Overview

Zeir talking to Thelema the Bard. Click to see a larger version.Diadem of Maunstraut is the first full-length King's Field fangame made with Sword of Moonlight (1) to be in the English language. The game has a concept similar to the traditional King's Field games (and other games of the series) as well as its own original soundtrack.

History

Before a concept for a game was created, there was the musical project Maunstraut done by Tom Eversole, which used MIDI to emulate an instrumental orchestra. Major influences for the Maunstraut sound were gothic video game soundtracks from series such as Legacy of Kain, the Myst games and King's Field. Once JDO Translations translated the Japanese-only Sword of Moonlight to English (2) , Diadem of Maunstraut went under development at end of June 2008, and was completed with its first version mid August 2008. A major highlight of the game was the original soundtrack.

Story

The royal crown, a mystical diadem, repels evil in the land of Maunstraut. It begins to crack and a great source of evil is soon discovered to be the cause. Lord Schnell, the reigning King of Maunstraut, decides to sent his most trusted servant, Zeir Grimholdt, to the darkest corners of the land, in hopes to seek out and destroy the source of evil and aid in the diadem's repair. Zeir is to seek out the signs and swords of the land, to build his power and destroy evil once and for all.

The Death of King's Field

A major motivator in Diadem of Maunstraut's production was the death of the King's Field series. On June 2nd 2006, Mark Johnson head of Agetec announced that, until further notice, there will not be any other King's Field (type) games being developed. (3) This was hard news to take amongst diehard fans. A select few began to seek out Sword of Moonlight, an almost forgotten PC relic, with attempts to make their own games. The full version of Diadem of Maunstraut is free for anyone to download. It is an ode to all King's Field type games created by From Software and published to the US by Agetec. It is also a gift to the fans of this series who are craving a new game of this genre.

Known Issues

There is one major known issue with the Sword of Moonlight engine. (Special thanks for John for finding this out.) Sword of Moonlight has a recognized memory leak. Essentially, it loads data into the RAM but then it doesn't unload it. When the collected memory usage reaches a certain point, there can be major slowdown and unresponsive gameplay. (In my opinion, this might be why the Sword of Moonlight software never reached the US)

A large deciding factor of the severity of this issue depends on the computer's schematics. My computer starts to get slowdown on traveling to certain new maps (Maps are divided by in-game greetings and different music) and sometimes, depending on the areas, there can be severe frame-rate issues. My dad's computer doesn't get slowdown on all newly visited maps, but will show minor skips if multiple areas are visited in succession. (4)

Since there is no source code for the EXE file, remedying the memory leak itself is not an option. However, there is a solution: Saving the game, closing Diadem of Maunstraut, restarting and loading whenever the first signs of slowdown occur directly addresses and arrests the problem. Doing this completely frees all RAM that the program has used and restores gameplay to a smoother state. Depending on the computer and the rate of exploration determines how often a game restart is recommended.

Since new maps seem to be the main trigger to the game slowing down, extra save points are added at the end and beginning at each place maps are switched. If the new map is experiencing slowdown soon after entering, simply examine the save point there, restart and reload your Diadem of Maunstraut game.

Acknowledgements & Credits

Tom Eversole - Map design & item/object/enemy placement and schematics, soundtrack and artwork

John Osborne - Sword of Moonlight translations, patches and fixes, additional Diadem of Maunstraut objects and items

References

(1) Sword of Moonlight: The King's Field Making Tool is a computer program to build King's Field games.
http://www.fromsoftware.jp/main/soft/som.html

(2) JDO Translations specializes in converting Japanese language software and games to English
http://jdo-translations.100webspace.net/JDO.html

(3) Mark (Duhrin) goes into detail throughout a YUKU post, the death of King's Field
http://agetec.yuku.com/topic/1758

(4) Memory leak tests are determined on a continuous play base.
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