Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles latest Work in progress 07/03/2018

[peteym5]

This video...

I am showing the forest village over-world with some differences when you select different quests, some of the leads between rooms get blocked and new ones open up. Also shows defeating enemies and money to purchase items. Some what happens when bumping into scrolls and display texts that tell story, ask riddles, or provide hints. I populated the game world with more items, and adding new traps and obstacles for you to figure out. The new room data encryption process allows for being more compact and encoded, to have a much larger map. The video recording has been fragmented and edited back together out of sequence so when the game is released, you will have a fresh new experience for playing this game for the first time.

New features include, collecting currency, buying items. New items with new functions. Text from scrolls can ask questions/riddles. Multiple choice ones be able to perform different action for each choice. Many new monsters, and capable of having many more rooms in same memory area. Cannot reveal all the features as I am still making progress.

This is the video of Secretum Labyrinth Dark Castles, and not Secretum Labyrinth The Legend, which is the earlier game with some differences. Different music, some different monsters, and weapon animations.

Secretum Labyrinth games require 64K RAM (48K + 16K RAM under OS ROM.) Run on 800XL, 65XE, 130XE, XEGS. 1200XL, as long as it using a compatible XL OS ROM. 600XL with ram expansion modification. Not known if games will run on 400/800 with that "incognito" device. If someone has one of those and did purchase the cartridge, let me know if it worked.

Edited July 3, 2018 by peteym5

[Lord Thag]

This is coming along nicely. I like the varied level design, and the fact that everything isn't just a big empty square. It's really starting to remind me of something like Gateway to Apshai, only much better done.

 

Are you still planning on adding roguelike/procedural elements to add to replayability, I think I remember you saying something about that in an earlier build/post?

[peteym5]

This is coming along nicely. I like the varied level design, and the fact that everything isn't just a big empty square. It's really starting to remind me of something like Gateway to Apshai, only much better done.

 

Are you still planning on adding roguelike/procedural elements to add to replayability, I think I remember you saying something about that in an earlier build/post?

In the video, on the title screen, I have 4 different quests, that relocate all the items, and there is a random quest which puts each items at random location. I selected two of them for demonstration purposes. Also I added conditional quest logic for the room(screen) drawing subroutine that adds the ability for walls and passages appear in certain quests, and no be there in other quests, changing the directions you need to go to get through the dungeon. I did a few screens and may do more.

[Lord Thag]

In the video, on the title screen, I have 4 different quests, that relocate all the items, and there is a random quest which puts each items at random location. I selected two of them for demonstration purposes. Also I added conditional quest logic for the room(screen) drawing subroutine that adds the ability for walls and passages appear in certain quests, and no be there in other quests, changing the directions you need to go to get through the dungeon. I did a few screens and may do more.

Cool. That sounds like a smart compromise. The game will benefit from the hand crafted dungeons while maintaining long term playability. The conditional logic should add to that as well.

 

Really looking forward to this one, keep up the good work!

[peteym5]

Several people told me that was an issue with games written for NES, SNES, or Sega Megadrive/Genesis. Once you beaten and played through the game, it is not much fun anymore. Like could Nintendo had a random placement option for Zelda?

 

I am also looking at with each quest, you can have a different extra ability with weapons or attributes. Total Random Quest generation is a little tougher because what if an item is placed beyond a room with a locked or hidden door that you need to open it, making the game unsolvable. That would be a very annoying bug, especially with the game worlds getting bigger and bigger. What I did is randomly place stuff at a list of possible locations. Think of 2600 Adventure and the White Key is placed inside the White Castle. I think it actually did that and I had to press Reset.

[256 colors]

I'm looking forward to playing this when it's done

[peteym5]

Thank you for expressing interest. We are hard at work at debugging, proofreading, testing new programming, and making decisions about additional expansions of the current game. This game already has a much larger world to explore, more monsters to fight, and many new challenges.

 

Something I need to figure out is how to make a good flute sound with RMT on the Atari computer, It would be very fitting for songs to have a Medieval or Renaissance sound to them.

[peteym5]

I decided that this will be my last work-in-progress video as very little is changing with the games graphics and sound. Most of the changes are happening internally with debugging, optimizing, and extending many of the functions that can be performed during the game.

 

Before I decided to do another Secretum Labyrinth game, I waited to see how well the King's Gold was received, and how many of 'The Legend sold. I wanted to get the first games out there and get some feed back. I have been reading posts of people looking for a game like NES "The Legend of Zelda" and looking for a good Fantasy Role Playing Game Adventure. I said, wait, I have something similar. I had thoughts about the sequel or making it into a series of games back in the early stages of development. To meet demands, I have to improve the existing game, making capable of storing much larger world, more monsters, new puzzles, and more items to use.

 

I looked into that previously reported gap in the sound, moved where it calls silence, made sure the NTSC-PAL delay did not happen when starting a new room, etc. I believe I have it sounding much better and less noticeable.