The Challenges of Remaking Alternate Reality

Every so often I receive an email or a post complaining that I’ve done something “wrong” with my remake of Alternate Reality:The City and the Dungeon – I’m not talking about bug reports or unimplemented features but more about design decisions. I guess in some cases I’m not making the decisions they would make if they were remaking Alternate Reality. For everyone who thinks I’m not expanding the game enough someone else thinks it’s not faithful enough. I think I’m past the point where this bothers me now and I’m realistic enough to know that with a project like this you’ll never please everybody. Most ARX players have been incredibly positive and supportive (and not to mention patient). Their feedback is also constructive, useful and essential to developing my project further.  So I’ll take this opportunity to say thanks 🙂

I thought I would talk about some of the design choices I’ve made with Alternate Reality X, the challenges I’ve dealt with and why these are unique to the Alternate Reality series of games (released and planned). Looking back now I think Alternate Reality was always going to be one of the most difficult and complicated games to remake in comparison to the other CRPGs from the same time period. I’ll explain below why I think that’s the case.

I started what I now call Alternate Reality X way back in 2009. I’ve had breaks during those years and diversions where I’ve looked into other formats or technologies but I’m now settled on the current technology so to speak in terms of using SFML and C/C++. I’d played around with Alternate Reality before but this is the year I made the first iteration of what you see today.

My background with Alternate Reality began with the Dungeon which I received as a Christmas present one year for my Commodore 64. Once I’d managed to keep a character alive long enough to advance a couple of experience levels, obtained some better equipment and stumbled across a quest I was hooked and played it regularly until I carelessly wrote over the Dungeon game disk years later in my haste to create a new character disk. I still have the box, map and manual today.

 

 

When I got access to the internet (around 1995) one of the first things I found was The Original Alternate Reality Homepage at: http://www.eobet.com/alternate-reality/ (it had a different URL back then). This site had lots of information about the games, an extensive FAQ, screenshots, maps (below) and comments from the AR developers including Philip Price. It also led me to the AR Mailing List (which sadly now seems to be offline) which was a great source of information. I’d never played any version of the City though I was aware of it from magazine reviews I’d read back in the 1980s.

One of my early goals with Alternate Reality X was to allow the player to move seamlessly between the City and the Dungeon as originally envisaged by Philip Price.

Whilst they share many similarities the City and Dungeon scenarios are very different games in my opinion. Perhaps the biggest difference is in the combat system. The City has the concept of engaged and disengaged menus (pictured above) but this was replaced by a different system in the Dungeon consisting of options for surprising an encounter, Battle Options and a Transact menu. This was the system I opted for in ARX.

Many other elements are different between the two scenarios from encounter graphics and map style to the use of currency. I don’t think ARX feels like a totally consistent game yet but hopefully as I add features the two scenarios will feel more integrated.

I made a number of development decisions which I’ll try to summarise here:

  • Players can move freely between the City map and the first level of the Dungeon as I imagine was originally intended by Philip Price.
  • I removed the penalties for saving characters in both the City and the Dungeon and provided 10 save game slots.
  • I removed timing from combat – I might add it back in as an option in the future – if there is demand for it.
  • Guilds are set up with multiple “branches” in the City and Dungeon and guild bonuses can be picked up in the Dungeon as well as the City (providing a guild has a location in the Dungeon).
  • 8bit Dungeon-style guilds are used rather than the style that was added to the 16bit versions of the City.
  • I chose to use the Dungeon’s combat system and menus rather than the City’s engaged / disengaged menus.
  • I liked the Charm and Trick mechanics of the City and added them to the ARX Transact menu.
  • The City’s potion system (tasting, sipping etc) where you tried to identify one of over 50 potions was not present in the Dungeon but I liked it so have added it into ARX.
  • As the encounter graphics are very different in style and size I opted to use the Dungeon’s encounter graphics for better consistency between the two scenarios.
  • I expanded the City’s map format to use the Dungeon format which used more bytes to allow more wall and door types and a “special” byte for fixed encounters, messages and unique treasures.
  • The City used a degree of randomisation when creating monster stats but I opted for the Dungeon’s fixed stats. I did originally generate encounters differently between the two scenarios but I felt it would always make the game feel disjointed and inconsistent if for example an encounter with a thief in the City felt very different to one in the Dungeon.
  • The economy – there’s a big divide here with the City trading in coppers (running into the 10,000s) and the Dungeon using silver, gems and jewels. I’ve kept the original prices and currency for now but it’s very inconsistent and I’m not really happy with it.
  • Again for consistency I’ve for now settled on a single font (the Dungeon) and banner colour scheme (the City). Easily changed in the future if required.

