Welcome to Tower And Dragon V2.7 Only 8K
2023-09-15 Version 2.7 Released! Only requires 8K memory and is playable by tape or disk.
Play Online Here:
Masswerk: Tower And Dragon.Download here:
TowerAndDragon.zip (This includes d64, tape cassette .wav, .tap, and more.)Watch the Video Here:
#^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR9TUzgQuWARelease 2.0 Video (3 minutes)With memory tapped out at 8K, version 2 started out modest enough with just optimizing program space to add room decorations. While testing, I realized it was nearly impossible to locate critical tiles for game progression. This caused another optimization programming cycle to include tile animation.
Animations had such a dramatic impact that I then created an entirely new starting level. The game now starts with your character outdoors just after landing a boat on the shore near an ancient ruin. To complete the outdoor adventure, a key needs to be found to unlock and descend into the depths of the ancient ruin. Monsters in the ruin have been increased in level to compensate for the outdoor adventure. The final boss is significantly tougher.
Left: Outdoor Adventure With Animated Water Right: Level 1 With Decorations.Tower And Dragon is a classic dungeon crawling adventure with primary and offhand weapon, armor, quest storyline, moving walls, teleportation, and unique tilesets and monsters for each dungeon level. Your character starts out just after landing a boat on the shore near an ancient ruin, discovered by following a dream.
Player Quotes:- Kimberly Cook- It was beautiful.
- Marshall Sutherland- The thought that this whole thing runs in 8K just boggles my mind.
- Richard Suematsu (ref. plot)- I like how you don't understand what's going on in the first 2 levels and then it starts to come into focus.
- Frederic Bezies- ...The end is really touching. For that alone, it rewards the fact of having invested 35 minutes per level to explore them completely, because the secret passages are rather numerous.
New in V2.7 2023-09-15- Additional 20% Improvement in performance.
- On CBM 80 Column Systems: Game now uses full 80 columns for main game display.
It should be compatible with 8032, 8096, 8296, and SuperPET, as well as N and SK variants.
If you have actual hardware, I'd love to hear from you that it works, hopefully with pictures. I've only been able to test using Vice.
Note: Movement is currently sluggish, but playable. Down the road, I expect to refactor/optimize code to find space to implement better smooth scrolling (still using only 8K).
Many thanks to Frederic Bezies for playtesting & brainstorming.
- Tape cassette version is fixed, it was missing critical files.
- Slightly modified Level 3 and end boss maps to preserve theme in 80 columns.
- Minor bug fixes.
New in V2.0 2023-07-23:- The game starts with an outdoor adventure!
- There are now animated tiles.
- All levels are fortified with room decorations.
- Game programmed around ROM 1 bugs with the Commodore PET disk drive (IEEE-488), allowing it to work with a disk drive! To get it operating, see project rom1diskmagic.
- 20% improvement in performance.
- As with 1.1, this all runs in only 8K of memory. To make something this complex has been an ongoing battle.
- Unfortunately, character save files from version 1.x are not compatible.
- Fixed screen corruption on save (only effected tape cassette version in some cases).
- As of Version 1.1, supports SNES Game Controller.
#^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1YFQ-3sEsYThe Making Of (36 minutes) 
#^https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnvDYabBdAAArchive Release 1.0 Video (3 minutes)IndieRetroNews Release Link:
IndieRetroNews: Tower And Dragon 2.0Tower And Dragon is written in assembly language, only requires an 8K Commodore PET, and is playable by disk drive or tape cassette on ROM1, ROM2, and ROM4 systems. You can play with more memory, but part of the design was to make sure the game would work on some of the oldest stock PET systems still around.
The audio soundtrack on the splash screen uses Shiru's BuzzKick engine, converted to the PET and gives Tower And Dragon a unique and distinct audio that new games will follow. He also converted the theme music to run under BuzzKick. While the splash screen utilizes BuzzKick engine, it is not used in-game due to lack of memory. Therefore, only simple audio is utilized while in-game.
To keep with the vintage theme, I recovered the data from maps in a game that I made as a boy in 1980. Those vintage maps are utilized in Tower And Dragon! The game is a tribute to the game that inspired me to become a programmer: "Dungeon" from 1979. Like Dungeon, this game only requires 8K of memory.
Instruction ScreenNorbert Landsteiner has a wonderful online PET emulator with recently released version 2.0 that includes audio. Play Online Here:
Masswerk: Tower And Dragon. This will make it easy for anyone to try out the game, as well as any other vintage games for the PET. His powerful emulator correctly works with
Back To The Pet,
A Bright Shining Star, and
Faulty Robots.
Version History
- New in V2.7 2023-09-15
- Additional 20% Improvement in performance.
- On CBM 80 Column Systems: Game now uses full 80 columns for main game display.
It should be compatible with 8032, 8096, 8296, and SuperPET, as well as N and SK variants.
If you have actual hardware, I'd love to hear from you that it works, hopefully with pictures. I've only been able to test using Vice.
Note: Movement is currently sluggish, but playable. Down the road, I expect to refactor/optimize code to find space to implement better smooth scrolling (still using only 8K).
Many thanks to Frederic Bezies for playtesting & brainstorming.
- Tape cassette version is fixed, it was missing critical files.
- Slightly modified Level 3 and end boss maps to preserve theme in 80 columns.
- Minor bug fixes.
- 2023-07-23 Version 2.0 Released
- The game starts with an outdoor adventure!
- There are now animated tiles.
- All levels are fortified with room decorations.
- Game programmed around ROM 1 bugs with the Commodore PET disk drive (IEEE-488), allowing it to work with a disk drive! To get it operating, see project rom1diskmagic.
- 20% improvement in performance.
- As with 1.1, this all runs in only 8K of memory. To make something this complex has been an ongoing battle.
- Unfortunately, character save files from version 1.x are not compatible.
- Fixed screen corruption on save (only effected tape cassette version in some cases).
- 2023-03-13 Version 1.1 Released
- Added support for Super Nintendo Controller.
- Minor bug fixes.
- 2023-02-27 Version 1.0 Released
ROM1 Disk Magic: Allows the use of IEEE-488 disk drive devices on a stock ROM 1 or BASIC 1 stock Commodore PET.
#^https://hub.inktada.com/channel/rom1diskmagicContact me: jason at insanerocketry dot com
