Tandy Color Computer

While it was possible to win Forest of Doom in its original incarnation, the screen consisted of the simple text, “You Won! Congratulation!” and a “Play Again?” prompt.

Not very exciting.

I just finished the mechanics of a semi-graphics reward screen, similar in quality to the Title screen, along with some heroic music for the hardy adventurer.  Much more rewarding!

And, NO, I will not post a screen shot – you will have to win to see it!

(To that end, the reward screen is obfuscated and can only be decoded with a ML routine for which Simon Jonassen provided much appreciated assistance)

The title screen of Forest of Doom was FUN to make!  Tedious? I guess, but I loved feeling like a teenager again as I worked on it.  Yeah, I stayed up WAY too late doing it, just like a teen.  (Didn’t feel like a teen the next morning, though…)

The Coco manual has a page of graph paper for each graphics mode.  I took a scan of that page and printed it onto a transparency.  (Back in the day I took a long bike ride to the local library to photocopy anything – forget ever making a transparency!)

I found a royalty-free pic via Google search, modified it, and printed a hard copy.  Laying the transparency over it, I went to work on the title screen.

Simon Jonassen pointed me to a great tool he created, SGEDIT, giving me a graphical interface to draw out my graphic based on the template.  Thanks, Simon!

 

Only the bravest souls enter, only the most cunning return!

Defeat innumerable monsters to ransom the king’s sceptre, stolen by the evil wizard and kept deep in the Forest of Doom. 

Your sword, shield and wits are your only allies – pray you find a magical Inn as your only respite!

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D. Bruce Moore began writing his first fantasy game for the Coco1 (Color BASIC only) in 1983; a turn-based campaign influenced by Dungeons and Dragons.  He was 14 years old and, while he could barely parse a FOR NEXT loop, his young imagination knew no bounds.

Forest of Doom was abandoned as Bruce learned more about coding from RAINBOW magazine, Hot Coco, and others.  By the time he was 16, he had written and sold several games on his cassette-based Coco 2 to T&D Software, taking those earnings and buying a EDTASM+ cartridge to delve into the arcane world of Machine Language.

Forest of Doom, and programming, was mostly forgotten as Bruce entered college in 1987, using his Coco 3 for writing papers and composing music (using LYRA).

In the Fall of 2016 Bruce’s brother bought him a Coco 2 from a pawn shop for $5. He got Bruce to pull out his old cassettes – most which still worked, and Bruce was smitten again with the Coco (and began teaching his young son BASIC).

Sitting in the “Green Glow” one evening, Bruce loaded up the semi-functional and horribly coded Forest of Doom, just for kicks…

One little edit turned to two, three, crash, four, crash, crash….every 2nd edit seemed to create an unforeseen bug – but the charm of the game not only endured, it grew!

While still in BETA, Bruce hopes to release it soon to the Coco community, so glad to have found you all after so many years.