Playing DM again: Harder than I expected

[seebs]

So, long story short: I got an A3000 in 1989 or so, and I got DM the moment I had confirmed the order, even before I actually had the machine. Then I played it. A lot. Well, time has passed. I sent all my Amiga hardware to a guy who does Amiga hardware repair so he can either rescue the machines or use them for parts. I also sent him my floppies in case they can be recovered. And disk images are gradually appearing, but it turns out that doesn't quite solve the problem in the case of a copy-protected disk...

Well. The good news is, there are LOTS of archives out there of the DM floppies. The bad news is, I cannot find a single one that I can get to work. I don't have real Amiga hardware anymore; I'm using E-UAE on a Mac (as part of Amiga Forever). What I have found is three basic categories of images:

1. whdload images. These might well work on real hardware, but they explicitly disclaim any interest in trying to make them work with emulators. The whdload DM image fails for me with a message about illegal access at expmem + $8f6; looking around, I find an existing whdload bug report claiming that this could happen in a previous version but was fixed in the current version. Which it may well be on real hardware. (EDIT: reading again, I think that's a 10-year-old comment from a FAQ someone else wrote; the current whdload docs indicate testing under WinUAE.)

2. The "hacked for HD install" version in the DM-Game-Amiga.rar archive from dmweb.fr. This one seems to run just fine until it crashes with error #60 blinking in yellow. According to one web page, that is a characteristic behavior of DM's copy protection (which is sneaky, and will run without complaint for a while and then suddenly blow up later).

3. Unmodified images, which obviously can't be expected to work in the absence of a floppy drive.

I had DM and CSB for the Amiga. I can't remember for sure, but I think I had DM2, too. If anyone has successfully gotten some version running on UAE, preferably with a HD install, I would love to know more. And yes, I really would prefer the original to things like csbwin.

[seebs]

A followup: The premade whdload file I found didn't work for me at all. However, the whdload installer did indeed create an install from the psygnosis file in the dmweb.fr archive. Of course. It did this on top of a version written by people who claimed to have played for two hours and encountered no copy protection, which is pretty unsettling when coupled with the famous many-layered copy protection of DM...

EDIT: On more research, I find that apparently the 3.6 version has no copy protection, supposedly. So this may actually be playable, yayyy.

[Jan]

And yes, I really would prefer the original to things like csbwin.

Why? CSBWin is an exact copy. Well, it's an Atari copy, not Amiga one, but meh. RTC or DSB is a different story, these are brand new engines with a slightly different feeling, but CSBWin is simply the old-good thing. Why bother with all the complicated stuff you described when here you can just click and go?

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

[Gambit37]

If you can find IPF images, and don't mind playing from emulated floppies only, then these images files work perfectly with WinUAE, so I'm sure they should work with the Mac version.

[seebs]

And yes, I really would prefer the original to things like csbwin.

Why? CSBWin is an exact copy. Well, it's an Atari copy, not Amiga one, but meh. RTC or DSB is a different story, these are brand new engines with a slightly different feeling, but CSBWin is simply the old-good thing. Why bother with all the complicated stuff you described when here you can just click and go?

Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Various reasons:
1. I was under the impression that it is not an exact copy -- there are cases where a number would differ. At all. Ever. That means it's not the same. Yes, I'm a little obsessive.
2. I played the Amiga version, so that's what I'm used to, etc.
3. In general, not using Windows.
4. I have an Amiga emulator.

[seebs]

If you can find IPF images, and don't mind playing from emulated floppies only, then these images files work perfectly with WinUAE, so I'm sure they should work with the Mac version.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure of this -- the Mac versions of UAE are in a state of disrepair (the only one that even has an Intel build, at all, that I can find is E-UAE, and the only build available to me has UI quirks; for instance, if you close the window, it pops up a "select configuration file" dialog before exiting), and I am not aware of anything that provides IPF support for the version available to me. There might be some, I just haven't found it.

I do have to give FTL full marks, though, for a game which does not appear to suffer at all from being run on a much much faster system.

[Antman]

Tried any of the versions from this site? http://planetemu.net/index.php?section= ... 754&page=d
Possibly the best site for old Amiga games.
There's about 8 or so versions, tried one of the Dungeon Master 3.6 versions any it seemed to work fine on Windows with UAE. Would second CSBWin though, not sure if there are any differences with the Amiga DM version, there certainly are with CSB.