alan wrote:Does anyone know if there is a disk version of ROD ?
I seriously doubt it...
Just take a look at the program's list (written in Basic), and you'll soon find out how
big it is. Given the use of PMODE3/4 graphics (i.e. another 6 KB off the available memory) for the main map and the cities & mazes, there would be no room left for disk management routines (and don't forget the DOS itself requires an extra 1.5 KB). Achieving this would have taken completely rewriting the game to split it into many more parts that could have been loaded in turn. But this wasn't an actual issue at the time the game was released, since disk drives were still scarce among Dragon owners.
Later on, more games were developped in m/c, which sure was a huge improvement on memory requirements, and would also allow either better/faster graphics, or larger game maps. But, except for professional software, very few people ever cared about writing disk-oriented programs.
The only exception that I know of still has to be the French RPG game called "Graal Quest", which is disk-based. I have it onto one of my VDKs, but never actually played it, having received it when I was already on the verge of becoming
a former Dragon user...
I remember converting some of my own software to run from disk, and it proved quite tricky sometimes (memory shortage, etc) : 32 KB weren't that much, especially after allocating a fair part of those to the DOS and/or graphics.
The disk versions of "Telewriter" and "Alldream" were good examples of very clever programming.
And please note that all of the above should be considered "IMHO" stuff !