The Daily Click

::. ::. ::.

Gridquest

Author:

Pixelthief

Submitted:

26th May, 2008

Favourites:

Genre:

Role Playing Game

Downloads:

707

Rated:

117th Place

(4.17 / 5)

Game of the Week Winner

Edited By Pixelthief on 5/26/2008

Gridquest is an epic sprawling action/RPG in the vein of Diablo and Rogue, at the same time! Controlling a hero across snow drifts, islands, castles, rivers of blood, ancient crypts and everything inbetween, this game boasts not mindless combat and character grind, but devilish puzzles and mazes to boot. Created entirely in TGF, the engine handles some 80 different monster types, with 20 unique spells and a "Diablo-Style" inventory system with 3000 different possible items. Furthermore, many dungeons are randomly generated, and the all-powerful save/load system allows you to save your progress ANYWHERE and load it from that exact spot, even in the middle of a largescale battle! (Though maybe not boss rooms, for some balance concerns ). A real-time "pseudo-lighting" system makes exploring caves with naught but a lantern a daunting task, and modular .INI loading levels mean anyone can create their own as they see fit. Playable entirely with either the keyboard or mouse, Gridquest offers up solid controls that should be intuitive to anyone familiar with the genre and easy for the rest to pick up. And as icing on the cake, the entire game was produced in TGF, and will be released completely open-source!

Worth hours of gameplay and high replayability, Gridquest is one of those truly epic scaled Click games. Give a click on that old download button; its definitely worth it. And feel free to distribute it FREELY anywhere else on the web.

Review This Download

http://claniraq.googlepages.com/Gridquest.zip (3.46 mkb )

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

If you use the keyboard instead of the mouse, you'll miss out on a LOT!
Theres hundreds a cute little tooltips you can read any time with the middle mouse button!
Comment edited by Pixelthief on 5/27/2008

Posted by Muz

26th May, 2008

That's a lot of files for a TGF game. I can see how you've spent years on it!

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

Oooh ur fast

Yeah should be like ~300 external files, minimum.

Posted by Muz

26th May, 2008

Lol, the "be patient, this takes a while" when generating levels is misleading. It should be "make yourself a sandwich and watch some cartoons on tv first, this could take an hour or so"

Posted by Ricky

26th May, 2008

Rated :

gotta go find a cnc32.dll then i'll play

Posted by Ricky

26th May, 2008

Rated :

found one

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

o damn I completely forgot cnc32.dll
Comment edited by Pixelthief on 5/27/2008

Posted by aphant

26th May, 2008

Rated :

Right off, the music playing in the intro made my ears bleed. I had to turn my volume down to 1 and it was still painful. Luckily there was a 'skip' option!

After generating the levels, I went for and started beating stuff with my stick. I clicked on a rock and the game crashed. In order to resume play, I would have to generate the levels again; If the first generation was a benchmark, it would have been another 10 minutes before I got to go smack that rock again.

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

Try saving your game.

Posted by Muz

26th May, 2008

It's still generating the level, lol. This computer sucks

Posted by Bricnic

26th May, 2008

Rated :

Sometimes when I save the game in town, all of the NPC's disappear (without me even loading the game). Loading the game still does not restore the NPC's. I found a fix though, which is to move to another area (e.g. Rune Cave) and come back. It looks like a pretty cool game though.

Edit: Oh there's some other problems too. You can't actually strafe, despite the advice in the controls. Also sometimes after you unpause or click a dialog box, the game registers it as a movement command, and you promptly start running there.

Edit#2: OH! I see what you mean now. ENTER strafes, not SHIFT (despite the controls section saying SHIFT, I believe)

Edit#3: Yes I removed my comment about the library

What actually happens is that you can't leave with enter, instead you can only read the tome. I guess you can strafe onto the exit while facing away from the tome, and exit that way. Just kinda awkward.
Comment edited by Bricnic on 5/26/2008

Posted by Dustin Gunn

26th May, 2008

I really wish you didn't make this in TGF

Very crashy

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

Ah got that cleared up. Typo indeed in my controls page!

If you're getting any crashing, please, please activate windows 95 compatibility mode. I played the entire game from start to finish earlier today without a single crash, so it really does stabilize it.

