Quest for the Unicorn

Quest for the Unicorn
Stable game
Developer	Mike Riley
Theme	Fantasy
Influences	Rogue
Released	1990 (1.0)
Updated	2009 (5.0)
Licensing	Originally shareware, now freeware
P. Language	Turbo Pascal,c
Platforms	DOS,Linux
Interface	Graphic tileset, Keyboard
Game Length
	Official site of Quest for the Unicorn

Quest for the Unicorn was my second foray into rogue-like games. I began writing the original version in the late 80s and released version 1.0 around 1990.

Quest for the Unicorn was based upon the engine that I had written for The Land. I had updated the engine to support a more expansive world than what the original engine could support. The engine for The Land also had a lot of hard coded values in it which I had moved off to the data files for Quest for the Unicorn, making the engine more generic in case I were to ever use it again for another game of this type.

Features

Unicorn's expanded engine now supported a world of 400x300 tiles divided into 12 districts of 100x100 tiles each.

More than 60 dungeons were added to the world for exploration, however only about 5 are actually needed to finish the main story line, all the rest contain powerful artifacts that could help the player.

Like its predecessor The Land, Unicorn provides an automapper in the lower right corner as well as a message log containing any messages given by NPCs or found in scrolls.

History

Much of the history of this game has been lost to the ages. This game was not nearly as popular as The Land, even tho it was a much more expanded game. Originally this game was written using Turbo Pascal.

Version 1.0 was initially released around 1990 for DOS. Like The Land it was originally distributed on BBS systems.

Version 2.1.2 was the last version released for DOS sometime in the mid 90s and was released on one of my websites.

Version 5.0 is still under active maintenance but now exists for Linux/Unix systems only. This version had been ported to c and therefore much easier to work with than prior versions.

Version 5.3 - Released on April 28, 2011

Rarity change to allow for ultra rare items
Sockets may now appear on rings, necklaces, weapons and armour Items can have up to 3 sockets
Recipe book browser added to crafting screen
No more random treasure, all treasure now comes from mob drops
Addition of items with enchantments, items can have up to 3 enchants
Trophies have been added
Many new crafted items have been added
Added Hall of Legends and Hall of Remembrance score tables
It is now possible to find items with enchants on them
Identify now shows the identified item in the message area
Added some statistics tracking
Added magical resistance attribute to mitigate some magical damage
Added ability for monster levels to be increased
Added seasonal items and trophies