Indie DrDungeon's Ultizurk and MADMAN Thread

[Infinitron]

Ok, warn us when the full versions are online please, I hate to start to get stuck half game. All of those are DOS or some works on windows ?

The main Ultizurk games available for download are full, only Wraith and Madman aren't (though apparently Madman can be unlocked?). They are all DOS games.

 

[DrDungeon]

Wow! Thanks a million Aeschylus! That was very helpful!
Mortmal - the new MADMAN will be a Mac and Windows native game, with a far greater degree of depth and features. Similarly with UZ4 when I get to retro-fit it, possibly in the new MAD engine. All the other stuff is indeed DOS. I'm still awaiting word from my Holland friend. I need him to re-send the illusive Ultizurk II: The Shadowmaster as my zip is not unzipping, and oddly I haven't a single copy of it anywhere! He does - as well as the full list of all my games. I actually myself don't remember the names of them all. I expect to hear from him soon. I also need to double check with him if I had pre-registered them. Like the old MadMan & and MACH code, or if it still needs to be entered. I'll make sure to indicate these things on the site. I'm getting a whole slew of ideas for the madman remake! Its moving along very quickly. Enough chat from me. Back to the lab! Back to WORK! Thanks again guys for inspiring me! I'm tickled pink!!! -Rob

 

[DrDungeon]

Got it!!! Soon to upload!!!! Here's the full list:

ZURK I: The Great Zurkian Empire
ZURK II: The World Below
ZURK III: The City of Glass
ZURK IV: Enter the Ninja
ZURK V: The Dungeon Master
ZURK VI: The Dragon Gate
ZURK VII: The Savannah
ZURK VIII: The Wizard’s Guild
Babysitter I: The Night His Parents Went Out!
Babysitter II: The Kid Unleashed
Spook House II: The Last Vampire
Spook House III: The Levee
ULTIZURK I: The Grandmaster’s Quest
ULTIZURK II: The Shadow Master
The Great Ultizurkian Underland
ULTIZURK III: Part I: The Guildmaster’s Quest
ULTIZURK III: Part II: The Mobius Mind
Wraith

Then of course MADMAN and the re-make. The guy is finishing a final test of
ZURK IX: The Rendezvous

 

[Infinitron]

Excellent.

 

[MMXI]

I can't wait for your Let's Play, Infinitron.

 

[TripJack]

Excellent.

Most excellent.

 

[Aeschylus]

Wow! Thanks a million Aeschylus! That was very helpful!

No worries, happy to help.

Back to the lab! Back to WORK! Thanks again guys for inspiring me! I'm tickled pink!!! -Rob

Will this go down as the first time the Codex has inspired a developer, rather than driving them off screaming into the night?

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

It's one of the awesomest threads I have ever seen in /RGD/ .

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Good grief, the Doctor is a machine!

Looking forward to the results of his lab work. Will fire up the first Ultizurk as soon as it hits his site, and progress from there. What a strange time for CRPG's we are living in....hidden incline surfacing at almost every level...

What will be next? Michael Lawrence suddenly releasing the second Aethra Chronicles game?

Thanks again Doctor!

 

[eric__s]

What exactly is your music problem? Is it that the files exist but don't work on your new computer, or that they just haven't been made yet? If it's the former, I may be able to help out.

This is a really cool thread and I'm looking forward to playing these games.

 

[Infinitron]

Dr. Dungeon has updated his site with download links for his 80's ZURK text adventures for the TRS-80: http://web.me.com/drdungeon/Site/Museum_ShowRoom.html

Also, OP has been updated.

 

[DrDungeon]

Site is updated! Information about running the games is in the new BLOG area. I need to add some notes about ZURK 5-8, which run a little differently and will soon make available the first two ULTIZURK games. Bear in mind these were my first two graphical games, so they look VERY, uh, retro? The goal was that each game would be more advanced than the other, but this took time.

