What is Mort?

Mort is an expansive, free-roaming adventure game for Palm OS, which we began developing in 2004. The majority of games for the Palm OS have always been puzzle games, and we wanted to bring some other genres, like adventure and horror, to the platform. We designed a game that could provide an enormous environment to play in, and would allow the player to interact with everything in that environment. Anything that the player changed, stayed changed throughout the entire game. We wanted a non-linear game, so that it could be played repeatedly, with the player getting a completely different experience each time. We also designed the game so that it could be modded, in order to let the players create their own worlds.

The Story of Mort This is the story of the world of Mort... 4,021 B.C. - Africa. As the neolithic era approaches, your tribe is on the precipice of extinction. The herds that your tribe hunts have not been seen in many moons. The violent gods of your ancestors have returned and rained pestilence down upon you. The elders have convened and announced that the gods require a sacrifice. Since you are the favorite of your tribe, and you have just turned thirteen, the age of womanhood, you have been given the honor of being sacrificed to the gods. You go willingly, with pride. Your body is tied to Blood Rock and your family says their goodbyes. When the sun sets, you will be no more. You lay alone, waiting for your moment of greatness. At the last instant, something snaps in your mind, and you begin thrashing about wildly. You have strength you've never known. You break free and run to the nearest cave to hide in shame. You find your grandmother is waiting for you and she speaks these words, "YOU have been chosen. YOU have been given the power of your ancestors. YOU must save your people by dispelling the gods. And you must never be seen again, lest greed for your power destroy our tribe."

The Definition of Mort We here at Trinfinity Software are fond of words. When brainstorming ideas for a horror game, we came across this synonym for death, Mort. mort n. The note sounded on a hunting horn to announce the death of a deer. A great quantity or number. A woman; a female. Death; esp., the death of game in the chase. The idea that this old word, which meant death, also referred to women, intrigued us. It's obvious that the time period that this word came from was sexist, but we tried to think of other reasons for the association. In our minds, women are associated with life because they are the ones that incubate and give birth to children, but perhaps in ancient times there was a warrior woman, who brought death to those that threatened their tribe. That was the spark that became the basis of the story and imagery of the game.

The State of the Game On December 15, 2004, we put the project on hold and shelved the game. It has been hibernating on our shelf for almost a year now, and it has become obvious to us that we will not be able to finish it anytime soon. We still want to bring other game genres to the Palm OS platform, even if we can't finish Mort ourselves. Therefore, in order to encourage the creation of non-puzzle games for the Palm OS, we have decided to release the source code and all associated project files to Mort under a creative commons license. We hope that you will use these files to learn about programming the Palm OS, programming using MacOS X, and game development. We also hope that some of you use these files as a starting point for your own Palm OS games. And lastly, we are hoping that someone finishes our game for us. The foundations of the game are finished, including collision detection, basic enemy intelligence, animated characters, and simple animated backgrounds. There is a working Palm OS application, in which you can start a new game, walk around the entire world, kill enemies, take damage, and cut down bushes to find bonus items. There is also a level editor, which runs on the handheld, or can be run within the Palm OS Emulator (POSE), which allows you to edit the entire environment without writing any code. The game needs music, sound effects, better graphics, and an enjoyable game experience. We have provided the world and the back story, you need to provide the events, challenges, bosses, and rewards. If you want to create your own game, redo all of the graphics, and you will be halfway finished. If you need help understanding how to develop Palm OS applications using MacOS X, our founder has written an article, which will explain the basics to you.

The Deal Mort is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License, which means that you are allowed to download it and use it. You are also allowed to modify it, and make commercial use of your altered version, as long as you state in the product, and all of its documentation, including its website, the following: This product is based on Mort, the open-source Palm OS game created by David Garcea, from Trinfinity Software (http://www.trinfinitysoftware.com). You must also release any derivative work under the same Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License and make its source code freely available to everyone. You must also notify us at the following email address, when you release your derivative work. info@trinfinitysoftware.com

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License.