Tower And Dragon 4.0

Click above image to view Tower And Dragon 4.0 trailer on youtube.

Tower And Dragon's goal is to create a fully immersive 2D gaming experience that is playable on one of the first computers to launch: A 1977 Commodore PET with 8K emulated on your Mac, or Windows system! The game has 8 hours of play, 16 unique zones, complex scenarios, two spells, and a compelling story with different outcomes based on your decisions.

The PET had a built in cassette player for data and options for 4K or 8K of memory, no graphics, and modified text ASCII (referred to as PETSCII). Due to the cassette requirement, the gameplay is primarily in a linear order, although you can go back to most zones.

Can a fully-fledged 2D adventure game be made with such tight limitations that can be played from cassette, disk drive, or virtual disk drive? Tower And Dragon 4.0 does just that!

Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each dungeon level. Your character starts out at a camp near a lake and ancient ruin, discovered by following a distressing dream.

Tower And Dragon 4.0. Only 8K Required

• Ranged Magic Spell Awarded upon completion of quest. This will have 3 full charges each time you switch zones. It will also charge once per each mob vanquished.
• A Buff spell that has 3 charges per zone change allowing you to exceed your max health by 50 or, if under full health, heal your health by 50.
• A river zone where a rowboat is utilized.
• A rescue mission zone where you have to recover the mage Cheryth, and lead her to safety with odds stacked against you as well as an end boss.
• A complex plot involving 4 zones and a lich. Included in this scenario will be a swamp where a raft is needed and thought/planning is required to reach the end, a ruined castle, catacombs, and the final lich lair.
• Choices that lead to different end game outcomes.
• 8 hours of game play.
• Animation for the player - Finally! Yes, all mobs were animated on version 3.0, but I just didn't have the space at that time to get the player animated. The animations for the player are simple, but there's only so much you can do with PETSCII.
• Some mobs run away on low health.
• Total time of play recorded.
• Due to being playable on stock Commodore PETs with only a cassette, gameplay is designed to be linear in order, although you can choose to go back to (most) previous zones explored.

The Making Of Version 1.0 in 2023 (36 minutes)

Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each dungeon level. Your character starts out just after landing a boat on the shore near an ancient ruin, discovered by following a dream. The game is a tribute to the game that inspired me to become a programmer: "Dungeon" from 1979. Like Dungeon, this game only requires 8K of memory.

Tower And Dragon is written in assembly language, only requires an 8K Commodore PET, and is playable by disk drive or tape cassette on ROM1, ROM2, and ROM4 systems. You can play with more memory, but part of the design was to make sure the game would work on some of the oldest stock PET systems still around. Designing under these tight constraints was a monumental task where every byte counted.

The audio soundtrack on the splash screen uses Shiru's BuzzKick engine, converted to the PET and gives Tower And Dragon a unique and distinct audio that new games will follow. He also converted the theme music to run under BuzzKick. While the splash screen utilizes BuzzKick engine, it is not used in-game due to lack of memory. Therefore, only simple audio is utilized while in-game.

Lastly, to keep with the vintage theme, I recovered the data from maps in a game that I made as a boy in 1980. Those vintage maps are utilized for the ancient ruin in Tower And Dragon!

Norbert Landsteiner has a wonderful online PET emulator with recently released version 2.0 that includes audio. Play Online at Masswerk Emulator here: Masswerk: Tower And Dragon. This will make it easy for anyone to try out the game, as well as any other vintage programs for the PET. His powerful emulator correctly works with Back To The Pet, A Bright Shining Star, and Faulty Robots.

Player Quotes:

• Kimberly Cook- It was beautiful.
• Marshall Sutherland- The thought that this whole thing runs in 8K just boggles my mind.
• Richard Suematsu (ref. plot)- I like how you don't understand what's going on" ... " and then it starts to come into focus.
• Frederic Bezies- ...The end is really touching. For that alone, it rewards the fact of having invested 35 minutes per level to explore them completely, because the secret passages are rather numerous.
• Rikkles- I confirm this 8K `Tour De Force` is something to experience.

• Be Thorough. Search for secret doors by pressing Y every 3 tiles (12 moves) or so. This will reveal any secret doors not veiled in dots.
• Saving can only occur when at the boat or on the stairs. When the game is restarted and load is performed, your weapon, armor, treasure, and player's level is restored. However, the fog of war and monsters are reset. Thus, the ideal time to save is when starting a new dungeon level.

Videos:

Tower And Dragon Interview: the Lost Sectors (1 hour 21 minutes)

The Making Of Version 1.0 in 2023 (36 minutes)

Retro RPG Roundtable Episode 8 (2 hours 20 minutes)

Release 3.0 Video (2 minutes)

Release 2.0 Video (3 minutes)

Release 1.0 Video (3 minutes)

Disk Image:

Tower Folder:

• LOAD "DRAGON",8
• RUN

Vice Character Transfer To New Version

• To transfer your save character, load the OLD file as usual, then load your character as usual.
• Click the little black icon next to 8, I think it will be the rightmost thing in the status bar below the pet emulator.
• Tap attach disk to drive #8, find the new file.
• Save your character.
• Quit the emulator. Don't terminate it, it may not save the file from cache.
• Now change your emulator to the new file, but don't delete the old version until try loading your character.
• Restart Vice, but now pointing at the new disk image.

