Im new to omnimaga as of today. just thought id say a little about my project. its called Phantasma: Shards of the Spirits. its a  83+ basic rpg with ASCII graphics (think Dark Link Quest). ill be using codex and flash gordon for archiving various map programs.
The story: you are a young man living in the Kingdom of Light (one of three countries in my huge world map), and your land is under attack from evil phantoms from the Dark Lands of the south.  To save your lands, you must find three shards of crystal that when put together make a ball.  This crystal ball has the power to trap the phantoms.
On the way, there will be many side quests, like freeing a town from a monster, etc, and the Academy of Legend (think Fable's academy).  Here you learn how to use various attacks and weapons.
There will be many weapons, all upgradable, like swords, bows, magic, axes, and bare fists, and also armour and clothes for your character to wear.  (Unfortunately the clothes wont make a difference to how you look in ASCII.  Maybe i can make people react differently to different scary or nice outfits.)
In the cities there will be buildings with minigames (horse racing and betting, casinos, arenas for fighting with various weapons, etc) and of course appropriate prizes.
For my maps, Im using programs to draw out large strings.  Each section of the game will need a new string, after the old is deleted, or there wont be enough RAM.
I've hardly started right now.  Im in the planning stage, and drawing maps.  Any suggestions comments?

Welcome to the forums! An I really like your story line so far. I hope I can make a good story like yours for some of my games .

Welcome to Omnimaga.

Sounds like a nice project. Do you have an estimate on how many maps you'll have?

And you will be using strings? Dumb question, but big or little font? (Characterized by Output for big and Text for little.) (Ha ha, characterized, get it? okay *_*)

thanks.  Ill be using strings on the home screen i think, so the maps will be large font.
as for the number of maps, each country is at least seventy individual calulator screens, and i want at least three countries, so at least 210 total screens.
got another idea: ill use codex's reverse text (white on black) to have days and nights in the game!
Also I think ive decided how the battle system will work.  Remember how in pokemon if you walked in the tall grass, you would get random encounters?  It'll be like that, with the difficulty of each foe depending on where you are.  And the battle itself will be real time combat, not turn based.

Yays, ascii graphics again! \o/ That people react differently to costumes sounds like a cool idea too.

thanks thats a good idea with the contrast.  i havent done much work with the reverse text yet so i didn't know too much about how it would work.
I have thought about a few weapons so far, each one upgradable.
Here's what i have:
Melee: fists, sword, and axe
ranged: bow and magic.
as an example of the upgrades, fists start as bare fists, then you purchase brass knuckles, then you can buy gauntlets, etc.
does anyone have an idea for another ranged weapon?

with spear you could add a jump attack?

spears are a good idea thanks.
I made a quick graphics test that switched from day to night and back again every twenty or so seconds, and I see what you mean about leaving the lines behind on the screen.  I added a line of code that would redraw the row you were on at night, but it made the character flicker a bit more than i like.  so im still debating whether or not just to do the contrast thing.