Dark Castle (CD-i)

Dark Castle
Developers: Media Construction, American Interactive Media Publisher: Philips Media Platform: CD-i Released in US: 1992 Released in EU: 1992 This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has debugging material. This game has a hidden level select.

If you have played Dark Castle on the Sega Genesis, we bet you'd expect this version to almost be identically bad, with the poor visibility making it harder to see what's up ahead.

Level Select

In the Great Hall, press Down, Down, Down, Up, Up, Up, Down, Down to activate a level select, which partially obscures the "ELIXIR" text on the HUD. Pressing Up and Down will change the selected level, which replaces the stage of whatever door is entered. In addition, the Fireball and Shield will be added to your inventory.

Development Programs

Download Dark Castle Development Programs File: DarkCastleCDi DevPrograms.zip (35 KB) (info)

Among the disc's files are three leftover programs used to develop Dark Castle:

• cdi_basecase: Displays the current amount of RAM free, as well as the amount used by both graphic planes.
• cdi_deinit: Initializes various settings for both the game and CD-i player.
• cdi_set_nvr: Saves data to the CD-i's NVRAM. Of note is that the program's NVRAM file name is "KILL_ME_NOW".

In addition, text for a code compiler program is located at 0x7AAED8 and 0x99DEC8, though it cannot be extracted like the others.

Disk Building Language compiler Version 2.52, 2/11/91

%s: Critical memory shortage ($d) - must quit
%s: Initializations failed
%s: Command-line variable definition failed
%s: Too many include directories
%s: Syntax error at line %d, char %d in "%s"
%s: Logic error in "%s" at line %d, char %d
%s: Error %d (0x%x) encountered in "%s"
%s: successful completion
%s: errors encountered
%s: Cannot initialize reserved words (%s).
%s: Cannot initialize keywords (%s).
%s: Canot create symbol table (%s).
%s: Canot create runtime label table (%s).

Notify_mbox
DFile_fattr
RTF_fattr
Dir_fattr
RTF_dir
RTR_dir
RRB_dir
SSII_dir
Info_dir

%s: variable definitions must be of the form "name=value"

DBL_symbols
DBL_rt_labels

%s: Unsupported option argument: "%s"
%s: Unknown option argument: "%s"

Written by Drew Topel and Randy Schulz
Copyright 1989,1990 American Interactive Media, All rights reserved

Options (key-letters are case-insensitive):
  -isrcdir{=destdir}
               Add "srcdir" to the file search path, optionally
     replace "srcdir" with "destdir" in .rrb file
  -p1, -p0     Turn Preamble file output ON or OFF, default is ON
  -s1, -s0     Turn SSII processing ON or OFF, default is OFF
  -c           Use the 'CLUT' RTRB directive instead of splitting clut files
  -f           Ignore File Not Found errors
  -wt#         Set warning tolerance to # sectors (5 default)
  -wl#         Set warning level to # (3 default)
  -l#          Set progress log level to # (1 default)
  -m           In the Mac version, replace ':' with '/' where appropriate
  -e           Turn the emphasis bit on in all audio (all off is default)
  -?, -h       Print this help message...

%s: Usage %s [ option | file ] ...

INTEGER
STRING
FUNCTION
PROGRAM
ALBUM
DISC
FSVDR
DIR
DFILE
RTF
FATTR
RTR
DRAWMAP
CLUT
SOUNDMAP
BUFFER
AUDIO_OUT
AUDIO_MIX
RELEASE
CHANNEL
MOVIE
TRIGGER
MODULE
EOR
EVERY
UNTIL
A
B
X

Hidden Text

Read Me

The file cdi_read_me is a developer message containing information on the level select mentioned above, as well as thanks to the game's developers, a build date and version "number", and the (otherwise unmentioned) name of the dev team.

Dark Castle
3/21/92 FINAL FINAL REALLY-THE-FINAL
Douglas Corarito, engineering
Michael Gallelli, artist
Media Construction, Inc.

This version contains a mechanism which will allow the player to enter
any playfield.  To use this feature you must be in the Great Hall.
The sequence on the joystick is as follows, DOWN DOWN DOWN, UP UP UP, 
DOWN DOWN.  You will be presented with some debugging information on
the status bar.  Use UP and DOWN to select playfield.  The numbers are
as follows.

Trouble 1   0
Trouble 2   1
Trouble 3   2

Fireball 1  3
Fireball 2  4
Fireball 3  5
Fireball 4  6

Shield 1    7
Shield 2    8
Shield 3    9
Shield 4    10

Black Knight 1  11
Black Knight 1  12
Black Knight 1  13


A special thanks to all the people who were involved both directly and
indirectly with this project.

Larry Lowe
Lisa Bolstad
Rod Wood
Drew Topel
Bernie Luskin
Charlie Golvin
Dave McElhatten
Mark Stephen Pierce 
Howard Soroka 
Phil Van Allen

A very special thanks to Alty van Luijt who's expertise in blitter technology 
helped resurrected this project from the grave.

All the best Alty.

Bibliography Text

A more detailed list of the development team showing who did what is stored in the file bibliography.

The Dark Castle Team
 
Larry Lowe, Designer/Producer
Robert Patton, Engineer/Producer
Lisa Bolstad, Art Director
Douglas Corarito, Engineer/Producer
Howard Soroka, Audio
Alty Van Luijt, Engineering Consultant
Charlie Golvin, Engineering Consultant
Drew Topel, Engineering Consultant
Rod Wood, Engineering Consultant
Carol Rudisil, Producer
Michael Gallelli, Art Director
Mike Willis, Producer

Dummy File

This file exists to fix a bug in CDRTOS.

This line is stored in the file dummyfile, and the file does in fact exist to fix a bug in the CD-RTOS (Compact Disk Real-Time Operating System).