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 Joltima - first GameBoy style RPG for the TI-83 graphing calculator!
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** Requirements **
TI-83
ASHELL  (and that's all you get!)

** The Game **

        Joltima is based on traditional style console RPGs
and runs similar to that of Dragon Warrior for the original
NES.  It more closely resembles Ultima Exodus for the NES,
but I figured more of you out there have heard of Dragon
Warrier.  I tried my hardest to make the game look less of
a calculator game and more of a Gameboy game.

** Controls **

        I chose to have simple Gameboy-style controls:

        Arrows          - Like the plus-pad on Gameboy
        2nd             - A button
        Alpha           - B button

        Clear           - Quits game

        Press A to go to your subscreen and to execute commands.
        The B button is for canceling menus.
        Move with the arrows.  To talk to someone, crash into them.

        It's pretty straight forward.  If you know Dragon Warrior,
        you're set.

** Objective **

        You have a party of 4, and go out to recover all 8 shards
(fragments of an unknown power) to stop the evil wizard Korifca from
taking over Daphnar.  There are 8 caves on the map and there is a
shard in each one.  When you get all 8 shards, you gain access to the
ninth dungeon to go win the game.  The game is pretty darn long, too.

        Party members:

        Knight  - can equip almost everything.  starts out strong.
                  only character who can use the strongest weapon.

        Archer  - has a 25% chance of inflicting a 2x shot.

        Mage    - has a fireball ability.  has an extra stat like the
                  archer, but it's MP instead.  attacking costs 1 MP
                  and does major damage.  if you have no MP, then the
                  mage smacks with his cane.  if you have MP, you have
                  to use the fireball.  number of shots + strength goes
                  up each level. if you don't want to waste your MP, then
                  press the B button (alpha) when it's the mage's turn.

        Thief   - strong like the knight, but starts with a LOT of agility.
                  gains levels the fastest and often will get
                  the first chance to strike, because of agility.

        Pick good names since you have these characters the whole game.

** Notes **

        - That black stuff around you is your vision being blocked.
          It represent what you can't see from where you're standing.
          You'll have to move around the bend if you want to see over there.

        - Standard tactics for RPGs are the way to go.  Venture out,
          stay at the inn.  Venture out farther, go back to the inn...

        - Make sure you have a lot of battery power.  It would seriously
          suck for those of you without friends or graphlinks to lose your
          saved game because you ran out of power before you finished.

** In case you care **

        - It took about half a year to finish programming Joltima.
        During this whole time, I watched many games come out for the 83,
        including the hyped up FFx4.  I wanted to just release a demo or
        something, but people that I knew said to "sit back and chill."
        So I chilled, and completed the entire game without really notify-
        ing anyone.  The result: a huge game coming from out of nowhere.
        I thought that sounded kind of cool anyway. =)

        - Joltima comes from Justin's Ultima.

        - Joltima uses amost zero calculator specific calls.  The
        entire menusystem, fonts, and other functions are all part of Joltima.
        This makes Joltima sooooo easy to port.  I'll probably make a version
        for all Z80 TI's. (82,83,85,86)

        - There's some major compression goin on with Joltima, if you
        programmers out there didn't notice.  In order to fit all the maps
        and stuff, I had to argue over what got to stay and what didn't.
        Joltima is missing a few things only because I fell short of room.
        It barely fits on the tiny 83's memory.  For what it has though,
        I think that's pretty darn good for an RPG trying to fit on 32k ram.

** Thanks to **

        - Movax!!  The sprite lib is where it's at.  Even though that
        routine is about 1% of Joltima, it sparked the whole game
        practically.

        - Waffy.  For knowing a lot.

        - Bill Nagel.  For always making new stuff.  (if something
        new is released, it usually has Bill's name on it).  This helped me
        keep up with what can be done on the 83.  oh, yeah, and ashell.

        - Alex Highsmith. For the 82 port, and just knowing a lot. Also,
        I used all his games as a guage of what's good out there.

        - Brother for telling me what's crap and what's not.

        - Class of '98, for being patient. =)

** Long live Joltima ** (Gosh, I'm so glad it's over!)

-Justin Karneges
 IRC    - {Infiniti
 email  - infiniti99@hotmail.com, jman@community.net
