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aschultz

About Me:

Sorry, but I haven't yet shared the information about myself that would typically display here. Check back later to see if that changes, or if I instead choose to remain an enigma.


Revisiting Bard's Tale
January 30, 2020

I replayed Bard's Tale I a few weeks ago. It's really horrible to you at the start. You need to find the exact right enemies to fight, or you'll get snowed under. Groups of 8 monsters attack you, bang, bang. And you have to win cleanly--resurrection is prohibitively expensive. The best way I found was to take a warrior in your main party and ditch them for a magician (useless at low levels) at level 2. Then everything gets rolling, and it's kind of fun. BT1 is small enough I was able to plow through the rest. Also, there are fights you can keep trying. Everyone knows the 400 berserkers, but the 69 wights on level 3 of the crypt actually are more efficient and give good item drops too.

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Childhood dream: achieved!
January 28, 2020

I realized how little I've been playing retro games. I've been busy writing text adventures, and it can be exhausting to make even small changes. But it gives me more appreciation for even mediocre games, and I'm always glad to get back to playing, both games I have and haven't played before.

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I'm on Itch.Io, yay. Is anyone else?
August 16, 2016

This was a long time coming, and after some encouragement from Wade Clarke, and some procrastination, I dropped the first of what I hope will be several games there. Wade's IFComp 2011 entry, Leadlight Gamma, is also on there: https://wade-clarke.itch.io/leadlight-gamma. If you want the free version for an Apple emulator, it's here.

My game is called Threediopolis. It was an entry in the 2013 IFComp, and it was conceived some time around June 2012. I think it's a pretty simple concept, but it kept growing with hints, silly game text, headers to keep track of progress, and eventually an advanced mode.

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My work on games
August 07, 2016

Well. I guess it's been a while.

When I played Bard's Tale II and Ultima IV one magical summer, I remember wanting to be a part of that. No, not practical, just learn general programming/keep your grades up instead. Computer courses even revolved around sorting algorithms, anything but just getting out there and finding how to do stuff.

Bard's Tale II fell. Ultima IV--well, solving it became a secondary dream. I got through it soon after leaving college, thanks to GameFAQs, without which I wouldn't be here.

But last month I was invited to help test a game for the Apple II. And I realized, I always wanted to do something like that, but life can get in the way.

You can play it on an emulator, say, AppleWin.

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Writing I've been up to
March 26, 2012

I decided to join on the Apollo 18 20th anniversary tribute which was posted to the text adventure forums back in December. I probably took too many games--the organizer wanted them all to be claimed by January 1 or so and so I stepped in with some ideas by January 15th, worrying nobody was going to take things. So I feel bad having taken so much, and I didn't really go after reciprocal testing, but I have to say this: it was a ton of FUN when I had the time, and despite being rather sick for 10 days, the 3-month buffer was enough.

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Review, in case it doesn't get into the database...
March 19, 2012

LR for WonderSwan

I wasn't aware of the WonderSwan until I went searching for new versions of Lode Runner (LR.) It was a last resort. You see, so many ports of Lode Runner contain the same levels from the original. Maybe they throw in a story with animals to rescue or something, but it that couldn't disguise the exact same levels made by kids pulled off the street long ago back in 1980. Which is annoying to see after I've poked my way through several Japanese menus. Yeah, first world problems, rom downloads aren't perfectly legal, and so on. But when so many Lode Runner games come with level editors (also part of the original) that the developers themselves never seem to use, it's hard to believe much care went into these products.

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So what apps do you-all use to write?
January 27, 2012

I've tried other text editors but can't believe I didn't discover Notepad++ until recently. I really like NoteTab Standard for organizing things that need chapters, but Notepad++ is great for typing one-off stuff like reviews I don't need/want to take too many notes on--it even tracks the # of bytes a file is, and so forth, which is nice when I don't want to bloat a piece of writing too much.

I'd actually heard of Notepad++ before but assumed it was too much like Notepad for some reason. But it's not. After trying a pile of other text editors geared towards HTML coding and such (which I bet some people here might find useful) it took me about fifteen minutes to realize that I'd found something I wanted and probably should've done so years ago.

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Additional Articles:

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