Kingdom of the Seven Stones
A downloadable game
Overview:
Welcome to the Kingdom of the Seven Stones, where thee, the curious stranger, enters the realm to embark on a journey of epic proportions. The land is fraught with peril and danger, but thou art undaunted, for thou art a hero of great renown. Thou roam the land, seeking quests to undertake, and those in need of aid. Thou art a beacon of hope, a shining light in the darkness, and thou will make right what wrongs exist in this realm. The fate of the kingdom rests on thy shoulders, and thou must not falter in thy quest to bring peace and prosperity to the land. May God watch over thee on thy journey, and may thou emerge victorious in battles against the forces of darkness that threaten to consume the realm.
Venture forth into a world brimming with over a hundred places, each graced with its own unique depiction. Here, thou shalt encounter riddles wrapped in enigma, labyrinths that twist and turn, felled beasts of legend, and secrets that beckon the curious soul. In this land of myth and mystery, something shall surely stir thy spirit and call thee to adventure.
Purchasing information:
Purchasing is required to play. For those whom are able, please consider purchasing this game in physical format from The Future Was 8 Bit. Buying from them encourages the development of new physical products for our old systems! Downloadable digital emulator cartridge format is provided as an alternative method to play the game as opposed to buying a cartridge for those that do not have access to physical Commodore 64 hardware but still want to own the game. Those who already purchased a physical cartridge and want a digital copy as well, please contact the author for a "no additional payment required" download key (i.e. author's first name -at- myjoe.com). Newer versions of VICE Commodore emulator with 1MB MagicDesk2 cartridge support are capable of playing this game, as is the Kung Fu Flash cartridge.
Technical Notes:
Kingdom of the Seven Stones is released in physical cartridge format using the full capacity of a Marina64 cartridge to squeeze the game into a single cartridge. This size of game would historically require three double-sided diskettes to fit the entire game. Even with the Marina64 cartridge’s generous capacity, the game still requires extensive compression to fit all of the graphics, game logic, songs, and the extensive interactive text and scenarios into the single loadable cartridge. The game supports both PAL and NTSC display regions.
Revision History:
Rev A
- Initial official release of the game after feedback from The Future Was 8 Bit (TFW8Bit).
Rev B
- Fix proposed by Martin Piper's technical analysis YouTube video suggesting to use an illegal screen mode to hide FLI graphics to text transition glitch.
- Game play fix based on TFW8Bit using "hello" or "hi" as an alias to "talk".
Rev C
- Removal of mention of the "north" from the fork location, as this path was removed due to cartridge space limitations.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $1 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Comments
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How about an EasyFlash version ? Also 1mb too (16kb banks instead of 8kb) This will cover users of MiST, MiSTer, TheC64, TheC64 mini, TC64, U64 & U1541II as well as real EasyFlash hardware. Ping me if you need assistance doing this. Find me on discord or https://csdb.dk/scener/?id=10113
I could likely make that work (thanks for the suggestion). FYI - I tried to join CSDB many times in the past, always rejected, so I gave up. Never told why. Can you send a ping in email in case I have some questions?
First of all, thank you for making this game. Question, I used HELP to get a list of available actions, is there a command that will list obvious directions you can go or is the intent to try all directions if information is not provided in the area description? It's been a while since I have played a word parser so just wondering.
Welcome! Unfortunately, there's no command to give directions. I have included a downloadable map PDF, and someone on the CASA website made their own map (much more detailed than my included map) [search "CASA Kingdom of the Seven Stones" and likely it will come up]. That's fairly common of the era to hunt and try, not that it can't be frustrating at time, but thankfully maps are available. It was one of the sacrifices that had to be made to not include that feature due to the system size constraints.
Just got the digital download, but I am unable to get the game to run. I have tried both with a real C64 using the Ultimate II+ cartridge and also theC64 Mini console, but it won't load up. Any ideas how to get it to work?
It’s not supported on the U2+ currently. We encountered this during the review for the latest issue of Zzap. You will need something such as a Kung Fu Flash currently.
This is the first time I hear that a game is not running on the U2+
Could you explain the technical reason for that? just interested to understand. No critism!
The game is great!
Hi Gregor,
Thank you and thanks for asking!
I wish it could support it. I suspect there's two reasons. I looked over the U2+ specs and under "C64 cartridge emulation, with support for many CRT files" it lists "Custom Ocean / System3 carts (up to 512K)". This makes me wonder if there's not sufficient onboard RAM/flash to support larger cartridges (as this one is > 512K). The other issue concern is that this cartridge format is a Magic Desk 2 cartridge format, configured at 8Mb (1MB), and I do not explicitly see this in the list. It might be this particular data file format is not supported (yet).