Posted by Muz

26th May, 2008

Lol, never mind, I checked back and turns out it loaded. Heck, it loaded so long ago that I died and I was wondering why I was stuck with some Charon guy. You might want to put a "Press button to begin" after loading

Posted by Pixelthief

26th May, 2008

Posted by Bricnic

27th May, 2008

Rated :

You can't play the gambling game with just the keyboard- pressing control to advance the text makes the dialog (yes/no) fail to appear.

Edit: I've now managed to reach a state where I can click lore on the ground, and it shows up as lore of my spell "afflict". 0_o

Edit#2: Ah.
Comment edited by Bricnic on 5/27/2008

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

Good find. You can work around it by holding SHIFT while you hit control, but I suppose I'll fix that some day

And hitting the Lore button brings up your active spell if you aren't looking at anything

Comment edited by Pixelthief on 5/27/2008

Posted by Cecilectomy

27th May, 2008

Rated :

it looks like still a few bugs that i found while beta testing are still there. that npc one is nasty.

but i can forgive most of the stuff since its tgf man!

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

Major kudos to all the betatesters, you know who you are

Posted by Ben Warren

27th May, 2008

Rated :

Reminds me of Exile for the PC and MAC from when I was younger - a great game, and good to see somebody else who still plays around with TGF

good on you!

Posted by Jason Orme

27th May, 2008

Rated :

Been waiting for this one.

Posted by alastair john jack

27th May, 2008

Rated :

This is a really wonderful game!
My disappointment lies with the random crashes though, maybe you could get someone to build an MMF2 version of it or something?

Posted by Ski

27th May, 2008

You've really been working on this for years? :/

Posted by curly

27th May, 2008

Rated :

This game is amazing!
Not just because its technically brilliant, but because it also manages to be fun and involving. The poor graphics, lack of decent pathfinding and crashes are all big problems but the actual gameplay and sheer amount of effort make it well worth 5 stars. Welldone!

Posted by Bricnic

27th May, 2008

Rated :

Yeah I should probably add that I actually find this to be a really enjoyable game- it's riddled with little things that are minor problems, like spelling/grammatical errors, bugs, etc. but overall it's a massive game which is fun to play. That's what games are about in the end anyway right?

Posted by Del Duio

27th May, 2008

The poor graphics, lack of decent pathfinding and crashes are all big problems but the actual gameplay and sheer amount of effort make it well worth 5 stars.

What an odd sentence this is.

I've been waiting for this one for a long time but I don't want it to break my computer!

Posted by OMC

27th May, 2008

A good'un. A lot of effort went into this, good to see I'm not the only one hangin' on to tgf.

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

Haha thanks- I had to write sooo many lines of text for the descriptions theres no doubt some typos and ones that are just too long to display in-game. But some of them are just plain gold. Lots of cultural references if you can notice them

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

Hey, addressing some PM's I've gotten;

If anyone has questions about the game, like getting stuck in an area or on a puzzle, feel free to ask them here. I like to know how far people have gotten and what areas are trouble.

I personally beat the game with 100% in about a 3.5 hour sitting, with a Dreamflange, Holy Heavy Plate, and Strong Dark Shield + 5. If anyone manages to kill the Mugwump already, do tell! (or if anyone finds the secret bogus area)
Comment edited by Pixelthief on 5/27/2008

Posted by Neuro

27th May, 2008

I've only had 1 crash so far, when I first ran the game and stepped out of the house. Fired it up again and I haven't had a crash since - though I save often just in case!

As mentioned, it is fairly buggy and unstable, but getting past that the actual game isn't too bad. I actually think the spells are awesome! I luckily found some Dark spell tomes and have been having fun with my Skeleton buddies. I'll play a little more before I rate, because I see this game as being something you have to really get into.

Posted by Hill Gigas

27th May, 2008

Rated :

It's put together really well, and I haven't had any crashes. But I would have LOVED it if my character would "lock on" to an enemy that I wanted him to fight. Having to chase enemies while frantically clicking is frustrating. I want them to hold still!!!!

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

Hrmm shroomlock did you try just left clicking and HOLDing down on it? Can't see any reason why it wouldn't work.

Posted by Hill Gigas

27th May, 2008

Rated :

I was just about to comment on the same thing!

That makes the game a LOT better! I thought I had to keep clicking on a monster to keep attacking!

