Deathlord Relorded!

[rikkles]

10 years later... I'm working on "Deathlord relorded".

 

[index.php]

https://rikkles.itch.io/deathlord-relorded

---=== Deathlord Relorded ===---

A combination of Ultima and Wizardry, Deathlord was first released for the Apple 2 and C64 platforms in 1987. It is notorious for being the most difficult and sadistic RPG ever created, dwarfing even Wizardry 4. In this reworking of the game, most of the frustrating aspects have been smoothed out, the game now plays in 1920x1080 resolution with a massive increase in map visibility, much nicer visuals, etc..

Except for the removal of permadeath, the difficulty remains. The dungeon puzzles are still the same, and if you're able to get through the 16th level of dungeon Telegrond you can consider yourself a true master of RPGs.

The original code still runs completely untouched, so you are guaranteed to get the exact same behavior by monsters and other NPCs as the original game. You can in fact toggle the original interface from 1987 by pressing `F11` at any time.

 

[rikkles]

Deathlord Relorded has just been released. It’s free on itch:
https://rikkles.itch.io/deathlord-relorded

The source code is also available on github.

Warning: while Deatlord Relorded improves significantly the Deathlord experience, anyone not comfortable with dying a lot in unforgiving dungeons should be careful.
It’s still Deathlord. The one and only.

 

[octavius]

 

[Rincewind]

This is excellent news, thank you very much for this!

The new tileset looks amazing! When I'll get to Deathlord one day, I'll definitely play this version.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Nice, I was unable to play the original Deathlord since the disks images I found online seemed to be corrupted, so this interests me. Unfortunately this doesn't look very faithful:

REQUIREMENTS: Windows 10, minimum resolution 1920x1080

the game now plays in 1920x1080 resolution with a massive increase in map visibility

I hope they add an option to play in the original resolution.

 

[Grauken]

Nice, I was unable to play the original Deathlord since the disks images I found online seemed to be corrupted, so this interests me. Unfortunately this doesn't look very faithful:

REQUIREMENTS: Windows 10, minimum resolution 1920x1080

the game now plays in 1920x1080 resolution with a massive increase in map visibility

I hope they add an option to play in the original resolution.

You can always boot it up in an emulator without these bells and whistles

 

[rikkles]

The key improvements over the original that will make the game less difficult are:

• Search for hidden doors and pits always works (used to be 35-60%)
  
• No perma-death.
• Automapping
• Much larger viewport
• No level drain!

but the dungeons are so big and tricky that you’ll still get ground to dust if you’re not really good at dungeoning. And without an exit spell you always have to fight your way out!

 

[rikkles]

I hope they add an option to play in the original resolution.

press F11 at any time to play with the original user interface.

or as Grauken says, load up the images in your favorite emulator if you want the real original without the new rules. The included images are true Apple 2 originals retrieved by Antoine Vignau via flux readings from An Applesauce.

 

[catfood]

Boomer game from the early 1950's requires Win 10 to play. Whatever dude.

 

[Rincewind]

Boomer game from the early 1950's requires Win 10 to play. Whatever dude.

1985 1987, to be exact.

I don't know what a "boomer game" is.

Why should he spend any effort and energy in making his program compatible with earlier Windows versions if at least 90% of people are on Win 10+ already? (source)
Even commercial companies don't do that if it's not worth it, so why exactly should a single person do that in his *hobby project* he's working on in his *spare time*?

 

[Crispy]

It's rare that we get to see a 2020 newfag tell some 2008 oldfag to go fuck himself in such a justified and precise fashion, so well done, Rincewind.

 

[Rincewind]

It's rare that we get to see a 2020 newfag tell some 2008 oldfag to go fuck himself in such a justified and precise fashion, so well done, Rincewind.

Glad to be of service.

 

[rikkles]

Rincewind, thank you for a precise and clear response that I would have struggled to craft.

The only nitpick I would have is that Deathlord is 1987, not 1985.

And for you guys with technical chops, being able to use DX12 allowed me to be very low level in my code and I managed to squeeze quite a bit of performance. The game uses 0.6% of CPU resources on my machine, and a frame calculates in 1.3ms.

 

[Alex]

I hope they add an option to play in the original resolution.

press F11 at any time to play with the original user interface.

or as Grauken says, load up the images in your favorite emulator if you want the real original without the new rules. The included images are true Apple 2 originals retrieved by Antoine Vignau via flux readings from An Applesauce.

Thanks for the hard work, rikkles. But if I may ask, why not allow the new difficulty rules to be optional? I understand that other remakes (like the one of x-com and the one of Daggerfall) usually put such different rules as options or mods. I think it might be a way to make your own work even better.

