Been nearly a month since release, and I’m overwhelmed by the response and feedback! Thank you everyone who purchased the game, and I hope to see more as word spreads.
I did an interview with The Lost Sectors on YouTube on Friday, you can view it here:
I also received the cartridge boards and EPROMs from my source to create the custom cartridges for Collector’s Editions, so I have everything I need now to start the mailing! (Formatting floppy disks and copying data is by far the slowest part of the operation. Thank goodness my drives are holding up for the task.)
Each Collector’s Edition will have all contents inside the game box, and will also be shrink-wrapped for added protection. I purchased custom mailers from ULine that fit the box perfectly as well. I’ll be taping them up thoroughly, especially for international shipping. Customs forms will identify it as “merchandise” worth $20 U.S. to avoid high duty fees and delay. Everyone will get emailed a tracking # for it as well. I’ll start on them this week and try and get them all out by the end of the week.
As for what’s next for the blog?
Well, my next TI project at some point! I plan to do a few small-scale ones that I’ve had on my mind. I wanted to do a true assembly version of an old BASIC program I wrote “Aperture”, just to learn the ins and outs of doing a platformer. I also every year around Christmas get a bug to write a game with shopping and having to pick up gifts in a department store and navigate around rude senseless people.
My next big project will be my Gauntlet clone, which will require the SAMS card. I have some particular technical limitations and challenges I have to make sure are achievable with it. I also have a Roguelike on the brain… Something that’s a mix of Rogue, NetHack, Warriors of Ras, and similar.
I may also take some time on the blog detailing the actual coding and design work that makes up Realms of Antiquity. My blog over the years has a lot of details on it, but a linear step-by-step set of posts of “How was it made?” and “Why this and not this?” may be educational for some.
Happy gaming to all! And be sure to check out Nox Archaist, another retro CRPG for the Apple II!
I for one would be ecstatic to see more posts on your coding and design work for RoA (and other games), especially covering the process and rationale behind decisions. I have found few other places on the web that cover development of games on retro computer platforms, but yours is the only one that even mentions these things. Most are just “here’s what I’m working on and some in-progress screen shots” but nothing about the actual development. Getting to read your explanation of the visibility algorithm variations and actual source code (even if I’m not familiar with TI’s asm) was the highlight of my 2020. Please keep it up!
Thank you! I am working on the first article now.
This was a great episode. For my own game, I was able to implement line of sight by reading Adam’s article on how he was able to do it. So a big thank you goes to him for that.
As for taking on large retrogaming projects I agree that they can be daunting, and you’re not allowed to quit halfway through because you will waste all of the hard work that you put in already. So you have no choice but to keep working on it until it’s finished.
And the main reason why I choose to make games on old platforms is that I have no idea how I would go about making a game for the modern Windows PC. It’s true that I didn’t know much about assembly language before I delved in it as well, but because I grew up with the VIC-20 and I am so familiar with it, it just seemed so much more convenient to make games for that platform.