The entire set reflects over 20 years of work. I hope the little stories - especially in Ultizurk II, make up a little for the antique look. Also check out the MADMAN area. There's a pretty little new pic there. Also a sample of Jay's erie music score from Ultizurk IV.
More than anything, have fun!! And again, I can't thank you guys enough fro encouraging me to get off my butt and back in the lab, which is where I'm heading right now! Working out the objects for MADMAN - there's so, so many of them!!! -Rob
The link again:
http://web.me.com/drdungeon/Site/MAIN.html

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Holy Shit

 

[Luzur]

great, more games to occupy my time

 

[DrDungeon]

ULTIZURK I: The Grandmaster's Quest is up and ready to play! Head over to the site and get it! Make sure to read the instructions in the new BLOG for running it.
Also! This was my very first graphical game made nearly TWENTY years ago, so I hope you don't mind the ultra-retro, cheapo graphics! Still, I ran through it a bit and the game is pretty
complex. It has elements of stuff like Ultima 6, Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams, in that "exceedingly amateur" sort of a way. Each game got more and more complex.
Its a fun little romp and FREE FREE FREE All I ask in return is a few comments here on how you like it, Dr. Dungeon's first graphic game!

 

[Infinitron]

ULTIZURK I: The Grandmaster's Quest is up and ready to play! Head over to the site and get it! Make sure to read the instructions in the new BLOG for running it.
Also! This was my very first graphical game made nearly TWENTY years ago, so I hope you don't mind the ultra-retro, cheapo graphics! Still, I ran through it a bit and the game is pretty
complex. It has elements of stuff like Ultima 6, Savage Empire, and Martian Dreams, in that "exceedingly amateur" sort of a way. Each game got more and more complex.
Its a fun little romp and FREE FREE FREE All I ask in return is a few comments here on how you like it, Dr. Dungeon's first graphic game!

This appears to be identical to the "UZ1V2" version that I found on the Web. The game has no readme.txt, however, so I'm not sure what version it really is...

 

[Marquess Cornwallis]

I salute everyone involved in unearthing the good doctor's work (and the doctor himself). Ultizurk is the next stop once I'm finished re-visiting The Walls of Bratock and Flame Storm.

 

[Aeschylus]

Very cool. I'll try to find a bit of time to check out the first game again this weekend.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Ultizurk I, here I come.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

This is my first post ever on RPGCodex. That is not to say that I am not familiar with the site. In fact I have lurked here for years, more so in the last year.

Mostly I came for the Let's Play threads, but I really got hooked during the Cleve saga. The website has done some fantastic interviews, especially lately. I cheered when the Codex raised enough money to be on the Wasteland 2 video game through Kickstarter. I followed RK47's various Let's Plays, stopping most recently with his temporarily suspended Mass Effect 3 effort. I am also a big fan of Crooked Bee's work, including her Let's Play on Space: 1889 (out of curiosity) and Dangerous High School Girl in Trouble (because the game looks great). I laughed aloud to WetWorks1's coverage of his Neckbeard character in the Sid Meier's Pirates LP. Because of this site, Sengoku Rance was my favorite CRPG of 2011 and is now in my all time top 10 list. I believe the Codex is spot on in their general opinion of the awesomeness of Exile vs the mediocrity of Avernum. I currently have a Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventure thread covering old school TSR modules thanks to Jaesun's enormous effort in promoting the system and his exposure of the Ray Dyer design mods. I tried out games such as the Age of Decadence demo because of this site. I now get into the habit of checking the Rampant Coyote, IndieRPGs, RPGWatch, Rock Paper Shotgun, GOG and CRPG Addict sites for updates on indie games or exposures to DosBox for free or cheap playable games I might be interested in. After that, I go right to RPGCodex and click on General RPG Discussion, General Gaming, Strategy Gaming, Adventure Gaming and the Codex Playground to finish off my fix. It's become a bit of a daily ritual. I tried to get an account here last year when I was stationed in the Middle East for an annual tour, but something about the location and routers didn't allow me to do so.

