Dungeons of Daggorath

Dungeons of Daggorath was one of the first games that attempted to portray three-dimensional space in a real-time environment, using angled lines to give the illusion of depth. It followed the 1974 games Maze War and Spasim, written for research computers, and the first 3D maze game for home computers, 3D Monster Maze, released in 1981. The game Phantom Slayer, which was released in 1982 for the Color Computer, also featured monsters lurking in a maze. While Daggorath was visually similar to these games, it added several elements of strategy, such as different kinds of monsters, complex mazes, different levels of visibility, and the use of different objects and weapons.{{Cite web|url=http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/dungeonsofdaggorath.html|title=Dungeons of Daggorath|last=Boyle|first=L. Curtis|website=Tandy (TRS-80) Color Computer Games|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110826114354/http://nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com/daggorath.html|archive-date=26 August 2011|url-status=live}}

File:Dungeons of Daggorath screenshot.png

The player moves around a dungeon, issuing commands by means of typing – for example, typing "GET LEFT SHIELD" or "USE RIGHT" (or abbreviations such as "G L SH" and "U R"), gathering strength and ever more powerful weapons as the game progresses. Various creatures appear, and can often be heard when they are nearby, even when not visible. The object of the game is to defeat the second of two wizards, who is on the fifth and last level of the dungeon.

A unique feature of the game is a heartbeat which rises as the player moves, takes actions or takes damage within the virtual environment. The heartbeat is a direct predecessor of the "health" indicator in later games; the higher the heart rate, the more vulnerable the player is to attack. The player can faint from overexertion, in which case there is the risk of being attacked while defenseless. This heartbeat system was used instead of numerical statistics such as hit points or vitality, and was inspired by arcade games,{{Cite book|first=Matt|last=Barton|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IMXu61GbTqMC |title=Dungeons & Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games |publisher=A K Peters, Ltd. |year=2008 |access-date=2010-09-08 |isbn = 978-1-56881-411-7 |pages=80–1}} specifically 1978's Space Invaders where a heartbeat-like sound gradually increases pace as enemies advance towards the player.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=M_bFdsP9L7oC&pg=PA232|title=Vintage games: An Insider Look at the History of Grand Theft Auto, Super Mario, and the Most Influential Games of All Time|author=Loguidice|first=Bill|last2=Barton|first2=Matt|publisher=Focal Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-240-81146-8|page=232|access-date=2011-05-01}}

The game was developed by Douglas J. Morgan and Keith S. Kiyohara, with sounds by Phil Landmeier, in 1980–81 for the Tandy (RadioShack) TRS-80 Color Computer. Produced by DynaMicro, it was released in 1983 as an eight kilobyte ROMpak cartridge for the Color Computer, which took several months of recoding to achieve. Despite this, the game features a multi-level maze and has what for the time were advanced sound effects that provide important clues to the locations of monsters.{{Cite web|url=http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/900|title=A Review of DynaMicro's The Dungeons of Daggorath (1983)|last=Barton|first=Matt|date=13 October 2006|website=Armchair Arcade|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070524001705/http://www.armchairarcade.com/neo/node/900|archive-date=24 May 2007|url-status=live}}

After Dungeons of Daggorath became one of the most popular Color Computer games,{{Citation needed|date=March 2019}} Tandy produced a sequel, Castle of Tharoggad,{{Cite web|url=http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/castleoftharoggad.html|title=Castle of Tharoggad|last=Boyle|first=L. Curtis|website=Tandy (TRS-80) Color Computer Games|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090912080504/http://nitros9.lcurtisboyle.com/castleoftharoggad.html|archive-date=12 September 2009|url-status=live}}[http://members.tripod.com/coco_docs/id61.htm Castle of Tharoggad], Color Computer Documentation Website in 1988 which was made without the participation of the Daggorath team. It was poorly received.{{Cite magazine|last=Sabbatini|first=Mark|date=February 2010|editor-last=Roppolo|editor-first=Bryan|title=Castle of Tharoggad|url=http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/rtm69/|url-status=dead|magazine=Retrogaming Times Monthly|issue=69|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100207044225/http://www.retrogamingtimes.com/rtm69/|archive-date=7 February 2010}}

