Introduction
The original Wizard's Castle game started out as a Basic-language game in 1980. The original game heading was:
WIZARD'S CASTLE GAME FROM JULY/AUGUST 1980
ISSUE OF RECREATIONAL COMPUTING MAGAZINE.
WRITTEN FOR EXIDY SORCERER BY JOSEPH R. POWER
The derelict (that's me!) was enthralled with the game, playing it over and over for hours (when he was *supposed* to be working on his senior project). I re-wrote it in Turbo Pascal 3.0 around 1986, and it got some local distribution around that time (though this pre-dated widespread access to the Internet, which complicated widespread visibility). My main addition was to make the current-floor map always visible, so one didn't have to press the [M]ap key every second or third move. In fact, the Map key was dropped entirely.
Now I've re-written it again, in C and Win32, using sprite-based graphics. It isn't exactly Nethack or Omega, but it's still a pretty fun game and reasonably challenging. I've also tried to make the rules a little more logical (for example, in the original game, monster attack and damage rolls were independent of monster level!!), but I am definitely *not* expert in designing game-rule systems, and I didn't put too much effort into that.
In any case, this program is freeware and the source code is available, so feel free to expound on any of this further as you wish. The game and its sources are available at:
My contact information is available at that site as well.
Enjoy!!
derelict
Copyright © 2005-2006 Cathartes Aura