Version History

• Enhancements that are in 4.0:
  • Ranged Magic Spell Awarded upon completion of quest. This will have 3 full charges each time you switch zones. It will also charge once per each mob vanquished.
  • A Buff spell that has 3 charges per zone change allowing you to exceed your max health by 50 or, if under full health, heal your health by 50.
  • A river zone where a rowboat is utilized.
  • A rescue mission zone where you have to recover the mage Cheryth, and lead her to safety with odds stacked against you as well as an end boss.
  • A complex plot involving 4 zones and a lich. Included in this scenario will be a swamp where a raft is needed and thought/planning is required to reach the end, a ruined castle, catacombs, and the final lich lair.
  • Choices that lead to different end game outcomes.
  • 8 hours of game play.
  • Animation for the player - Finally! Yes, all mobs were animated on version 3.0, but I just didn't have the space at that time to get the player animated. The animations for the player are simple, but there's only so much you can do with PETSCII.
  • Some mobs run away on low health.
  • Total time of play recorded.
  • Due to being playable on stock Commodore PETs with only a cassette, gameplay is designed to be linear in order, although you can choose to go back to (most) previous zones explored.
• 2024-01-05 Version 3.0 Released
  • Almost all monsters are animated.
  • Armor and weapons have names.
  • There is finally a use for gold. There is now a village with a vendor up north in the outdoor area.
  • While there are a few other items available at the vendor, You can now purchase a heal enchant. The enchant activates once per purchase and is expensive. I didn't want to change the "feel" of the game too much. To heal you press H.
  • There are a total of 3 new zones to explore in the game. I say zones as they are not ruin levels. The village is accessible from the outdoor area. The other two zones are accessible from the ruin.
  • A few boss mobs have been added.
  • If coming from version 2, The stairs down on level 1 are worth visiting.
  • Level 3 has been mostly restored to about 85% (possibly more) to its original state as I made it as a boy 40 years ago. Not that it is an awesome area or anything, but still neat. If coming from V2: Going to the stairs down on this level is significant.
  • There are better weapons available in the game than previously available. If coming from version 2, simply killing monsters on level 3 and 4 should upgrade.
  • The end is much tougher if coming from v2. Let me know if you can beat it without any upgrades or leveling.
  • Completely enclosing character's avatar in any stairs/boat tile temporarily changes your spawn point to that location until you change zones or reload.
  • While there is only so much you can do with text graphics, the dragon animation is worth viewing.
  • Added more help option on title screens.
  • When you have won, be sure to check out what is cooking on the stove. I used almost all available memory on the level to add some polish.
  • Rebalanced all the zones, painful. This required me exploring every room, and looting every gold on every level. I can't tell you the number of times I had to clear every mob from the new zones to thoroughly test.
  • A few Easter eggs have been added. Hint: A few things change based off of your progression.
  • Support for quests has been added.
• 2023-09-10 Version 2.7 Released
  • Additional 20% Improvement in performance.
  • On CBM 80 Column Systems: Game now uses full 80 columns for main game display. Movement is a bit sluggish, but makes up for it in extra view range.

    It should be compatible with 8032, 8096, 8296, and SuperPET, as well as N and SK variants.
    If you have actual hardware, I'd love to hear from you that it works, hopefully with pictures. I've only been able to test using Vice.

    Many thanks to Frederic Bezies for playtesting & brainstorming.

  • Tape cassette version is fixed, it was missing critical files.
  • Slightly modified Level 3 and end boss maps to preserve theme in 80 columns.
  • Minor bug fixes.
• 2023-08-29 Version 2.5 Released
  • Support for CBM 80 Column Systems: While game only uses 40 columns(centered), screen does not corrupt on 80 column CBMs such as the 8032 and SuperPET. (Upgraded in 2.7 to support full 80 columns)
  • Minor bug fixes.
• 2023-07-23 Version 2.2(2.0) Released
  • The game starts with an outdoor adventure!
  • There are now animated tiles.
  • All levels are fortified with room decorations.
  • Game programmed around ROM 1 bugs with the Commodore PET disk drive (IEEE-488), allowing it to work with a disk drive! To get it operating, see project rom1diskmagic.
  • 20% improvement in performance.
  • As with 1.1, this all runs in only 8K of memory. To make something this complex has been an ongoing battle.
  • Unfortunately, character save files from version 1.x are not compatible.
  • Fixed screen corruption on save (only effected tape cassette version in some cases).
• 2023-03-13 Version 1.1 Released
  • Added support for Super Nintendo Controller.
    • For a PET, this adapter is required: SNES Adapter. You will also need a game controller. I had success with this controller: Hyperkin "Scout" Controller
    • From Masswerk Online Emulator, it is recommended to play using Firefox. I found this USB controller set worked well: kiwitata Super NES
  • Minor bug fixes.
• 2023-02-27 Version 1.0 Released