constructed the Boundary, a border protecting the Nine Worlds inhabited by humans.  A person can leave the Boundary if they wish, but they will not be allowed back in (so says the Space Patrol).

You play one of six characters who want to cross the Boundary, each for a different reason.

Let’s Go a-Saga-ing

The game manual encourages you to jump right in, providing some quick steps for setting up the map and Computer Game Master (CGM for short – I’ll use that from now on), and then pointing you towards the individual character booklets, each of which has a step-by-step tutorial for playing your first turn.

Player interaction in the game is somewhat limited – if two or more players are in the same trisector, they can choose to have Meeting in they can exchange items and/or trade goods, moderated by the CGM.  That’s it, direct gameplay-wise.  But the manual encourages a meta-game level of deciding what info players want to share with each other.  When a new planet is found, all players must be told its location, but other than that, anything a player has learned can be kept secret or shared at the player’s discretion.

Hidden info comes into play immediately, as once you choose a character, you read the individual’s Character Booklet that other players are not meant to see.  This gives the player’s background and their secret goal in the wilds beyond the Boundary.

Now I’m playing solo, but I also want to see how the game differs for two different characters, so if I come across a conflict of info (character B has found out something advantegous for character A that character A shouldn’t know about), I’ll just have to role-play it or randomize some otherwise loaded choices.

OK, the next post will deal with the initial turns of the two characters I’ve chosen, heretic Laran Darkwatch and xenobiologist Professor Lee Dambroke…

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I realized I neglected to mention the game’s main quest/whole rationale in my first Magic Candle post.  Here’s the gist of it.  In the semi-distant past the Forces of Darkness’s favorite big badass, the archdemon Dreax, was poised to unleash some Sauron-like destruction on the world.  Badass Dreax could not be killed, but he could be captured.  A band of heroes died as demon-fodder to allow the mage Zirva close enough to Dreax to trap him within a candle’s flame. An ingenious use of magic, sure, but the candle was just an ordinary piddly candle, sure to burn away and release the demon again.  So a giant candle was crafted in the fortress Berbezza, and Dreax was transferred to the Magic Candle’s flickering flame. A host of 44 Guardians of the Candle have the duty of chanting to keep the flame burning and thus keep grumpy Dreax trapped.

Well, as the game starts, the Guardians of the Candle have gone missing, the Candle has begun to burn down, and lesser minions of the Forces of Darkness gleefully mill about the land, expectant of Dreax’s return.  You have to prevent this return.  Interestingly, the game allows you to set the difficulty level by choosing how many days you have before the Candle burns down.  By all accounts, this is a pretty long game to complete, so I chose the Easy setting – 999 days – because I can’t imagine anything more annoying than having invested 50 hours in a 8-bit game and then seeing ‘oops – the Candle burns down. Game over’ pop-up.  Even in my youthful Apple II days of almost unlimited free time, I don’t know if I would have started a game over after an event like that.  I’m not saying I will actually get that far in this game, but if I do, I don’t want to be chopped off at the knees by a time limit.  I wonder if any CRPG masochists of the day actually chose the Tough setting of 600 days?

The game continues to be engaging.  For one thing, the game encourages multiple approaches to making progress.  In fact, the manual’s own ‘starting out’ advice points out the game’s non-linearity:

That gives you an idea of the options available even this early in the game.  I have also been relying on additional staring guidance from Jason Spangler’s great Magic Candle page, as well as the Magic Candle entry in Shay Addams’ Quest for Clues III book (I have pledged to only look at the first of the five MC pages in that Quest for Clues book, unless I get *really* stuck at some point).

Points of interest:

• Sleeping – this is handled in an interesting way.  When a party sleeps in a hotel or makes camp in the overland map, you can choose what each character will do for that sleep period.  Plain ol’ sleeping will restore energy, but you can keep some members awake to perform tasks.  The most common of these is to have your mages memorize spells.  Whenever a mage casts a spell, it first must be Recalled from the stack of pre-memorized spells.  Learning spells is effectively stocking up on your spell-casting ammo.  Another task is fixing weapons, as they wear down from combat use.  Another possible duty is standing guard when you’re camping in the wild, because otherwise you may endure a surprise attack from wandering baddies.  All this may sound annoying, but it actually makes what could be just perfunctory down-time instead a phase where you consider trade-offs – do you keep your mages up to learn more spells while everyone else sleeps?  But they need to restore energy too.  Do you have them pop some sermin mushrooms to make up for it then?  You might need those ‘shrooms during combat.  OK, let them sleep extra long — but that eats in to the game’s overall time limit, etc.

