Dark Keep - ROM posted

[mickmuze]

Just seeing these screenshots now, this is beautiful! Great work!!

[SoundGammon]

How about: "Tower Of Darkness"?

[easmith]

On 4/7/2022 at 3:25 AM, SoundGammon said:

How about: "Tower Of Darkness"?

Thanks , but Purposely avoiding the use of “tower “ .

Keep is the central fortified tower within a castle . So seems to fit and also 4 letters are easy to draw with 2 sprites !

 

 

[easmith]

On 3/9/2022 at 10:38 AM, SpiceWare said:

 

You might not have the ROM for it, but by rotating thru a few color tables for each frame you might be able to enhance the effect of the fire blasting towards the player.

According to Kevin ( who drew it ) , hotter flame near source ( mouth ) should be lighter color . Makes sense to me so I’m rolling with it. 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

EXCLUSIVE WORLD PREMIERE of

       DARK KEEP      

FRIDAY APRIL 15 on ZEROPAGE HOMEBREW

WATCH on TWITCH LIVE @ 12PM PT | 3PM ET | 7PM GMT

https://www.twitch.tv/zeropagehomebrew/

 

 

 

We will be playing the EXCLUSIVE WORLD PREMIERE of Edward Smith @easmith and Kevin Mosley's @KevinMos3 new game Dark Keep this Friday Apr 15 on ZeroPage Homebrew! We will be playing the game with Darcy who owns a board game store so he can give us the inside scoop on the board game community!

 

There will be a special announcement during the show about the game so make sure you tune in! See you there this FRIDAY!

 

- James

 

(WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

[easmith]

Attached is a detailed instruction manual for the game.  This is not a final cart release manual, but wanted to have something nice-looking  for those just playing ROM. 

 

Definitely a Read the Full Manual game  :)

 

 

 

 

Edited April 15 by easmith
updated version added to later post

[+johnnywc]

5 hours ago, easmith said:

Attached in a detailed instruction manual for the game.  This is not a final cart release manual, but wanted to have something nice-looking  for those just playing ROM. 

 

Definitely a Read the Full Manual game  :)

 

 

I just read the entire manual, great job!     I'm very excited and anxious to play, can't wait!   

[easmith]

35 minutes ago, johnnywc said:

I just read the entire manual, great job!     I'm very excited and anxious to play, can't wait!   

Thanks  .  I hope it is worthy of the expectation.    

[easmith]

Attached are game ROM and online version of  instruction manual ( fixed a few typos from previous post) .    Hope you enjoy it enough to persist through some  experimentation with different strategies in order to beat the game !  For those who are familiar with the original game I hope we did it justice .  We were able to preserve almost all of the original rules and add a few new things . 

 

  

Dark_Keep_Manual_online_version.pdf

Edited April 28 by easmith
updated rom posted in later post

[easmith]

The first to find the game's  Easter egg and send me a PM with :

1)  where/how it is  found 
2) what it is
3) what happens as a result 

 

 will win this dice roller Dark Tower, 3D
printed by Kevin. Due to the cost of international shipping, this is
limited to addresses within the US.

 

 

 

[Numan]

Looks great!

[easmith]

Thanks to James and the Zero Page Homebrew crew for featuring the game. 

 

https://m.twitch.tv/videos/1456915875?desktop-redirect=true

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

21 minutes ago, easmith said:

Thanks to James and the Zero Page Homebrew crew for featuring the game. 

 

I watched it last night after work, y'all did an impressive job on Dark Keep!

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

7 hours ago, easmith said:

Thanks to James and the Zero Page Homebrew crew for featuring the game.

Thank you @easmith & @KevinMos3 for making this amazing game and having your debut of Dark Keep on ZPH!

 

You can check out the archive of the premiere of the game here:

(WATCH AT 1080P60 FOR FULL QUALITY)

 

- James

[MarcoJ]

Wow, the graphics are astounding. Achieving a lot of detail using only F4 bankswitching (no extra RAM too). Hats off to the devs.  

