Tag: alternate reality

Donation Perks

Acrin1 1 Comment

Life is a bit tough just now on a number of levels so I’ve been re-evaluating things and that includes my development projects. I know some of you have issues of your own so I know I’m not the only one. Hang in there.

I’ve been thinking about “perks” for people who donate funds to the support of ARX and SOTC and wanted to get your ideas. I’m putting together release 0.5 of ARX now and this will have a special credits section for those who have donated to support the project – I’m looking for a good name for this section so let me know me if you’ve any ideas. So if you’d like to see your name in the next release of ARX please donate now.

Anyone who has already donated will receive any “perks” I introduce to either game.

What other “perks” would you like to see and what level of donation would be appropriate to warrant them?

  • Design of new weapons or spells for inclusion 
  • Design of new types of encounters for inclusion
  • Direct input into the design and discussion of new features in future ARX scenarios or SOTC development 
  • A hard copy, full colour map
  • Hard copy manual
  • “Roll of honour” on a newly designed website and in the game manuals

I’m also trying to raise the profile of ARX and SOTC so if you can spread the word online that would be great or if you have any good suggestions for sites or media I should be considering let me know.

For SOTC I’m thinking about going for the full works and setting up an Indiegogo crowd funding site  http://www.indiegogo.com but I’ll wait until I have a SOTC demo first for people to get a taster of what gameplay will be like. Has anyone used this or donated using this site? Any issues? Here’s the ADOM redevelopment which seems fairly sensible in terms of perks:

http://www.indiegogo.com/resurrect-adom-development

As always I’d welcome your thoughts and ideas and really appreciate any support you can provide.

Keep supporting ARX and SOTC development.

Thanks

Alternate Reality X – Demo 0.43 Released!

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Demo 0.43 of Alternate Reality X is now available from the www.crpgdev.com download page. The main changes since demo 0.42 include:

  • Added full source code for ARX to the game download
  • City and Dungeon guilds now merged
  • All Guild functions added including joining, remove curses, learn spells, practice spells, deposit / withdraw from guild locker, resign
  • Added “Drop” command
  • Added “Cast spell” command
  • Added the “Healing”, “Conjure Food”, “Conjure Key” and “Location” spells
  • Added “Offer” command to “Transact” menu
  • Fixed visual map zone issues where walls and floors had incorrect textures and colours
  • Tweaked City and Dungeon gate counter speed and increased starting values slightly for stats
  • Fixed move backwards bug which allowed characters to pass through walls

Thanks for your continued support and feedback.

Alternate Reality X – Release Roadmap

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With the imminent release of Alternate Reality X 0.43 I can now confidently publish my roadmap for the future releases leading to the official 1.0 release. My goal for the 1.0 release is to have all the original City and Dungeon content completed, fully playable with all the quests completed plus a few more extras which will be unique to ARX.

Release 0.5 – July 31st 2012

  • Add initial credits screens (will be added to in each future release)
  • Add back in “Alternative Graphics” option
  • Add Damon & Pythias provisions and bartering
  • Add City Smithy bartering
  • Add Dungeon Retreat for resting
  • Add duration based spells – Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Fireblade

Release 0.6 – August 31st 2012

  • Add City Shops
  • Add City Healers
  • Add City Banks
  • Add “Buy a round” at City Taverns
  • Add remaining combat features
  • Add combat spells – Cold Blast
  • Add “Examine Items or Spells” option
  • Add additional encounter tables for the Dungeon
  • Add Dungeon Level 4
  • Add Dungeon door types

Release 0.7 – September 30th 2012

  • Add Rathskeller Bar & Grille
  • Add all encounter weapons
  • Add all encounter treasure items
  • Add unique treasure items
  • Add Encounter animation scheme
  • Add City Rain and Storm effects
  • Add the ARX manual draft
  • Add effects of hunger, thirst and alcohol

Release 0.8 – October 31st 2012

  • Add Dungeon Smithy
  • Add Bank Vaults
  • Add Weapon Enchantress
  • Add Dungeon Chapel
  • Add music on screen lyrics and timings
  • Add Smithy animation
  • Add Oracle

Release 0.9 – November 30th 2012

  • Add Dungeon quests & locations
  • Add Dungeon ending sequence
  • Add curses, diseases and poison

