README

Progress Quest 6.4.1 — TUI Port

"Gone are the tedious micromanagement and other frustrations common to that older generation of RPGs."

Progress Quest is a satirical zero-player RPG by Eric Fredricksen. Your character auto-levels, auto-quests, and auto-loots — no input needed beyond character creation. It is a loving parody of MMO grinding culture.

This repository is a Free Pascal port of the original Progress Quest 6.4 (Delphi 6 / Windows), version 6.4.1, to a cross-platform terminal UI using raw ANSI escape codes — no curses dependency, no external libraries. Runs on Linux and Windows (10 v1511+).

Screenshot

Features

• Truly zero-player — sit back and watch your character's legend unfold
• Online leaderboard — register with a Progress Quest realm and compete at progressquest.com/realms.php
• Compatible save files — .pq3 files round-trip with the original Windows client
• No external dependencies — zlib compression handled by bundled pure-Pascal sources in paszlib/
• Cross-platform — one codebase, {$IFDEF WINDOWS} guards for the platform differences in terminal control and timing

Building

Requires Free Pascal (fpc) only.

./build.sh

Compiles everything in one fpc -O3 -Xs -Fu./paszlib pq_tui.pas invocation; FPC resolves unit dependencies automatically. Produces the pq_tui binary. On Windows use build.bat.

ARM note

When cross-compiling for ARMHF you may see:

Warning: "crtbegin.o" not found, this will probably cause a linking failure
Warning: "crtend.o" not found, this will probably cause a linking failure

These warnings are harmless. crtbegin.o/crtend.o are C runtime objects that the ARM linker looks for but never actually uses for pure Pascal code. The binary links and runs correctly. To silence the warnings, install the ARM gcc toolchain:

sudo apt-get install gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf

Installing it does not affect binary size — the objects are found but not pulled in.

Running

./pq_tui                            # new character (interactive creation)
./pq_tui save.pq3                   # load existing save file
./pq_tui -export save.pq3           # load and export .sheet on each save
./pq_tui -export-only save.pq3      # export .sheet then exit
./pq_tui -no-backup save.pq3        # load without writing a backup on save
./pq_tui -set-motto save.pq3        # interactively set/clear the character motto
./pq_tui -motto "My motto" save.pq3 # set motto non-interactively then exit
./pq_tui -help                      # show all flags

In-game keys: q quit · s save · e export character sheet · b post to leaderboard · m toggle Minimal Mode

Minimal Mode

Press m to toggle Minimal Mode — a compact view that collapses the stats, equipment, inventory, and quest panels down to just the title bar, name/EXP row, race/class/level row, encumbrance, plot progress, and quest progress. The redraw rate drops from 5 Hz (every 200 ms) to 0.2 Hz (every 5 s), which considerably reduces CPU usage — useful when running in the background or on low-power hardware. The title bar shows - Minimal Mode when active.

Architecture

All source lives in the project root. Entry point is pq_tui.pas.

See SAVE_FORMAT.md for the binary save file specification.

Attribution

Progress Quest was created by Eric Fredricksen and is copyright © 2022 Eric Fredricksen. The original Delphi source is available at https://bitbucket.org/grumdrig/pq/ and at http://progressquest.com.

This Free Pascal port is a derivative work and is distributed under the same licence as the original. The game content (monsters, spells, items, races, classes, quests, plot acts) and save-file format are taken directly from the original source.

License

Progress Quest version 6.4
Copyright (c) 2022 Eric Fredricksen

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.