oprysoft-development-blog

TI-99 CRPGs in progress

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:52:14 +0100

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!!!

(RPG) Beryl Reichardt (TI-99/4a)

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:12:00 +0100

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.

TI-99 RPG "The Legend of Beryl Reichardt"

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:15:57 +0100

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

Honeycomb Rapture (XB version) complete!

Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:58:24 +0100

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.

Honeycomb Rapture CONTEST (Atariage)

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 15:12:53 +0100

Greetings all,
Once again, I may have bit off almost more than I can chew... I have entered Honeycomb Rapture into the RGPC on Atariage.com. That is the "Retroclouds Game Programming Competition." There are many other great looking games being entered as well, but I think my little game will stand a good chance at least at showing well. =) My friend Karsten is entering a game called "Destroyer." It looks pretty amazing.
Anyway, the deadline for the finished games to be submitted is the end of January. I should be done by then... but we shall see.

NEW HONEYCOMB RAPTURE UPDATES:::

**Implemented a "Lives" counter on the top of the screen. It starts at 3, and decreases as you lose a bee at a time.

**Implemented the "point" counter as well. Points will start at 100 per successful Honeycomb entry, and will increase by 50 points per entry on each successive level. Every fifth level will be a bonus level, inside the honeycomb-- Aliens are attempting to take your bees to outer space and you have to get to the center of the honeycomb before you get raptured.

Looking for some help on a few key points, however... and I have not been getting very much help on Atariage for some reason... Filip is the only one to offer any suggestions or help... so I'm stuck on a few key programming points. Maybe I'll discuss these points on the OLUG with the TIers... but I had hoped to just rely on myself and the support system on Atariage. Anyway, it will get done and all should be well. I just hope I can tie in all the graphics implementations and game features in the amount of space allowed for the contest. The game must run on an unmodified TI with 32k expansion card. Shouldn't be an issue, but I ran RIGHT against that size limitation in "Lemonade Stand." Keep tuned in for updates. Thanks for reading

Assembly Tutorials, Atariage, and MORE!

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 06:38:47 +0100

Thanks to some great TIers out there, I have begun to learn assembly language programming. It is a serious upgrade from the XB mess I've been stuck in forever.... I have just recently added a new page to my site called "Assembly Tips and Tutorials" which contains the first two tutorials both submitted by Matthew Hagerty. THANKS MATTHEW!!!

Additionally, we now have our own subgroup for /4a programming at Atariage.com. Please check it out, and we hope to see you all there!!! Some awesome things going on right now--- not the least of which is a "new game competition" where the winner wins a Mechatronic XBII+ cartridge!!! Very very cool stuff, for sure. Anyway, check out the new forum!

Lastly, I would once again implore those of you who ARE working on a new game to submit it right here at Opry99er.com. On the game development page, we have a few excellent games being built right now, and screenshots as well as short videos are available right there on the development page!! Click ***HERE*** to visit the page! Thanks alot, and see you again soon.

Joystick Implementation (Honeycomb)

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 06:10:02 +0100

I have recently begun working on Honeycomb Rapture again. In doing so, I realized that for it to act as a true arcade game, I must implement a joystick function. To do this, I turned to my friends on the Yahoo! user group... Here is a brief summary of what I have learned, and how I was able to tie in all the elements together to make this function work::: First, let me describe how this works in general.

*CALL JOYST returns a "4" when a joystick position change occurs... 4 or -4 on both the X and Y axis. This is very useful in the case of "Honeycomb Rapture," as the SPRITEs are double size, double magnified. Since they are double sized, they take up "4" characters in the ASCII table. I bet if you really think about it... you can tell me why this is a GOOD thing??? Here's the mathematical reason, and then I'll explain it

10 CALL JOYST(1,X,Y)
20 CALL MOTION(#1,-Y*2.5,X*2.5)
30 CALL PATTERN(#1,Y*3+X+80)
40 GOTO 10

This example of a joystick implementation was the basis for my construct. Marc Hull and Mike Brent were instrumental in helping me figure all this out... Essentially, here is the logic behind the above example program.

**CALL JOYST(1,X,Y)
        This is the actual necessary format to call the joystick into play in a program, directly out of the BASIC manual.

