dwhyte Posted April 27, 2007 Share Posted April 27, 2007 (edited) I was playing around with a IIgs emulator the other day and downloaded a game that I always wanted to try... I always heard such good things about it back in the day from friends with an Apple. I loaded it up and was impressed with the amount of depth in the game with such a simple interface. After about 1/2 an hour of playing it dawned on me that I could make something like this. I knew without a doubt I could do something like this... So after a week of playing around I have a working character generator, main menu, game menus, all identical to their Apple counterparts, only Atari-ized. A bitmap chart for encoding the levels to around 2K-2.5K each, and all items, monsters (minus gfx), title screen (minus animation, ANTIC E) and around next week I'll be starting the maze engine. Originally on the Apple it's a 6 color 280x192 screen... I always thought it looked better in mono, so it'll be done in Antic mode F, with some thoughtful artifacting for those that use it... Around Fall all Atarians will (hopefully) enjoy "Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord" Edited May 5, 2007 by dwhyte Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted April 27, 2007 Share Posted April 27, 2007 I'm looking forward to that. I hope you will post some of the technical details of the conversion process as well. Steve Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted April 27, 2007 Author Share Posted April 27, 2007 I'm looking forward to that. I hope you will post some of the technical details of the conversion process as well. Steve it's all done in kword right now... will convert over to pdf sometime... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted April 27, 2007 Author Share Posted April 27, 2007 (edited) I'm looking forward to that. I hope you will post some of the technical details of the conversion process as well. Steve it's all done in kword right now... will convert over to pdf sometime... [EDIT] Let me rephrase that, it's done in kword and on both loose leaf and graph paper... lol... Level encoding is a bitch with the bitfields to keep the levels small... So far all it is, is charts and notes I've made myself in kword to tape to the side of the desk while I work out the levels... one square at a time (total 20x20 for levels)... I'll scan everything, and combine it all into a pdf when it's released... Edited April 27, 2007 by dwhyte Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VW Posted April 27, 2007 Share Posted April 27, 2007 (edited) Hope it goes well, I and am sure many others look forward to the game and the technical details! Edited April 27, 2007 by VW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noelio Posted April 28, 2007 Share Posted April 28, 2007 SWEET! That's the only reason I ever wanted an apple II!!!!! Can't wait! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted April 28, 2007 Author Share Posted April 28, 2007 Seeing as I opened my big mouth, I figured I should work out the vectors now instead of next week when I may not have the time... The look is a little different. You'll notice that the top of the wall isn't coming from the corner, but a e few pixels over matching the bottom... On the Apple, it came from the corner... not sure about the PC version... This is a very alpha screenshot... atari001.tiff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted April 29, 2007 Author Share Posted April 29, 2007 When done, game will run on a 64K XL/XE w/1050 drive... Hopefully in final release, be 2 SS/SD disks, not ED as it is at the moment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Goochman Posted April 29, 2007 Share Posted April 29, 2007 SWEET! That's the only reason I ever wanted an apple II!!!!! Can't wait! Ditto here - awesome!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velcro_SP Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 So after a week of playing around I have a working character generator, main menu, game menus, all identical to their Apple counterparts, only Atari-ized. A bitmap chart for encoding the levels to around 2K-2.5K each, and all items, monsters (minus gfx), title screen (minus animation, ANTIC E) and around next week I'll be starting the maze engine. Originally on the Apple it's a 6 color 280x192 screen... I always thought it looked better in mono, so it'll be done in Antic mode F, with some thoughtful artifacting for those that use it... I looked at the screenshot, very cool. Are items and monsters and so forth supposed to appear in the 3D window? If so, perhaps you could use P/M graphics to display them. I think this would give you some freedom with the colors, unless you want to go mono for the mood or tone or whatever. Good luck with this project, what an amazing retro thing to be doing! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 I played through the first three Wizardry's on my Apple II back in the day (I got them as part of a 3 pack when some computer store was closing down). Next to the Ultima's, Wizardy is one of my favorite RPG series. Wizardry IV was WAAAAAY too hard, and by the time V came out, I had moved on to other things. I do own them all, and I plan on playing through them sometime in the future. So Wizardry never came out on the Atari? Wow, I'm sort of surprised at that. I always assumed it was Apple, C64, IBM, and Atari. Tempest Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted April 30, 2007 Author Share Posted April 30, 2007 (edited) So after a week of playing around I have a working character generator, main menu, game menus, all identical to their Apple counterparts, only Atari-ized. A bitmap chart for encoding the levels to around 2K-2.5K each, and all items, monsters (minus gfx), title screen (minus animation, ANTIC E) and around next week I'll be starting the maze engine. Originally on the Apple it's a 6 color 280x192 screen... I always thought it looked better in mono, so it'll be done in Antic mode F, with some thoughtful artifacting for those that use it... I looked at the screenshot, very cool. Are items and monsters and so forth supposed to appear in the 3D window? If so, perhaps you could use P/M graphics to display them. I think this would give you some freedom with the colors, unless you want to go mono for the mood or tone or whatever. Good luck with this project, what an amazing retro thing to be doing! Great idea... never considered pm gfx. I was just going to use antic F with artifacting... I've been playing with reverse xl/xe artifacting on Atari800MacX for the monsters... It seems to give me an extra color... rather than just red, white & blue, rev.artifacting seems to give me red, white, blue & green... But PM gfx for monsters.... awesome idea... Might as well considering the only Atari-izing I've done so far is