Posted by Beau

27th May, 2008

Only major bug that sprouted up on me that messed anything up was that all of my inventory ended up going into the middle of the map once and I had to restart to fix (which meant I lost all of my inventory). I also still think several spells are highly unbalanced. Vampirism made me unbeatable after awhile. Overall very good. I just wished it was a little longer. Oh, and my grizzly raped the zelda worm boss

Posted by Pixelthief

27th May, 2008

There are a lot of sidequests and hidden areas if you explore a bit; underneath the graveyard and in the middle of the lake in the southfield are the big two. By the way; what kind of gear are people finishing this game with?

Posted by Mr JackFaise

27th May, 2008

Rated :

n/a

Posted by markno2

28th May, 2008

Rated :

Very good.

Posted by Ricky

28th May, 2008

Rated :

5 stars

Posted by Pixelthief

28th May, 2008

I'm really intrigued at how far people are getting. Post me some gears/locations

Posted by Neuro

28th May, 2008

So far I've done this Dark Forest with Sturdy Leathers, a Buckler of Health and my trusty stick! Also, 2 tomes of darkness and a tome of earth. I want to get further but I have extremely high game-making motivation at the moment! Must. Finish. PROJECT!

Posted by Beau

28th May, 2008

Um...My shield is the worst of the things I have. My sword is something like "The Dark Great Sword of Evil" my armor is one of the special items like "Evilnedia"...better than my old Hate Mail anyway, and I just have a Great Dark Shield. I don't have the game in front of me to check, but I'm pretty much invincible. I want side quests that are like FFXII and much harder than the last boss. The blood tower was intriguing, but I wanted to kill myself after falling the 100th time.

Posted by Pixelthief

28th May, 2008

Yeah I think making liberal use of the save/load system makes the blood tower a bit easier

There is indeed a super secret area with bosses tougher then the final one, but its fairly well hidden inside the Darkfrost Islands. You gotta do a bit of thinking on how you get to it

Posted by Beau

28th May, 2008

meh. that'd feel like cheating. Especially since there are warp gates and everything.

Posted by [EclektiK]

28th May, 2008

Rated :

YESS

I remember playing the Beta

THIS GAME IS JUST VERY WELL DONE
Comment edited by .:Eclektik:. on 5/29/2008

Posted by Fragasnap

28th May, 2008

Dang, I must be doing something wrong, I'm level 32 and I still have only found two warps to Rune Cave!

Any chance I could be told where I'm supposed to go after the castle?

Posted by Roman-the-evil

28th May, 2008

Rated :

I liked the game, but I have a complaint =/ may be it just me, considering that I'm used to play Diablo on Hell difficulty setting, this game is too easy for me. Every area I go through, every boss I end up killing, my life does not drop below 3/4. Monsters barely hit me and most of the time they do no damage. It would be great if you would add difficulty levels to add some challenge to the game D=. I really liked the puzzles though.

Posted by Muz

29th May, 2008

Lol, if you play Diablo on Hell setting, you should be playing roguelikes for a challenge

Posted by s-m-r

29th May, 2008

Running it in Windows 95 compatibility mode, and whenever I attempt to start a new game, input locks up on the "enter a name" screen.

Has anyone else encountered this? Should I just wait for a blinking cursor to appear or something?

EDIT: I attempted this a few more times, and eventually the game started after I pressed CTRL+ALT+DELETE and jumped back into the game from the Task Manager. When the game started, my character's name was one long nonsensical word.

Perhaps the display was distorted or didn't display correctly for some reason? I suspect this has something to do with compatibility mode behaving badly.

But I found a Stick +1 and bought some studded leather armour.

Comment edited by s-m-r on 5/30/2008

Posted by Del Duio

30th May, 2008

better than my old Hate Mail anyway

Hahaha, "hate mail" instead of plate mail. That's gotta be worth +1 to the star rating I'd say.

Posted by AndyUK

30th May, 2008

Rated :

Ive had several quick goes so far and i'm sure you would be pleased to know it's not crashed once yet.

Posted by Pixelthief

30th May, 2008

Thats really odd with the crash, smr. The only thing different about that part of the game is its the only instance of an "Edit Box" object in the whole game, and iirc edit boxes are a hardcoded with some windows thingy.

