Castle of the Winds

Castle of the Winds
File:Cotw-screen.gif
Developer(s)	SaadaSoft (Rick Saada)
Publisher(s)	Epic MegaGames
Engine	Custom 2-D
Platform(s)	Windows 3.x
Release	1989
Genre(s)	Roguelike RPG
Mode(s)	Single player

Castle of the Winds (CotW) is a tile-based Roguelike RPG that runs under Windows 3.x. It was written by SaadaSoft (a one-man, one-product company run by Rick Saada) and published by Epic MegaGames in 1989.

The game was released in two parts: A Question of Vengeance, released as shareware; and Lifthransir's Bane, sold commercially. A license to continue using A Question of Vengeance and a copy of Lifthransir's Bane were sold together.

Castle of the Winds's only system requirements are a mouse, a 640x480 monitor, and Windows 3.x or higher. The game differs from most Roguelike games in a number of ways. Its interface is heavily mouse-based. Many commands are awkward to enter by keyboard (possible only through the menu bar with the Alt key). Traditional Roguelike games are usually controlled completely by keyboard, sometimes with optional mouse input. Castle of the Winds also allows the player to save the game at any point, and to restore saved games after dying — features never seen in a traditional roguelike game.

In 1998, the author, Rick Saada, decided to give Castle of the Winds away for free, and allowed the registered and shareware versions to be freely distributed, but he did not release the source code.

Magic

The game tends to favour the use of magic in combat, as spells are the only weapons that work from a distance (there are no bows). The player character automatically gains a spell with each level-up, and can permanently gain another using the corresponding book (found or purchased), until he/she learns all the 30 spells that he/she can learn. There are two opposing pairs of elements: cold vs. fire, and lightning vs. acid/poison. (The player has no acid/poison attacks.) The spells are divided into six categories: attack, defense, healing, movement, divination, and miscellaneous.

Items and the inventory system

Castle has a relatively sophisticated inventory system, limiting a player's load based on weight (measured in grams) and bulk (measured in cubic centimetres) rather than number of items, and allowing the character to use different types of containers, including packs, belts, chests, and bags. Other items include: weapons, armor, protective clothing, purses, and ornamental jewelery.

Almost every item in the game can be normal, cursed, or enchanted, with curses and enchantments working the same way as in NetHack. Although items do not break in use, many can be broken or rusted out when the player finds them. Since rings, amulets, potions, scrolls, wands and staffs are valued only for their magical effects, the non-magical Ring of Adornment, Necklace of Adornment, Distillation of Water, Blank Scroll, and are worthless. Dead Staff, and Dead Wand, however, aren't worthless as they can be recharged in the appropriate store. Most objects that the character currently carries can be renamed by the player.

Monsters

There are 90 types of monsters in the game, including dragons, kobolds, and manticores. Many of the creatures carry money or valuable items with them. Some of them can perform magic; others drain you of your strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, mana points, and other statistics. The further you progress into the game, the more dangerous monsters you'll encounter.

Character attributes

The player's four attributes are displayed to the player not by numbers, but by a bar graph, with blue and green bar representing the value before and after any item enchantments, curses or drains. The attributes are:

• Strength — Determines how much damage is done in hand-to-hand combat, and the Maximum Weight the player can carry. (The Maximum Bulk is fixed at 1,000,000 cm³ and, in practice, is not a limiting factor.)
• Dexterity — Determines how likely a player is to hit and to block a hit in hand-to-hand combat and gives the player a chance to avoid damage when he sets off a trap. Also affects Armor Value.
• Intelligence — Determines the player's maximum Mana.
• Constitution — Determines the player's maximum Hit Points. If a player's Constitution falls too far below its base level, he dies.

The other standard characteristics include:

• Special attributes (resistances/vulnerabilities to Cold, Fire, Lightning and Drain Life, vulnerability to Acid, and Levitating).
• Hit points.
• Mana: The player's reserve of magical energy. The player can cast spells that run Mana into the negative, risking a temporary but potentially fatal drop in Constitution.
• Armour Value: Defense against physical damage. The combined total of armour, braces, gauntlets, cloak, boots, helmet, shield, and enchantments/curses.
• Weight and Bulk: The player's body weight and bulk are not counted here, only the items he is wearing or carrying.
• Copper: The sum of all money, not just copper, carried in the purse and on deposit at the bank.
• Gender: A purely aesthetic choice that determines the default icon.
• Custom Icon: Another aesthetic choice that, when used, makes Gender irrelevant.

Experience and levels

HP and mana increase on level-up, but the four base attributes do not. The experience required to level up is as follows:

• Every player starts Part I at Level 1, with 0 experience.
• 20 experience points are needed to reach Level 2.
• For n > 2, the experience requirement for Level n are those for Level (n – 1) x 2 plus 20 points at Easy difficulty, 40 at Intermediate, 60 at Difficult, and 80 at Experts Only.
• The maximum level, 30, requires 10,695,475,180 xp at Easy, 16,106,127,320 at Intermediate, 21,558,722,500 at Difficult and 27,011,317,680 at Experts Only.
• Experience rewards for killing monsters range from 1 xp for a Giant Rat or Goblin to 344 xp for Surtur. (Reaching Level 30 by repeatedly killing Surtur would mean doing so 31,091,498, 46,820,138, 62,670,705 or 78,521,272 times, depending on the difficulty level.) Disarming a trap yields at least 1 xp.