• Extra keywords – I initially thought the only conversation keywords you could ask NPCs were the ones obviously highlighted by quote marks in conversation.  But it turns out some of them do respond to logical but non-quoted keywords from other bits of conversation they give (like the name of an NPC or town they mentioned).  It’s cool that there’s more keywords (making it a bit more Ultima IV-like) but it’s unfortunately not consistent – sometimes (more often actually) they won’t respond to obvious words from sentences they’ve just uttered.  It really would have been better to have consistently highlighted keywords, so you wouldn’t waste time guessing.
• Mountain passes – They are some parts of mountain passes that are not friendly to foot traffic:

But if you have a rope, you can Use it to make your own bridge:

And if instructed to Cross, your party shimmies across it Lode Runner style, which is charming.

• Dwarves Have No Welcome Mats – I was crossing the above-mentioned mountains to get to the Dwarven town of Soldain.  Once there, I discovered dwarves were not particularly open to visitors.  When you knock on their doors, you have to declare exactly who you’re looking for or be rebuffed.  Actually, this is much more realistic than the 8-bit era’s convention of being able to enter any NPC’s house wily-nily.  Anyway, from prior NPC conversations I did have some names to try out, one of which led to this scholar opening his door:
  

  He taught me some dwarvish, which I thought would be treated as a behind-the-scenes skill I’d acquired, but instead involved several screens of dwarvish words and their meanings. More note-taking!
  

  It’s been hinted dwarvish messages needing translating will lie in some dungeons or mines.

• Speaking of dungeons, I’ve visited two, the first being Dermagud.  Its doors could only be opened by a chant (yes, all Tolkien/Moria like – and it’s a mine) taught to me by an NPC.
  

  Inside, you can see the game’s use of a true isometric view, as opposed to its usual top-down or side view:
  

  You can also see a bunch of slimes who ambushed my party.  Things didn’t go too well:
  

  The cleric with the Resurrection spell was among the casualties, thus Lucas could not be resurrected, thus that was game over.  I restored a save, rested more, made better tactical reactions in my re-match with the slimes, and was able to scramble off to the dungeon’s teleportation room before being attacked by anyone else. Teleportation rooms only work when you use the right 3-part sequence of spheres, cubes and/or pyramids – these all being items you can purchase from merchants wandering the overland roads.

  I teleported way over to the southeast corner of the continent, and was following Shay Addams’ advice of making a beeline for the Crystal Castle when all but 3 characters were slain on the way. This was less tragic that it might seem, as the Crystal Castle’s appeal is having some stronger characters you can swap into your party. I dismissed the remaining survivors and hired Addams’ suggestions. This new, tougher party was still not cut out for the general skill of the roaming badguys of that region, however, as I discovered when I tried to travel south to the city of Kharin. I could not make it, and returned to the Crystal Castle, which fortunately has its own dungeon with a teleportation room that takes you back to the area around the King’s Castle, where the party initially started out.

There’s a number of leads to follow. From various conversations, I’ve learned that the Zirvand — instructions on how to re-seal Dreax — has been placed in a stone vault that can only be opened by a star-shaped key. A white wolf that lives by the ‘wolf rock’ in Phaleng carries this key around its neck, and can by lured by the rare plant hoyam. The dwarves of Soldain have hoyam, but are only going to let me at that good stuff if I prove worthy of being a ‘dwarf-friend’, which looks like will involve recovering Thorin’s hammer, which some jerk Orcs have buried in one of the dungeons. I’ve also been told there’s a god sleeping in each dungeon, and ‘two above ground’, all of whom must be prayed to and eventually, apparently, awoken. (If I get to wake some gods, I hope the game doesn’t just portray that with a single ‘The god X is now awake’ line.) The first thing I’m going to do, however, is sail to Bondell where I can get Lukas’ charisma raised, so I can pump info out of the cads who still won’t talk to us.

I’m definitely interested in continuing The Magic Candle, despite some annoyances and some generic elements, there’s something compelling about it that makes me want to see more of its world. I do fear that combat could become tedious, as the variety of foes and especially the variety of spells available to you are less than Ultima IV, and it could end up being endless recombinations of the same-old. But I’m not at that point yet, and maybe the game has both foes and spells up its sleeve that aren’t detailed in the manual.

