My brother owned Color Computers, both a 2 and 3 model. So we played this one quite a bit, although we only ever got as far as the start of the second level.
Ahhh the advantage of having grown-up with the real deal!
Quote:
The game is ALWAYS monochromatic, black and white, which was the technical limit of the TRS-80's display in the highest resolution. (256x192). The color you see is just NTSC artifacts, which most old computers suffered from.
Although as I understand it was introduced intentionally by Steve Wozniak with the Apple II. When he fully understood NTSC timing *and* revised the circuitry after the first few production runs he was able to coax out not only orange and blue (like the CoCo) but also green and violet - in addition to white (two dots placed next to each other) and black (two 'blank' dots next to each other) generating six individual colors in a high resolution screen (280x192) and 15 in low-resolutions (40x48).
This works astonishingly well but of course TVs are less precise than color monitors which I guess where more common with the Apple II than the CoCo.
Later computers had dedicated graphics chips that could generate true colors -especially in lower resolutions- which not only was more precise and gave more flexibility (more colors, often thanks to color palettes) but was also of use on a monochrome monitor. Artifacting only generated pixel patterns on those and not solid colors (or shades).
Quote:
The TRS-80 Color Computer had no interrupts for sound processing, which is one of the reasons the game can be slow to react at times when doing sounds.
Interesting - pretty much a "real-time machine" like the Apple II (which had no interrupts at all in basic configuration - that is without a dedicated sound card).
Quote:
This has an unexpected benefit in making the game a little more tense and stressful, around the time you are getting attacked by multiple opponents.
The game is VERY hard, but there were a lot of players who figured out good survival strategies. Monsters always waste time picking up things on the ground before attacking, so one tactic is to find a nice dead-end corridor, drop stuff (and let stuff drop) in one square and just wait for monsters to come to you. Eventually you can clear the entire level this way, and if you're over matched, you can back up and rest a bit while the monster continues to collect your swag. This particular strategy has only one interruption; after defeating the "wizard's image" on the third level, you are teleported to the fourth level with only the items in your hands, which means you lose all your hoarded items and have to start over.
Interesting...
Quote:
The PC remake pages have a lot of interesting information on the design of the game from a code and gameplay perspective:
- All damage is rated as either normal or magic in percentages, so some monsters are completely immune to normal attacks. Weirdly enough, the shields had their values reversed so the leather shield was useless for protection against normal damage. Players noted that shields were mostly useless in magazine walk-throughs from the old days.
- The heart rate is determined by the ratio of damage against power; the smaller the difference the faster the heart beat. Power never goes down; defeating monsters increases your power by a ratio of their power, which is why your heart rate drops after a victory. Resting will slowly reduce damage, but it never goes below a certain ratio of the current value. One of the potions will reduce your damage back to 0, though.
- All items in the game have to be revealed before they can be used. They are otherwise treated as the lowest value of their class. Rings and potions give clues based on their names, the player has to actually look up words and try different ones to determine them. You also have power requirements to reveal items, this means you have to fight monsters and clear the levels to have the power necessary to complete the game.
The balancing was probably the part they should have spend more time on.
Quote:
- The game was originally designed in 32k, and had randomly created dungeons as well as a much larger item list. To fit it into the 16k ROM cartridge, they pruned down the item list and used a fixed random seed to generate the same dungeon levels each time. This let them pre-place ladders in data structures so they could remove the code that placed them dynamically.
I suspected that it was a 16K cart but I have seen only pirated disk images.
Quote:
- Strangely, the game uses the floating point real number arithmetic system for action determination, instead of straight integers. Probably another reason it's a little slow...
Uggh.
Quote:
- Defeating the wizard does not win the game. You have to figure out what word to incant his ring with to take his place...
My brother owned Color Computers, both a 2 and 3 model. So we played this one quite a bit, although we only ever got as far as the start of the second level.
Ahhh the advantage of having grown-up with the real deal!
The game is ALWAYS monochromatic, black and white, which was the technical limit of the TRS-80's display in the highest resolution. (256x192). The color you see is just NTSC artifacts, which most old computers suffered from.
Although as I understand it was introduced intentionally by Steve Wozniak with the Apple II. When he fully understood NTSC timing *and* revised the circuitry after the first few production runs he was able to coax out not only orange and blue (like the CoCo) but also green and violet - in addition to white (two dots placed next to each other) and black (two 'blank' dots next to each other) generating six individual colors in a high resolution screen (280x192) and 15 in low-resolutions (40x48).
This works astonishingly well but of course TVs are less precise than color monitors which I guess where more common with the Apple II than the CoCo.
Later computers had dedicated graphics chips that could generate true colors -especially in lower resolutions- which not only was more precise and gave more flexibility (more colors, often thanks to color palettes) but was also of use on a monochrome monitor. Artifacting only generated pixel patterns on those and not solid colors (or shades).
The TRS-80 Color Computer had no interrupts for sound processing, which is one of the reasons the game can be slow to react at times when doing sounds.
Interesting - pretty much a "real-time machine" like the Apple II (which had no interrupts at all in basic configuration - that is without a dedicated sound card).
This has an unexpected benefit in making the game a little more tense and stressful, around the time you are getting attacked by multiple opponents.
The game is VERY hard, but there were a lot of players who figured out good survival strategies. Monsters always waste time picking up things on the ground before attacking, so one tactic is to find a nice dead-end corridor, drop stuff (and let stuff drop) in one square and just wait for monsters to come to you. Eventually you can clear the entire level this way, and if you're over matched, you can back up and rest a bit while the monster continues to collect your swag. This particular strategy has only one interruption; after defeating the "wizard's image" on the third level, you are teleported to the fourth level with only the items in your hands, which means you lose all your hoarded items and have to start over.
Interesting...
The PC remake pages have a lot of interesting information on the design of the game from a code and gameplay perspective:
- All damage is rated as either normal or magic in percentages, so some monsters are completely immune to normal attacks. Weirdly enough, the shields had their values reversed so the leather shield was useless for protection against normal damage. Players noted that shields were mostly useless in magazine walk-throughs from the old days.
- The heart rate is determined by the ratio of damage against power; the smaller the difference the faster the heart beat. Power never goes down; defeating monsters increases your power by a ratio of their power, which is why your heart rate drops after a victory. Resting will slowly reduce damage, but it never goes below a certain ratio of the current value. One of the potions will reduce your damage back to 0, though.
- All items in the game have to be revealed before they can be used. They are otherwise treated as the lowest value of their class. Rings and potions give clues based on their names, the player has to actually look up words and try different ones to determine them. You also have power requirements to reveal items, this means you have to fight monsters and clear the levels to have the power necessary to complete the game.
The balancing was probably the part they should have spend more time on.
- The game was originally designed in 32k, and had randomly created dungeons as well as a much larger item list. To fit it into the 16k ROM cartridge, they pruned down the item list and used a fixed random seed to generate the same dungeon levels each time. This let them pre-place ladders in data structures so they could remove the code that placed them dynamically.
I suspected that it was a 16K cart but I have seen only pirated disk images.
- Strangely, the game uses the floating point real number arithmetic system for action determination, instead of straight integers. Probably another reason it's a little slow...
Uggh.
- Defeating the wizard does not win the game. You have to figure out what word to incant his ring with to take his place...
So you become the ultimate baddie yourself?
take care,
Calibrator
take care,
Calibrator