**CALL MOTION(#1,-Y*2.5,X*2.5)
        The multiplication of 4*2.5 yields "10," which will be the speed of the SPRITE in question. Anytime a joystick motion is made, the default return of "4" or "-4" is multiplied by 2.5 to achieve the desired speed of 10. Since the "Y Axis" is inverted in XB, you are essentially multiplying "-4" by 2.5, so we add a "-" before the Y, thereby making it a positive. This makes our formula work properly, creating a speed of "10" for every joystick position that returns either a "4" or a "-4". (Confused yet?) =)

**CALL PATTERN(#1,Y*3+X+80)
        This is where it gets fun. The actual format for a call pattern is simply (#sprite, X). It basically says that "SPRITE #1 is going to look like "X"." So, in the above formula, #1 is the SPRITE we will be changing patterns of, and the equation in the place of "X" determines the ASCII character that will be defining it. "Now, what about that formula?" you ask... This is the fun part. The math would place values on each of the joystick positions... For the sake of clarity, use the following picture to help you visualize.



What is important here is to use the math above to give us one numeral for each joystick position. This yields the following results--- Imagine that the 9 numbers below represent the 9 positions on the joystick above.

-16   -12   -8
-4      0     +4
+8   +12   +16

The original formula for the CALL PATTERN: CALL PATTERN(#1, -Y*3+X+80) will make more sense when you think about what we've discovered so far. Since the smallest number in our array is -16, then adding "80" to that gives us the number "64." 64 will be the first defined character for our SPRITE's pattern. From there, every forth number will be a new character. Since all our SPRITEs are defined by 4 characters, this makes everything work. See, it's nice that the CALL JOYST defaults by giving you "4s" isn't it? Still confused? (Don't worry... I was too until I typed in all this stuff for myself and saw how it all worked. It's not easy bein' cheesy! Thanks for takin' a peek.

.

The Legend of Beryl Reichardt

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:47:11 +0100

This game concept has been in development for about a year and a half now. It originally started as a Tunnels of Doom custom game using the Asgard ToD editor. I will try to post the original ToD game to the "Downloads" section of my page. I have no idea how it plays, as it's been over a year since I've even looked at it. I never completed the game, and it is still very much unfinished. If I remember correctly, the graphics are all backwards and reversed. I guess I just got frustrated with the Editing software. Anyway, I have decided to create it to be a standalone game. Below is the backstory.

The Legend of Beryl Reichardt

Character History:

Beryl Reichardt is a half dragon, half man hero from the ancient days before recorded time. His destiny as a young child was to become the greatest swordsman and champion the world had ever seen. His mother, Anifax the Black dragon, died at birth, and his father, Beryl the first, died when Beryl was a young boy and left his son with a great burden. Beryl Reichardt, the heir to the throne of Kings, was without the legendary "Sword of Wooldridge." When his father was killed, the dark prince of Angmar took the fabled sword from Reichardt's lair and hid it deep within the dreaded Tunnels of Doom. Raised by Reptoslicer the reptilian wizard, Beryl was always practicing swordplay, learning to manipulate magic, developing his experience and character to one day lead a small group of champions into the Tunnels of Doom and recover the sword which was his birthright.

Beryl Reichardt is accompanied in this quest by a few friends, of which you can choose. The other champions are:

*Sir Markus the Valiant:   (Fighter)

       -Strong magic

       -Average attack

       -High charm

Sir Marcus the Valiant is a welcome companion on your quest to retrieve your birthright. His speed and Magic are nearly as strong as yours, and he is a very accurate striker, although his strength lies mostly in his attack magics. He will be of help to you when there are multiple enemies present in a room or tunnel passageway.

*Reptoslicer: (Wizard)

       -Strong Magic

       -Strong attack

       -Weak Charm

Reptoslicer is a very important member of your team of champions. His speed is second to none, and his close range attack is vicious. He is the reptilian version of a great wizard, as his magical abilities are well trained in the ways of healing and regeneration. By far the strongest and most loyal member of your team. He won't win any popularity contests, though, because as he is a shape-shifting lizard, he doesn't speak in a language most can understand. Because you are Beryl Reichardt, you can understand Reptoslicer's words.

