FreeGameDev

Troll Bridge is an adventure game like the original Legend of Zelda. I started it a long time ago but never completed it. Up until recently it used a Moblin like character as the troll. I decided to upload the artwork to opengameart so I redid the troll to be an original creation. There isn't a lot of game to play at the moment. Two dungeons are available but neither are complete. The overworld is mostly empty.

DOS support included. That's uncommon. Palettes and everything, so you're clearly no stranger to DOS development. SDL with Allegro 4 fallback. I played around with that a while back, but I ultimately dropped Allegro in favor of OpenGL. I was like "DOS? Nahh..." But I've found myself playing a lot of DOS games lately so you seem to have your finger on the pulse of this retro craze. It's magical seeing CWSDPMI and all the other stuff in the folder. This looks like it's going to be a treasure.

But... I can't get past the name entry screen. It's just a cursor to move around with the arrow keys and I can't seem to get it to type anything and the enter key, spacebar, etc. don't work. I would consult the code, but I think you should make it more straightforward to enter a name and get into the game considering people might get frustrated not knowing what to do.

Control key is "A" which is used to select a character in name select. Alt is 'B' which is used to backspace in name select. Enter starts the game once a name is selected. Yeah it needs to explain the keys somewhere in game. It is in the user manual on the web site.

The DOS version is old. I don't support DOS anymore. I have a windows build but haven't uploaded it yet. It only has an SDL backend now. This game was not built for the retro craze. It was simply started around 1998 I think.

I don't know how to build the latest version (no makefile or cmakelists) so I'm trying out the old DOS build. The A key is not working for me. I am using a US QWERTY keyboard; maybe that has something to do with it.

1998, huh? That's pretty ancient. Good on you for keeping it up.

EDIT: Ctrl is the button on DOS. I'm playing it now. This is looking very similar to Zelda, except this time you're playing as Gannon. Very fluid controls. I would make the screens scroll about 4x as fast. Of course, I am using an old build so I don't know how much this reflects the current version.

Normal vs. Atari 2600 like Graphics



Some backgrounds like the blocks and doors are not modified. It's been fun trying to get things that look alright with the restrictions.

I'm not sure if the 2600 uses that many distinct scanlines. I'm also seeing a lot of horizontal detail, and the colors aren't as gaudy as a typical 2600 game. Not too bad tho. 7/10

fluffrabbit {l Wrote}:I'm not sure if the 2600 uses that many distinct scanlines. I'm also seeing a lot of horizontal detail, and the colors aren't as gaudy as a typical 2600 game. Not too bad tho. 7/10

It definitely has more scanlines than the 2600. It is still using 320x200 that Troll Bridge engine runs in. I don't know how detailed you can get horizontally you can get on the Atari 2600. I suspect it wouldn't be possible to create these images. The colors are from an article about the colors supported by Atari 2600 on NTSC.

I didn't mention it but Troll Bridge is not switching to these graphics. I may add them with a command line option or some setting in game but they will not be the default.

I didn't know such colors were possible on the 2600. Strange how most of the games are green and red. I'm thinking specifically of Adventure and Pitfall.

I didn't mention it but Troll Bridge is not switching to these graphics. I may add them with a command line option or some setting in game but they will not be the default.

Reminds me of a situation about 5 years ago where someone suggested I add a CGA mode to a game I was working on. It wasn't shader-based (or palette-based) so I manually modified the graphics. It was still too smooth and high-res, unlike an actual CGA game on DOS, so I dropped the feature soon thereafter.