Release 1.0 – December 31st 2012

  • Add the AR introduction sequence
  • Finalise the ARX manual and supporting documents
  • Add an ARX icon

2013 – A new Alternate Reality X chapter begins…

Alternate Reality X – Donations & Support

Acrin1 3 Comments

Apart from my belief that the Alternate Reality games are some of the greatest (if not the greatest) computer games ever made, I also rely heavily on the support and feedback I get from the AR community to keep me going on this remake project. I know I’ve been working on this project for a very long time and these timescales aren’t what anyone wants but I think people sometimes forget how much work goes into a game and I am just one guy. You have to remember as well that this is Alternate Reality not just any old game so I picked a pretty challenging game to remake!

I’m not a professional programmer, have a full time job and a family to look after so I need to feel that I’m using my time wisely. I have had a few doubts along the way about how many people are really interested and whether I’m wasting my effort and should do something else with my limited time. Then I get an email of support or someone posts a link and spreads the word elsewhere and it gives me a real boost.

I am now accepting donations through Paypal from both the link on the right hand side of this blog for both my Alternate Reality X and Stone of the Citadel projects. You can also make a donation from the link over at www.crpgdev.com. This is a great way to show support for the projects and will also help to cover the web site costs and my time. I think my time on Alternate Reality alone must be running into several hundred hours over the years.

I really value any support you can give to the projects whether it’s a donation through Paypal, an offer of assistance or just your feedback or suggestions – but please let me know you’re out there and have an interest in the project one way or another.

Over the last few days I’ve probably spent about 15 hours just working on the City and Dungeon guilds. It takes a long time to work out how the original games worked, research all the fine detail, decide how to recreate that experience and then turn it into a real part of the game that you can download and play. I feel it’s really coming together now but I still need your support to see this through.

Let me know you’re still behind the project whether it’s through a donation, personal email to acrin1 @ googlemail.com , by signing up as a follower for this blog, posting on the AR mailing list or posting on the forums. And to those of you who’ve supported this project from the early days or earlier incarnations my sincere thanks. Hopefully you will soon feel your patience has been well rewarded!

Alternate Reality X – Updated automap and options

Acrin1 2 Comments

I’d always intended to have the automap display only those places on the map that you’d explored so I’ve spent some time this weekend updating the automap. As you explore each location on the map they become visible on the map making it easy to see which parts of the map you’ve still to explore and will avoid the problem of the player missing any potential specials objects or locations.

The updated automap showing the starting area of the Dungeon

I’ve also added some additional code to each of the shop locations to mark out all the cells of the map relating to that shop are appropriately coloured in (e.g. The Retreat and Grille above). It will take a while to mark out the same for all the shops, guilds etc in the City as well. I need to add this new automap information into the save game format so that save games include the areas of the automap explored so far.

I’ve also made some changes to fix the problem people reported about accidently quiting from the game by pressing the ESC key twice. When you now press ESC you get an options / help screen.

Further options will be added in future

If you select the Quit option you’ll also be asked to confirm it with a Yes / No prompt now so hopefully no more accidental lost characters. You can currently only load your save games from the main menu.

Alternate Reality X – Saving and Loading characters

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I’ve now added basic support to ARX for saving and loading characters. You can save a character whilst exploring the City streets or the Dungeon corridors. Saved games can be reloaded from the main menu. You can’t save during an encounter or whilst inside a special location such as a guild. There are 10 save game “slots” to use and these can be used for multiple saves of the same character into different slots. New saves can overwrite old ones. These are just straight save games so there are no penalties when you die other than lost progress. I now need to add in some additional save game information to make this feature complete for the current version features.

Alternate Reality X – Display timing issues

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I recently posted on the 8 bit Atari Age forums and some of the regulars there who’ve responded to my AR X posts over the last couple of years reminded me of an often mentioned issue which I’ve still to fix. This is the high speed which the City and Dungeon gate counters spin around. I’m not currently timing the speed with which different computers should display things on the screen which means some people find this very frustrating as it’s way too fast.

Along with the save game facility I’ll aim to fix this problem in the next release. I know what SFML commands I need to look at to help with this and once I’ve worked it out this will hopefully help me to be able to tackle others features such as encounter animation and on screen timed song lyrics.