*Skylar Twilight: (Thief)

       -Average Magic

       -Weak attack

       -Strong Charm

Skylar Twilight can be very useful in a pinch!! She is the fastest member of your group, and her small dagger is accurate, though it does not deliver many hitpoints. Skylar has special powers of persuasion... When she casts spells, often the enemies cower away. She prefers to avoid physical conflict, but is never afraid to slice up an Ice Demon or an Ork with her magical elven dagger!!!

***ENEMIES***

You will see many enemies as you travel down through the many levels of the Tunnel Dungeon. Many common enemies like "Cave Spiders," "Orcs," and "Goblins." But as you reach the lower levels of the game and as your experience points rise, you will face 3 fierce and powerful enemies:

*The Doppleslicer

The Doppleslicer is an evil clone of your team member "Reptoslicer." The Doppleslicer has the same strengths, the same weaknesses, and even looks the same in many ways. The Doppleslicer is one of the worst enemies you will face. Be sure to use a balanced attack on this enemy. Swords, Axes, Slings, magics... all at once. You will see what I mean.

*Unipanx

Not a lot is known about the dreaded Unipanx. His battling skills have left many-a-champion without a head or torso. He has a single giant horn atop his massive black head that is said to give him super strength and an uncanny ability to avoid close range blows.

*Anifax

It is unknown how the demons of the depths conjured up the undead spirit of Anifax, Beryl's mother. Her soul has been trapped within the twisted body of an ancient demon and made to stay deep within the Tunnels of Doom. Over the centuries, what was left of Beryl's mother has long since faded. All that is left now is a twisted, hateful, terribly dangerous Demagon. It is understood that Beryl Reichardt has conflicting emotions... On one hand, he knows his mother is now nothing more than a twisted demon-spawn bent on murder and power. But on the other hand, she is his mother... Use whatever precaution you can. There is no more dangerous enemy than Anifax. Can you muster the strength to kill your own mother to acquire "The sword of Wooldridge?"

Free copy of Lemonade Stand to subscribers!

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 09:46:38 +0100

This is an announcement that on November 10th, I will be posting "Lemonade Stand" on my site along with a pdf of the manual. It will be accessible by password, and that password will be given out to all the subscribers to this blog. Please become a subscriber and have the blog sent to your eMail address!!! Don't miss the digital downloadable version of "Lemonade Stand and color pdf copy of the manual. If you don't already have a copy of the game, this will be the only place you can get it. Of course, it can be ordered by eMail; $10 including the game, manual, and shipping. Send all orders to **owenbrand@opry99er.com =) Thanks you all!

Honeycomb Rapture

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 15:02:00 +0100

After working on "Lemonade Stand" for the past few months, getting it all put together, tested, duplicated, packaged, and sent off to the Faire, I have turned my attention to "Honeycomb Rapture," a completely original game concept, and Oprysoft's second release. Based on the challenges "Lemonade Stand" posed in the areas of "true 'customer interface'" I have decided to make an arcade-style game as opposed to another "simulation" game this time. I have a majority of the graphics completed for the game, and am now turning my attention to developing game parameters. In the game "Bubble Plane" recently demo'd at the TI Faire, the plane is destroyed when it comes in contact with particular boundaries on the screen. I want to develop a similar concept in theory for this game... However, when your character (in this case, the Honeybee) comes in contact with these pre-determined boundaries, it will have a different outcome. Rather than the bee exploding and making crash noises, I was thinking of sending additional "enemies" after the bee. This will incentivise the player to remain within the game boundaries. As it is my first arcade game, I will need to study and research several aspects of XB programming I did not need to use in "Lemonade Stand." Mike Brent will be helping me with "Assembly-izing" the music so that it can be CALL INITed and CALL LOADed for play during actual gameplay... something that was not possible in "Lemonade Stand." Due to the loop and cycle limitations of XB, it will be necessary to write the music in Assembly so that it can run in low memory while the game is run in high memory...XB. Stay tuned for preliminary screenshots of "Honeycomb Rapture" and for updates on the progress thereof.