"The Minstrel’s Legend” An Intellivision RPG?

[m-crew]

“If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”

-- Albert Einstein

 

So so True, Looking forward to the release...

 

 

Cheers

[+cmart604]

Any updates? ?

[JohnPCAE]

I just started playing Ghost of a Tale (http://www.ghostofatale.com) and it's absolutely charming (though quite difficult). The story is really captivating. Worth a look -- not for an Inty port, but as an example of great storytelling!

[+JasonlikesINTV]

If you dont have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?

-- Albert Einstein

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet."

 

-- Abraham Lincoln

[+DZ-Jay]

"Don't believe everything you read on the Internet."

 

-- Abraham Lincoln

 

"Internet memes are sooooo lame."

 

-- Queen Marie Antoinette

[+JasonlikesINTV]

 

"Internet memes are sooooo lame."

 

-- Queen Marie Antoinette

[First Spear]

https://twitter.com/IntvPrime/status/1020664236178124801

 

Coding adjustments are being made. The game appears to be larger than normally available ROM. Working on it, so I hear...

 

Any updates?

[+fdr4prez]

https://twitter.com/IntvPrime/status/1020664236178124801

 

Coding adjustments are being made. The game appears to be larger than normally available ROM. Working on it, so I hear...

 

 

 

They can make it fit

 

 

[Emanuele]

Any update on this WIP?

[First Spear]

Two technical hurdles, two usability bug fixes, and some nips and tucks still need to be lept before promo ROM release, I was told by the mad scientists at Intv Prime. Bug fixes and tweaks look like 12 hours of work. Tech hurdles may be significant.

 

The game can see completion shortly after the promo ROM release, because the game will be just like the promo ROM, just with a lot more content and will be playable. Then it’s all manufacturing and marketing and some management (finalizing how to “sell” a game without making any profit from it so it can be true charityware).

[m-crew]

Looking forward to this release!!

 

Thanks for the update ...

[Emanuele]

Two technical hurdles, two usability bug fixes, and some nips and tucks still need to be lept before promo ROM release, I was told by the mad scientists at Intv Prime. Bug fixes and tweaks look like 12 hours of work. Tech hurdles may be significant.

 

The game can see completion shortly after the promo ROM release, because the game will be just like the promo ROM, just with a lot more content and will be playable. Then its all manufacturing and marketing and some management (finalizing how to sell a game without making any profit from it so it can be true charityware).

Thanks for the info!

[First Spear]

I was able to get a couple more draft screen shots from the folks over at Intv Prime. One shot is the general overland navigation, the other shot is when the player chooses to "camp" the party. In this iteration, camping reduces food, increases stamina (as long as there is food), reduces virtue ever so slightly, increases mana points, increases health points. Calio the minstrel is kind of hurting (yellow), Gruk the warrior is very hurt (red), Pella the druid is also very hurt (red), Tloju the wizard is midrange hurt (purple). Stamina (represented by a candle) is high (white), Food supply (represented by a loaf of bread) is midrange, Virtue (represented by a musical note) is midrange, Gold pile is "in the red" AKA it's low. Pre-testers have agreed that the gold pile icon isn't that good, so it will be changed to something else depending on the lo-fi artist's creativity.

 

 

 

 

Looking forward to this release!!

Thanks for the update ...

[+JasonlikesINTV]

I might have a suggestion for improved mobility within the game:

 

 

 

[+Lathe26]

I was able to get a couple more draft screen shots from the folks over at Intv Prime. One shot is the general overland navigation, the other shot is when the player chooses to "camp" the party. In this iteration, camping reduces food, increases stamina (as long as there is food), reduces virtue ever so slightly, increases mana points, increases health points. Calio the minstrel is kind of hurting (yellow), Gruk the warrior is very hurt (red), Pella the druid is also very hurt (red), Tloju the wizard is midrange hurt (purple). Stamina (represented by a candle) is high (white), Food supply (represented by a loaf of bread) is midrange, Virtue (represented by a musical note) is midrange, Gold pile is "in the red" AKA it's low. Pre-testers have agreed that the gold pile icon isn't that good, so it will be changed to something else depending on the lo-fi artist's creativity.

 

tmls1.JPG

 

tmls2.JPG

 

 

The graphics looks fantastic. Nice work!

 

The only minor feedback I have is that it might be better to have red = mid-range hurt and purple = very hurt. Yellow to red to purple seems like a progression from good to bad (especially if you look at a color wheel). Anyways, that's my thoughts. Either way is fine in the end.

[m-crew]

Nice !!!!!!!! Thanks for the screen shots..

[+DZ-Jay]

The graphics looks fantastic. Nice work!

 

The only minor feedback I have is that it might be better to have red = mid-range hurt and purple = very hurt. Yellow to red to purple seems like a progression from good to bad (especially if you look at a color wheel). Anyways, that's my thoughts. Either way is fine in the end.

 

I thought the exact same thing when I read the description.

 

For the gold, may I recommend a single coin or a stack of coins, which are typical symbols of wealth.

[+JasonlikesINTV]

Isn't purple also a symbol of wealth? And drowning too, I suppose.

[IMBerzerk]

Wow, amazing that you did all this with a system that started with basic Blackjack & Poker style graphics.

 

Makes a strong case for how powerful the Inty was. If even go so far as to call it a damn micro computer.

 

Great work! Can't wait to buy a copy!

[+DZ-Jay]

Makes a strong case for how powerful the Inty was. If even go so far as to call it a damn micro computer.

