Legends from the Lost Realms

So what is this all about?

It's Lords of Midnight for the 21st Century. Still confused?

In the 1980s the ground breaking game the Lords of Midnight was released on the ZX Spectrum computer. Pushing technology to the limit this game featured a landscaping engine that drew three dimensional views of the world of Midnight. The player controlled a variety of characters in a turned-based strategy game, defending the free and trying to defeat the evil Lord Doomdark.

Legends from the Lost Realms is an attempt to develop an updated version of this masterpiece, incorporating the advances in technology that have occurred over the last twenty years. For example, the Legends Engine uses the Open GL graphics library to provide true three dimensional graphics in the place of the original tiled two dimensional images. Lighting effects enhance the graphics even further, the intention being to create an immersive environment without placing the graphical bells and whistles before gameplay. Multiplayer games will be supported, with both hotseat and play by e-mail games being possible. Other enhancements in the pipeline include a more advanced and flexible artificial intelligence.

Will I be able to create my own scenarios?

The Legends Engine has been built from the ground up with the goal of allowing the maximum of flexibility possible. The graphics can be altered with new buildings added and the landscape look changed (you want snow - change a couple of graphics files and you have it). As much as possible the data used in the game is separated from the code so races and characters can be added and changed without difficulty.

So what will the first scenario be like?

I don't want to give too much away at the moment, partly because it will ruin the fun of discovering everything when it is released and partly because I will probably change things to fit better with future coding developments. What I can say is that the first scenario will not be Lords of Midnight with a new coat of paint. I have many fond memories of playing Lords of Midnight, but I know the land of Midnight backwards and I want to create a new world to explore with different challenges.

For those that might be interested the current technical details are,

Tools,

• Visual C++
• Open GL for the graphics engine
• Bryce and Truespace for the creation of 3D objects and billboards
• Paintshop Pro versions 4 and 7 for 2D graphics and textures
• A good dictionary for multilingual support - blame my brother in law for that

Minimum requirements,

In theory any computer will be able to run the Legends Engine, the question being how fast? The game is turn-based so speed is not vital, but obviously there will be a point when the lag will be unexceptable. Different levels of graphics resolutions are supported for lower end computers. How minimum are the minimum requirements is yet to be determined, but it is expected that a 3D graphics card will be necessary.