Other considerations:

  • I’m not a professional programmer so I’ve reworked and refined code a lot and will continue to do so until the project is complete. In addition I’ve not always understood the longer term requirements for a feature until further down the line (e.g. custom objects created dynamically in game).
  • The Arena, Palace, Wilderness, Revelation and Destiny scenarios were never completed.
  • A variety of different versions of the game(s) exist across 8bit and 16bit platforms, many of which add further variety in terms of graphics, music and mechanics.
  • Less of a problem in the Dungeon but there are many areas of the City where features and locations were left for later patching.
  • There’s always the question of making the game authentic (in look and feel) versus an “upgrade” with better graphics and sound as well as new features.
  • Should I have treated the City and the Dungeon as two separate games with a compatible character save file? I even thought of developing them as two separate executables (or sets of datafiles).
  • I can possibly address some of the differences as game options and preferences but that does add to further development time. I’m considering this though 🙂

I cannot think of a single game or series of games that would have presented quite so many questions or difficult decisions as Alternate Reality. There are no right answers for many of these If you have a game or series of games in mind though please let me know as I’d love to hear about it.

In the meantime if you have an opinion about any of the above or a design preference I’m interested to hear it. Nothing in ARX is set in stone.

Alternate Reality X – Release 0.81 – Now Available


The latest release of my Alternate Reality: The City and The Dungeon remake, Alternate Reality X is now available for download.

You can download Release 0.81 from the link below:

https://crpgdev.com/downloads/

Just a few additions and bug fixes in this release as follows:

  • Added Custom Weapons to Dwarven Smithy for you to buy (and name)
  • Added Dungeon vaults – Gram’s Gold Exchange and the First City Bank
  • Fixed – Dwarven Smithy – doesn’t use character’s name
  • Fixed – Dwarven Smithy – selling item removes existing silver from character
  • Fixed – Daily events didn’t run on the last day of each month

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

Alternate Reality X – Dungeon Vaults and Custom Weapons

Release 0.80 of Alternate Reality X features two bugs relating to the Dwarven Smithy so I’m keen to get a new 0.81 release out in the next week which fixes these.

In addition I plan to add the Dungeon vaults and the option to buy custom weapons from the Dwarven Smithy. For anyone who is not familiar with vaults they give you the option to attempt to steal bags of copper, silver and gold as well as the more valuable jewels and gems which which the Dwarven Smithy trades in. Unfortunately the Palace Elite may catch you, forcing you to fight or surrender.

 

Adding in the custom weapons will be the first example of weapons which are dynamically created within the game with different values (based on factors such as how many jewels and gems you offer the Smithy). You can also name your custom weapon before returning several days later to collect your newly forced weapon. This will complete the Dwarven Smithy coding and takes advantage of the flexibility added with the new item and inventory system.

 

Alternate Reality X – Release 0.80!


The latest release of my Alternate Reality: The City and The Dungeon remake, Alternate Reality X is now available for download.

