Author Topic: Good Calculator Rpgs?  (Read 9594 times)

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Offline robberguy189

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #15 on: October 24, 2012, 04:49:44 pm »
And you didn't like Joltima? I think that's one of the most polished games (not just RPGs) ever made for the ti calcs!



Whaaaat!  Are we talking about the same game.  I got so bored I deleted it!  http://tiwizard.com/downloads/view.php?id=58

I wish I could play narkemen, it is only for 83 though.  Most of the games I find are demos, suck, or don't work.  I've found a chrono trigger game that is very fun though.  Can't wait to get an nspire and use gameboy emulators.  TI boy is very laggy and unplayable.  Also not very safe.

Also, are there any good non-rpgs like calcwars, but for ti 83+/84+?
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 04:51:42 pm by robberguy189 »

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #16 on: October 24, 2012, 05:17:41 pm »
Joltima is by far the best TI-83+ calculator RPG from before 2004 in terms of graphics and lenght. I think you might be expecting a bit too much from calculator games. It's a calculator, after all, not a Super Nintendo. Back when Joltima was made in 1998 there was barely any documentation in z80 ASM. Also making an RPG in ASM is a major PITA due to the large data and back then there was the 8 KB executable code limit coupled with the lack of a free Flash APP SDK. I think the issue you ran into that got you bored from the game was the lack of magic spells (from what I remember, they were left out because the author ran out of space). All you can do in battles is fight, defend, use healing items and run. No special moves/spells/combos. That makes battles very repetitive after a while. It's a great classic, though, especially considering it dates back 14 years ago and was ported on every z80 calc under ridiculous limitations.

Dying eyes has magic spells,  but poor graphics in dungeons and the difficulty is ridiculously hard. Another classic, though.

There is also The Verdante Forest if you don't mind the bugs. It gotta have the best graphics of any calc RPG from that era and has a quite good amount of features.

It's hard to find any calc RPG without flaws. Even my own games are flawed due to using outdated ASM libs (sadly that's all that was available when I made the games)

The best that could ever happen is if someone remade Joltima with a small dungeon graphics overhaul, but added magic spells or character classes, with abilities you gain as you progress. Maybe a bit more NPC events, too. That or remake another existing RPG. Or another idea is that you could start programming yourself then once you become quite good you can try making one. ;)
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 05:22:22 pm by DJ_O »
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Offline Yeong

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #17 on: October 24, 2012, 05:31:20 pm »
I object Dying Eyes being ridiculously hard. all you have to do is spam raise int to 99 and spam reraise/doom for boss fight.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #18 on: October 24, 2012, 06:37:28 pm »
Oh lol I didn't know about that trick. But I really meant hard when beaten without abusing glitches or exploits. :P (and of course without grinding on an emulator running at 8000% speed)
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Offline Yeong

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #19 on: October 24, 2012, 06:44:35 pm »
i never play rpg games in emu (exception being ROL3) XD
Also, hasting before battle in dying eyes can wreak havoc on enemies
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Offline robberguy189

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #20 on: October 24, 2012, 06:48:22 pm »
Joltima is by far the best TI-83+ calculator RPG from before 2004 in terms of graphics and lenght.

Dying eyes has magic spells,  but poor graphics in dungeons and the difficulty is ridiculously hard. Another classic, though.

There is also The Verdante Forest if you don't mind the bugs.


Joltima is ok I guess.  It just needs a story.  I don't even get why it is an rpg.  You start the game to somebody saying, "go find a bunch of magical objects."  And you spend the rest of the game doing this.  

Dying eyes, in my opinion, was the best game I ever played for the calculator.  Desolate second, and Reuben Quest third.  I might have put reuben 2nd, but the translations weren't great.  I thought the difficulty was just right.   For tvf I tried playing the second game which encompasses the first, and It was crazy buggy.  I couldn't win a single fight.  My attacks missed or hit armor 100 percent of the time.  Nice Game Maxcoderz!

I can code already, although I focus on the computer.  I am currently working on a zombie survival game, 3d and all.  But I don't know when I'll be done.  Soon hopefully, but you never now;  I have a ton of work, and hardly have time to code at all.  I'm a new coder also.

So is ticalc really the best site for games?  A lot of the stuff there is very bad.  Are there any other big calculator game sites?
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 06:51:12 pm by robberguy189 »

Offline Yeong

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #21 on: October 24, 2012, 07:02:16 pm »
Quote
For tvf I tried playing the second game which encompasses the first, and It was crazy buggy.  I couldn't win a single fight.  My attacks missed or hit armor 100 percent of the time.  Nice Game Maxcoderz!
It's just a minor stat balancing issue. You could raise spirit to increase hitrate.

also, ticalc has nearly all the calc games ever existed.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #22 on: October 24, 2012, 07:28:44 pm »
Well that's pretty much how almost every RPG for the NES worked. Even Quest for the Nintendo 64 has no proper story XD. It was basically find 3-4 special items to save the world with every boss guarding it saying "I am <bossname> and no one can beat me". In Final Fantasy 1, you get an one-screen long intro, then when you start a new game you land straight on the world map. Some games don't even include the intro in the game so you have to read the manual.

