Deathlord Relorded!

[index.php]

Version 1.0.5: 1366x768 screens​

3 hours ago by Rikkles (@RikRetro)

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I've added "support" to use 1366x768 screens (cheaper laptops) for those of you who want to play this on the go. The game scales down the interface to the smaller screen, so some text is barely readable but it's playable. Doing anything better to support smaller screens would require me to rewrite the whole interface, and I don't have the time for it currently.

 

[rikkles]

Yes, this is really just a very quick hack to shrink the output to 1366x768, which does make the small text difficult to read. I'm sorry I can't do much better than this because a proper design for a smaller screen would require a ton of UI work on the character information screens, and would probably necessitate more popup windows.

EDIT: Which I just realized breaks the mouse-based inventory window, so I need to fix that ASAP.
EDIT2: Fixed in 1.0.5.1, should be up in minutes on itch.

 

[index.php]

 

[rikkles]

Yep. A very small update but this was long overdue. FYI the reason why it wasn’t showing the camping animation is that camping is handled uniquely, like being on a boat or in a pit. I hadn’t noticed that. The variable is 0 for normal, 1 for boat, 2 for pit and 3 for camping.

Also it was reported that the spell Dokumo which instakills all enemies doesn’t give XP. This is correct and that is the original behavior. I did not attempt to modify it because I believe it works as originally intended, to reduce the player’s reliance on this spell (same as forcing all enemies to flee).

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

You should provide a cmake file or something. At least the project file (not the sln) so i can generate one myself. I don't have a windows system to run visual studio. Wanted to build it on linux.

 

[rikkles]

I have no idea how to build a DirectX12 game on linux. Is that even feasible? Can’t you generate a cmake file from the existing project file?

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

I have no idea how to build a DirectX12 game on linux. Is that even feasible? Can’t you generate a cmake file from the existing project file?

I have no idea how to build a DirectX12 game on linux. Is that even feasible? Can’t you generate a cmake file from the existing project file?

Oh actually if it's not opengl then forget about it. Someone has to implement vulkan or opengl functionality into the existing code base, and judging from what you said, you don't have an interface separation to make that easy. I'm not willing to do that at this point.

As for the vs project, yes it's possible to do it, but not with the .sln file. There is another project file, .vcprojx or something like that which is required.

 

[rikkles]

The project file is within the sln solution folder. But beyond Windows-only DX12 calls, you have an embedded 6502 emulation core and a ton of Windows-only idiosyncracies from the AppleWin codebase.

The DX calls are pretty simple because my engine is tiny, so that’s less of an issue than the 6502 stuff I think. I do have one interface, which is DirectXTK, a thin wrapper over some DX12 basic stuff like printing strings. There are only a couple of very basic HLSL shaders, and I use a grand total of 3 screen buffers x 2 (double buffering).

The most difficult work was to learn DX12. I should probably have learned DX11 instead. The second, and most time consuming work, was to disassemble all that 6502 game logic to determine the where and how to hook into it for bug fixes and UI updates. That’s where Qkumba’s help was invaluable, and I turned to BillG (who also did the Nox Archaist graphics) for new tiles.

Fun project.

 

[octavius]

Any options/patches/mods that translate the Japanes names of races and classes (except the well known ones Ninja, Samurai, Ronin) to English?
Sorry if this has been asked and answered before.

 

[rikkles]

I have the data in the code. I don’t remember if I created a toggle to show the english names. Let me see what I can do.

 

[rogueknight333]

Any options/patches/mods that translate the Japanes names of races and classes (except the well known ones Ninja, Samurai, Ronin) to English?
Sorry if this has been asked and answered before.

I do not know what can be done in game, but if you just want a reference:

Warrior Classes:

Senshi=Fighter
Kichigai=Berserker
Kishi=Paladin
Ronin=Blackguard
Yabanjin=Barbarian
Ryoshi=Ranger
Samurai=Samurai

Roguish Classes:

Yakuza=Thief
Ansatsusha=Assassin
Shukenja=Monk
Ninja=Ninja

Casters:

Shisai=Cleric
Shizen=Druid
Genkai=Illusionist Wizard
Mahoutsukai=Evoker Wizard

(Note that Ryoshi have a limited ability to cast Shizen spells, and Kishi, Ronin and Shukenja have a limited ability to cast Shisai spells).