Posted by Harvy

30th May, 2008

Rated :

I'm using Aegis, which is better than a Dark Shield

Auric Full Plate +3, and a plain old Great Sword (though for a while I was using Glephnir, or something like that)
at lv. 35 my stats are:
4280 HP / 2875 MP
144-252 dmg., 41 armor and 90% blocking. I think blocking maxes out at 90% or I would be higher, esp. with some of the nifty armor/weapons I found.
I found some crazy side quests (this is my second play-through), but I only just now discovered the book shop! I had maxed red, blue and black magic but was only 1 spell in green and white. Needless to say I used my 100,000 silver to by books. That's another thing, that silver is *extremely* plentiful, and levels come easily, which puts the game on the easier end of Gauntlet genre. But still way fun. A "hard" or "nightmare" mode might be appropriate, where everything is way expensive (XP and gold).

Nothing can survive my onslaught... I cast 3x white 4, 1x green levels 3 & 4, then use teleport to warp around and crush everything or continuous red 4 for dramatic effect

Bosses last about 5 seconds.

Posted by Pixelthief

31st May, 2008

Heh, I don't like to spoil the fun of discovery for those who like adventuring through and figuring it out on their own, but I'd say nearly 60% of the levels are hidden in this game.

Theres some neat puzzles and battles underneath the graveyard, which I hope is hidden in plain sight well enough, and TWO hidden dungeons in the middle of the lake in southfield; one traveling through the bridges up to the veggiemancer, and the other one is extremely well hidden in the Darkfrost Islands leading to a rather obnoxious hidden level, so you'll have to think of a little trickery with those moveable bricks to reach it.

Lastly, since I suppose nobody is going to discover this one on their own; try entering in "RODENTS" on the sphinx's riddle >.< hehehe

Mad props to people who have beaten it; I tinkered alot with game balance, trying to get it right. I think I made leveling up a bit too easy, and the exponential HP jumps up WAY too much.

btw- try exploring south of the town after you've completed the tower; theres a fun little riddle

Posted by Del Duio

31st May, 2008

Damnit, so I finally take this game home and start playing it last night and sure enough it crashes for me after about 10-15 minutes or so. I followed your directions and made it run in Win95 compatibility but still no dice.

I commend you for making a game like this though, it has a very old-school feel to it and reminds me of games I enjoyed a lot growing up as a kid / teen. Although I was only able to get as far as the beginning stick and a buckler, I got a kick out of the enemy description that said he was a kid who turned green from eating his own boogers. Hahahaha!

I can't rate this since I can't play it enough to fairly judge it, but it looks like a winner.

Posted by Pixelthief

31st May, 2008

Hrmm, if you save often enough, crashing shouldn't be more than an inconvienence; it loads the game from the EXACT spot you save. I've seen alot of people saying it crashes a bit right after running the initial "random level generator" sequence, right at the start, but generally not again after that. Perhaps its safer to just save the game immediately off the bat, then close gridquest, restart it, and load the game?
Comment edited by Pixelthief on 5/31/2008

Posted by Del Duio

31st May, 2008

Well, I was able to save well enough, and actually the world generator didn't take half as long as it seems to have for some people above. It'd just crash for no reason that I could see.

I also didn't see any way to properly quit the game. I know if you run it in a window you can just "X" out of it, but the one time I made it full screen that option disappeared. Maybe you should put a quit option somewhere on the save / load screen too?

Posted by Lachie Dazdarian

2nd June, 2008

Didn't play this long enough really, but the first impression are not that good. Rather poor and cumbersome game engine and graphics, but I like the real time battles. Not a fan of turn-based ones.

Then again, the amount of positive comments must count for something. I hope it's not comming from people not playing enough RPGs. So I'll get back to it.

The game loaded quite fast on my PC, and I have an old one. Also, not crashed in 15 minutes I played it.

I like the idea of meeting death after getting killed. Can I do something there?

Also, how do I quit the game?

Posted by erghhhhx

2nd June, 2008

Rated :

Already a classic. =

Posted by Pixelthief

2nd June, 2008

I'll admit I completely overlooked having an "Exit Game" button. I'm a strict adherent to alt-f4'ing whatever I'm playing or pulling the plug on my desktop when it acts up >.>

Posted by Va1entine

4th June, 2008

Rated :

The games look reminds me of Gauntlet!

Posted by alastair john jack

5th June, 2008

Rated :

I'd much rather play this over most Rogue-likes.

Posted by Codemonkey

8th June, 2008

Rated :

This game is acually very entertaining, me and my friend played it for two hours last night straight.