 

[rikkles]

Thanks for the hard work, rikkles. But if I may ask, why not allow the new difficulty rules to be optional? I understand that other remakes (like the one of x-com and the one of Daggerfall) usually put such different rules as options or mods. I think it might be a way to make your own work even better.

Good question, Alex. The completely new UI makes it automatically a different experience. You get a lot more information, so the original game is not original any more anyway.
Hence, I can't "just" improve the visuals and keep the old rules. You'd still get trolls clamoring that it's not the "original" experience, etc... etc...

So I decided that there would be 3 options:

1- Play the original. The images are in the download. Run them under AppleWin and play the original.
2- Play with the new rules but the old UI. When you launch the game and get into the map, press `F11` and you get the old UI.
3- Play 100% relorded.

Also note that you absolutely can switch between playing the original under AppleWin and Relorded. Relorded will load the images as-is and run your original game perfectly with the new rules and UI.

Edit: In any case, my choice is to make you play the relorded game the way I decided I want it to be played. If you're unhappy with my decision, fork the game on github and make your own rules.

 

[Sotomonte]

I have a little graphic issue... basically I see a big black block around the "party":

... and another question: is it possible to play this "reloaded" versión in AppleWin directly (without pass through the personalized emulator that come with this version)?

 

[rikkles]

I have a little graphic issue... basically I see a big black block around the "party":

... and another question: is it possible to play this "reloaded" versión in AppleWin directly (without pass through the personalized emulator that come with this version)?

That is really weird. What is your setup? It makes no sense to have this rectangle. What version are you using? I just pushed a 1.0.0.1, you could always try this but I am really surprised. I have no idea how the code could generate this kind of black rectangle.

You can absolutely use AppleWin to play the original game. The images are in the /Images folder. But you won’t get the new rules. If at any time you want to play DLRL you can also ise those same images and continue where you left off.

 

[rikkles]

I have a little graphic issue... basically I see a big black block around the "party":

also I see that player 4 in your party, the ryoshi, doesn’t have a portrait. What race/class/gender combo is it? I thought I’d accounted for all of them in the portraits files.

 

[Sotomonte]

That is really weird. What is your setup? It makes no sense to have this rectangle. What version are you using? I just pushed a 1.0.0.1, you could always try this but I am really surprised. I have no idea how the code could generate this kind of black rectangle.

I am using the last version (1.0.0.1). My setup is windows 10 64 bits, with a Radeon RX 590 (last drivers) and a Ryzen 7 3700x

also I see that player 4 in your party, the ryoshi, doesn’t have a portrait. What race/class/gender combo is it? I thought I’d accounted for all of them in the portraits files.

This is:

 

[rikkles]

This is so weird. The official Deathlord documentation as well as the FAQs state that the Gnome Ryoshi is not a possible combo. So they're both totally wrong. Good to know!
I'll update the portraits accordingly. Thank you. (incidentally, the original docs are wrong in so many places it's not funny)

I own a both an Intel+Nvidia and AMD Ryzen+Radeon and both are fine using Win10 Pro 21H2 64 bits. If you toggle the original video via `F11`, does it overwrite the black rectangle and show normally?

 

[Sotomonte]

If I use the original graphics via F11 the game looks totally fine... but in the background you can still see the "black rectangle":

 

[rikkles]

I just pushed 1.0.0.1a which adds the gnome+ranger portraits.
As for dark rectangle, I need to research this more. It's some kind of banding, and it only happens on the map tiles area.

I just realized that itch.io's update system will overwrite "saved games" (which in this case are the complete game images). I think I'm going to have to change the code to copy the game images to a user folder if they don't exist, then use those. And completely do away with image selection etc... leave it to the user to have the exact names necessary for loading.
If you're going to upgrade to 1.0.0.1a, please FIRST COPY THE IMAGES OUT OF THE GAME DIRECTORY. Then do the upgrade and copy them back. I'll have to see how to make it easier for users. It's always a big issue with emulation-based games where the saved data is part of the code.

EDIT: It looks like Itch will create a brand new directory for new versions. I uploaded 1.0.0.2 to test, and it put it in a totally different directory. That's actually very good and avoids a save game overwrite.

 

[Sotomonte]

I have discovered one thing... if when entering a town I use the Relorder>Map>Display Centered Full option there are certain areas where artifacts do not appear (outside the towns it is an orgy of black rectangles):

In case it helps you to locate the problem

 

[rikkles]

In the same Relorded menu, if you remove fog of war, does it still show black rectangles?
If not, then it's a line of sight calculation thing that seems to return weird artifacts in your case, probably because of floating point arithmetic. It would allow me to work on different algorithms and give you another executable to test.