

			Hidden Realms by Miguel Balauag


I've made several attempts at RPGs before, but I've never gotten around to actually finishing one. But since I recently got my Graph-Link (finally!), I can actually make one without worrying about free memory. This will be the first in a series of RPGs under the same name. Hidden Realms II will probably be done by Easter break this year.

		Introduction

All right, the storyline's not so original, but I think it'll do. The king of the land called Nok wants you to find four charms for him. These charms were once used to defeat a higher order called the Faki, and now they're back. Your job is to recover the charms and bring them back to the king.

In this game there is no MP, just money. Your money is in the form of Z, the local currency. When casting spells, you have to spend Z instead. So, be careful when managing your money!

		Basic Gameplay

	Map Screen

Theta = You
Triangle = Town/Outpost
Pi = Cave
I = one of the 4 dungeons
Box = Chest

2nd = Status Screen
Up/Down/Left/Right = Move Character
Y= = Automatic Battle

	Status Screen

Y= = Use an herb
Window = Cast Cure
Zoom = Equip/Drop Items
Trace = Save Game
Graph = Leave Status Screen
2nd = Toggle Info

	Battle Screen

2nd = Select (from menus)
Up/Left = Back one menu (Up for bottom menus, left for side menus)

F(ight)
M(agic)  -  C(ure)  F(ire)  I(ce)  L(it)  N(uke)
H(erb)
R(un)

For almost all menus, use the 2nd button to make selections.


		Other Stuff

You can not sell items that are equipped. To unequip an item, you can select a blank space at the Equip screen.

You can hold up to 4 items, not including Herbs (you can have an unlimited amount) and your equipped Weapon and Armor.

Strength affects how much damage you inflict and Karma affects how effective your spells are.

Most enemies have a special attack which inflicts more damage than normal. Watch out for these.

Search the dungeons well for chests. They hold armor and weapons that will be useful.

If you ever want to turn on/off the attack animations, just store 0 to L4(33) or whatever list your game file is using. Store 1 to enable them.


		Designer's Notes

Okay, so it's not the greatest RPG ever (especially graphically). But hopefully I can improve it a lot over the series. Hidden Realms II should be significantly better than this one. Here's a list of some the new features it should have:

  16 x 16 Overworld Map (compared to 5 x 5 for this one)
  Bigger dungeons
  More and tougher enemies and bosses
  More spells and the ability to "affect all"
  More chests and hidden events (the lists are going to be nearly 60 items long)
  Better storyline/ending (hopefully)
  More characters in the party (maybe!)

Anyways, I thought this one's pretty good. It runs pretty fast and doesn't require much run-time memory. In fact, I've never gotten a memory error yet, even when I had another game on my calc (it was a small one, about 600 mem). The game should take fairly long; it took me  maybe 5 hours, I'm not sure. The next one should take almost twice that (again, hopefully).

Any other questions or bug reports (there shouldn't be any) can be sent to anarchy16@rocketmail.com