WORLD'S FATETST RPG!

(sic)

So what happens when you sit down in front of your computer one evening, nothing to do, and you decide, "hey, I've always wanted to make an RPG. I'm not going to stop programming until I've finished an RPG"?

Back in first year, I did this very thing. The end result is what is known today as the WORLD'S FATETST RPG (or WFR for short).

So what is WFR? I'm glad I just imagined you asked. Basically, it's an RPG I threw together, from scratch, in Visual Basic, in a couple of hours. Nothing was planned ahead of time. All of the plot, gameplay, graphics, etc. were created on the fly during production.

How does this unique style of programming manifest itself? Well, it's pretty obvious. No spelling errors were corrected. The enemies are various colors and sizes of squares. The world map is nine tiles wide by 255 tiles tall. And the strength of the enemy you fight is a function of your y-coordinate. The object of the game is simple: find the tree.

It wasn't until I was mostly finished development of WFR that I found the trick to make it work: add a clock. This transforms this short, limited RPG into a time trial, and we all know that competition is the only true fire that can burn in our blood. Believe me, I've tested this assertion.

I would like to now assess the abilities of you, faithful mathNEWS readers. I have posted a Java applet version of WFR (with the assistance of good old SheepNine) at my conveniently situated CS webspace, at http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~h3truong/games/wfr/. And yes, I know Java applets tend to blow hard every now and then. Also, this version is programmed in a horridly inefficient fashion, but that's okay because it's so simple. Maybe one day I'll have an optimized Flash version, but that would require me to know Flash. How about some lessons, guy-who-programmed-that-online-Flash-version-of-Set-whose-name-I-can't-remember?

WFR2, WFR3 and WFR4 forthcoming.

HWT