The same issue will present itself with any device that attempts to emulate cartridges, for example the Mini or the Maxi. They need to have sufficient space available to load the cartridge and bank in/out data "on-demand" and support the particular .crt file format for Magic Desk 2 at this capacity. Newer VICE versions supports this format, but it's not universal (yet + unfortunately).
For those wanting to understand the low level details, technically the game is a compiled 1MB binary (.bin) file with all the code, graphics, text and sound inside. I use the VICE cartridge converter to convert that binary file into a magic desk 2 .crt file. There's nothing special at all about this binary file otherwise. The binary file is 128 x 8K binary chunks merged (in-order) together into a single file then converted into a .crt files where meta data describing the contents of the cartridge format is added.
For the Magic Desk 2 format, a cartridge emulator (e.g. U2+, Maxi/Mini) needs to respond to requests when the game code sets a bank value at $DE00. The game code effectively does an LDA #bank STA $DE00 (or to translate to BASIC, a POKE 56832, <bank>). Then the cartridge emulator responds by presenting one of the 8K bank out of the 128 available as ROM memory at location $8000 for the C64 CPU. So the U2+ and Maxi/Mini need to add this tiny bit of logic and have the space in RAM/flash to be able to load this cartridge. Cartridge emulators already do this type of logic for other cartridges, so it would be very easy to support Magic Desk 2 if they have the RAM/flash space available to hold this size cartridge.
I hope this helps explain!
It’s not the size of the cart, the U2+ can play both Briley Witch games and they are both over 512k in size. It’s almost certainly going to be the device doesn’t yet support the MD2 bank switching configuration.
Interesting. I looked at the firmware code, and I see that the the max rom capacity for the U2+ is 1MB, and they do support Magic Desk but the comment says that it supports a max of 16 x 16K chunks, which means 256K total. So they do support some banking but not the full range. Probably a very easy fix.
I will be truly glad to buy the physical version but TWF8bit sadly doesn't ship to Slovenia (EU).
I don't work for TFW8Bit, but I do know international shipping is a bit of a nightmare. When packages are shipped to certain countries, the packages can be hit with not only tariffs and taxes but flat (+expensive) fees that are tacked on by the carrier and the receiving government. Those fees by the shipping company are to cover the crazy paperwork of local governments. DHL is one of the friendlier shipping companies in the sense their fees are more reasonable. When I say reasonable, I don't mean cheap, but DHL tends to deliver the package on time (important) and doesn't charge extra fees that makes a buyer think they are just using their "fees "to pay for their executives' next lavish vacations.
When sellers ship to countries that are not international friendly, the charges/fees can be so extreme by the local government that buyers will refuse the package and demand a refund. That leaves sellers in the position where they not only don't make a sale, but they eat the shipping costs of the package and the return too. Bottom line, sellers need to selectively pick to ship to specific countries, or they get royally fleeced (which will make sellers regret making a sale).
The other issues is that buyers often don't expect those fees (or think they are too high), so they might just think sellers are trying to make even more money, and refuse the package delivery. Depending on which country, buyers are often more or less aware of these fees, so banning some countries outright (sadly) is often done to prevent massive losses.
I can't speak to your specific country, nor do I know TFW8Bit specific policies, but I hope this helps explain the problem... I wish it were different...
Raymond, thank you for reaching out and for explaining. I know all about what you said. I am a great retro computer lover, especially the C64 which is and will bi my first love. I am practically ordering on monthly basis stuff from the UK. And yes there are taxes and import fees to pay after the Brexit in our country, but so it is from the US etc. I will gladly pay all of the fees to have a physical copy of this fabulous and great adventure. But fortunately I own a Kung Fu cartridge and I can play the game on real hardware if I want.
Please see my collection, so you can see some fee is not an issue for me.
Congratulations for your work and keep up with it.
Very best regards, Sincerely, Martin
Nice collection! I love how shinny the boxes look making everything appear new still. Mine have dulled with age. Yes, fortunately the Kung Fu flash works well. I wasn't speaking on behalf of the TFW8Bit (since I'm not affiliated), but you could always reach out to them and ask if ever you wanted to order something. I can't say if they'd can make special cases or not but it doesn't hurt to ask... Nice to see the spectrum joined the group :-)
Great text adventure game with good graphics. I also included it in my new "Gameplay of New C64 Games from October 2024" video, in addition to the other C64 games released in October. Hope you like it.