Day 36 – Knights Of Legend

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve finally made a start on Knights Of Legend. This is a game I’ve never played even for a few minutes before and is a full on RPG from Todd Porter. The manual is getting on for as large as the one in Omega at around 160 pages and the game looks very big and complex which is probably why I haven’t got round to starting it for a few days.  For such a huge manual there isn’t that much backstory and its mostly about the gameplay mechanics. The level of complexity is a bit overwhelming, frankly. The manual mentions that the game was designed to be modular with plug in addons. These never got made though as the game didn’t sell that well.

On starting the game there is a nice animated intro with a knight in a thunderstorm gradually getting nearer as it flicks between credit screens.

Theres no storyline given as such in the intro which is a bit surprising. The manual gives you a bit of history about the kingdom and mentions that monsters are beginning to reappear and knights of legend are needed but thats about it. Theres no real clue as to where the game will go so its starting out pretty open ended.

Character creation gives so many options for races and professions, its hard to know what to pick. I’ve attempted to get a good range of characters. You have a party size of 6. You start the game out in a pub with the one character, who can then recruit any others you have created from the same pub. The graphics are really nice for EGA. You get pictures of everyone you talk to, any buildings before you enter. The interface is mouse driven using icons at the bottom of the screen.

I gather my party and head out for a look around. The world graphics don’t scroll smoothly, its back to one tile at a time like Ultima. They look great though for the time. You can wander to all the houses in the village and talk to people. You can just chitchat or use keywords (typed in) to get clues. At this stage, I’m just trying to get a feel for the game so I head out of town to find a fight

When you get out of town, the map switches scale. Your party here is represented by a small dot that moves a pixel at a time. You automatically camp at night, which since it takes days to get anywhere is a good thing.

This is my party as it started out. They aren’t wearing much so I’ll have to do something about that some time.

It takes a while but I eventually run into an orc who promptly slaughters me so I read the combat bit of the manual and start again. You can only save in this game by sleeping in a pub (which costs money). Curiously you have to pay and save each party member individually, which gives me an idea. I figure you can give loads of good equipment to a dummy party member, save him, give his equipment to someone else, sell it, save the guy with the money and repeat. This works fine giving me a great starting point to the game and an infinite supply of cash. When I get some decent artifacts I’ll be able to duplicate them in the same manner.

I get myself about 30000 cash in this way, buy some armor for my frontline fighters and set out to do things properly this time.

I talk to everyone in the town. The mayor won’t talk to me until I know the guilds. Elsewhere Stephanie tells me about a missing gavel stolen by ruffians and gives me a quest to get it back. I don’t have any details of where to go though.

Asking around about ruffians gets me a clue from the blacksmith. The people in the towns all stay indoors all the time as far as I can tell. You have to go into their house to talk to them – no one is on the streets at least yet.

I head back out to have a go at this quest and bump into a party of six orcs. I’m a bit better equiped to deal with them this time. The combat system is very very complicated. For example to attack an orc with my axe I have to choose to attack, then choose direction, then choose what type of blow, then choose part of the orc to aim at, then choose my dodging strategy, then approve it. I may get quicker when I get used to the system but this one battle took 10 minutes.

It uses a turn based system, where you decide actions then they are carried out one by one according to speed. If the orc moves before you strike then you miss it unless you were aiming at the empty square. One of the stats used is foresight which allegedly will give me a clue of where it will move if I get it high enough.

All actions cause fatigue which can make you collapse it seems and reduce your chances of hitting or dodging.

I beat them in the end and theres a nice graphic to show it.

Its back to the town to try and heal now. At the local abbey the monks help me out for a price.

I’ve not really even got started in this game but I’ve spent a few hours on it with the manual and just walking about. It’s pretty difficult to get started when the mechanics of the gameplay are so difficult to get to grips with. I’ve heard people describe this as their favourite RPG of all time – I’m undecided at the moment. If I get into it, I could see me liking this game. If I don’t the size and speed of it could make me hate every minute. From what I’ve seen there are a couple of weeks worth of gaming here.

Day 35

Posted on by
Reply

I finished up Omega without any trouble last night. I just modified my tank to turn left 3 when it hit the edge of the map so that it ended up diagonally crossing the middle. This made the battles much faster and I beat the Ogre on my first attempt. There’s no cutscene or anything to mark the end of the game beyond the usual certificate and a final rank of Omega.

There is still plenty of room to improve my tank and the game could be played long beyond this point but this is good enough for me. All in all this was a pretty impressive game, if you ever fancied programming an A.I. its well worth a look. Next up: Knights Of Legend

Day 34 – Omega

Posted on by
Reply

Omega is a very different game to anything else Origin has ever produced. In this game you must design the ultimate tank choosing the components and programming the A.I. Your tank then goes up against a predesigned tank and if you win 7 out of 10 you get promoted and get more money to improve your tank. The manual for this game is huge – 300 pages+ I would guess but the page numbering makes no sense.

