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Messiah Quest
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Messiah Quest is now playable in the browser! Click the following link to play Messiah Quest: Web Edition.
About
An Evil Being has emerged from the south. The being is powerful and immortal, and is leading monsters of the world to rise against the humans. The monsters lurk in the dark edges of civilization, and they attack when the settlements are tired and weak. The Evil Being plans on wiping out the human race so monsters will reign superior.
Although, you have been created to defeat this evil threat and save the human race from extinction. The Evil Being's power is drawn from five Power Orbs scattered across the world. Each one fuels the monsters nearby with dark power. They are kept protected within the Fortresses of Evil. You must conquer each Fortress of Evil to take the Power Orbs. Without a Power Orb, the monsters will weaken in that region. Once all Power Orbs are gathered to one place, their concentrated power will cause the orbs to self-destruct, leaving the Evil Being powerless and mortal. Then you can slay the evil Messiah!
Updates
Messiah Quest 1.1: A Splash of Color is now available! In this update, the text is now color-coded to provide hints and context in the world. The link above will download the latest version of Messiah Quest as well as the link below.
Messiah Quest 1.0 is still available as well in all its green glory.
Download Information
The download is a zip file containing the executable, its class libraries, and a guide text document. The game is a simple console application, and it is started by running the executable. When the game is started for the first time, it will create an XML file where it will store save data. To continue using the save data, make sure the XML file is in the same folder as the other files. On that note, make sure the executable and the class libraries stay together as well. For your convenience, you can create a shortcut of the executable on the desktop or the start menu and it will function perfectly.
The guide that is included is a great place to start and highly recommended. It includes details on how the game works and how to play the game. It also lists every possible command that the game will recognize, so you can know which actions are even possible. With all the information provided by the guide, you should be ready to begin your quest.
Development
As I mentioned in My Origin, I sometimes develop applications without using an IDE like Visual Studio. Messiah Quest was one of those projects. It wasn’t too bad since it was just a console application. All the source code was written in Notepad. I was then able to write batch files to run the C# compiler in command prompt to compile each library and executable.
I divided the code into three files so I could experiment with building the game on different platforms. I used an architecture like Model-View-Controller to break the game into different tiers. The entire game was compiled into MessiahQuest.Model.dll, and it does not depend on the console. I also compiled the code which dealt with the save data into MessiahQuest.Data.dll so I could create multiple versions of the library which handled the data in different formats. The version available for download uses XML, but I did create a library which used JSON. The controller and view tiers were compiled into the executable itself, and that code was the only part of the application which depended on the console. By doing this, I could easily rebuild the game on a different platform by writing a new application that emulated the console and referred to the MessiahQuest.Model library. Each version of the app was the same game, because the core of the game was compiled into the model library. I was able to develop a Windows Universal application and an ASP.NET application for Messiah Quest.
Messiah Quest: Web Edition. Looks familiar, doesn't it? Under the title would be a save menu containing the save slots. After clicking a button, the black window would take over the site, and a text box would appear. Then the game was on!
I also mentioned in My Origin that I developed Messiah Quest twice a few years ago, but I lost all of the source code when my first laptop died. So in order to rebuild Messiah Quest from nothing, I had to analyze the salvaged executables of the past versions. I mapped out the entire game in a notebook, then I turned it into code. By iterating through each level of the game with mapping the level from the old version, writing the code for the level, and testing everything in that one level, I was able to develop the entire game in about a month. I wrote the first class on the 1st of October 2015, and finished coding the final boss in the middle of November. The problem was that I had school work I was supposed to do, but I really wanted to resurrect Messiah Quest more than anything. I even blew off a macroeconomics paper because I didn’t care about anything else. I was incredibly depressed from the loss of my laptop, and I needed to avenge its death by making Messiah Quest.
The evolution of Messiah Quest. The left window is the very original developed in 3DFA. The top-right is the remake developed using C#. The bottom-right is the resurrection.
The greatest loss from the death of my laptop was actually the project I was working on when it died: Messiah Quest II. I started it as a school project during the spring of 2015, and I continued development through the summer. The very weekend before the fall semester, my hard drive crashed and all was lost. I wanted to finish developing Messiah Quest II, but I couldn’t bear starting over. And it irked me that I no longer had the source code for the first Messiah Quest, so I felt obligated to start over from the very beginning. I spent all of September helplessly trying to resurrect the laptop itself. Once all hope was lost, I realized the only way I could avenge its death. So October began and I started Messiah Quest from the very beginning. Today I am glad to say that I have finally returned to Messiah Quest II, and I am in a better place than I was before.