Re: [stella] RPG progress

[Paul Slocum <paul-stella@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> I think you can make do with a solid background.  It's already green, 
> which implies grass.

I've attached a version without the grass.  Now that I'm looking at it, I 
kinda miss the grass.  Gives it a little more of an authentic RPG 
look.  See what you guys think.

I also added a mock inventory screen you can get to by pressing Game 
Select.  Press Reset to get back to the map.

> The flicker rate looks acceptable to me.

It's not too bad.  Having 8x12 tiles (versus the original 8x6 text in 
Stellar Track/Basic) makes it easier to design tiles in a way that reduce 
flicker (avoiding lots of single pixel horizontal lines).  And the 
non-flickering blocks of playfield color on some tiles make it look more 
solid.  I'm going to try to not have any other part of the game that 
flickers except the map.

> Have you thought about secondary kernels for zoomed in action like 
> Intellivision AD&D?

The battles will require the display of more text for stats and stuff, and 
that takes RAM.  I don't think I'll be able to display a map and display 
text and keep track of the stuff for the battle.  But I'm planning a decent 
battle system that will employ a little more strategy than just "attacking" 
each time.  And I want to make it so you can be setting up your next move 
in battle WHILE you're waiting for the results of your last move and 
waiting for the computer to finish its turn.

> You only need 8x8 for Archon, but there would be a problem getting the 
> pieces to be different colors for each side, right?

You could just color one player's set of pieces and not shade the other's.

> How big can you make this game ultimately?

We're planning on making it 64k.  I think it will be a decent sized game, 
comparable to early computer RPGs.  The RPG may fit in 32k, but we're 
planning on including a few mini-games which will definitely push it over 
32k.  We're thinking we might use whatever's left over for some audio 
samples and/or some nice hi-res pictures for cut-scenes.

> And how do you plan on handling state management of the monsters?  Once 
> you kill a monster you need to keep track of whether it's live or dead, right?

Monster frequency/difficulty will be set in zones.  I'm planning on keeping 
track of the last several zones where you already fought monsters so you 
won't immediately have to fight anything there again.  If I set aside a few 
bytes for this, at 1 byte per zone it's pretty easy on RAM.  And zones will 
just determine the probability that you have an encounter, so passing 
through a monster zone doesn't necessarily mean you'll have an 
encounter.  I think if it's balanced well, it won't be too much of an 
annoyance.

-paul

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