My contribution to the TES #Arena birthday posts: this scattering of documents I still have from my own copy. While the Tamriel holiday calendar is fun, my favourite item is the addendum letter, which acknowledges there "may still be some bugs lurking", admits some classes are weak but claims this won't be a problem if you just git gud, and signs off with "Journey well, and peace be with you."
which, now that I think of it, would be an ideal way to start ending all my e-mails
Where it all began, 30 years ago - The Elder Scrolls, Chapter One: The Arena.
Happy 30th anniversary, Elder Scrolls! Your first-ever game; how far you've come!
Starting life as a gladiatorial game with the world crafted in TTRPG sessions, 'Arena' was retconned as the scope of the game expanded into a full blown open-world CRPG to refer to the nickname that the denizens of war-torn Tamriel gave to their world.
Procedural generation allowed for travel and adventuring across the whole of Tamriel with hundreds of settlements and dungeons to visit and explore. And like Ultima Online, Arena eshewed party based RPGing in favour of going solo.
Gazers! These ocular floating spellcasters (who are definitely not beholders) rank among the most adorable of all long-standing #Ultima enemies. Here's four watchful variations, from Ultima IV, Ultima VII, Underworld, and Underworld II, all exported from my work-in-progress Fraznium viewer.
Anvil of Dawn's box blurb boasts that monsters "all but lunge out at you in attack", and they mean it! Every enemy sprite has a single dramatic striking frame that closes the distance, whether it be by claw, sword, or eldritch appendage. Here are four beasts - the Wyvern, the Blood Spawn, the Cacofiend, and the Juggernaut - doing their best to break through your screen.
While this "lunging" flourish was often seen in other grid-based 2D crawlers, Anvil was unique in being able to push its animations to such full-screen extremes. Released in late '95, it required a 486DX/33 - the sort of system that could power improbable wonders like System Shock or Magic Carpet 2 - and unlike Interplay's similarly audacious Stonekeep, couldn't even claim to have cutting edge full-motion-video. Instead, DreamForge put all of that extra power into showing off the best sprite work from the studio's fine career.
It's not ordinarily possible to view the Anvil of Dawn map in its entirety, as the game only runs at 320x200 resolution. But my sprite viewer renders the world of Tempest as a single "high-res" image, and the result is lovely.
💾 NEW PODCAST!💾 A while ago we looked at The Secret of Donkey Island (yes with a D).
This 1994 parody game made by two teenagers from Czech Republic became a surprise local hit. Now, almost 30 years later, an English translation has been made and it's available for free!
If that's not a great reason to check this out now, we don't know what is.
I'm looking for pixel artists and map designers for my DOS JRPG game Princess Fighter. The game will be freeware, so I can't offer any monetary compensation.
Last week of my vacation. I made a little racing game for real-mode DOS that uses ray casting for rendering. There’s not a lot of game logic, except for lap timing and the tiles next to the walls have very high friction.
The tracks are procedurally generated. You can select one from the command line. (I love that concept very much.)
But … oh my goodness, the performance? The video was made on my Pentium 133, which is very powerful for the DOS era. And yet, it barely makes it above 25 FPS. I already used a couple of tricks (no floating point in some parts, try to keep an eye on cache locality, …) and I’ve passed on texturing the floor. The hot code paths are those that copy data in memory, like reading a pixel value for a texture and then copying it to the VGA buffer.
I’ve learned to appreciate games like Duke Nukem 3D a lot more now – how on earth can they be so fast? 🤯 I’ve got some homework to do …
There are (at least) three variations of the Might & Magic III, IV, and V paper maps: large ones from the original games, smaller ones from the Might & Magic Trilogy compilation, and even smaller ones from the Might & Magic VI collector's edition.
Which means that you can stack them to create a vibrant psychedelic portal!
Ultima: you need to embody the Virtues so that you may become a champion against tyranny
Wizardry: you need to resolve alien conflicts so that you may ascend to godhood
Might & Magic:
💾 NEW PODCAST!💾 Back in August (welp) we played Jazz Jackrabbit (Epic MegaGames, 1994), the first game featuring the cartoon bunny hero that became a PC gaming mascot.
This game is a technological marvel no doubt, but is it fun to play?