Redefinable keys, goblins that chase you, d20 combat, and the memory bug that had the game silently overwriting itself.
In part seven the dungeon was full of goblins that were about as threatening as garden gnomes. They stayed exactly where the map generator dropped them. You could walk up, poke them, take five points of damage and stroll away, and they’d still be standing there in the same spot when you came back.
This time they chase you. A small change in code but big step forward in feel, and getting there dragged me into a weird and nasty memory bug that corrupted my character set while I watched. The bug is probably the most useful lesson in this whole part, so if you skim, don’t miss the memory section.
Open the full program and edit it in your browser here: part8d.bas in the RGC online IDE.
Where we got to last time
Quick recap of where part seven left off. We had a custom character set loading from disk, a map built out of three by three meta-tiles which randomly generated on every run, a player rolled up with proper Dungeons and Dragons style stats, collision detection that read the screen back with PEEK , and a teleport key for when the random map boxed you into a corner.
What it didn’t have was a game. Nothing threatened you, so there were no stakes.
Four things change in this part:
You can redefine the keys , because QAOP is not to everybody’s taste.
, because QAOP is not to everybody’s taste. Goblins get a position, a health value, and a brain (albeit, a very small one).
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