Loadstar 248/248.d81/t.knight journey

Text File | 2022-08-26 | 5KB | 186 lines

u
          KNIGHT'S JOURNEY
     [NEW] VERSION 3.00 for 2007

     Program by Richard Derocher
       Text by Richard Derocher


    This Choose Your Own Adventure
type of game gives you the chance to
go back to the days of yore and become
a brave knight. It is your job to
bring justice to the realm, and along
the way you just might be able to woo
a fair damsel or two.

    Game play is simple... just read
the story, then when you come to a
point where you need to make a
choice, just press the key for the
option you want.

     For example:

     You are traveling down the road
and meet a stranger...

     1. Talk to the stranger
     2. Continue on your way

    If you want to talk to the man,
press 1 on your keyboard, or if you
want to keep going on your way then
you would press 2 on your keyboard.

    If you make a wrong choice along
the way, you will fail in your quest
and will lose the game. You then will
be given the option if you want to
play again.

    That's all there is to it! There
are several correct paths through the
game, each one having its own plot
line. So if you win once, you can try
another path through the game.

    Have fun!

 RJD


[DESIGNER'S NOTES ON THIS GAME:]

    Yes, this is an improved version
of Knight's Journey that was on
LOADSTAR #228. The original version of
the game was split into different
files and had several songs that
played in the background, which all
had to load in and slowed game play
down to a crawl on a 1541.

    So this year I decided to make an
upgraded version. I linked it all into
one big file to cut out load times. I
had to cut the music files, so there
is now only one song that plays in
the background, but I added some
pictures I grabbed from Sherwood Open
and stuck them into the story. So now
it became somewhat of a Graphic Text
Adventure. This became Version 2 of
Knight's Journey.

    A few months past, and I decided
to make some more changes... So here
is version 3, for Loadstar. For this
version the Quicksmith music has been
replaced by Sid music, the all upper
case font was replaced with a upper
and lower case font, the game has been
squeezed into only two files instead
of the four of V2, some typos in the
text were fixed, some sprite overlays
were added, another song file has been
added, and some more story text has
been added in spots.

    If you press RUN/STOP RESTORE
during the game and list the program,
you will find that the game has 820
lines of Basic code! You may also
notice that most of the end quotation
marks for the PRINT statements have
been removed... A space saving measure
I had to resort to in order to squeeze
a few more bytes of code in, as the
game fills most of the RAM up -- so
much so that it leaves only 102 bytes
of BASIC ram free!

    This project has given me new
appreciation for all the wonderful
tools and utilities that have been
pulblished on LOADSTAR over the years.
Even though I've used many LOADSTAR
tools in the past, I keep finding new
uses for them!

    Here are the tools I used in
making Knight's Journey:

    Fullfont
     For editing the custom font.

    Font Swapper V2
     For swapping font charcters from
     different fonts into the one font
     used in the game.

    Sprite Factory - LS #86
     For making the sprites.

    Unpacker .99
     Used in the title screen to show
     the .shp picture.

    Sid Player - LS #81
     Used to play background music
     during the game.

    Mega Basic 128 - LS 128 #25
     Handy addition to BASIC that lets
     you do searchs in BASIC text, and
     merge BASIC programs together,
     among other things. I used this
     in a lot of the editing, and used
     it to merge all of the basic
     files of the orignal version into
     one file.

    Super Aide - LS #153
     A C-64 program that does a lot of
     the same things that Mega Basic
     128 does. I found this on LS #153
     and switched from Mega Basic to
     it in the last few stages of
     programming.

    Star Linker 1.2 - LS #188, #205
     Lee Novak's wonderful linker
     program. I used it to link the
     basic file, font, music, etc.
     into one file.

    Star Packer 1.2 - LS #188, #205
     I used it to pack everything down
     and make the game a lot smaller
     block wise.

    If you're into BASIC programming,
I encourage you to look into some of
the above tools. They'll make creating
a program with that polished Loadstar
style a lot easier and faster.

    RJD


[DAVE'S EXCESS:] Right you are, Rick!
I have heard how "lame" LOADSTAR is in
the eyes of the Elite Coderz, but one
thing is for sure: If you want to
create slick, smooth, and even elegant
software, the LOADSTAR tools are the
way to go.

And, now we have DotBASIC Plus, that
puts all the programming power right
in your hands! The C-64 is 25 years
old, and just keeps getting better!

 DMM