However, before going deeper into The Magic Candle, I’ll be taking a detour in the next several posts to cover a unique game that’s set in outer spaaaaaaace…

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2011. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: fantasy, magic candle, RPG

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Things start off well with a charming title screen, of which I’ve made a YouTube video:

In the 8-bit era as today, a good title screen does not guarantee a good game, but I like it nonetheless.  The Magic Candle is sometimes written off as  an Ultima clone, and it does bear many resemblances to Ultima IV/V – it’s set in a high fantasy medieval world, the graphics are tiles shown in a top-down view, you have a multi-character party, you travel in large steps on an overland map of the world – then have more fine-grained movement when you enter a town or dungeon, combat is a turn-based tactical affair on a battlefield the size of a single screen, and there are *many* NPCs you need to talk to.

But it has unique elements as well.  Like Wasteland (1988), you can split your usual 6-character party into multiple smaller parties, and switch between them for independent exploration (it’s pretty useful to split off your highest-charisma character to run around towns/castles alone talking to people — some NPCs won’t talk to you unless the current lead character’s charisma is above a certain level).  But going even further than Wasteland, MC (I’ll use that abbreviation from now on) allows characters that have been split off to take up odds jobs or training while the rest of the party adventures about.  When the party picks up that individual later, the re-joining character will bring hard-earned gold or a boosted skill or stat to the mix.

MC also does some clever things with its tile set.  Not only are things seen in the Ultima-standard top-down view, but they are also used for crude isometric feels and some side views — you can see this in the following video, which shows my party bumbling around Port Avur, asking the librarian monk some questions (based on keyword clues given by previous NPCs), and also demonstrating party-splitting and leaving-a-character-to-do-training and leaving-a-character-to-do-wage-slavery.

Note: One can navigate the menus quicker than is seen here – my slowness was caused from bouncing between the Apple IIc and the laptop I was capturing the video on.

Another note, on the manual transferring of gold to an individual character seen in the video – you can also Pool or Divide items & gold, which is much handier than the way I did it above.

There are tons of NPCs to talk to in each locale, and almost all of them have something useful to say.  This is a game requiring copious note-taking.  Here’s page 1 (of 2) of notes just from the castle you start the game in:

What I like about the game is that the lore is not just “in the manual” – all the NPC conversations do a good job of revealing world details within the game and spinning a pretty good web of things to pursue right from the get-go.  Also, a la Ultima V, NPCs will appear at different places at different times of the day – a member of the King’s court asks you to meet him in his chambers at midnight to tell you a secret (no, not a naughty secret), bards and ship captains only appear in the tavern at night (this might just be a night/day switch, though, in which case I think it’s less complicated than Ultima V’s NPC schedules).  What I don’t like about conversation is that after you choose one of the main conversational options (Advice, Rumors, or Other (Other is for entering specific keywords)), you are dumped out of the conversation, and if you want to try a different option you have to choose Ask and then the direction the NPC is in all over again to continue the conversation.  Other aspects of the UI are relatively smooth for an 8-bit game, so it’s odd there’s no loop back to all the conversation options after you’ve chosen one – seems like it would have been very simple to implement.

Now an example video of combat.  You’ll see how you’re first allowed to place your characters on one side of the battlefield screen, draw weapons, Recall spells (basically readying a spell you’ve memorized at a time of rest) and then Begin the fray when you’re set up.  One of my magic users has an analyze-type spell already recalled, so you’ll see the casting of that pull up the stats of the stinky Orc enemies (and again when I accidentally re-cast it).  You’ll also notice one of my magic users not having enough energy to cast a spell (energy is important for all characters – you must rest regularly or they become tired and pass out, refusing to move).  To solve this he pops a Sermin mushroom to boost his energy back up (there’s also other mushrooms for combat bonuses, defense, etc).  I think all the characters will be Sermin addicts before this game is through, energy is so central to gameplay.

You might also have noticed how when an attack misses, the defending character/enemy is actually shown dodging to a different location and then returning to their initial one, which is cute and an departure from Ultima IV – V combat.  The game’s default speed for displaying these combat animations, however, reduced combat to a painfully slow 8-bit ballet that made me dispair of getting very far in the game.  Fortunately the game allows you to change the combat result speed, and you’re seeing a much more reasonable pace in the above video.

