Aerendel, The Game

Aerendel - Text Based Role Playing Game

(This page is under construction)

I wrote my first attempts at a computer Role Playing Game in Applesoft Basic. The maximum size for any program was 32k. Yup, 32k. I threw in a healing skill, sharp weapons skill, one spell, a system for advancing via experience, linked the program to a character generator and a training hall / store. The second version had all that and 6 spaces to move around in, including one where you could find stat raising (or reducing) herbs. There were half a dozen weapons with various damage bonuses. A magic accountant would pop up and buy any excess weapons before I figured out how to add inventory slots for up to 15 items. I linked in a workshop/weaponsmith's area where you could make weapons, either throw them away or keep them, and/or take them to the pawn shop to sell. I copied everyhting in the main program into an add on program and gave myself 6 different spaces to wander around in. The characters had to 'search' each space to find or not find any opponents, or herbs. The combat system pretty much sucked. You typed "K" to attack the npc and you swung at the npc and it swung back. If you wanted to wander off and come back three hours later the characters would still be exactly as you left them. Before I got it right, I goofed and forgot to tell the combat 'die rollers' to return only integers. I had monsters with something like ".85372619111 Hit Points" who probably could have gone on forever without dying. Oh, and flying characters never actually touched the ground when they walked, they were always at 1 unit of height while non-flyers were at zero. My nephews (the now 20 year old was six years old when I wrote this) loved it.

Then I rewote the whole thing in "C" on a 286 pre-windows ibm clone. This version of "C" said it could have infinitely long programs, but it never counted on me. It got brain fried after one meg. I had to tie 5 programs together to roll a character. but I learned how to tell each program to commit suicide while calling up the next program. I felt like a freakin genius. But it wasn't multi-player.

So now I got my hands on SlashMUD- which is multi-player. I started writing rooms, adding armour and weapons and social commands. I was having fun. But now the real geniuses (I'm not being facetious.) are reworking the whole package from pascal based to C++. And that will take a while. So here we are, encouraging the developers behind this developer. making suggestions and holding our breath.