Cleveland Mark Blakemore
Golden Era Games
Almost a mini-Ultima in just under 16K of Basic and assembly. The world was gigantic and the simple interface (mouse cursor driven icons) belied a deep RPG. Unlike Ultima, the entire world was contained in memory (just like Grimoire) and there were no loading scenes or delays going from one area to another. Using a custom character set and the hidden 8K beneath the ROM for the map.
One thing I regret leaving out is some kind of level advancement. You do get new magic spells with time by buying them. In some ways the coins double as "Experience" points like in real tabletop D&D.
I believe the "MELEE" title screen color-cycled the letters. I can't remember. I used to spend some time on designing cool "Attract modes" even for the smallest games on the C-64. I like grabbing the player as soon as the title screen appeared.
I think I designed a unique RLE format to crush the necessary graphics data down to a fraction of what was required by the colossal tile map so it was quite compact. I was getting to be a pretty decent PAL assembly coder just before the C64 began to die as a games machine.
I could be wrong but I think as was the style in those days, the NPCs were static but the monsters popped up around you or in front of you.
I think a demon was ruling over the city clandestinely and we had to find him, penetrate the depths of his dungeon and destroy him. I think a full playthrough took at least a couple hours.
Notice all the color coding in the text. Like ANSI or the VT-100, the C64 permitted you to embed color changes as special control characters in text.
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