Opry99er

Currently I'm aware of 3 RPGs in varying stages of development for the TI-99/4a.  Adamantyr's "Realms of Antiquity," Keith Bergman's "Downward," and my own "Legend of Beryl Reichardt."  Adamantyr's game is a pure assembly offering, boasting brilliant graphics and (from what I've read) an excellent storyline!  Keith's has an interesting premise, basically the name says it all: "Downward".  By utilizing one of TI's weaknesses as a strength, Keith has decided to use the "PRINT" statement in XB to make the game appear to scroll upward, (or Downward) as the character travels ONLY downward.  It's a very cool idea, and I'm looking forward to hearing more about when Keith gets back into TI programming, from which he has taken a brief detour.  I had contemplated starting another blog page, specifically for my own game, "The Legend of Beryl Reichardt," but haven't figured out where to do it.  Possibly right here on "Opry99er.com".  Anyway, if you're a fan of RPGs on the TI, you must be aware of these 4 games.

1) Tunnels of Doom:  Classic dungeon crawler-- Turn based combat
2) Old Dark Caves: A very complex XB offering featuring many great elements of a "Hero" RPG
3) Legends/Legends II: Arguably the most advanced RPGs ever made for the TI.  Turn based action and great graphics

Please keep up with the TI RPG development of Adamantyr, Keith Bergman, and myself at Atariage.com under the "programming" header... subforum "TI-99/4a"

Thanks for supporting homebrew RPGs!!!

Here's an update for ya.  Started building different gamescreens for different "worlds".  Along with the screenshot from my previous blog on this CRPG, this one is from the "desert" world.  I have decided to make
this a "linear" RPG...  This differs from many RPGs like "Morrowind" or "Grandia II," which are non-linear RPGs.  In my game, the gamer will have a semi-specific order in going from "world to world" or "level to level."  This picture is of the desert world, the 3rd world in the sequence.   =)  Enjoy it, and please keep up with the blog here, and on the Atariage "Beryl Reichardt" CRPG thread.  Click HERE to go to the Atariage forum.  Thanks.

Working with what I've got, I have made some significant progress on "The Legend of Beryl Reichardt" in the past few weeks.  Once the Atariage contest ended (still awaiting results) I turned my focus to the development of my first CRPG or RPG for the TI-99/4a.  Click this link for the development thread on Atariage.com. "Beryl Reichardt"


The biggest hurdle I've had to overcome thus far was mental... For me, RPGs hold such a lofty place in my head, especially due to my early experiences with "Faxanadu" and "Tunnels of Doom."  I had to convince myself that doing an RPG on a significantly memory-limited system was possible!! Of course I've seen ToD, but that was written by TI programmers who were paid for their work.  It then occured to me, I have resources THEY did not have.  =)  I have Classic99, a brilliant emulator for this system... I have Atariage.com... I have the experiences and know-how of many great people right at my fingertips.  This was my first hurdle... The next was to create a screenshot that would inspire me to go on. 

As some of you know, I created a custom Tunnels of Doom game called "The Legend of Beryl Reichardt" which you can download from my site here, Opry99er.com.  I first went to that game, played it in Classic99, and took a screenshot of my characters.  The four characters that I created were

1) Beryl Reichardt
2) Reptoslicer
3) Skylar Twilight
4) Markus the Valiant

I went pixel by pixel a couple days ago recreating the original designs of these characters to give my RPG the feel I desired when I started the "Beryl" quest.  Below is a screenshot I worked up to show the design of the game and how it differs from the ToD version.

**This is a screenshot of the battle screen from my game (in development)


***This is a shot of the original ToD battle screen



As you can see, the characters are similar, but slightly different.  In the original ToD game, you had to draw a "standard" representation of the character AND an "attack" representation of the character.  Skylar's character is now in "attack" mode in the new game, and she will remain in that state as her standard state... I have a new representation of her for attacks.  In any case, there are similarities in how the characters look, but as you can see, The battle screens look nothing alike and the attributes "MP, EP" do not exist in the original ToD game.  Essentially what I am trying to get across is that my RPG is NOT a ToD clone in any way.  The only real thing that I'm bringing over from the custom ToD adventure is the character designs I made.  More updates coming soon!  Please visit my Atariage thread to see the most updated "Legend of Beryl Reichardt" RPG programming work!  Thanks

Greetings again all,  thanks for coming back to see what's new at Opry99er.com.  Well, the contest has ended, and I think we did pretty well in the contest.  1 week until final judging.  I think I've already won though... Even if I don't come in first place for the contest, my game is complete and people are playing it and enjoying it!!!  That's the best prize there is, really.  I have uploaded the final XB version to the "Oprysoftware" section of this site, and you are more than welcome to download it and enjoy the madness!  On to bigger things now::

1) Filip Van Vooren has agreed to help create a TMS9900 assembly version of this game that will be "cartridge-ready."  This is a big deal in our community, as it will be only the second new cartridge release in 20 years.... "Pitfall!" by retroclouds being the other.  This is a happy day for me, as it has always been my dream to have a game of mine on cartridge. 

2) I have begun the process of moving the "Legend of Beryl Reichardt" game from a ToD custom game to an actual game, an XB/AL hybrid.  The marvellous thing about this is that I've got some help on the assembly side, Mark Wills of Tashkent will be helping me in my assembly growth.  I've posted before about the Atariage forum and the developments over there... "The Legend of Beryl Reichardt" has its own thread which you can reach by clicking HERE.  Screenshots and current development activity can be seen here, and new screenshots can also be viewed at the "screenshots" page of this website.

Many great things are happening for the TI community right now, and I'm proud to be a part of it.  Hopefully, with the right amount of enthusiasm, we can thrust our development into high gear and build up one of the premier "homebrew" scenes in retro-gaming.