Hello dtgreene!

Thank you for the confirmation. Nonetheless, I already downloaded the PDF-files which the developer 'adamantyr' posted directly above your comment.

I have not tried "Nox Archaist" (and its expansion), yet. I do like "Ultima V" a lot. However, I never played the original (or Apple II) version, but rather the little bit enhanced DOS version!
I do not like the strong usage of white in "Nox Archaist". Together with the flashing, color bleeding, and difficult to read text font it gives me headaches from just watching...
A version with a tile set more reminiscent of Ultima V's DOS version (also the one available here at GOG.COM within the second trilogy package) would be more pleasing to me.

Furthermore, the large amount of individual keyboard keys and the dependency on a numpad (not available on my Notebook) lead to me not replaying "Ultima V" more recently.

From what I gathered, there are a couple of other aspects of "Nox Archaist" that could be reasons for annoyance for me:
The kind of level scaling with respect to the experience gain of enemies. (The more you fight and defeat the same kind of enemies, you gain less and less experience points for them.)
The input delay--or delay between key/command inputs and their execution (However, it seems, that acceleration of the emulator might reduce or could even solve this issue.)
And the story did not grab me enough in the beginning. It felt too... I do not know, maybe 'generic'. (Although, I only watched gameplay videos up to the first castle and Orc encounters in the mountains north of it.)

Thanks again for the confirmation regarding the included documentation of "Realms of Antiquity"!

Kind regards,
foxgog

Hello adamantyr (Adam Haase I believe)!

Thank you very much for this amazing game and for providing the link to downloads of the documentation in PDF format!
(By the way, is it intended, that the two map files are technically identical? I could not see a difference between the digital version of the standard and deluxe edition of the world map. The photo of the physical deluxe map is gorgious, though!)

I downloaded and read the material. Meanwhile, after watching some of your interviews (e.g. with the lost sectors and dfortae) I already purchased "Realms of Antiquity" here.
I especially like the simplified interface and the quick flow of the gameplay, and am looking forward to dig deeper into the game.

Kind regards,
foxgog

Interesting that you mention this, because I'm actually going to make an old-style RPG of my own. It's going to be made for modern systems, using modern tools, which is going to have some impact (for example, it's much easier to, say, divide by 3 on a modern system). It's going to be more JRPG-ish, but will still have a not-so-linear overworld. Combat will not be tactical; Wizardry is probably a better comparison here.

So, you don't like "strong usage of white". What would help mitigate that? Some color filter? Or perhaps make different tiles different colors? (I'm planning on just using ASCII as the tileset, though I could make minor changes if needed.) (I'm going to try to avoid the issues you mention, and if I do decide to include flashing, there will be an option to disable it.)

I'm planning on using console-style controls, so very few keys get used, and the game would be easily playable with a controller. This is definitely different from Ultima 5's full keyboard use, or Realms of Antiquity's in-between approach. Of course, I'm planning on implementing key remapping. (incidentally, one holdup I had is that the rust libraries egui/eframe didn't provide any mechanism that would allow key remapping, but now that it does, I should be able to finally start work on the game.)

As for your comment on XP scaling, my solution is to throw out XP entirely, and use a different system (or, rather, different systems, depending on the type of character) for stat growth.

(I do have a name for this game, but I'm not yet ready to post it on a public forum At the very least, I'd like there to be some game that's at least somewhat playable. This also means not to expect a release for a while, if at all.)

Anyway, going back to your comments, there's unfortunately a small amount of delay in movement in Realms of Antiquity; I would chalk this up to hardware limitations.

Another thought I have: I've mentioned that RoA is basically a (classic style) WRPG with some JRPG DNA mixed in, and it occurred to me that the simplified interface may be another aspect of (good( JRPG influence on this game.

The deluxe version has areas that weren't detailed on the original in full detail, mainly end game areas. It was distributed with the Deluxe Collector's Edition I released a couple years ago.

While the collector's editions are sold out, the cloth deluxe maps ARE still available; you can find a link on my site to them.

Charming. I wouldn't pick those colors or that resolution, but it certainly harkens back to the days of the Apple ][.

...It's a TI-99 game. You don't "pick" the colors or resolution, you get what the hardware can output.

256x192 display, 15 colors. :) (They burn one for a "transparent" color which is always whatever the screen is.)

And the colors are:
Black
White
Grey (light)
Magenta
Light, Medium, Dark Green
Light, Dark Yellow
Light, Medium, Dark Red
Light, Dark Blue
Cyan

Reminds me of the C64 colors, which I somehow still have memorized after all this time. (Black, white, red, cyan, purple, green, blue, yellow, orange, brown, light red, dark grey, medium grey, light green, light blue, light grey.) I didn't know anyone with a TI, but did get to play around with a TI-99/4a in a store a few times. Fortunately for the shop owners I didn't know how to program it; I had learned enough C64 programming to leave some...interesting results on the store display units. ;)

Really excited to see this one here. I remember seeing adamantyr on the comment section of crpgaddict and was amazed by this project. I believe that a new game that runs on old hardware is already awesome, and being an CRPGeven more ;)
Wish I had the skills and tools to do something like this for the MSX1 hardware that my father has xD

Did you release this game somewhere?

I never finished it, like most other games I made.

Sounds a lot like me, actually.

It's way too easy to start on a bunch of projects, and not finish any of them.

(This can and does happen for any creative hobby.)

I totally agree. But there's also another reason. Each game I started was another step in evolution. Like when I made games in ASCII code (text mode) back then I suddenly figured out how to make one using actual graphics. Then I started a new game using real bitmap images as tiles and while I made it, I found another thing out (like map scrolling) and so on...

For example, here's a game I made very early:

It's funny in that much of what you discovered relates to things I'm going to avoid doing in order to try to avoid scope creep.
* Graphics will be mostly ASCII (actually CP437), but will be technically "graphics" rather than it being a terminal. (This means that I can, if I so choose, create custom tiles (perhaps slight variations of ASCII characters), or even add shaders (which I am technically capable of writing) for things like weather effects.)
* I've decided not to try to implement map scrolling. Instead, the map will be split into separate screens (see Phantasie for an example in the same genre, or Zelda 1 for an example in a different genre).

Sounds a lot like Duke Nukem Forever