I mention all this because I want to say that although I never did post here, I do follow this site quite closely. I also wanted to stress that this Ultizurk thread is the reason I decided to try (successfully!) registering onto the site again. I never played this series of games, but the people on this website have done a great job in recovering DrDungeon's work. So I just wanted to say that I've downloaded Ultizurk I and played a few minutes of it last night as my DosBox ran it just fine. I'll also be giving my two cents, if the good doctor doesn't mind critiques of his early work. I also plan to try out his other games.

It's wonderful to see the people on this website pulling together to save and restore the work of a classic RPG fan like DrDungeon. It's also wonderful to be exposed to the work of someone who I had never heard of before, and I look forward to delving into this world. Thanks again! You RPGCodex trolls are awesome!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and try to figure out how to brofist Infinitron for creating this thread.

 

[Infinitron]

Many thanks. Aeschylus and Blackadder also deserve credit!

 

[DrDungeon]

"To get the images to show up you have to put in the URLs of the image files themselves, rather than links to the slideshow you have set up. "

I've looked far and wide, but have no idea where the image files are or how to get them? The page just shows html, or html0 - where are the images URL and how do I get them?
I assume its at the drdungeon/Site something or other? A little help appreciated! -Rob

 

[Aeschylus]

"To get the images to show up you have to put in the URLs of the image files themselves, rather than links to the slideshow you have set up. "

I've looked far and wide, but have no idea where the image files are or how to get them? The page just shows html, or html0 - where are the images URL and how do I get them?
I assume its at the drdungeon/Site something or other? A little help appreciated! -Rob

I'm not sure what the direct URL is for them either. I just used the 'download' button in the slideshows and uploaded them to an image hosting site.

 

[Infinitron]

"To get the images to show up you have to put in the URLs of the image files themselves, rather than links to the slideshow you have set up. "

I've looked far and wide, but have no idea where the image files are or how to get them? The page just shows html, or html0 - where are the images URL and how do I get them?
I assume its at the drdungeon/Site something or other? A little help appreciated! -Rob

Didn't you upload the image files to your site? They're right where you put them - that's the URL.

 

[DrDungeon]

Hi again! I found out its a little complicated how iWeb, which I use, actually stores the images. Its deep down in a bunch of sub directories and has a different name, plus a thumbnail. What I'm thinking of doing is linking to my idisk. I just have to figure out how to make it display here rather than download or something?

Maybe better is to use the site Aeschylus mentioned that hosts images. Where was that?

About that Spiderweb thread. My eye is still black and blue. My idea was that people on that site certainly like retro-role-playing games, so I thought I'd find some good playtesters. I should have come here instead! Didn't know about this site at the time. It seems to me the guy was mad mostly because he couldn't play it. But an ad? I wasn't selling anything, just looking for playtesters. It seemed no one was too interested in Ultizurk IV.

I wrote to Jeff Vogel himself, who knew me in the old days. In fact, he was the first one to check out "The Great Ultizurkian Underland" when I made it and he liked it. He was infinitely more helpful than his forum users! I knew way back when he used to host some other games by other developers, and I was hoping he might consider UZ4.

He was honest in admitting that he no longer does this because he felt he wasn't doing justice to the developers and admitting not being too good at marketing. Actually, I think he's pretty good at marketing. But he did recommend some other companies that might be interested, so that was helpful.

The 1680x1050 or 1920x1200 resolution was my mistake because it zaps notebook users, plus UZ4 was Mac-only.

As I reprogram a far more elaborate MADMAN, I'm basically porting over almost all the functionality of UZ4, plus some new bells and whistles. More and more I'm thinking that after MADMAN, my best bet would be to re-do UZ4 the same way, which will open everything to notebooks and windows as well as Mac.

There's SO many objects in this game that the madman can play with! I just finished up the object control stuff today and I think the only object not in the game is an Amaze-A-Matic car from the 60's! Dr. D.