You can download Release 0.80 from the link below:

https://crpgdev.com/downloads/

The main changes in this release are as follows:

  • Modified the internal structure for items and inventory
  • Increased internal size of inventory / item buffer from 100 to 250 items
  • Now using authentic City Smithy, Dwarven Smithy and D&P item data
  • Pick up weapons left by opponents
  • Buy weapons and armour from the Dwarven Smithy (not custom weapons)
  • Sell old weapons and armour to the Dwarven Smithy
  • Implemented player weapon descriptions (e.g. slash, whomp)
  • Implemented crossbow & reloading of ammo
  • Modified automap to show walls and doors by default
  • Re-enabled the “Wait for Encounter” option
  • Adjusted encounter frequency
  • Modified City starting time to match 8bit version
  • Added release specific “Acknowledgements” page
  • Fixed – Some encounter images appear outside window
  • Fixed – Encounters did not display death message / leave treasure bug
  • Fixed – Phoenix encounter crash bug
  • Fixed – “Quit” looping / main menu bug
  • Fixed – Missing wall section near “Ono Goods” shop
  • Fixed – Character creation would accept blank name
  • Fixed – Doppelganger attacks with “slimy tentacle”

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

Alternate Reality X – New release in March 2017

 

I’m making good progress with the next release of Alternate Reality X and hope to have this out for public release before the end of March. It doesn’t contain all the features I had planned but nevertheless contains some important changes and additions.

The changes to the internal structure of the player’s inventory and what I call the “item buffer” took a long time. Once these had been completed I then had to make changes to a number of existing sections of the game such as the City Smithies and the Damon & Pythias Shop as they no longer worked correctly. These changes did allow me to use the authentic weapon and armour data though which is an improvement over the previous versions. Perhaps the most requested feature I’ve had is to implement selling old weapons to the Dwarven Smithy. I’ve pleased to say that this is now in the game and seems to work well.

At the time of writing the Dwarven Smithies’ custom weapons are not yet in the game. I feel I really need to implement the Dungeon bank vaults as well to make this feature worthwhile so that players can find enough gems and jewels to pay for custom weapons. Rather than delay this release further I’m probably going to leave these for the next release.

I’m currently testing the gameplay to check that what is there seems to be working ok.

Changes and additions include:

  • Modified the internal structure for items and inventory
  • Increased internal size of inventory / item buffer from 100 to 250 items
  • Now using authentic City Smithy, Dwarven Smithy and D&P item data
  • Pick up weapons left by opponents
  • Buy weapons and armour from the Dwarven Smithy
  • Sell old weapons and armour to the Dwarven Smithy
  • Implemented player weapon descriptions (e.g. slash, whomp)
  • Implemented crossbow & reloading of ammo
  • Modified automap to show walls and doors by default
  • Re-enabled the “Wait for Encounter” option
  • Fixed Phoenix encounter crash bug
  • Fixed “Quit” crash bug

 

New Blog – Comments Issue

My apologies to Allan, Steve and Meerling who had commented earlier today. After attempting to re-import my old blog content from Google Blogger to include all the images, I was forced to reinstall WordPress in order to import the old posts back in again, therefore losing your comments. The blog import is now complete and I won’t touch the importer again. Sorry.

Alternate Reality X – Plans for 2017

 

Following my review of 2016 I wanted to follow up with a taster of what you can expect to see and play in the coming year. There are other projects and interests I want to cover and talk about in 2017 but this post focuses solely on Alternate Reality X which is my top priority. Here is an outline of the key areas of development I’m planning to complete during 2017. There may be some changes to the order of this list but this is the general outline I’m working to just now.

Complete Item and Inventory Changes (currently in progress)

Basically updating all the existing code in the game to use a more flexible item and inventory format, essential for implementing future changes to custom items, enchanted items and procedural generation of City clothing items. Currently this code supports weapons, armour, clothing and a number of special “quest” items.  The changes to the City Smithies and Damon & Pythias shops are completed. I need to add in the procedural generation of clothing in the City Shops (where you can buy a compass) and update the existing code for unique items scattered around the Dungeon and quest items (E.g. the troll and goblin ring halves). This has taken a long time as the items and inventory touch so many different areas of the game but all the time consuming, hard work is now complete. In the next release you’ll now be able to pick up and use weapons which your opponents used, introducing a lot of new weapons for the your Alternate Reality character to play with.