Overall, Magic Candle seems worth digging into further at this point.  I noticed when making these videos that Min has a higher charisma stat than Lukas, and I’d been using Lukas to talk to everyone.  Time to make Min talk to those stuck-up townpeople and knights who wouldn’t talk to me yet!….

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2011. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: adventure, fantasy, magic candle, RPG, ultima

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Strategic Simulations Inc. (SSI) was one of the companies known in the 80′s for, among other things, bringing complex turn-based wargaming to the Apple II.  The kind of wargames known for large hex-based maps, complicated rules, combat units defined by many various stats, and simulations of historical conflicts – the kind of gaming grognards (also see here) might like (though how well these complicated table-top wargames translated to Apple II games varied).  As well as historical conflicts, some games explored hypothetical scenarios (NATO vs USSR with then-modern armies, for instance).  Some hypothetical scenarios even reached into a nuclear-war-radiated future complete with cannibals and motorcycle gangs, as evidenced by Road War 2000, which was released by SSI in 1986 (requiring a mere 48k of memory).

Road War 2000 is a turn-based strategy game that puts you in charge of a gang of, well, road warriors in a post-apocalyptic North America.  With the government mostly broken down, you and your gang are the only hope to track down 8 scientists who have a cure for a nasty mutated virus threatening to wipe out what’s left of humanity.  While carrying out this search, you have to take on the rival gangs and factions controlling what’s left of the continent’s cities (hopefully gaining control of the cities yourself) — and to do that you’ll need to amass better and bigger vehicles, more and more-highly-skilled gang members, lots of fuel, weapons and ammo and fight a bunch of Mad-Max-esque road battles.  Well, okay, it’s kinda awkward to place a do-gooder, world-saving quest on the shoulders of high-octane-highway-carnage-makers, but you didn’t come here for the plot, did you?

The game starts you off on a random location on a North American map that’s several monitor screens wide and high in total size.  Here’s an example screenshot:

On this screen you decide to investigate your current location, move to an adjacent location, and various other actions.  A neat thing about the map is that different kinds of locations have truly different qualities – bigger cities will have higher quality vehicles to scavenge and more supplies, but likely tougher enemies lurking in them than towns; oil fields have lots of fuel available but are usually already watched over by a strong rival gang, etc.   Moving costs fuel and food, so there’s strategy involved in every move you make.  A complaint about the map screen:  you press a number key to choose direction of movement, but on a keypad the numbers do not match the compass point positions they represent – they’re counter-intuitive.  This seems to be a holdover from other SSI games of the same era.

You can Search a location for loot (vehicles and weapons) or people (new gangmembers), all of which you desperately need at the beginning of the game.  When looking for new recruits, you’ll encounter various groups who may join you, or fight you.  If there’s a fight with a ‘footgang’, you get to enjoy the most unfun part of the game.  These battles are tiresome scrolling text ’2 Gangmembers killed’ , ’1 Gangmember killed’ affairs with no input available for tactics, etc.   These battles are often very rough, too, especially when you’re starting the game. You can send out a scouting party to get the lay of the land first (for instance, to discover that the town is held by deadly religious fanatics, which tells you you’d probably want to skip scavenging for now), but those scouting excursions can cost you personnel as well.

Fortunately, the actual road battles make up for the annoying footgang battles.  Here your vehicles, with their various ratings of maximum speed, maneuverability, carrying capacity, breaking and acceleration capability, etc. come into play.  Here’s an example stats screen of a vehicle:

You’re shown a top-down view of the battleground, which is nicely detailed and, like the N. American map, several screens wide and tall.  As well as roads, vegetation, fences, and various obstacles you’ll also see the flaming wrecked vehicles of other gangs’ battles littering the road (and you’ll add your vehicles to their number if you’re not careful!). Here’s an example:

And another portion of the same battle area:

You can manually choose (within certain limits) the starting locations of your vehicles and choose which gang members will occupy which vehicles, or have the computer automatically handle that set-up.  Appropriately Road Warrior-ish, you can (and should) deploy men both in and *on top of* your vehicles.  Then it’s time to rumble!