You can’t play the game without reading most of it either. That would alienate most people straight off I would have thought but pc gaming was very different back in the 80’s. It really shows how much the industry has changed that a major publisher would release a game like this.

On starting the game you get a nicely animated introduction and some unncessary eye scanning effects. These are better than anything I’ve seen in an Origin game to date – with a game like this they probably felt the need to put the effort in since you would be staring at code for most of it.

The game uses a mouse driven interface, which works well. You can choose from a huge variety of tanks and components although most are too expensive at this stage. To start with I just use a sample A.I. from the manual.

To advance in the game you have to run clearance tests against a pre-designed tank. If you win 7 out of 10 you get a promotion and more money for your tank. The A.I. from the manual is good enough to beat the first tank. Things get trickier after that.

Most of the tank fights seem to end up in slugging matches with both standing still and shooting each other. My first minor A.I. change is to fire in the same place 6 times without bothering to scan for the enemy tanks position. This gives me a clear speed advantage and gets me through the next couple of levels.

At this point my speed advantage vanishes as the other tank has an upgrade which enables it to lock its scanner onto me and fire without scanning again. To counteract this I have to purchase a jammer which removes this lock and then add the appropriate code into the A.I. Again this gets me through a few more levels.

My next major problem is a tank which backs away to repair, then waits for me to come onto it and shoots me as soon as I’m in range. This one is seriously annoying. My strategy here is to not move if the enemy is within a range of 10 so that he always comes onto me instead. This is a slow process, so I just leave it running but when I get back to my PC I’ve won 9 out of 10.

The next battle is up against an Ogre tank (a clear reference to the game). I’m struggling to find it with my A.I. and tend to end up following the edges of the screen around. When I do find it, I usually win so if I improve my path finding to go to the middle of the map, I think I can beat it but this will have to wait till tommorow.

All the programming is a bit too much like the day job for my liking but this is a pretty impressive game and really would teach the fundamentals to someone who has never programmed before. You can battle friends tanks or there was BBS support as well. You can even design teams of tanks that can talk to each other. The options really are endless if you wanted to carry on with this game. From my point of view, I’m just trying to get to the top level of promotion and move onto the next game. I’ve no idea what the top level is but I expect that the ogre I’m fighting is the toughest opponent and I’ll win the game if I beat it.

Day 33

Posted on by
Reply

Irial tells me I have to kill the evil clerics off but will first need to fetch the chime from the blasted spot so I can get into the temple. The map has a big crater on it so I head back there with the key he’s given me to get in.

Sure enough, theres a entrance in the middle of the crater. This takes me into an underground section which plays pretty much exactly like the ruins. Its a bit easier this time thankfully.

Eventually I get to the throne and find the chime. I pick it up and get out as fast as possible. The monks are at a temple right on one edge of the map. I head for the nearest town to save and trek off to find the temple.

The temples not too hard to find as when I get near there are clerics wandering about. I avoid these and head into the temple. I walk up to the head villain and talk about the weather. At this point I’m killed instantly and have to walk back again.

A more subtle approach is obviously required. An exploration of the temple reveals a dungeon underground with a prisoner who tells me how to kill the abbot. Walking round the temple is extremely difficult and skeletons keep coming out of the ground and blocking the path. If my health gets low I head back outside and kill thieves until I get enough potions to get my health back. The crystal sphere to kill the abbot is under his bed upstairs. I grab it then head for the abbot.

I use the sphere and the abott dies instantly. I then pick up the kings medallion and discover than I am the king after all.

The adlib music kicks back in for the endgame. All the screens from the end are shown here.




And thats it. This wasn’t a great game but it was also short which stopped me getting too bored or frustrated with it. I was getting fed up of the 5 minute walk to the temple at the end of the game every time I died – much more of that would get very annoying. The storyline was pitiful if I’m honest and the gameplay very simplistic. Its saved by being technically impressive (at least to someone who has played nothing but 80’s games for the last 2 months).

Next: Omega

Day 32 – Times Of Lore

Posted on by
6

Times of Lore was Chris Roberts first game for Origin before he went on to create the hugely successful Wing Commander franchise. Its described as an action RPG although I’m not sure its really a true RPG. It was released on a whole string of systems but I’m sticking with DOS versions of all games where possible from now on. 


On loading the game the first thing thats noticeable is thats noticeable is that there is soundcard support for the first time in an Origin game. I get the feeling it was probably tacked on as an afterthought as its only available on the title screen and introduction (+ maybe the end sequence?). The title screen doesnt do much yet the music on it goes on for around 5-10 minutes – if this track was just looped in the game it would have helped the atmosphere a bit but maybe there were performance issues. The game only supports CMS and adlib so there is no MT-32 sound.

The games introduction is similar in style to Ultima 5 with small pictures and loads of text. Each screen of text has a unique bit of music for it. There really is a lot of music for this game considering you play most of it in silence. The plot is nothing special and basically boils down to the king and infant child going on a holiday and vanishing. You have to help find the 3 magic artifacts used to govern the kingdom and restore him to the throne. Since the king vanished, chaos has returned to the land (i.e. you will have to kill monsters).

