The Madness of Roland

The Madness of Roland
First release	1992
Also known as	roland
Developed by	HyperBole Studios
Published by
Distributed by
Platforms	MPC, Windows 3.1
Resolution	640x480, 256 colors
Engine	VirtualCinema
Support	Not supported
Available for Purchase	Not available

The Madness of Roland is an interactive novel and audiobook with FMV cutscenes that adapts the epic poem Orlando Furioso about medieval French king Charlemagne's heroic paladin Roland who falls tragically in love with sorceress Angelica and loses his mind.

Versions

• PC: 1 CD

Gameplay

The game was built using Visual Basic 3 and has Windows Forms used within the game. I believe we can implement most of it and create a simple UI that will handle some of the form interactions. It has some game flags that records the user interaction with some of the screens which can lead to different endings, but most of the game can be played freely, choosing any character and chapter, but it is intended to be played/listened like an audiobook.

The game logic is all hard-coded.

Technical Details

• Folder Structure:
  • HYPER: Tool tips/hyper links the player can hover with the mouse
  • MENUS: Menu screens
  • QT: Quick Time container files
  • SCREENS: Gameplay chapter screens

• RLE Bitmap Compressed Images: .rle
  • The screens are all RLE images with few BMP files

• Quick Time Container: .mov
  • Both Audio and Video
    • Video: sms SMS
    • Audio: raw PCM

Reverse

Need to track chapter, characters, visit characters, visit pages per character.

Characters Indexes: 5

• Angelica: 1
• Charlemagne: 2
• Durendal: 3
• Roland: 4
• Main Leaf: 5

Chapters Indexes: 7

• Seige of Paris
• Beware the Forest Green
• Black is the Kight
• A Chapel, Small and Dear
• La Bella Luna
• The Tide Turns
• Epilogue

External Links

• The Madness of Roland HyperBole Web Site
• HyperBole Games