Major Release ~ Dark Law was released ten years ago today.
Dark Law ~ Meaning of Death
# Posted on March 28, 2007, 2:05 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

I refer, of course, to the original game. Now, however, ten years later, it is available in English for the first time. Despite the amount of effort that went into this (it has, by far, more assembly code in it than Rudra had) I am somehow lacking in things to say, other than that I hope you enjoy the patch and the game!

Progress ~ Dark Law enters playtesting.
Dark Law ~ Meaning of Death
# Posted on March 22, 2007, 8:43 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Dark Law ~ Meaning of Death has entered playtesting. It's not without issues; there's still some rather nasty problems with the auto-center routines, especially when item descriptions or number variables factor into the equation, but it's looking mighty fine enough already.

Currently, the patch is 360K. I've hacked thirteen font routines for this sucker - 8 variable-width ones, two 8x16 fixed routines, and three 8x8s. The amount of code that's gone into this is mind boggling!

I expect to release the patch on Wednesday, in celebration of the 10th anniversary of the game's original release.

Progress ~ Dark Law is nearly done.
Dark Law ~ Meaning of Death
# Posted on March 19, 2007, 6:18 p.m. by Gideon Zhi

Here are a few statistics:

Assembly code (so far) in Dark Law: 102KB. Number of variable-width font hacks: 6 (so far - it probably needs at least two more.) Amount of raw text: 232,112 bytes. Number of advils taken: 10 (best guess.)

Here are some of the features you can expect to see in the final version:
--Fully variable-width menus
--Expanded list files for enemies, spells, and items. Originally fixed at 8 characters max, I now have as much screen and romspace as necessary.
--Expanded names for NPC characters - originally 6 characters max, "Antoniana" now fits.
--Expanded names for scenarios and locales - originally 8 characters max, I now have 256 pixels of space available for both.
--Expanded names for jobs (originally fixed at three characters on the subscreen, should be able to fit up to seven 16x16 tiles.

I've updated the screenshots slideshow on the project page to reflect the new progress. It's hires, so be sure to click the slideshow to bring up full-resolution screenshots. Here are a few samples: