Realmz

Realmz is Dungeons and Dragons with graphics.

Sub-Page#

Revisional DifferencesWhat's new in this version: Everything! Or so it seems.

Unused Graphics#

Castle in the Clouds#

This appears to be an early version of the Evil Castle.

Destroy the Necronomicon#

There are a few unused pyramid land tiles, two small and one large.

Half Truth#

This land tile isn't used anywhere.

Mithril Vault#

A stack of cards and an orb. The orb may have been an early version of the Geyser (Gridstone).

Unused Text#

City of Bywater#

TEXT resource -200 is Vestron's report on body collection. The usual "Double Click To End This Message" message looks like the end of the report, but it's not - after it, there are 55 blank lines, followed by:

Live Long and Prosper.

The credits text (TEXT resource 1128 in the main game) also has this message long after the main content, but has 57 blank lines instead.

Destroy the Necronomicon#

TEXT resource -128 (the only one in this scenario) contains the following:

This is some test text.


Please stand by.

Text Done

Unused Encounter Results#

Assault on Giant Mountain#

• At the former king's grave, you can use the Gloomy Ring to reunite his spirit with his former wife, or you can cast Puppet Master or Revive Dead to torture him for eternity. An unused third result exists, where his ghost says "Because you will not give me what is rightfully mine, you must pay for your greedy piracy", he mumbles a few ancient words, and solidifies into a solid form. Then a bunch of zombies rise from the soil around you and you have to fight them.

• In the dungeon of the hill giant citadel, there is a locked door on the east side of a large room littered with traps. The encounter at this door has an unused result which asks "Who is the brave volunteer?", asks you to pick a character, and then says "You have triggered a trap." and hurts the chosen character.

Castle in the Clouds#

• On the top floor of the Evil Castle, there is an unused result that says "It looks like you cast the wrong spell at the wrong time. You seem to have opened up a portal to Hell and, before you can shut it, you are surrounded by evil creatures." and causes a battle.

• In the trap room in Lord Voltan's castle, an unused third result exists, which says "You bend the very solid bars with your bare hands. You must surely have had the gods on your side." and lets you out of the cell.

City of Bywater#

• At the brothel in Bywater, there is an unused result for the encounter with the dwarf at the front desk. It says "As you rejoin the group, you notice you feel a little strange. It becomes apparent that you have caught some kind of disease. It would seem a trip to the Blue Temple is in order. What would your mother say?" and gives the entire party a persistent Diseased condition.

• When you encounter the cleric raising an undead army in the cave under the graveyard, there is an unused fourth result where the cleric says "In any case, I have waited far too long for the last shipment of bodies. I depart now to deal with this foul tower. Farewell. Tell the king he shall once again be sole master of this fine city." Then he and the army just leave.

• When you confront the goblin king at his residence, there is an unused fourth result where he whimpers in excitement at being spared and says "My people stand no chance now. We must flee, for the krise sluk are too numerous. I show you where they live so you shall know where not to go as well." He then gives you map 4. It looks like this was moved, since you can normally get map 4 at x=2 y=44 on land level 0 (the main overworld). Curiously, this unused encounter result also changes a single tile inside the evil dragon's castle, a few tiles to the right of where you eventually encounter the dragon itself.

• On the west side of the main overworld there is a small cave where you can find some dead goblins and a few gems. In the encounter at the entrance to the cave (where you have to clear the collapsed opening), there is an unused result that says "As you stand pondering the situation, you here a deep rumble. You look skyward and see the whole slope begin to slide towards you. You manage to get away from the area with only slight damage. However, the old site is hopelessly buried." The result then pushes you a few tiles to the east and hurts the entire party. This result was likely scrapped because it also deletes the AP, which renders the cave tile freely passable.

• When you encounter the chest at the southeast corner of the crypt, there is an unused result that says "With the trap triggered, the lock is quickly defeated. Inside, you find treasure." and gives you the same treasure as if you had picked the lock.

• There is a door near the center of the crypt, behind which are some flesh fiends. At this encounter, there is an unused result that says "As the echoes fade from your pounding, you hear a faint shuffling. It would seem you have gained the attention of some of the denizens of this crypt." then causes a battle. It's likely this is unused because complex encounters can only have one result for the Action button, so there was no way to assign this result to the action "Bang on the door".

Destroy the Necronomicon#

When you encounter the pit near the beginning of the Abyss entry bastion, there is an unused result that says "You locate a secret chamber. Imitation rock was cleverly molded to conceal the entrance. It fails to deceive your keen eye. You step inside. A winged creature bends over a pot and avidly stirs a boiling mixture. Small vials crowd a table nearby." and kills the entire party. It's likely the string originally used here was overwritten, hence the nonsensical result.

Mithril Vault#

• When you encounter Lane in the Devil's Serpent river, there is an unused result where Lane frowns and becomes very angry with you. He says "Very well then! I shall have to ask you to leave as I do like to keep to myself. Good day to you!"

• In the dwarven warrens, you can randomly encounter a poisoned dwarf, whom you can save with various healing or cure poison spells. There is an unused result that says "The poison has finally taken its toll and the dwarf has died. It must have been a strong poison to kill one so hardy as a dwarf so quickly." and disables the entire RR. This is presumably unused because the RR has two other events that can happen as well, so this result shouldn't disable those too.

Prelude to Pestilence#

When you talk to Hodar after leaving without checking in, there is an unused result where Hodar sits back and laughs. He says, "You are a gutsy bunch. I like that." and walks away.

Twin Sands of Time#

There are many APs scattered around this scenario with empty scripts. Their locations often make sense (e.g. they're on building tiles, or other places where the player would expect something to happen), so it may be that the author intended to write these scripts eventually but never actually filled them in.

The unused area of dungeon level 1 contains many APs, most of which have empty scripts and do nothing at all. AP 3, however, says "In this alcove lies a quite inebriated orc guard. An empty bottle of wine lies next to him, its contents more on the floor and clothing then he could have possibly ingested. Or could he? He snores very loudly and is very unconcious." There is a completely unused simple encounter which appears intended to occur at this AP, but isn't used in its script. The result codes aren't set correctly, but it's fairly obvious which choice should correspond to which result. The encounter disassembles as:

===== SIMPLE ENCOUNTER id=5 can_backout=1 max_times=1 prompt=0 [SEC5]
  choice0: result=0 text="Kill Guard."
  choice1: result=0 text="Search Guard."
  choice2: result=0 text="Wake Guard."
  choice3: result=0 text="Do nothing and move on."
  result1 UNUSED
    string                   "You easily slit his throat.  He stops snoring."#258
    enable_ap                level=1, id=3, percent_chance=0, low=0, high=0
    change_rect_dungeon      level=1, id=0, times_in_10k=0, new_battle_low=BTL0, new_battle_high=BTL0
    exit_ap
  result2 UNUSED
    string                   "Your searching reveals a key."#259
    treasure                 TSR17
    enable_ap                level=1, id=3, percent_chance=0, low=0, high=0
    change_rect_dungeon      level=1, id=0, times_in_10k=0, new_battle_low=BTL0, new_battle_high=BTL0
    exit_ap
  result3 UNUSED
    string                   "Impossible.  The snoring continues."#260
    exit_ap

Hidden Speech Results#

Assault on Giant Mountain#

• Many complex encounters in this scenario have speaking results, but most of them do nothing - they activate result 4, which is the default "you did the wrong thing" result, so the player can't tell that they triggered a speaking result at all. The strings used in these encounters are "macintosh", "compac", "motorola", "ppc", "pentium", "ibm", "star", "hootch", "%4%", "*&%", and "***".

• The treasure chest in the final room of the hill giant citadel can be opened with various lockpicking methods or by saying the word "fantasoft".

Castle in the Clouds#

• In the bandit caves west of McBane City, there is a locked door where you can try to bust it open, pick the lock etc. Or, you can just say the word "open".

• There is a similar secret door in the hills just southwest of McBane City. This one opens at the words "open sesame".

• There is a well in the broken city where you can fall into the underworld. If you click Encounter at this well and say "zukar", it says "You speak Zukar's name down the well and you here it echo. Then after a very long silence you here a very loud noise!" and causes a battle.

• When you find Lady Keto, you can heal her with various spells or potions, or you can say "Zukar" and she'll miraculously revive.

• On the top floor of the Evil Castle, you can use teleportation spells to reach the hidden treasure room, or you can say "paladin" to get there for free.

• In the trap room in Lord Voltan's castle, you can say "natlov" to be let out without using a Vaporous Form potion.

Destroy the Necronomicon#

• As in Assault on Giant Mountain, there are many speaking results that have strings but trigger the default result. These strings are "death and taxes", "#$%&*", "!@#$%", "!@#$", "whistle while you work", "sugarpie honey", and "pull tantor!".

• In the encounter where you discover the command words to activate the Abyss portals, you can cast Speak Language to understand the writing on the token. Alternatively, you can swear at it (or more precisely, say "@#$%^&") and the mysterious language will then make sense.

Half Truth#

In the default encounter (the one that occurs when you press Encounter but there's no special encounter wherever you are), if you say "arawn", it says "You feel a barely suppressible desire to journey to the east."

Mithril Vault#

• As in Assault on Giant Mountain, there are many speaking results that have strings but trigger the default result. All of these contain the string "death and taxes", except one which says "mmm, chicken!".

• There are two places where saying "death and taxes" actually does something. In the encounter with the poisoned dwarf, saying "death and taxes" will heal him, and when you meet Blublub, saying "death and taxes" will allow you to speak their language.

• Just south of Winterhaven there is a small pool of water with a door at the bottom. You can use Waterworld or just hold your breath to get down there, or you can say "cool water sandwich".

• In the Winterhaven city hall, there is a locked room with several storage pits inside. You can pick the lock, cast a spell, or use a key, but you don't feel like doing any of those you can say "cheezehead" to open the door.

• There are plenty of ways you can get over, under, or through the wall into Morbius' castle. The least obvious of these ways is to say "help me spock".

• After fighting Vomax, you can destroy the warding glyph by casting Destroy Magic or by simply saying "vomax". (Did he really not try that while he was trapped for centuries?)

• Later, in Morbius' hidden treasure room, there is another warding glyph. This one can also be broken with Destroy Magic, or you can say the password "Trelen".

Twin Sands of Time#

• As in Assault on Giant Mountain, there are many speaking results that have strings but trigger the default result. Most are just "a", but one is "death and taxes".
• There are three encounters in which saying "open sesame" will result in the taunt '"Open sesame?!" How weak. Nothing happens.'

White Dragon#

In this scenario, every complex encounter has a hidden speaking result that lets you pass the encounter without using an item or casting a spell. The passwords are "terroristarescum", "vaulting", "noreally", "noway", "dunkit", "hackerssuck", "yaddayadda", "packersrock", "vikqweens", "drawed", "jdslfds", "skfjds", ";ldjf", and "dallassucks".

Level Oddities#

Realmz scenarios are made up of land and dungeon levels, which are 2-D tile maps. Action Points (APs) are special tiles that run a script when the party walks on them - these are the most common triggers for story events. Random Rectangles (RRs) are similar to Action Points, but cover more than one tile. When the party is within a RR, the game runs a script linked to the RR with a certain probability (also part of the RR's definition). There's also a special kind of RR that only runs scripts when the player clicks the Encounter button and is within the RR - we call this an encounter RR.

The levels in a scenario are numbered starting from 0, with dungeon and land levels occupying different spaces (that is, dungeon and land levels with the same numbers aren't necessarily related in any way). When scripts refer to a level by number, they have to additionally specify whether it's a dungeon or land level.

Many scenarios have numerous hidden APs and misplaced tiles in inaccessible areas. Most of them appear to be mistakes or leftovers from development.

Assault on Giant Mountain#

Dungeon level 0 is unused and completely full of wall tiles.

Dungeon level 1 and land level 5 share some features. The RRs from land level 5 appear inside the walls in dungeon level 1, but the APs from dungeon level 1 appear as misplaced tiles in land level 5. They connect via APs on both levels at x=23 y=25, so it's likely they used to be on the same land level and the developer decided to change the middle part to a dungeon.

Curiously, the RR in the lower-right corner is unreachable in both levels. If activated, it shows the string "You attempt to get to the fortress by making a mad dash over the rough terrain. Agile dodging enables you to avoid many of the hurtling boulders heaved your way. However, enough find their mark to make the flight a costly endeavor.", then damages the entire party. These events normally occur when the party attempts to dash into the hill giant citadel when the giants are throwing rocks. That also happens in the lower-right corner of a level, but it's on land level 0, suggesting that this unreachable RR may have been an early implementation of that sequence of events, and land level 5 / dungeon level 1 were copied from land level 0 at some early point in development.

Castle in the Clouds#

Dungeon levels 0 and 4 are unused and completely full of wall tiles. (The levels look identical to Assault on Giant Mountain's unused dungeon above.)

Dungeon levels 1 and 2 are unused versions of Lord Keto's and Lady Keto's castles respectively (land levels 5 and 6 are the used versions). This suggests that these large castle levels were originally dungeons.

There is an inaccessible AP inside the wall just a few tiles to the north of the exit from the main cave (land level 2), which teleports the party outside the cave just like the normal exit does.

There is an inaccessible encounter RR on the left side of land level 3, located inside the wall.

If activated, it shows a message that normally appears at the stables in Ketonia:

The old man in the stables comes out and mumbles something like, "Fighting over colors just doesn't seem right.  Just doesn't seem right."

City of Bywater#

Dungeon level 0 contains copies of RRs in the walls from both land levels 5 (the crypt) and 6 (the dragon's palace). Unsurprisingly, land level 6 appears to have been made later, since the string of inaccessible APs on the middle-left side of the map are unused copies of the APs with the same indexes in land level 5.

Dungeon level 1 contains a copy of the APs and RRs from the Dogre citadel (land level 8), and both levels contain most of the same misplaced tiles within the walls in the top half. Many of these appear to correspond to used APs in land level 7.

AP 2 on land level 3 (the sunken city of Waterford) may have been the original entrance to the dungeon version of the Dogre citadel - it's located inside the wall only a few tiles away from the real citadel (AP 20), and when activated, it shows the same message ("The door to a large ornate palace stands unlocked."). Unlike the real citadel's entrance, the unused AP also sends the party to a dungeon, though it appears the E-Code entry for the command was overwritten so it doesn't point to the unused dungeon level anymore.

There's a similar AP (19) inside the wall near the entrance to the dragon's palace (1) that may have originally sent the party to the dungeon version of that level.

Destroy the Necronomicon#

Dungeon level 0 contains what appears to be an unused early version of the Red Ooze Castle in the bottom-left corner, and copies of the RRs from the first coming of doom in the right half. The used versions of these areas are both on land level 6.

The top part of dungeon level 1 contains an unused version of the final pyramids (the used versions are in land level 7). The misplaced APs and RRs in dungeon level 1 also match the used area on the bottom half of land level 7.

Shalutie's village is on the same map as the final pyramids, and the RR for returning him to his village overlaps slightly with the area around the final pyramids. If you wait around in the southern edge of the final pyramids area and you've managed to keep Shalutie alive, he will return to his people in the surrounding village despite the village being technically through a wall and actually on another plane of existence.

Half Truth#

All of the cave areas in this scenario are on the same level (land level 2), and the scenario uses APs to teleport the party to and from these areas. The open area on this level containing the point x=20 y=40 is unused and inaccessible.

