Ten years ago, in 2011 I detailed my experiences as a youth with tabletop and computer based role playing games. I had played several in the 1980's and by the 1990's, inspired by Dungeon Master (and also irritated that Dungeon Master 2 was never developed for the Apple IIGS) I had embarked on the development of my own cRPG using HyperCard IIGS. I envisioned creating a HyperCard based engine stack that would be used to run community generated dungeons, much like a 3D graphics version of EAMON. Unfortunately my reach exceeded my grasp.
Dungeon Master IIGS by FTA
Dungeon Master revitalized my interest in building my own games, but at the time of its release there was no way to modify it or build your own dungeons. So I turned to HyperCard GS and spent hours trying to create my own dungeon engine I called "HyperAdventure" and sample game I called "Fangborne". My goal was to combine the 3d dungeon exploration and point and click interface of Dungeon Master with the fairly simple real-time combat system of my own devising. My HyperAdventure system relied on predefined cards that defined every possible appearance of a hallway. This would have allowed for a nearly unlimited size dungeon within the constraints of the software and memory (a high-end IIGS typically had no more than 4 MB RAM, and it could be as little as 1.25 MB). Also, since a dungeon was essentially defined by a set of text records it would have been easy to create a dungeon generator and save files would be very small text files. Characters were also saved in text files so that they could be migrated between games. It all worked but it consumed an enormous amount of my free time designing it and with the abandonment by Apple of the IIGS platform and HyperCard IIGS it became difficult to remain motivated to complete it. I stopped working on it in 1995. The final prototype version was only 750K in size.
Fangborne prototype in development
Flash forward to October 2020 and I was putting the final touches on Script-Central 2020 SE, my personal homage to the Script-Central HyperCard IIGS disk magazine that had been published by Resource-Central in the early '90's. I had just enough room for one more stack and I decided to include the Fangborne prototype.
I decided that I still had time to release Script-Central 2020 SE in 2020, and so began adding some minor enhancements to Fangborne, hoping it would end up closer to an enjoyable game than just a concept piece. I worked on it through mid-February 2021 and enlisted the aid of a family member or two to test it out. In the end it became a 350 card stack of over 2 MB in size, eclipsing the 750k prototype I started with.
A demo of a beta version of Fangborne v1.0
Fangborne v1.0 is a completely functional single-player multi-level cRPG that includes editors for creating items, populating stores, and generating template-based dungeon levels of up to 20x20 size.
Some of the many features of Fangborne include:
Player character generation, saving, loading with multiple races and attributes
Game session saving/loading
Help system stack
Editors for developing items, stores, and map levels (5x5, 10,10, 15x15, and 20x20)
A theme editor
Auto-mapping
Game and Sound FX menus for easy access to options while playing
An on-screen mini-map
A large 3D display with a mouse-driven interface
Combat in the style of Bard's Tale with a variety of monsters
Loot from both random drops and placed treasure troves
A spell casting system resembling that of Dungeon Master
A variety of normal and magical weapons and clothing
Spell scrolls and notes, with a spellbook and a folio
Dungeon features such as pits, traps, doors, gates, secret doors, one-way doors, and more.
Sound effects that can be customized
Built-in speed control so that it can be played on fast emulators
A kid mode that allows exploration without fighting
A master mode that doubles monster hit points and attack damage for replayability
A developer mode that allows access to many hidden commands such as teleport, giveitem, etc.
A non-flashing mode to reduce the amount of on-screen flashing
All of these features do come at a price though. The game will function on a IIGS, but even on an accelerated IIGS the gameplay will be frustratingly slow. Loading the initial maps can take several minutes, as can viewing the in-game level map. Movement can take more than 15 seconds, even with the mini-map toggled off. For an enjoyable experience I strongly recommend playing on an emulator with a CPU speed of 40 MHz or more. The faster the better really, although at faster speeds you will be more likely to encounter random monsters. Testing has been done on Sweet16 and GSPlus. I have found that the GSPlus emulator has problems playing sounds in HyperCard IIGS, so unless that is fixed I recommend using Eric Shepherd's Sweet16 emulator due to Fangborne's frequent use of sound effects. At this time Sweet16 works best on Mac OS 10.13. It has disk mounting issues on 10.14, and does not work at all on 10.15 or later. If you have Windows or Mac OS 10.15 or later then you can try GSPlus (without sound) or ActiveGS.
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