 

Some of us always knew this.

 

The Intellivision has a 16-bit micro-processor. The console was very powerful when compared to its contemporaries (mainly Atari and Magnavox).

 

-dZ.

[IMBerzerk]

Not to get OT, but how did it compare to a Colecovision and eventually the C64? Looking at the graphics level of this game and many of the new ones, seems it could keep pace with a C64.

 

What about cooling? Do these higher demands require some on board cooling?

[+DZ-Jay]

Not to get OT, but how did it compare to a Colecovision and eventually the C64? Looking at the graphics level of this game and many of the new ones, seems it could keep pace with a C64.

 

What about cooling? Do these higher demands require some on board cooling?

The ColecoVision had higher resolution, the Intellivision having been designed back in 1978. The Intellivision doesn't have any extraneous limitations on how to position the 8 hardware sprites, so they all can can appear in the same horizontal line. The color palette, though, is not as good.

 

The Commodore 64 is better in almost every way.

 

So, very impressive for late 1970s hardware, not so much for early 1980s stuff.

 

No extra cooling is necessary, the machine was always capable of doing this, we just have 30+ years of accumulated game design and software engineering experience.

 

dZ.

[Sir Jay]

Still super excited to play this. Ultima 4 was my favorite computer game of all times, and this has a strong Ultima vibe. Is there an attack or fight mode, like Ultima? It seems like that would work really well within the hardware restrictions for the Inty. Nice job!

[CharonPDX]

Not to get OT, but how did it compare to a Colecovision and eventually the C64? Looking at the graphics level of this game and many of the new ones, seems it could keep pace with a C64.

 

What about cooling? Do these higher demands require some on board cooling?

 

C64 is no comparison - the C64 just has so insanely much more memory to make the Inty essentially a pocket calculator in comparison. (Literally, I have a late '70s pocket calculator that has more RAM than the base Intellivision. HP 41C with memory expansion - gives it about the same amount of memory as an Intellivision plus ECS.) That was the biggest problem with the Intellivision - while the CPU was "decent" (2 MHz, 16-bit CPU,) that should have been almost on par with the CPU in the original IBM PC. But it was severely hobbled in RAM. The graphics unit was also very limited, being much lower resolution than the Coleco and C64, as well as having fewer available colors. 159x96 resolution with 16 colors. That's it.

 

In theory, the Intellivision can address 64 KB, though (combined RAM+ROM.) If someone were to make a game that *NEEDED* more memory, they could put RAM on the cartridge. (UCSF Chess did this! Adding 2 KB of RAM to add enough RAM for the 'vs. computer' mode to be possible.) So if you were to program a game that fit in a tiny amount of ROM (8 KB, say,) but needed a large amount of RAM, you could add ~48 KB of RAM to the cartridge, That would allow for games nearly as complex as a C64 - as long as your code+resources fit in a small area (or you implement bank-switching to allow more code to be loaded.)

 

But you can't get around the resolution and color issue. You can "hack" the color by changing between two colors very fast to "emulate" another color (flash between red and blue really fast to make it look purple,) and there are games that have done this (Tower of Doom, for one.) But it is CPU intensive, so to my knowledge, has only been used on fairly static "intro" or "transition" scenes, not in-game to add more colors. And the resolution is a hard limit. ColecoVision had higher 256×192 resolution, but fewer sprites, and while it could display the same number of colors, the way it could apply them was more limited. In the end, programmers for Coleco were able to make use of the much higher resolution to better effect, in spite of its other limits.

[+Lathe26]

 

C64 is no comparison - the C64 just has so insanely much more memory to make the Inty essentially a pocket calculator in comparison. (Literally, I have a late '70s pocket calculator that has more RAM than the base Intellivision. HP 41C with memory expansion - gives it about the same amount of memory as an Intellivision plus ECS.) That was the biggest problem with the Intellivision - while the CPU was "decent" (2 MHz, 16-bit CPU,) that should have been almost on par with the CPU in the original IBM PC. But it was severely hobbled in RAM. The graphics unit was also very limited, being much lower resolution than the Coleco and C64, as well as having fewer available colors. 159x96 resolution with 16 colors. That's it.

 

In theory, the Intellivision can address 64 KB, though (combined RAM+ROM.) If someone were to make a game that *NEEDED* more memory, they could put RAM on the cartridge. (UCSF Chess did this! Adding 2 KB of RAM to add enough RAM for the 'vs. computer' mode to be possible.) So if you were to program a game that fit in a tiny amount of ROM (8 KB, say,) but needed a large amount of RAM, you could add ~48 KB of RAM to the cartridge, That would allow for games nearly as complex as a C64 - as long as your code+resources fit in a small area (or you implement bank-switching to allow more code to be loaded.)

 

But you can't get around the resolution and color issue. You can "hack" the color by changing between two colors very fast to "emulate" another color (flash between red and blue really fast to make it look purple,) and there are games that have done this (Tower of Doom, for one.) But it is CPU intensive, so to my knowledge, has only been used on fairly static "intro" or "transition" scenes, not in-game to add more colors. And the resolution is a hard limit. ColecoVision had higher 256×192 resolution, but fewer sprites, and while it could display the same number of colors, the way it could apply them was more limited. In the end, programmers for Coleco were able to make use of the much higher resolution to better effect, in spite of its other limits.

 

Ever thought about upgrading from the 41C to the more advanced 48SX calculator? There is even a 41CV Emulator Card available for the 48SX.