Similarly, all of the swamp areas in this scenario are on the same level (land level 3). The level contains multiple unused areas:

• The alcove around x=77 y=58 is unused and contains no APs or RRs.
• The alcove around x=40 y=50 is unused and contains no APs or RRs.
• Around x=35 y=25, there's a small unused shoreline.

All these areas are far enough away from any accessible location that the player can never see them, and the party is never teleported to or from them.

Unused Tiles#

The blood tileset is unique to this scenario and is used on only one not-very-complex level (land level 11). Here's a comparison showing which tiles don't appear anywhere in the game (full tileset on the left, unused tiles on the right):

Mithril Vault#

Dungeon level 1 is unused and appears to be mostly corrupted. The uncorrupted first few rows are a duplicate of the mostly-unused dungeon level 1 in Destroy the Necronomicon, suggesting that Mithril Vault's development began from a copy of that scenario.

Realmz allows land levels to be connected; that is, when the party moves off the edge of a connected level, they appear automatically on the opposite edge of the other level. Levels 3 and 4 are connected vertically in this scenario, but the accessible areas on their edges don't line up. The scenario uses RRs to teleport the party between these two levels instead when they approach the edges, rendering the connected-levels functionality unused in this case.

At some point between Realmz 5.1 and Realmz 7.1, the subterranean tileset was redrawn, and a few tiles were changed entirely. Most notably, tiles 151 and 153 were changed from clear terrain to the top tiles of tall mushrooms, and were also changed to be impassable. This makes it impossible to meet Wealvin or complete Lane's mushroom farming quest in the Hell's Serpent.

Prelude to Pestilence#

Dungeon level 0 has a large empty space away from the accessible areas. Also, there's a misplaced AP inside a wall at x=58 y=9 with an empty script.

Most of the level beyond the Fingertip Pass (land level 3) is inaccessible and obviously unfinished. The AP in the inaccessible area at x=25 y=25 causes a battle, then teleports the party into the Castle in the South (land level 4).

Twin Sands of Time#

At some point between Realmz 5.1 and Realmz 7.1, it became impossible to complete Twin Sands of Time without cheating because underground tile 153 was changed to impassable, and the secret passage to Allimac's castle requires passing over tile 153 multiple times.

The center area of dungeon level 0 is unused. Despite having a fairly complex structure, it contains no APs or RRs, and there's no way to get into or out of it.

The area mentioned above appears to be an early version of the the upper-left area on dungeon level 1, which is also unused. This area has many APs, but most of them do nothing.

White Dragon#

On all land levels in this scenario except level 6, AP number 0 is placed inside a wall and cannot be accessed. On land levels 2 and 3, AP 0 is marked as secret.

Land levels 10 and 11 are unused duplicates of level 9 (which is used). The duplicates are identical to level 9 and include all of the APs, RRs, and scripts.

Dungeon level 0 is unused and completely full of wall tiles. (The level looks identical to Assault on Giant Mountain's unused dungeon above.)

Dungeon level 2 is also unused and mostly wall tiles, but has some empty space in it in an odd shape.

The circular area in the upper left of dungeon 3 is unused and inaccessible. The AP on the staircase tile in that region sends the party to x=20 y=85, which is the beginning of the secret-wall maze in the lower left. The AP in the sort-of-circular area closer to the bottom of the map sends the party to the same location in the maze, implying that the upper circular area is an early version of the lower circular area.

There is a small unused open area containing a diamond-shaped lake and a house in the upper-left corner of land level 3. The unused AP 0 also makes a cameo appearance just to the right of the unused area.

Tile Oddities#

In the default desert tileset, the horizontal fence tile is marked as solid, but the vertical fence tile isn't.

In the default snow tileset, the horizontal wall tile doesn't block line-of-sight, but the vertical wall tile does.

In all of the default tilesets except the desert tileset, tile 167 is unused. If placed in-game, it's completely white and behaves like clear terrain.

Tile definitions have a field that specifies what kind of forest the tile is, which the game uses to diversify the battle maps it generates. Generally the values in this field appear correct in the default tilesets, except the lever tiles in the indoor tileset are marked as mushrooms for some reason.