超现实地带:
Alternate Reality:
城际
The City

Paradise Programming, 1985
Atari 8-bit, Amiga, Apple II, MS-DOS, 等

Paradise Programming, 1985
Atari 8-bit, Amiga, Apple II, MS-DOS, etc

Philip Price 创造的《超现实地带》最初计划将成为一个雄心勃勃的七大场景系列:城市、地下城、竞技场、宫殿、荒野、启示和命运。原本这座城市将被随后发布的场景不断完善地图,最终创造出一个巨大切连贯的冒险。遗憾的是,只有前两个场景得以正式发布——城市和地下城。

游戏的主要情节是主角被一艘外星飞船绑架后,发现自己被扔进了充满敌意的 Xebec's Demise 城市,主角要与各种元素和原住民作战——从小偷、强盗、贵族到夜晚的奇幻生物,同时也试图了解自己被绑架的原因。

当你跨出宇宙飞船的大门,头顶上旋转的数字会不停滚动,代表着《超现实地带》世界中你的初始状态数值。除了传统的体力、耐力、技能、魅力、智慧和智力外,这款游戏还提供了一些关于角色的附加数值,如饥饿值、醉酒值和疲惫值等,这些数据对玩家来说是隐藏不可见的。即便在 30 年后的今天,仍然有人在讨论这些数值对事件和某些类型的遭遇所产生的影响。

Created by Philip Price, Alternate Reality was originally planned as an ambitious series of seven scenarios – City, Dungeon, Arena, Palace, Wilderness, Revelation and Destiny. The City would be patched by subsequent scenarios, creating a huge, seamless adventure. Sadly only the first two The City and The Dungeon – were ever released.

Kidnapped by an alien spaceship, you find yourself dropped into the hostile city of Xebec's Demise, fighting against the elements and a wide variety of inhabitants from thieves, robbers and noblemen to fantastical creatures of the night, as well as trying to understand why you were abducted.

As you step through the doorway of the spaceship the spinning numbers above your head will roll your initial statistics within the world of Alternate Reality. As well as the traditional Strength, Stamina, Skill, Charisma, Wisdom and Intelligence, the game featured a number of additional statistics about the character, such as hunger, drunkenness and exhaustion, which remain hidden from the players. Even 30 years later there's still discussion about the impact stats have on events and certain types of encounters.

1999 年,Philip Price 和 Gary Gilberson 再次联手创建了一个名为《超现实地带在线版》的 MMO,但由于没能筹集到足够的资金,该项目被取消。

In 1999, Philip Price and Gary Gilberson teamed up again to create an MMO called Alternate Reality Online, but the project was cancelled due to lack of funds.

在角色创建界面上你的角色数值和财富会不断滚动。当时的画面相当令人印象深刻。

The character creation screen, where your stats and wealth are rolled. The graphics were quite impressive for the time.

你通过屏幕中央的第一人称小窗口,使用键盘或手柄摇杆来探索一个大城市(64x64 大小的地图)。不同于《巫术(Wizardry)》系列和《冰城传奇(Bard's Tale)》系列,那些游戏使用相对简单的三维视图,当你移动到每个地图方块时,这些视图会“跳跃”。而《超现实地带》提供了全彩纹理的墙,当你的角色从一个地图区域移动到另一个区域时,这些墙会平滑滚动。

结合其他图形效果,如大量的精灵动画、日夜循环、下雨和闪电等,你会发现这款游戏在图形和听觉上都领先于同类游戏。它利用了 Atari 8-bit 的独特优势来实现一些特殊的效果,如最大限度地增加屏幕上的颜色数量等。这些独特的优势使得后来的程序员发现要将它移植到其他平台上十分困难。它精心制作的开场白(大约 5 分钟长,有一首主题曲)、电影风格的字幕以及声音和图像的精心同步在当年可是新奇特点,许多年后这些特点才在游戏中变得普遍了起来。

游戏中所使用的 Gary Gilbertson 的音乐令人难忘,而且运用得很好。在不同的场景和任务中有各种各样不同的歌曲,甚至还有一个歌词显示在屏幕上的 Game Over 歌曲。在遭遇战中,音乐的类型还可以用来确定遭遇战的性质和可能的敌对程度。

由于游戏中没有任何明确的任务,你的目标只是发展一个拥有足够强大属性的角色,获得高质量的装备,积累足够的财富,这样你就有机会在未来的场景中生存。这是是要通过遭遇城市原住民并在战斗中击败他们来实现的,尽管也可以存钱进可变利率银行账户来增加财富,不过高利率也意味着亏钱的风险更高!

You explore a large city (64x64 squares) through a small first person window in the centre of the screen, using either keyboard or joystick. Unlike Wizardry and Bard's Tale, which used relatively simple 3D views which “jumped” as you moved to each map square, Alternate Reality provided full-colour textured walls which scrolled smoothly by as your character moved from one map square to another.

Combine that with other graphical effects such as numerous sprite animations, day-and-night cycle, rain and flashes of lightning and you have a game which was graphically and aurally way ahead of its peers. It made use of the Atari 8-bit unique strengths to achieve some special effects, such as maximising the number of colours on-screen, that programmers found challenging to port to other computers later on. It's elaborate opening sequence (almost 5 minutes long and with a theme song), movie-style credits and careful sync of sound and image were novel features which only became common many years later.

The music by Gary Gilbertson is memorable and well employed. There's a variety of songs for special locations and events – including a Game Over song with lyrics appearing on-screen. During encounters, the type of music can be used to determine the nature of the encounter and how hostile it is likely to be.

With the absence of any defined quests within The City, your goals are simply to develop a character with powerful stats, obtain high-quality equipment and amass sufficient wealth so that you may have a chance to survive in future scenarios. This is done through encountering the city's inhabitants and defeating them in combat, though wealth can also be increased through the use of variable-rate bank accounts – although a higher interest rate also means there is a higher risk of you losing your money!

《电脑 RPG 游戏史(The CRPG Book Project)》原书信息

英文原版主编:Felipe Pepe
原项目网址:https://crpgbook.wordpress.com/
授权协议:知识共享 署名-非商业性使用 4.0 国际许可协议 (CC BY-NC 4.0)

这本书历时四年,由 119 名志愿者共同完成。

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