Jeff Fink has announced the impending arrival of Silvern Castle 8.2. The new version of the popular 8-bit role-playing adventure game has a number of fixed bugs, improvements, and new features.Bugs fixed include:
- Fixed problem with camp minimum weapon damage function where selecting a weapon after pressing could accidently abort or call the demihuman equivalent human age function due to an uninitialized variable.
- Sound preferences are now honored in all Extra Menu functions.
- The random number seed is now randomized after decoding special goodies messages to fix an age-old design flaw. (Decoding the text used to leave the seed in a known sequence, which normally was not a problem as the next keyboard input randomized the seed again, however in the case of random item special goodies this is not true as the list of items are generated before the next intervening keypress.)
- Breaking a key while the auto-unlock function is active now works properly.
Improvements:
- The Tome Reader is now over 18 times faster!!! The search speed is now even faster than Dogpaw by a factor of 4!!! This has been accomplished by partly coding the page display/search routines in assembly language. However, the main program still is almost entirely AppleSoft BASIC.
- The tome viewer now has a fast input routine with full editing capabilities.
- All library tomes are now in AppleWorks format.
- The CTRL-Z command has been removed. Its function to restore the hires screen after using the GS control panel to fix a Second Sight card anomaly has now been made automatic.
- Assembly-language code optimized, saved over 150 bytes! The CODE, CODEQ, and VAP/CODET object files have now been incorporated into a single new object file: SC.OBJ! In addition, this file is only loaded once, speeding-up the time needed to reload the title page.
- The Quick Plot function has been changed to Full Plot so the ON/OFF display is shown in positive logic.
- Since the automap function was added, the LOCATE spell has lost its usefulness. Now, when you invoke this spell, it gives you the teleport coordinates needed to get to your current location from the stairs to the market (or the spot the portals to the other scenarios take you).
- Lowered the chance to lose skills when gaining levels (however, characters near their life expectancy may still expect to lose skills). In addition, your level now has more weight in determining whether skills are gained-although age and vitality are still the main factors, the greater your level the higher chance there is to gain skills (since higher levels are more difficult to attain, the awards should be greater).
- The maze information window is no longer annoying redrawn after going thru a locked door when the auto-unlock function is active.
New features:
- The Tome Reader now has an option to view the tomes as one continuous document to allow you to browse/search all the tomes at once. When viewing all tomes, you can quickly jump to the previous/next tome by pressing the open-apple key and the up/down arrow. You can also view the tomes separately as before.
- The Tome Reader now displays the current tome number being viewed.
- To more easily ascertain which group of 8 items are being displayed, the second page of items have their index numbers shown in inversed type.