Road combat is pretty engrossing because there are a lot of factors at play.  A vehicle’s maneuverability effects how many 45 degree direction changes it can make during a single turn, and is further effected by speed and damage.  Moving fast is helpful to avoid getting rammed or boarded (yes, both you and the enemy can board and capture each other’s vehicles), but can end up taking you where you don’t want to go thanks to momentum and reduced maneuverability (tactical braking is just as important as accelerating).  Ramming is a useful tactic but can do damage to both vehicles (unless it’s a flatbed truck vs. motorcycle situation).   Your vehicle’s facing is ever important since it determines both where your current speed will force you to go as well the directions its crew can shoot in.

The AI seemed fairly competent in the road battles I’ve fought so far.  It moved its vehicles into decent line-of-sight positions to shoot at me, and certainly took full advantage of ramming me when I sloppily passed too close with flank exposed.  I did see one of its vehicles get unnecessarily stuck between some of the flaming wreckage on the road, so it might be a mixed bag.

Overall, Road War 2000 offers a unique setting for turn-based strategy and an original flavor of tactical combat, despite some various quirks.  I need to play more to render a final judgement, but it seems to have enough detail to be interesting, but not so much detail as to be overwhelming, and I’m definitely motivated to play more to witness some epic many-vehicle battles – bring on the trailer trucks!

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2008. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: post-apocalypse, roadwar 2000, SSI, strategy, tactical, turn-based

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EOS intro

The intro screen (shown above) for Earth Orbit Stations features a nice animation of a space shuttle launching, and the game that follows that neat intro does not disappoint.  EOS was programmed by Karl Buiter and published by Electronic Arts in 1987.  It puts you in charge of building and turning a profit from, you guessed it, space stations orbiting not only Earth but potentially other planets of our solar system as well.

An interesting twist in the set-up is that you are not simply running a government-funded, NASA-sponsored project – you are one of several entrepreneurs competing to make money with your station, through a combination of commercial and research uses of your station’s modules, and by building new and more advanced stations.  Rivals, who can be either computer-run or actual human players, will be building their own stations and trying to beat you to reach the goal of whatever particular mission you’ve currently chosen.

The interface is very nicely handled, which saves this fairly complex program from being too clunky on an Apple II.   A big block serves as the cursor, which you move by the joystick to select menu options or to inspect and place station modules.  The menus themselves are easy to navigate – moving around to get the information you need goes pretty smoothly.  There is an amount of disk-swapping you have to endure when first loading the game (and when first creating your own mission disk to save gaves onto), but once you’re playing, if you’ve got two drives, there doesn’t seem to be any annoying swapping at all.

Each game turn is a fiscal quarter.  You’ll start by being greeted with news articles for the current quarter, which you can peruse or ignore.  Most of these have to do with the fluctuations of various markets, but there are some flavor ‘scientific discovery’ and such news items.

Once done with the news, it’s wise to hop into the Commerce menu and check the market activity screen, which will show a color-coded summary of which markets (pharmaceuticals, forestry, resources, etc etc) are on the upswing, which are stable, and which are falling.  This info will help you plan what new station modules to buy, and tweaks you may want to perform on your existing modules.

Then you can head to the station screen, where you can peruse, buy, and place new modules, and even start additional stations if you have the funds.  Each station has to have a set number of bare necessity ‘support modules’ (living quarters, power, gym facilities, etc.), after that you’re free to build as you like, constrained by your money (you can take loans, deposit money in savings, etc) and your tech level.  You can, for instance, install a solar collector module which will give you a big energy boost, as well as being available for commercial and research uses.

Each module has its own crew and energy requirements, as well as quarterly upkeep cost.  Each module can either be set to commercial use (you basically lease it out to those who will pay), research (gives you technology points), or deactivated (if you don’t have enough of a support coverage to go around, for instance).  When you buy a module, you rotate it and place it sorta Tetris-piece style in the ‘grid’ of your station.  Connector pieces form the backbone of your station around which the modules attach.

Here’s the humble beginnings of my station in my first game:

My EOS station

And here’s it a little further on:

My EOS station, expanded

BTW, I apologize for the dodginess of the screenshots (like the washed-out-ness of the first of the two above).  While it would be very simple to get emulator screen captures, I’d rather post images of games running on the actual Apple hardware, but I haven’t figured out the best settings for doing this yet with my Canon PowerShot – so I apologize for scanlines and other ugliness.