Posted by Chaoz (Tri-Life Gaming)

8th June, 2008

Rated :

Awesome game. It's so cute, i want it for takeout

Posted by Pixelthief

8th June, 2008

I'd kill to put it on a DS

Posted by Jason Orme

9th June, 2008

Rated :

Gonna have to see how this plays on my arcade machine

Posted by Pixelthief

9th June, 2008

My math skills say 2 people voted 0 and deleted their posts :X My observation skills say one of those was on accident, and the other wasn't

Posted by alastair john jack

10th June, 2008

Rated :

You deserved the GOTW!

Posted by

10th June, 2008

damn... it wont work for me... it crashes when it's generating random level

Posted by

10th June, 2008

Died the first time, the second time the game crashed. Should I bother with a third try?

Posted by Pixelthief

10th June, 2008

Try saving the game before you die. Its not Diablo on Hardcore mode, you can save/load an infinite number of times.

Posted by

10th June, 2008

When you die, are you trapped in hell forever?

Posted by Pixelthief

10th June, 2008

Until you load the game, or 100 years, depending on which comes first. Shame nobody buried you with an obolus.
Comment edited by Pixelthief on 6/10/2008

Posted by [EclektiK]

12th June, 2008

Rated :

Hey, are you going to make an official website for the game? I mean, they are so many things in it that an official website could be cool...

Posted by Pixelthief

14th June, 2008

Aye theres tons to be had, and an absurd amount of information strewn through it, like monsters stats and lore and tooltips, but most of those are accessible if you just dig through the INIs

I'm actually considering compiling it into a website, but I'm no great shakes at web design.

Posted by Pixelthief

16th August, 2008

don't be shy with your opinions

Posted by Callebo

21st August, 2008

I really want to test it out, since i thought the demo was great... But when it starts to generate random levels, everything freezes and i have to ctrl+alt+delete :C

Edit: Now it works! kept it loading for about 15 mins

Comment edited by Calle Boström on 8/22/2008

Posted by Pixelthief

23rd August, 2008

If I post it to any other sites, I might make an optional version that has preloaded maps, for people whos computers can't handle that first bit. Seems odd that some people take 5 seconds and some 5 minutes.

Posted by alastair john jack

21st September, 2008

Rated :

Can you port this to MMF?!

Posted by Eternal Man [EE]

21st September, 2008

Rated :

Well Mr. Thief, you really have made an awesome game! ;P It is epic and great! Man how I love it! The only downside is the lack of animations and "movement" between tiles, kinda makes my eyes hurt. I also had to wait for at least 15 minutes before it had generated the levels. That's why I'm so late with my comment!

Well, if it wasn't for the animation thing I'd vote a 5.

...

Ah to hell with it, this game deserves a 6 in my opinion!

Keep up this masterly coding of yours!

Sincerely yours //EE

Posted by [EclektiK]

28th October, 2008

Rated :

Daah... I remember trying the beta and I was so impressed... I guees i'm even more impressed with the full game

critics call it "Awesome" -Marc
"Fantastic" - Marc
"Twi thumbs up" -Marc

are you going to make any other type of games based on the engine?

Posted by Pixelthief

29th October, 2008

I'm refurbishing it and reposting it as Gridquest V2.0, at some point. I'm compiling it in MMF2, as well as creating a strategy-guide-esque thingy, with all the monster/item/level data. It doesn't have any more random crashes, but I'm going to wait until I'm done with the guide before I post the new version

Posted by [EclektiK]

1st November, 2008

Rated :

wOah that sounds fantasic!

Posted by Hill Gigas

7th November, 2008

Rated :

Excellent.

Posted by Codemonkey

9th November, 2008

Rated :

Under rated.

Posted by Pixelthief

9th November, 2008

well I imagine most people got sick of the constant crashing, so maybe when I repost it it will go platinum :~O

Posted by AndyUK

13th November, 2008

Rated :

hmm I agree with Codemonkey.
This is one of those games where sheer technical wizardry and effort make the crashing and the less than amazing graphics minor annoyances rather than reasons to lower the score.

Posted by Pixelthief

13th November, 2008

aye, but its alot more enjoyable without the crashing

Posted by AndyUK

14th November, 2008

Rated :

It never did crash when i played it.

Posted by Pixelthief

19th November, 2008

V2.00 now out, download is the same for either of them >.>
http://www.create-games.com/download.asp?id=7456