convert the +--+ type boxes to atari ctrl-q ctrl-r ctrl-r ctrl-e type.... I've also been thinking of using a different title page, something a little more snazzier and atari-ish if I'm going to use g2f... still on the g2f learning curve right now... But for the most part, all I want is for it to be the same (hard to do when converting 6 color apple hi-res... but with pm gfx...) or (as in the character gen & menus) better (faster)... Edited April 30, 2007 by dwhyte Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 Can't wait for the conversion Will you be using another font than the standard one? -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Velcro_SP Posted April 30, 2007 Share Posted April 30, 2007 Great idea... never considered pm gfx. I was just going to use antic F with artifacting... I've been playing with reverse xl/xe artifacting on Atari800MacX for the monsters... It seems to give me an extra color... rather than just red, white & blue, rev.artifacting seems to give me red, white, blue & green... But PM gfx for monsters.... awesome idea... Might as well considering the only Atari-izing I've done so far is convert the +--+ type boxes to atari ctrl-q ctrl-r ctrl-r ctrl-e type.... I've also been thinking of using a different title page, something a little more snazzier and atari-ish if I'm going to use g2f... still on the g2f learning curve right now... But for the most part, all I want is for it to be the same (hard to do when converting 6 color apple hi-res... but with pm gfx...) or (as in the character gen & menus) better (faster)... I can't take credit for the idea of using PM graphics in this way. Alternate Reality does it like this, and additionally even for the rain! At least that is my understanding. You can combine the missiles for a fifth player, and then you have a total of five eight-pixel-wide players, each of any height and any color. I think you can overlay them to the limits of your creativity, and as a final bonus you can POKE them to be single, double, or quadruple width. That might come in handy to illustrate monsters or items coming towards and away from you in the 3D maze. I want to do it like this in my dungeon game (not very far along yet): http://linux.tc3net.com/daclmi/basic02.html. I tried to implement this before but I think I was running out of memory so I have to try again. It's an interesting question you're dealing with, when to be faithful to the appearance of Apple II Wizardry (or whichever version is considered the original) and when to use the unique abilities of the Atari 8bit to improve a bit here and there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted May 1, 2007 Author Share Posted May 1, 2007 The title page was still bothering me, so I decided to spend tonight trying to come up with something... I'm afraid this is all I got... Which of these two would you prefer to see when booting this game? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zagnalopius Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 Absolutely without a doubt the one with the green dragon from the Wizardry box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
classics Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 Absolutely without a doubt the one with the green dragon from the Wizardry box. Agreed++ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+remowilliams Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 Absolutely without a doubt the one with the green dragon from the Wizardry box. Agreed++ Thirded! Great project! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted May 1, 2007 Author Share Posted May 1, 2007 Can't wait for the conversion Will you be using another font than the standard one? -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com I was planning on using the standard $E0 font, but I was intrigued by your question... I tried finding a decent fantasy themed font and all I could find were replicas of Alternate Reality's font... Seeing as this game is going to be nowhere near comparable graphically to AR, it seems to me like RPG programming sacrilege on the Atari to use the AR font... I settled with the ARogue font... Looks a little better than the $E0 font... Every day... some days I get a lot done... some days I chip a little at it... But this will be done... 25 years to friggen late... lmao... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted May 1, 2007 Share Posted May 1, 2007 I really like that font. Looks a lot more polished that way -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted May 2, 2007 Share Posted May 2, 2007 you can use the font i use in my action rpg if you don't mind... you can simply rip the font in atari800win... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+bf2k+ Posted May 2, 2007 Share Posted May 2, 2007 The title page was still bothering me, so I decided to spend tonight trying to come up with something... I'm afraid this is all I got... Which of these two would you prefer to see when booting this game? Definitely the green one! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dwhyte Posted May 2, 2007 Author Share Posted May 2, 2007 you can use the font i use in my action rpg if you don't mind... you can simply rip the font in atari800win... Fonts are not my strongpoint, hence the using of other fonts... I tried a bunch of fonts... The one from Temple of Apshai Triliogy (my very first disk based game, but alas, no lower-case), almost all from g2f, before settling on the arogue font... I actually had to look at your project to see if the font I was using was the same as yours. I'm honored that you gave me permission to use the font you're using, but, settled on something released in the public domain, and decided not to use yours, as yours is a work in progress... p.s. And in regard to the first sentence... The 4x4 char pic of "Tanis Half-Elven" was done by screenshot of the c64's "Dragons of Flame". From there I loaded into photoshop... Cut and pasted that little 27x28 graphic into it's own window... Blew it up to 400% and then cut out 8x8 blocks into new files, and mirrored each section over to a char on Envision... I'm thinking of using the SSI's C64 "Dragons of Flame" font for final version... The Arogue font is good enough for now... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
www.atarimania.com Posted May 2, 2007 Share Posted May 2, 2007 You may want to check these two disks as well: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...st&p=757289 -- Atari Frog http://www.atarimania.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heaven/TQA Posted May 2, 2007 Share Posted May 2, 2007 nevermind... "my" font was ripped from gauntlet as far as i remember.... or just the little pics... not sure... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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