Text on a calculator takes a ridiculous amount of space. In older ASM or BASIC games there was no known possible compression. Just take the short Reuben Quest 1 intro, for example:

Quote
Once upon a time on a foreign island, an evil knight named Ev came in order to disturb the peace that citizens established. Then one day a warrior with legendary power came to defeat the knight to save the people.

Then the hero vanished.

Several years passed and one day, Ev arose from darkness once again, and no sign from the hero that defeated him a few years ago.

So a young boy called Reuben with magic power had to save the island once again...

Just that small bit of text alone takes 458 bytes of memory, which is almost 2% of the entire calculator RAM. Now add a few NPC convos with boss intros, a short final boss speech and an ending text half the size of the intro, then you have about 10% of your RAM used. In Illusiat 13, where there are decent-sized NPC convos, about 20-30% of the game file size is text. This is why so many RPGs, especially older ones that had no access to the archive, has such limited storylines or ends instantly after the final battle. Joltima may not be that great, but it's very good by calculator standards, even more by '90s standards. Bashing Joltima like in your earlier post is like saying all NES RPGs are worthless by comparing them with Playstation 2 ones. I would obviously like a remake, though. (although Dying Eyes might be easier to remake due to lack of fog of war)

The only way you would be able to really understand is if you joined the TI community in the late '90s or early 2000's when making Flash APPs costed money, then try to create a better ASM RPG than Joltima without ever using any bit of the Flash memory and without the help of Fullrene/Crabcake tools, and only use ASMGuru and Dying Eyes source code as learning tools. Then you would realize the large amount of effort that had to be put in Joltima or similar games.

As for Reuben Quest yeah the text quality isn't that great, although since I don't speak english as native language that can't be helped much. :P (not tom mention I had to shrink down the text in every way possible to not run out of memory).

As for other calc sites ticalc is the largest, but not necessarily a quality archives. There are many good games there, but they're drowned out by thousands and thousands of crappy ones.

You really need to lower your standards, though, when it comes to judging other people's calculator games, else you're not gonna have much respect from other TI community members (and might even get inaverdently banned from the forums), especially if you flame people's work before having ever attempted to code one non-Nspire/Prizm calc game yourself. That said I guess it is expected as behaviour if you're coming from Youtube or have only programmed on a computer before. (You're basically transitioning from a 2000-3000 MHz platform straight to 15).
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 07:49:03 pm by DJ_O »
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Offline robberguy189

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #23 on: October 24, 2012, 08:45:38 pm »
Quote
For tvf I tried playing the second game which encompasses the first, and It was crazy buggy.  I couldn't win a single fight.  My attacks missed or hit armor 100 percent of the time.  Nice Game Maxcoderz!
It's just a minor stat balancing issue. You could raise spirit to increase hitrate.

also, ticalc has nearly all the calc games ever existed.



I know it wasn't spirit, this was the first first fight of the game.  It also played normally once, then went all glitchy.   ???  I find some good games on ticalc.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 08:46:29 pm by robberguy189 »

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #24 on: October 24, 2012, 08:54:00 pm »
TVF was never actually completed. From what I remember the author stopped in 2002 before restarting in 2004. Since in 2002 he was new to ASM programming, this resulted in some rather large, hard to debug code, and the author was not willing to restart such massive project from scratch. By late 2004 he was slowly retiring from calc programming and released the game finished. However some bugs were discovered including the Miss bug, but since he stopped calc programming he never actually fixed them. I think that's one reason why it's recommended to not start a calculator RPG as very first calc project when someone is new at calculator programming, especially ASM.
« Last Edit: October 24, 2012, 08:54:48 pm by DJ_O »
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Offline Yeong

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #25 on: October 24, 2012, 09:42:32 pm »
Yes, TVF is actually unfinished.
One of the proof is the unopenable chest in chapter 5 or something, which, i'm pretty sure, supposed to contain rune magic or something.
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #26 on: October 24, 2012, 10:08:56 pm »
Also if I remember, when you walked near the top portion of maps, there was garbage up there.
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Offline chickendude

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #27 on: October 25, 2012, 12:28:40 am »
Another really good (amazing, possibly the best) RPG is Robot War by DigiTan. I started porting it to the 83+ but haven't finished it. I'm not sure how much of it will play but it's very likely that it'll crash and you'll lose your savegame.

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #28 on: October 25, 2012, 12:30:01 am »
I really hope one day that one can be ported completely to the 83+. I always wanted to try it, but it doesn't run on my 82. D:
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Offline chickendude

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Re: Good Calculator Rpgs?
« Reply #29 on: October 25, 2012, 02:32:58 am »
I started converting it to an app since it's just too big to fit comfortably in RAM (and it lets me have a big buffer in RAM :D).