The Forest

Epilogue

A MaxCoderz Production: MaxCoderz! by Maarten Zwartbol

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I. The Chronicler

Two years. Two years it took me to dig up all the information that Stooge wrote about the Verdante Forest and the adventures of David and Lelani and turn it into a RPG. Unnoticeably I became the main character of my own quest, making an RPG....doomed for failure. As most people know, many have attempted to create an RPG but have failed. Because of boredom, realism and probably time absence. I suffered from all, but all couldn't touch the core of my inspiration.
When I started the concept of the game back in February 2002 I was filled with confidence and inspiration. I didn't like any RPG I had played so far (for a calculator) and wanted to make one the was graphically beautiful and had a touching story. At that time I didn't care much about gameplay, so I dismissed it as something of latter concern. How could I know it would become a slow poison...wrecking my brains late at night.
When I started my RPG I wanted to see how RPGs we're done on the Gameboy and the SNES since those machines are most comparable to the TI83. I played a set of FF versions and other games that people at the board recommended. I sought for information provided by other TI-RPG makers and stumbled upon a piece by Alex Roper. He said that making a good RPG took around 2 years to complete. of course I didn't agree and thought I could do it in 6 months. After 6 months a big part of the game was released as a BETA at ticalc. I got extremely much positive comments through emails, IMs, PMs. And decided that I was gonna be one who was gonna break the cycle and release my RPG within one year. I coded through the whole summer, dismissing all my friends temporarely and skipping all the fun. After that summer I was completely broken down and sweared I would never lay eyes one any piece of ASM code ever again. Not keeping in mind all the work I had previously done.
I kept the game in the freezer for 6 months when I realized that all the work I had done for it should not be in vain. I took up the project and started finalizing it. A lot was to be done but I pushed on. I implemented external levelpacks which would allow for more gameplay, finalized the battle engine and did a lot of debugging.
The gameplay aspect was backfiring on me. I had dismissed it for to long. My game was becoming a beautiful woman without a brain. I implemented some new concepts to really let the player control how the character develops. Still...I couldn't make it the way I planned it to turn out.
Then the gameplay design part was becoming reality. I had to make maps and write dialogues! It became the most boring part of development. Coming up with names, different quests and personalities. As a coder you are always interested in letting the calculator do 'cool' stuff for you. Making maps wasn't really fulfilling my ideas of programming. But it had to be done, and it became done.
After that period I let a certain amount of people beta test my game, and these people were invaluable for the progress of the game. Their comments and bug reports allowed me to produce the quite complete game you are about to play. To see who these people are and where/how you can worship them...check the credits.

II. Inspiration

I have always been an RPG lover. They trigger emotions within you that I haven't felt with any other gametype. Therefore I wouldn't qualify them as games but modern forms of literature. Therefore I don't see myself as a diehard coder but a writer who has got a story tell and does this in a modern way.
The biggest inspiration for The Verdante Forest has been 'Silver' an RPG/Adventure released by Spiral House somewhere around 1998. If you ever get a chance to play this game you should. The game 'Summoner' by Volition has not really been an inspiration but is the second best RPG I have ever played and I think it must have influenced me in one way or another. Of course 'Diablo' has been an inspiration :). Some characters actually appear in the forest and I use the same weapon system. My battle engine has been graphically inspired by 'Final Fantasy III' and 'Golden Sun' and technically by 'Baldur's Gate'. I did my research :). For more inspirational information resort to the Credits.

III. The Final Result

The game turned out to be a whole lot different then I had it planned to be. I wanted to make the 'Ultimate TI-RPG' ever to be released for the calculator. I can sadly admit that I have failed to reach my final goal. You for yourself can decide wether you think it deserves to be entitled by that. I've already decided. I failed myself, but I can't blame myself. To a certain extent it turned out the way I wanted but because of size issues a whole lot more was skipped.
When I started the project my ASM knowledge was a 1 on a scale from one to ten. I didn't even know how to draw a sprite on the screen. So you can see that the foundation of my game was quite badly coded...and when you have coded on a game for so long you don't want to recode things you did 1.5 years ago. Therefore the game became to big and for every feature I added I had to sacrifice others. It had to stop somewhere. The one thing I hope for is that people enjoy to play it and cheer me up a little. That's why I coded the game anyways, for you!