Around 2001, Douglas J. Morgan noticed that the exclusive copyright had reverted to him from the publisher RadioShack. He released the game under a freeware-like license to the public, also offering the source code for a small fee.[https://web.archive.org/web/20100911232420/http://frodpod.tripod.com/lisence.html Grant of license to reproduce Dungeons of Daggorath] by Douglas J. Morgan "I hereby grant a non-exclusive permanent world-wide license to any and all Color Computer site administrators, emulator developers, programmers or any other person or persons who wish to develop, produce, duplicate, emulate, or distribute the game on the sole condition that they exercise every effort to preserve the game insofar as possible in its original and unaltered form. ... Anyone willing to pay for the copying of the listing (at Kinko's) and shipment to them, who intends to use it to enhance or improve the emulator versions of the game is welcome to it". It has been ported by fans to Microsoft Windows,{{Cite web|url=http://mspencer.net/daggorath/dodpcp.html|title=Project Page for Dungeons of Daggorath PC-Port|last=Hunerlach|first=Richard|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150228204701/http://mspencer.net/daggorath/dodpcp.html|archive-date=28 February 2015|url-status=dead}} Linux,{{Cite web|url=http://hd.servebbs.org/dod/|title=Dungeons of Daggorath – Version 0.5.1 for Linux|date=July 2012|website=Daggorath PC-Port|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160423084905/http://hd.servebbs.org/dod/|archive-date=23 April 2016|url-status=dead}} RISC OS{{Cite web|url=https://www.riscository.com/2012/dungeons-of-daggorath-ported/|title=Dungeons of Daggorath ported to RISC OS|last=Hudd|first=Vince M.|date=27 May 2012|website=RISCOSitory|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120615031501/https://www.riscository.com/2012/dungeons-of-daggorath-ported/|archive-date=15 June 2012|url-status=live}} and PSP{{Cite web|url=http://www.qj.net/psp/homebrew-games/psp-homebrew-dungeons-of-daggorath-v07.html|title=PSP homebrew – Dungeons of Daggorath v0.7|last=M.|first=Glenn|date=15 December 2008|website=QuickJump|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160424113859/http://www.qj.net/psp/homebrew-games/psp-homebrew-dungeons-of-daggorath-v07.html|archive-date=24 April 2016|url-status=dead}} via the SDL library. A free, open-source version has also been ported to the [https://daggorath.online Web].{{Cite web|url=http://daggorath.online/|title=Dungeons of Daggorath|last1=Byrd|first1=Nathan|website=Dungeons of Daggorath|language=en-US|access-date=2020-04-20}}

Dungeons of Daggorath is a plot point in the book Ready Player One,{{Cite web|url=https://geekdad.com/2018/04/the-video-games-of-ready-player-one/|title=The Video Games of 'Ready Player One'|last=Owens|first=Skip|date=9 April 2018|website=Geek Dad|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190204164710/https://geekdad.com/2018/04/the-video-games-of-ready-player-one/|archive-date=4 February 2019|url-status=live|access-date=20 March 2019}} but it does not appear in the film adaptation.

{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.lcurtisboyle.com/nitros9/dungeonsofdaggorath.html Dungeons of Daggorath] at the Tandy Color Computer Games list
• [http://iloveglory.freehostia.com/daggorath/index.html Dungeons of Daggorath site] with Douglas J. Morgan interview
• [https://github.com/MichaelSpencerJr/DungeonsOfDaggorath Original Dungeons of Daggorath source code] on GitHub, retrieved 26 January 2022.

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Category:Dragon 32 games

Category:Fantasy video games

Category:First-person video games

Category:TRS-80 Color Computer games

Category:Role-playing video games

Category:1982 video games

Category:Commercial video games with freely available source code

Category:Video games developed in the United States

Category:Single-player video games