You have a choice of 3 characters. I can’t honestly say how they affect gameplay but I chose the knight. There are no character stats in the game, or levelling up unless they are hidden. I wouldn’t really call this an RPG without some stats, its more of an action adventure.

Once I’ve chosen my character the game proper starts and the adlib sound stops. Despite the lack of sound first impressions here are pretty good. The engine is a huge step up from Ultima 5. Scrolling is now smooth, the roof pops off a building when you enter it. There is an isometic effect also on all the buildings. The game has mouse control although its fairly awful as it doesn’t use a pointer. Its easiest by far to stick to the keyboard. The icons at the bottom of the screen represent all the actions and correspond to the function keys. You use the cursors to walk about, return to attack and thats about all the keys you need. Again this is a huge improvement on Ultimas attempts to use every single key on the keyboard.

I walk downstairs and get my first mission from an old man to find the seeing stones which were apparently stolen on the road to the north. Conversations use keywords but they are selected off a menu as you learn them. The conversations are much more limited than Ultima 5 but the system used is more advanced.

I buy some food at the bar, chat to a couple of people and then head out north to find these stones.  As soon as I get at of town I start getting attacked. Combat pretty much consists of walking up to the enemy and pressing return. Enemies usually die in 1 hit so its very quick. This is a good job as the number of monsters is fairly absurd. 

I bump into this woodcutter who tells me that the orcs have a camp up ahead – this seems a likely place to find the stones so I head there.

After trailing through the bushes for 5 mins and killing a couple of dozen monsters I find the orc camp. A load of orcs set on me but they die off pretty quick. Monsters in this game when killed drop one item (usually). There are two colours of scrolls (freeze and kill all monsters) and two potions (restore some health, all health) + they can drop food and money. Regarding the scrolls and potions – they never drop one if you already hold the same one. Its usually best not to hold off using them for this reason as you get more chance to pick another up. One of the monsters drops an urn containing the stones so I pick it up and head back to the inn.

Back at the inn I get a hint about a magic axe. Before I go any further I travel to the next town South to try to find it.

It doesn’t take much seeking out and I buy it for 72 gold. This isn’t much considering how many bags of gold I’ve been picking up.

Back at the tavern I give the urn to the old man and he sends me off to see the regent.

The castle which had been locked up, is now open and surprise surprise the king gives me another quest. Aparently the tablet of truth is being held in another castle and I have to fetch it.

A long trek across the length of the map later I get the right town. The castle is locked up but I ask around and get hints about a secret entrance.

The entrance turns out to be in the pubs cellar. I head down the stairs, walk into a lever on the wall and head down again.

The cellars aren’t too big so I find the tablet quickly enough, although I do have to avoid a load of guards on the way. When I take the tablet it talks to me, I ask about the high king and a message appears on it saying the king was assassinated and to look for the assassin in Lankwell.

Lankwell is of course on the other side of the map, but I take a shortcut through the desert.

I ask around and get put on the trail of the assassin who is called the Black Asp. He’s in a small hut just out of town – when I find him he gives me a signed confession to take to the guy I stole the tablet from so its another trek across the map.

The warden isn’t too pleased to see me but as soon as I give him the scroll I get free access to the castle and he asks me to catch someone who has been spying at the castle. I ask around town and get told that a guard sneaks around every night, I wait around the castle until sunset, find and kill the guard, grab a note off the corpse then head back up to see the warden.

He doesn’t seem all that interested and tells me instead of some plot by a load of dark clerics and how we must find the kings offspring. I’d be surprised if that doesn’t turn out to me in the end of the game but we’ll see. Via another side quest to rescue a child I get pointed in the direction of the royal wizard Irial.

Before we get on with saving the kingdom Irial tells me to prove myself by killing a lyche in a ruined temple in the middle of desert. I have to get some holy water to kill it though which means another trek across the map. While I’m in the area I take a trip to Treela first to seek out some magic boots I’ve heard about. I buy these from the tavern. They do speed me up a bit so I can now run from battles. The number of monsters by now is just getting silly so this really helps.

A monk sells me the holy water so its off to the temple to kill a lyche.

The temple takes a bit of finding as its not really where it says it is on the games map but I get there in the end. This is by far the trickiest part of the game so far. The monsters are constant and the temple is maze like. I have to find and step on floor switches to open doors or teleport around. None of the monsters in here drop potions which makes life difficult. I took about 10 attempts to finish this. Since you can only save the game by sleeping at taverns this was a bit of a pain, having to walk back each time.

I get the lyche in the end though. He just sits on the throne ignoring me so I use the holy water and he dies leaving behind a red potion which I grab.

 The next job is to go back to Irial and see where he sends me next. I’ve got a feeling there isn’t much of this game left – I seem to have been to nearly everywhere on the map already. I’m enjoying the game for all that – its pretty easy and simplistic but after Ultima 5 thats not a bad thing.