And finally:

Kosaku=Peasant

(The default class if your random stats are too bad to qualify for any actual adventuring class)

Races:

Human=Human
Toshi=Elf
Nintoshi=Half-elf
Kobito=Dwarf
Gnome=Gnome
Obake=Halfling
Troll=Troll
Ogre=Ogre

Translation is into D&Dish equivalents based on knowledge of class/race capabilities from playing the game and as described in the original manual, not on any knowledge of Japanese.

 

[rikkles]

My own existing translations in-game are the same as yours except that I have the ronin as dark knight instead of blackguard, and mahotsukai as magician instead of evoker wizard.

I’ll need another day to have access to my computer to see how to expose that functionality. But it shouldn’t be too difficult.

 

[rikkles]

Alright so I went and did a hack on a hack, and now you can dynamically switch from fake japanese to english.
However at party creation there's no impact, I haven't touched that part of the UI except to allow for autoroll.

This should come out soonish in version 1.0.7.

 

[GaelicVigil]

I used to play Deathlord on my C64. Just booting the game up took 20 minutes. Changing disks (which happened often) took 5 minutes. I'm not exaggerating those times at all. Many traps and secrets were practically impossible to discover because of arbitrary search percentages.

But this was a game that I couldn't put down because I wanted to see the massive world the box said existed.

 

[rikkles]

I used to play Deathlord on my C64. Just booting the game up took 20 minutes. Changing disks (which happened often) took 5 minutes. I'm not exaggerating those times at all. Many traps and secrets were practically impossible to discover because of arbitrary search percentages.

But this was a game that I couldn't put down because I wanted to see the massive world the box said existed.

On the Apple 2 with the floppies it was obviously much faster than that, but still quite painful when you died and had to reboot.
You hit the nail on the head regarding the one absolute most sadistic feature of Deathlord (there are many, but this is the worst): the search percentages. You can read all about the logic for random checks in Deathlord in the DLRL wiki I wrote on github to go along with my code changes.
For searching, for example, these were your percentages:

• Human 0x58 (88) --> 35%
• Toshi 0x96 (150) --> 59%
• Nintoshi 0x80 (128) --> 50%
• Kobito 0xAF (175) --> 68%
• Gnome 0xAF (175) --> 68%
• Obake 0x64 (100) --> 39%
• Troll 0x4B (75) --> 29%
• Ogre 0x4B (75) --> 29%

I am certain that some astute RPG expert around these parts will point out that there must be a mistake, and that searching should be driven by class, not race. Nope. Why? Because Deathlord.

So if you want to still play the original Deathlord, make sure that the leader of the party is a kobito or gnome. Even with 68% search chance, there's still over a 3% chance you'll fail to find a secret if you search 3 times in a row. And if you made, god forbid, the error to have a human leader (which, incidentally is by far the best class in the original Deathlord), then if you searched 3 times in a row you had over 27% chance of missing the secret!

Hence my decision to make Deathlord Relorded and fix this crap: search always succeeds and the non-human races have bonuses that make you want to use them. Those are some of the many changes in the relording.

 

[Grauken]

I am certain that some astute RPG expert around these parts will point out that there must be a mistake, and that searching should be driven by class, not race. Nope. Why?

You could explain it based on eyesight, hearing, and smell used as part of perception to find things, and these could be different based on race. Still not fun to play but there's a certain logic to it

 

[rikkles]

I am certain that some astute RPG expert around these parts will point out that there must be a mistake, and that searching should be driven by class, not race. Nope. Why?

You could explain it based on eyesight, hearing, and smell used as part of perception to find things, and these could be different based on race. Still not fun to play but there's a certain logic to it

You're right, but when not told in the manual (which is of course full of inaccuracies to boot), you assume the thief is probably better at searching. Also the Obake (probably halfling) should in this case be a lot better as well. Not everything is in dark dungeons.

 

[rikkles]

Hello all,

the new build 1.0.7 of Deathlord Relorded is up on itch.io. The big feature is `F10` that toggles between the pseudo-Japanese and English, for races, classes and items.

Races and classes are pretty clearly defined and the "translations" are quite obvious. For example, a Toshi is clearly an Elf. On the other hand, items are more difficult to map 1-for-1. So I took some liberties and renamed the items for the English version, looking at their class use and power.

You could always choose to change the translations if you so wanted. To do so, look inside the folder "Assets" for the file "InventoryList.csv". Inside it, you can change the text in the English column to what you prefer. DO NOT modify the Japanese column, it is the key to translating the names.

As a reminder, you can also in that file modify the attributes of the items so you could make an illusionist carry and use a Katana, for example.

Have fun,

Rikkles.