Cool. Object Oriented Programming on an Atari in the early 1980's..

The morality bit was always one of AR's charms. Well, I know this much:

There is an alignment stat, it starts at neutral (127) memory location
6382 in the Dungeon. It would be interesting to monitor your alignment as you
performed certain actions! (I wonder why I never did that).

You could uncover a whole new dimension to the game that way! I think I may do
that this weekend. Also finish mapping the memory locations for the city &
verify a couple for the dungeon.

Mark

"Matthew T. Bouchard" <mattb--ilm.com> wrote:

I believe Phil or someone said the weapons were actually code, so its code
module was just run when you used it, or maybe even all the time. So,
that is how it can react to different things. It also planned so that in
this way you could accumulate weapons from other modules and go back into
the city and have it work. I thought that was brilliant.

I would be interested in knowing how the internal "morality calculator"
worked. I loved the fact that actions had consequences. Most RPG games
either dont even have the concept outside of puzzles, or require you to
play a particular way (Ultima 4). Well, I havent really played any in a
while, so maybe that's changed.

matt bouchard


On 20 Oct 2000, Mark Wieczorek wrote:

> discovered this:
>
> Rob, the section in the FAQ on stat increases - I never realized that that
was
> the first "skill based improvement system in a computer role playing game!"
> The thing I loved about the game was that it was so detailed. Little things
> like that. It was SO mysterious, I never knew how anything worked. The way
the
> weapons work is still a mystery to me. I remember Ken or Dan mentioning
> something about various weapons being xdx, but that never helped me
understand
> how they to effect in the game.
>
> One thing computer games don't take advantage of now that they should is
> making an an increadibly complex world where things have complex
interactions.
> Everything nowadays is based on d&d. I realize AR is too, but it succeeded
in
> creating it's own world that transcended d&d. In AR I felt (and still feel)
> that each weapon reacts with each monster in a different and complex way.
That
> various subtle things I did would trigger events I didn't realize, nor
could
> comprehend. Games nowadays focus on puzzles that you can easily understand
-
> push the levers in the right order. I want to return the world of the things
I
> don't understand.
>
> Phil emphasized how easy it is to crack the encryption used to create the
> games. I guess nobody has tried. I don't know much about cryptogrphy (in
> theory yes, in practice no). Does anyone know about the encryption used to
> create AR (city & dungeon)? or even where the key may be or where to look.
He
> said that the key is on the disk and is even loaded into RAM.
>
> If you open the City in the very beginning is the string:
> Protection From Paradise
> then a string of "garbage" characters followed by
> ASSERT [ENDRAM SHR 12]=[TEST SHR 12]
>
> does any of this mean anything to anyone?
>
> Mark
>
> E-Mail: Tengard--usa.net
> ICQ: 16332158
>