You’ll notice in the second station screenshot that some of the modules are green – this represents that they have been set to commercial use for the current quarter.  The non-support modules that are not green are carrying out research (a disabled module will show as blue).  In the commerce menu, you can see how much use paying customers are making of your available modules, and combine this info with the current status of the markets to decide if you’re going to change the rate you’re charging for that kind of module, or switch a module to research or even de-activate it.

Here’s a shot of inspecting a module from the Commerce menu (the big ugly scanline is not on the actual screen but thanks to my poor photography skills) :

Looking at a module in the Commerce Menu

It’s pretty fun expanding the station, and gives you an immediate incentive to manage things wisely so you’ll have more moolah to expand further and get more advanced stuff.  And, of course, there’s your competitors to goad you as well.

The first mission I tried was a race to see who’d have the most recent points by a certain end date.   You have to have everything set to commerce as first, to build up enough funds to keep you going and expand, and then switch some over to research.   I started to think my two computer opponents, the dastardly ‘apple 2′ and ‘apple 3′, were dim bulbs, because as we neared the end date, they both still had almost all their non-support modules set to commerce, where I had been doing a balancing act for awhile, steadily building up some research.  Unfortunately, I was wrong about their dim bulb-ed-ness – by the very last quarter their increased funds had allowed them to expand very far.  In fact, evil apple 3′s station filled the whole screen:

Apple 3's station

And he dastardly switched all those commerce modules to research his last turn, funneling in the research points!

Apple 3 is a jerk

This won Apple 3 the game.  I did beat Apple 2 though, who had tried a variation on the switch-at-the-last-minute strategy.  Anyway, it seemed to bode well for the AI not being a push-over.

There’s also a lot of things I didn’t get to see in this particular game – with advanced stations you can have a docking station for space shuttle missions, send out planetary probes, maintain a space hospital, do mining and refining, even attach a propulsion unit to your station to make it mobile and take it other planets.  So I should be getting some more fun out of this well-designed game.

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2008. | Permalink | 12 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Earth Orbit Stations, Electronic Arts, EOS, simulation, space, strategy

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Some of the Maxis open-ended simulation games (SimCity, SimCity 2000, SimLife, The Sims) have been personal favorites and huge time-evaporators for me, so I thought it appropriate for my first mini-review here to be of an Apple II predecessor of The Sims, Activision’s Little Computer People (aka House on a Disk).

Will Wright has said in a CNN interview that he did play Little Computer People “a long time ago. I’ve since gotten to know several people who were involved with that project, and many of them gave valuable feedback on The Sims…”.  This makes sense, since, although they are very different games, there are some interesting similarities in their core mechanics, and of course, the setting.

Little Computer People presents itself as a research project where you, as researcher, get to observe and interact with one of the, you guessed it, Little Computer People living inside your Apple.  This is reinforced by the instruction manual including a place for you to take notes on the habits of your LCP (I’ll use this abbreviation, which the manual does as well, from here on), the title screen of the game featuring a lab research notebook, etc.

The game’s main setting is a a cutaway view of a 3-story house. In this house lives your LCP and his pet dog. As you watch, your LCP will putter about his little domain, performing various everyday tasks and enjoying ocassional diversions.  These activities include making dinner, reading the newspaper, washing up, talking on the phone, feeding the dog, listening to music, etc.  Like a Maxis Sim, the LCP will autonomously move about the house and perform activities on their own, but also, like a Maxis Sim, the LCP may not take the best care of themselves — you may end up needing to remind him to drink water, eat, etc.

This is where the interaction comes in – you can type commands to your LCP, such as PLEASE DRINK WATER, PLEASE FEED THE DOG – they appear at the top of the screen and on pressing return, you LCP will usually oblige your request (it also apparently improves their mood of you THANK him after he does so!).  It might be different on the other versions of LCP, but on the Apple there seems to be some weirdness with when you can and can’t type in commands – sometimes you type, but your input does not appear in the ‘text’ area up top.  This doesn’t happen enough to be truly annoying, however.

You can play games with LCP – anagrams and a couple of card games – which will boost his mood, and one particularly amusing form of interaction is the LCP sitting down at the typewriter and writing a letter — the letter will be addressed to you and will highlight the ways the LCP is currently pleased or annoyed.  In addition, you can refill the LCP’s water cooler, deliver human and dog food to the door, and “pet” the LCP (a little mechanical hand extends beside the lounge chair, which will pet the LCP once he sits in the chair).

