A Royal Challenge: Port Richard Garriott’s D&D #1 Game

Richard Garriott’s D&D #1

Richard “Lord British” Garriott has issued a challenge to our developer community: port his Dungeons & Dragons precursor to Akalabeth and Ultima from its hand-typed, 37-year old paper tape spools into a modern usable form, while remaining true to the original in as many ways as possible. In the offing is a bounty of Shroud of the Avatar pledge rewards!

For the next month, through May 15th 2014, submissions will be accepted in one of two forms: a Unity version, and or a no-plug-in Browser version. All submissions become property of Richard Garriott. The winner of the best Unity version & best no-plug in Browser versions will each receive a Citizen Level pledge reward (each worth approximately $550); additionally, two runners up in both categories will receive Collector level pledge rewards (each worth approximately $165).

To be eligible, entries must:

• Be a faithful recreation of the original, not embellished (e.g. No fancy graphics, stick with a traditional font on “yellow” paper.)
• Be fully working and debugged versions as similar to the original as possible.
• Be self-running, and not require any other installations that are not automatically requested during the running of the entry.
• Add a “© 1977-2014 Richard Garriott” at the beginning.
• May include an addition of “Ported by DEVELOPER NAME”.
• Must agree that all rights to this port remain property of Richard Garriott

Unity version entries must work inside Unity, rendering to a texture, such that Portalarium can map it in Shroud of the Avatar onto an object or interface element. Unity versions earn bonus points for the more versions of Unity they support (web player, Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android, PS3, etc.)

No-plug-in Browser version entries earn bonus points if run on: 4 major browsers (Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari), 3 operating systems (windows, mac & linux), and 2 mobile platforms (iOs & Android).

All submissions must be received before May 15th!

Submissions and questions should be sent to Portalarium.