The Prior Game

The game’s full title is:

“Realms of Antiquity: The Shattered Crown“

The design has been inspired by some particular games:

  • Ultima
    • (in particular Ultima IV and Ultima V)
  • Tunnels of Doom
  • Legends (and by extension Phantasie)
  • Avernum

Features:

  • A party of up to four characters
    • Characters can be created at the start
    • Characters can be found in game as well
  • Four primary attributes
    • Used to determine secondary attributes and other factors
    • Mostly static, can be raised in game with certain items
  • Two secondary attributes
    • Health (your basic hit point)
    • Stamina (energy for combat, spells, etc)
  • Nine character classes
    • Classic fighter, wizard and rogue from Tunnels of Doom
    • Hero class available for players who start with a party of one
  • Eight schools of magic
    • 60 different spells
  • 250+ different items
  • Characters can level up to 16 in game
    • Experience gained from both questing and monster slaying
  • Scrolling maps
    • Line-of-sight blocking
    • Elevation
    • Light
    • Wrapping and edged maps
    • Slanted maps
  • High-color graphics
    • For the TI, this is “bitmap mode” which permits 2 colors for every row of 8 pixels in a character
  • Equipment
    • Players can equip a variety of items
      • Melee weapons
      • Ranged weapons/ammo
      • Off-hand items like shields and “foci”, rogues can use weapons in the offhand
      • Armor
      • Spellbook
      • Trinkets
  • Inventory
    • Each character has a backpack capable of 10 item capacity
  • Tactical Combat
    • Turn-based
    • Battlemaps generated randomly for every combat
    • Melee
      • Thrown weapons
      • Reach weapons
    • Ranged
      • Several different forms of weapon types and ammunition
      • Wands are “infinite” use
    • Spells
      • Can be targeted in multiple ways
        • On single units
        • On locations
        • On multiple units
    • Summoned creatures
    • 225+ monsters
      • Multiple monster types per battle possible
      • Some are “bosses”, double-sized
      • Monsters can have ranged attack and “special attacks”
    • Treasure
      • Only intelligent monsters have coins and items
      • Items are in chests which must be checked for traps

Requirements:

  • A Windows PC (for the provided Classic99 implementation)
  • A modern PC running a A TI-99/4a emulator capable of SAMS support:
    • Classic99
    • MAME
    • PC99
    • JS99er
    • V9T9 (? Need to verify SAMS support)
  • A TI-99/4a home computer with the following:
    • One of the three:
      • Extended BASIC, Editor/Assembler, or TI Writer cartridge
      • FinalGROM99 to support a custom cartridge ROM image
      • Or use a provided cartridge
    • SAMS memory system with at least 256KB of RAM
    • Disk system capable of at least 180K of space per disk
      • TIPI compatible
    • Color monitor
      • You STILL have a monochrome?! It’s the 21st century…