The Dwarven Smithy

This is partially completed. The main new features it will introduce to the game are the option to sell old weapons and to have a custom weapon made. The main work to do is getting the correct menus in place and the custom weapon creation code which I don’t see as being too difficult.

 

Despite having finished the Dungeon for the first time a few years back, I had never saved up enough gems to have a custom weapon made. One thing I thought would be cool (and easy with the new ARX item system) would be to allow the player to name their custom weapons but on looking through the original code for the Dwarven Smithy it looks like that feature was already in the original game! Alternate Reality continues to surprise me after all these years 🙂

Treasure Items

These include those unique items on the Dungeon floor which I’ve not added yet and the special items you find after a successful encounter – wands, trump cards, horns etc. This won’t make it into the next release due to all the work I’ve done on refactoring my existing code to work with the new items and inventory but is high on the list for future releases. Only a handful of City items remain to be added to ARX.
I need to introduce a new “effects” system which holds timed and temporary events (e.g. if wearing a crystal belt you get a stamina increase, you’ve drunk a potion of invulnerability sharp). The effects system is also required to enable the remaining guild spells to be implemented. I don’t see this as being difficult to implement as I’ve given it a lot of thought but it’s a substantial piece of work. I also need to do some research into how encounter treasure selection works so if you have any ideas on that please let me know. Once implemented I think the results will be quite visible to players so hopefully a good boost to gameplay. For me the Dungeon always had some of the best treasure of any CRPG.

Dungeon Quests

Basically adding in the few special locations which are still missing that are required to complete the Dungeon and the necessary dialogue and quest items. A lot of this is already complete but hasn’t been tested in a long while. I seem to remember the Oracle took a lot of work and might need some bug fixes. Off the top of my head I think the Clothes Horse and Great Wyrm may only be in game as placeholders. Occasionally I go back and find that I’ve already started part of AR though which is pleasant surprise 🙂 When the Dungeon Quests are complete there will be enough Alternate Reality recreated in ARX that you will be able to play the City and Dungeon through to completion!

Updated Display Options

I’ve already added some support for multiple screen resolutions and windowed vs full screen displays through the arx.cfg configuration file but there aren’t currently any good scaling or filtering options available for players to make best use of those larger screen sizes. I’d also like to make it easier for you to adjust display options whilst the game is running so players can easily skip through options to find the one that best suits them. With so many people running larger displays now it’s not really acceptable for me to limit development to only a couple of window sizes. Emulation front ends like RetroArch make use of some very high quality filters and scalers it would be great to introduce these into ARX if it wasn’t going to be too much work. I also want to introduce some new (optional) display elements along similar lines to the automap that may add to players enjoyment or reduce frustration.

Multiple Media Packs

One of my original goals was to have multiple media packs for ARX and thanks to the superb work from Ted Cox and Furious we’re pretty much there. Due to a few different reasons I’d temporarily removed these but I’m keen to reinstate these in the next few months and hopefully expand them further.

Mac OS X version

There are quite a few Mac ARX players and I’ve now reached the point where a native Mac OS X version will no longer be the big piece of work it once was – partly because I’m just much more comfortable with coding and development tools than I used to be. I have another couple of versions in mind for other platforms but I’ll see how well the items above progress first.

Release 1.0 of Alternate Reality X?

You may well have looked at the list above and thought “When can I expect to see X?” or “Will Z be included in ARX?”. As you can see from the list above I have a LOT of ideas for areas of work planned for development and completion. Sometimes I think something will be difficult and it comes together fairly quickly, other times the opposite happens.  So I’m going to hold off on any release 1.0 date predictions – at least for the time being. What I can promise you is that I have lots of plans for further developing ARX in 2017, making it a lot more complete and hopefully more enjoyable to play.
Finally I just wanted to say a massive thank you to so many of you for sticking with me on my Alternate Reality remake project through the years of development.  I know it’s been a bumpy and sometimes inconsistent ride along the way. I’ve often been amazed by your kindness, support and sheer enthusiasm for what I’ve been doing and for Alternate Reality in general. I’ll do everything I can to try and deliver on the promise of the original project. Wishing you all the best for 2017.