Re: Penguin Software's The Quest/RingQuest maps/walk-thru wanted...

[Yan Termit <yt@no.spam>]

In message <Pine.A41.4.58.0405311252480.108462@zivunix.uni-muenster.de>

 Holger Picker <pickerh@uni-muenster.de> wrote: 

The only systems capable of producing the kind of graphics and sound I
want to enhance the game with are a PC or Mac.  An Apple II would leave
the game no different, graphically or audibly.  A IIGS would be an
improvement, but not enough.  I want to make this game vastly better, not just
marginally improved.
I have access to a MIDI program on my Power Macintosh G4 DA (running
MacOS X Panther) and have produced the first music "snippet" for one
scene... the provisioner's, as you start the game.  I plan to submit several
bits and, if anyone is better at MIDI than I, are welcome to expand
and/or improve the bits as they deem appropriate.  I'm working on the into
scene next.  Sometimes music creates itself and you have to sense where it
best belongs, rather than being able to create music to fit the scene
you want in a specific order.
I'm planning on creating a "Quest Revisited Repository" website to stick
and store all elements of this game, both old and new.  Even if this
project never gets any further than bits and pieces, at least there will
be a central location where all things related to  "The Quest" and "Ring
Quest" can be found.
And that has value in and of itself...

>
>
>On Mon, 31 May 2004, Yan Termit wrote:
>
>> Date: Mon, 31 May 2004 03:53:51 GMT
>> From: Yan Termit <yt@no.spam>
>> Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple2
>> Subject: Re: Penguin Software's The Quest/RingQuest maps/walk-thru
>>     wanted...
>>
>> In message <bQxuc.6409$aM1.2895@fed1read02>
>>  Yan Termit <yt@no.spam> wrote:
>>
>> Anyways, now that I have "The Quest" maps, does anyone have any input to
>> offer as far as ideas or suggestions for improving the game?  Anyone
>> interested in helping in audio/graphics/programming?
>
>Hi,
>
>well, I'd have a few questions:
>1) What platform are you targetting? AppleII, Apple// GS, other?
>2) What programming language would you like to use? AFAIK, the main program
>language (6502), but you don't have to stick to that.
>3) What platform do you use for programming? In case you'd like the final
>program to run on an AppleII, do you also program on a real AppleII or do
>you use some cross-compiler platform with an emulator?
>4) Do you also plan to improve the parser? Are you in need of one?
>5) Have you already extracted the graphic data from the picture files? Do you
>know what the format looks like?
>
>Suggestions (if you program for the AppleII):
>1) If possible, use 2 (double)hires screens, i.e. a buffered output. Hide
>drawing of the pictures from the player.
>2) Split the action data into several little files depending on the location.
>Don't load everything into memory, only on demand. Loading a few sectors for
>action data isn't that time consuming, but helps you to avoid running out of
>memory.
>disk. Logical room = the room number that is used with the objects.
>Sometimes you may want to have several different action files for one
>logical room (e.g. before an earthquake, after an earthquake).
>4) Avoid numbers or indexes like O%(4) = location of object 'sword',
>O%(23) = location of object 'chest' etc. Code like this is hard to read and
>maintain. This also applies to room locations. Better call a room
>location 'in_desert' than '43'.
>5) If possible, use a special adventure programming language that supports
>all this. This also has the advantage that the final code is very small in
>size. The code itself also becomes portable then, or you can (pre-)compile
>it e.g. for compressing message strings.
>6) If possible, use an emulator for development. I personally use Emu][ (aka
>Dapple) for writing programs for the AppleII. It has a built-in assembler as
>well as a debugger. Developing programs is rather simple this way as you can
>use all the memory. Assembling is done really fast and directly into the
>'AppleII' ram. Finally, finding bugs is not as annoying as it used to be.
>Purist possibly won't like this programming approach, but IIRC, even old
>programs for the AppleII by Lucasfilm Games ('Koronis Rift', 'Maniac Mansion'
>etc) were written on a VAX and not directly on an AppleII.
>7) If you are in need of 6502 code etc, just ask, please.
>
>Holger
>.
>