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HISTORY.RLM
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1989-05-15
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LAND OF THE REALM(c) ADVENTURE SYSTEM
The History Of The Realm
May 16, 1989
The Land of the Realm started as a bold attempt at an online chain
for the World War IV Bulletin Board System (WWIV BBS) by Wayne Bell.
The first version of the Realm was fairly complex, as it was designed
for use with version 3.21d of WWIV. This required (or allowed,
depending on your point of view) the use of chained Pascal units. This
wasn't very difficult since Wayne had the foresight to provide a
skeleton Pascal module for those ambitious enough to attempt to design
an online chain.
The primary scope of the system was to provide a role-playing gaming
system which would quench the RPG thirsts of those electronic D&D
lovers, while at the same time allow the "typical" hack and slash
addict enough flexibility and options, without overwhelming him/her
with the complexities of a true RPG game. To accomplish this, I
researched the world of RPGs (I never was a real good D&D player) as
well as several "BBS online door" type as well as stand-alone adventure
games. The best looking and playing game I reviewed which seemed to be
perfect for the BBS environment was, at the time, WIZARDRY(c).
So, the goal was set: Design and implement a game which would provide
lots of the features which could be found in WIZARDRY, and incorporate
many of the features which were found in some of the most popular BBS
doors. The biggest problem would be my own lack of experience in
designing a game which incorporated so many different scenarios and
features, within the limitations of a 640K machine which probably would
have some of its top memory loaded with TSRs or BBS data. And secondly,
I would have to amass a crew of Beta testers who were familiar with the
BBS environment, adventure games, and the frustrations associated with
the role of the Beta tester.
By the time version 1.0 of THE REALM was released for beta, I had 2
excellent beta testers. My Co-SysOp, Rob Collins (Logon1), and Len
Wooden (Nutso). These guys really banged the code around on a daily
basis, seemingly taking great pleasure in reporting the many bugs they
found. After a few days however, I noticed that the bug reports were
declining. Was the code becoming more solid? Were we actually getting
this thing debugged? Well, not actually. Seems that my beta testers
were enjoying the game so much, that they stopped testing the "fringes"
of the game, and were really concentrating on the mainline, basically
trying the kick each other's butts. So, my only resource was to release
the source to my general users. Yes. I'd let THEM beta test the sucker!
(They wouldn't know this, of course.) And the first beta test was a
huge success. Yes, there were many errors and buggies found, but the
code could be patched on the fly, and many of the bugs killed without
missing a beat. THE REALM was catching on.
Version 1.4 was released (unofficially) on April 15, 1988. Right about
the time Wayne upgraded from WWIV 3.xx to version 4.xx. Damn!
So here is the next generation. This version of THE REALM, version 2.0,
is the first official release for WWIV 4.xx. Hopefully, WWIV 4.10 won't
contain any drastic external support changes. I don't know that I could
go through another conversion of this code. The actual source code for
the game is over 6,000 lines of Turbo Pascel 3.0. Include all the
support files and data, and the entire package exceeds 8000 lines.
Quite a bit of keyboard time. Now, I won't give you any stats on how
many man hours of coding and/or debugging went into this, because I
really have no earthly idea. But I will say that I started grad school
when I started this little project, and I'll have my masters in 6
months.
I hope you enjoy this first release. There will be other scenarios
releases in the future. So, keep your eyes open.
Michael A. James
(Silver Shadow)