Story, towns and dungeons

Although it is secondary to the hack and slash gameplay, Castle has a plot loosely based on Norse mythology, told with setting changes, unique items, and occasional blocks of text.

As the story progresses, the setting changes twice. There are thus three towns, each with its own dungeon nearby. The game has a total of 40 dungeon levels, some randomly generated, others pre-designed.

The tiny hamlet and the abandoned mine

The player begins in a tiny hamlet, near which he used to live. His farm has been destroyed and his godparents killed. The first dungeon he will travel to at this time is an abandoned mine overrun with creatures and some weak undead monsters. It is four levels deep and features no boss battles or powerful items.

The buildings in the hamlet are as follows:

• The Temple of Odin, which offers healing spells and restoration of drained attributes whether temporary or permanent as well as Remove Curse and Rune of Return, for a price.
• Olaf's Junk Store, which sells nothing but will buy anything, including the "worthless" items that other merchants reject, for which it pays maximum 25 copper pieces (CP). However, it will not pay more than 25 CP for an item, even when other merchants will. In some cases, such as boots and cloaks, the broken version of an item is worth more than the normal, unbroken version (i.e. 25 CP versus even less).
• The house of a sage, who will identify any unknown item for a fee.
• Two merchants: a blacksmith (buys and sells weapons and armour) and a general store (buys and sells scrolls, potions, spellbooks, cloaks, boots, containers).
• Two farmhouses and a village well, which have no function and are purely decorative.

After clearing out the abandoned mine, the player finds the first scrap of parchment, and returns to the hamlet to find it pillaged. He or she then travels to Bjarnarhaven.

Bjarnarhaven

The buildings in Bjarnarhaven are:

• The Temple of Odin, Olaf's Junk Store, and a sage, which work the same way as in the hamlet.
• A branch office of the First Bank of Crossroads, where the player can deposit money. He will then not have to carry the money or risk having it stolen by a Smirking Sneak Thief, but it will still be available to spend in the four shops.
• Four merchants.
• A number of homes and a small fountain, all decorative.

The fortress near Bjarnarhaven is 11 levels deep and is held by Hrungnir, the Hill Giant Lord (the only boss in the fortress). Hrungnir carries the Enchanted Amulet of Kings, which grants a resistance to Drain Life (attribute- and experience-draining attacks). When he Activates the amulet, Part I ends, and the game can be imported or started over in Part II. In general, the player will be more experienced if he carries over a winning character, rather than creating a new one.

Town in Part II

The castle near this town is ruined. Only the dungeon and parts of the ground floor remain; the dungeon is 25 levels deep and has been converted by the monsters living in it. The crypt has been desecrated, a Necromancer has set up his home (with a bed and desk), and special rooms for elementals have been installed. The minor bosses are a Wolf-Man and a Bear-Man. At deeper levels, the player fights the four giant kings, followed by the Demon Lord Surtur.

The buildings in the town are:

• A central keep, where the Jarl will not admit the player at first, but will provide advice and two enchanted items after specific bosses are killed.
• The Temple of Odin, Olaf's Junk Store, a sage, and the First Bank of Crossroads.
• Ten merchants.
• A number of apartment buildings, mansions and a very large fountain.

Other features

The game keeps track of how much time has been spent in the game. Although story events are not triggered by time, it does determine when merchants change their stock. Also, victorious players are listed on the "Valhalla's Champions" list in order of time taken (with the fastest wins listed first). However, if the player dies, then they are still put on the list, but are listed as "Dead," and with their experience amount.

Graphics

All terrain tiles, some landscape features, all monsters and objects, and some spell/effect graphics take the form of Windows icons. A tile is thus the size of an icon — 32 pixels square. This means that they can be applied to shortcuts, if desired, with no extraction process.

Multi-tile graphics, such as ball spells and town buildings, are bitmaps included in the executable file.

No graphics use colours other than the Windows standard 16-color palette (plus transparent). They exist in monochrome versions as well, meaning that the game runs well even on monochrome monitors.

The map view is identical to the playing-field view, except for being scaled to fit on one screen. (This actually increases the size of some levels on high resolution screens.) A simplified map view is available to improve performance on slower computers. The latter function also presents a cleaner display, as the aforementioned scaling routine does not always work correctly.

External links

• The Temple of Odin, Castle site with downloads of the game available
• Castle of the Winds Forum, Castle forum sporting a section for remake projects
• Part I and Part II in one zip file for easy download
• Castle of the Winds wiki guide at StrategyWiki (previously hosted by Wikibooks)