[+TrekMD]

Wow, this game looks awesome!  Love the fire breathing dragon!

[+littaum]

A brilliant game!  The special events screens are amazing and the gameplay is really captivating.  It also didn't occur to me before how this game had both resource management elements like Hammurabi or M.U.L.E. as well as the RPG elements like D&D.    The ZPH playthrough was also helpful as a primer on game rules.  My first go at it had me at a +6 warrior-brigand advantage at the keep but alas, the battle did not go in my favor and I lost. I shall try again! 

[PacManPlus]

This is awesome.  It takes 'Dark Tower' off of my list of games to do for the 7800.  I wish I had been home to watch @ZeroPage Homebrew on Friday, but I was on the way home from Georgia.

 

I actually still have the board game as well, and I was going to use that to create the 7800 version.

 

Excellent job!

[+littaum]

Hooray, I beat it!  It's a long way from 99, but it is still plenty addictive.  

 

 

As was mentioned on the ZPH stream, having some sort of "debounce" for button presses would be good just so you don't accidentally buy more than what you were looking for at the bazaar or during a brigand fight.  And as you are probably aware the "gold key" doesn't show up as the gold color during the Keep sequence.  

 

Any plans on releasing this in physical form?

[easmith]

3 hours ago, littaum said:

As was mentioned on the ZPH stream, having some sort of "debounce" for button presses would be good just so you don't accidentally buy more than what you were looking for at the bazaar or during a brigand fight

thanks for the feedback ! I am happy you like it . 
 

The burton action is something I plan to look at .  You can get a feel for it after a while , but I will try to make it a bit better .

3 hours ago, littaum said:

And as you are probably aware the "gold key" doesn't show up as the gold color during the Keep sequence.  

 

It looks as intended to me. It is same as when you win  it after a battle.  It is a greenish yellow I guess .  Kevin is very particular about choosing colors that strike a compromise between how they look on  CRT TV and in Stella  

.

Again , thanks  . 35 is a a pretty solid score 😊
 

 

 

 

 

 

[easmith]

3 hours ago, littaum said:

Any plans on releasing this in physical form?

Yes .   As soon as the art is figured out we will start the ball rolling . 

[+ZeroPage Homebrew]

3 hours ago, littaum said:

Hooray, I beat it!  It's a long way from 99, but it is still plenty addictive.  

Wow, great score! Such an addictive game.

 

Quote

And as you are probably aware the "gold key" doesn't show up as the gold color during the Keep sequence.  

We were also having some trouble as well differentiating the gold key during the stream. It looks like all three keys are using a slightly different colour at the Keep than your inventory. The colours in inventory look great but I agree that the Gold Key at the keep has more of a green hue. Here's some screenshots from the broadcast (RGB modded light sixer -> RetroTINK 5X).

 

- James

 

INVENTORY SCREEN:

 

 

AT THE KEEP (Bronze / Silver / Gold):

 

 

 

 

[easmith]

16 hours ago, ZeroPage Homebrew said:

We were also having some trouble as well differentiating the gold key during the stream. It looks like all three keys are using a slightly different colour at the Keep than your inventory. The colours in inventory look great but I agree that the Gold Key at the keep has more of a green hue.

This will be altered to look more yellow on all video setups for future updates .

[+SpiceWare]

Hmm, wonder if the colors being the only difference might cause problems for color blind people.  

 

Do you have ROM space to make each key look different in some way, such as make the key handles a square, a circle, and a triangle?

[easmith]

55 minutes ago, SpiceWare said:

Hmm, wonder if the colors being the only difference might cause problems for color blind people.  

 

Do you have ROM space to make each key look different in some way, such as make the key handles a square, a circle, and a triangle?

unfortunately no, although that is a good idea . Would also need to change the scroll images as well .   I think it always starts off as brass and there is a toggle sound effect  ( I think ) so I suppose you could do it by sound .   If there is not a sound effect could add one .