Little Computer Person about to type a letter

I was going to try to make a little video of some of the gameplay, but I discovered someone else has saved me the trouble!  Thank you, bluecolor3k (note the sound effects are not so annoying when playing LCP on an actual Apple II):

>> Watch Little Computer People gameplay on YouTube

So how is it as a game (or as a simulation/toy)? The graphics are very charming, and the actions of the LCP amusing, and it’s certainly a very innovative game design.  I’d imagine that after seeing everything the LCP does many time, it would start to get old (this was a problem with the Sims for me as well – at least until I started downloading and mixing-and-matching all the crazy custom content that users made for the game).  However, there is one thing in particular that’s keeping me playing currently – Luther’s mood.

Different LCP (there’s only one per disk) have different ‘digital DNA’ – meaning they have different likes and dislikes.  My LCP’s DNA must have strong sequences of EMO. See this page from the instruction booklet:

Little Computer Person moods

And see my LCP, Lucas, close up:

Lucas the Sad

He always has that expression.  I give him water, food, pet him, play games with him and he still keeps his frown.  I bought my copy used, and the ‘researcher name’ that shows on the title screen is ‘Francisco Quesada’, and maybe Francisco was a very abusive LCP owner, leaving me with tons of LCP bad blood to undue.

Little Computer Person Abuser?

Regardless, I’m determined to make that sour bastard Lucas happy.

Little Computer People manual

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: little computer people, simulations, the sims

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For the game, I’d stick to the medieval setting – Scruffy and Sidekick can simply be “in character” as adventurers, having come to a little towne where they’ve heard tale of a Blacksmith who can make a perfect +2 Vorpal Sword.  In the game’s intro, they would witness the Blacksmith’s cursing the sword and throwing a mighty far distance – all the way, in fact, to a nearby orc-infested tower.  To retrieve the sword, they’ll have to travel to several different locales, bash various monsters, and collect gold to buy better weapons/armor til they’re finally strong enough to storm the tower.

I’m planning to program this in Applesoft BASIC, relying on the Beagle Brothers’ tremendous Beagle Graphics to create hi-res images, and their ProntoDOS routines to allow speedy loading (for the Apple II) of those images.  The Beagle Graphics program Double Plot has turned out delightful to use, especially in an emulator so I can draw with the mouse (though I do plan to get a mouse for the actual Apple IIs sometime).  Here is the first (and only so far) screen I’ve done, the ‘Presents’ screen that will precede the Title Screen:

Scruffy and Sword game Presents screen

Since I’m using BASIC, I think it’d be best to keep things simple.  They’re won’t be any animation or even single frame sprite-shapes moving about the screen — all graphics will be static screen images and all input will be menu-driven (Beagle Graphic also allows for easy programmatic printing of text to the Hi-Res screen from BASIC).  So for instance, in Town, the top half of the screen will show a picture of the various buildings Scruffy and Sidekick can enter, and on the bottom half will be a simple lettered menu reiterating those choices (Where should we go?  A. Marv Ellis’s Shoppe B. The Blacksmith C., etc), with one choice being Leave Town. When the player leaves town, a new image is loaded showing the nearby landscape and available place to go, and an appropriate menu.   Likewise, combat will be a similar affair, if a bit more complicated display wise: An image of the enemy on the upper left half of the screen, an image of Scruffy and Sidekick on the upper right half with stats displayed below each (that text would be dynamically added after the picture has loaded), and the bottom half would be used for hi-res text, alternating between menu of choices and displays of battle results.  That kind of display for combat would be similar to, but simpler than, the ones used in Wizardry, The Standing Stones, Wasteland and such. Here’s a Wasteland combat for example:

Wasteland Combat example

The Double.Scrunch utility provided with Beagle Graphics allows nice compression of hi-res images that must be stored on and loaded from a disk.  Using it, I’m hoping I can get around 40 hi-res images on a single disk (I’ll be making hi-res and not double hi-res images to save space).  The game would then consist of two disks.   The first disk would hold the BASIC program, the required Beagle Graphics loaders, and a few introductory images.  After the BASIC program loads, and intro graphics are viewed if the player wishes, the player is asked to insert disk 2 into the drive.  After that, all images needed are loaded from disk 2 as the game unfolds.

With that framework, I’m hoping I can make an amusing little game.  We shall see…

© JJ Sonick for Apple II Adventures, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: BASIC, Beagle Brothers, Beagle Graphics, RPG, Scruffy and Sword

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