We're all gonna die! or: New to DM

Discuss anything about the original Dungeon Master on any of the original platforms (Amiga, Atari, etc.).
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- Z -
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We're all gonna die! or: New to DM

Post by - Z - »

Hi there.

Hm... my, I'd never have thought there was still such a large community for such an old game. Glad to see all those sites still hanging in there, though.

You see, somehow or other I never got around to playing DM in the time of my youth. So recently, when a friend of mine told of the good old times when he and a pal of his went around exploring dungeons, one of them slaying monsters and collecting the loot, the other one drawing the map, switching positions every now and then, or creating new dungeons for each other to crawl through or die very messily, and, in general, having a hell of a good time...
In short, I finally went out, had a look and struck gold with the DME site, which is very lovely indeed. Downloading the Windows/Linux DM and stepping into the Dungeon was one.

And, boy, is it fun! Right now I'm busy battling may way through level three. Imagine my consternation when I discovered the Worm generators.
"My good, another pair of them... RETREAT, RETREAT!!" Backing off, flinging spells and knives and hacking and slashing them to death, only to advance again and discover yet ANOTHER pair of those #+§&$%.
"We're all gonna die!"

The game compares very, very well with many, nay, most contemporary games my pals seem fond of - Dungeon Siege? Or yet another 1st person shooter?
Seems much more thought went into the design of DM than, say, that new Star Wars hack&slayer.

And it's tricky, if you're new to it. I just discovered that Stamina and Health are generated by draining Food and Water... Ooops. I guess I shouldn't have spent all that time sleeping, but rather bring back lost points by a quick gulp out of the potion flask.
Now I'm surrounded by angry worms and starving to death. I just hope I can make it to that fabled Pantry (the screamer room).
"We're doomed... we're DOOMED..."

And that's just level 3. There's so much more to come...
Boy, am I having fun.

Well, sorry for all that aimless rambling, but I couldn't help it. Well, that's what this forum was made for, wasn't it?

Right. Just let me grind that axe, and then I'm gonna have me a tasty worm round or two...

"No! Other left! NO! Not that switch!!"

Yours,

Z
"We're all gonna die!"
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beowuuf
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Post by beowuuf »

welcome to the forum

glad you are enjoyign playing, the atmosphere and gameplay are why we play such an old game still!
and don't worry about ranting, we've been there, done that, bought the t-shirts, had them eaten by the deformed monster

and yes, it does get better...

one word - scorpions : )
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PicturesInTheDark
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

It's great to be able enjoying it for the first time - I sometimes miss that. There's truly great efforts available as downloads with all kinds of modifications and twists to graphics, gameplay and riddles but the taste of the first fright is gone in it's intensity. Now the aim is to find more complex, heavier, more lethal set-ups. Enjoy and... yeah watch those golden guys, they're pretty quick...

Regards, PitD
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Post by Lunever »

It's good to hear someone who does not play this game just out of nostalgia but because it's simply fun to play, even today.
Welcome to the forum, Z!
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Post by Simon »

The concept of multiplayer Dungeon Master is a very good one. Multiplayer features, especially cooperative, in any game, improve it tenfold. A friend and I used to play Dungeon Master ( and other games such as Eye of the Beholder ) with one person on the keys, one on the mouse. It was fun! I saw the 2 player ST one, but I didn't want to mess around trying to set it up.
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D'OH!!

Post by - Z - »

Well, thanks for the welcome. I'm feeling right at home here.

But...
Damn. After reading that other thread about DM/CSB rules for reincarnating champions I entered the Hall of Champions and did a bit of experimenting, and sure enough, I had reincarnated my party with half stats. Finally realized what that DM rules toggle in CSBwin is good for and started over again.

No wonder I had trouble. With full stats the first few levels were a breeze - where I had waged running battles (or should I say, fighting retreats) through half of the dungeon, my new party slays trollins and rockpiles left and right without raising a sweat. (Kicks himself)
First thing I did, though, was to collect four chests full of foodstuffs. Now I'm ready to face those worms and whatever...
(Kicks himself some more, just for fun)
"We're all gonna die!"
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

If you played for a while with halved stats-starting characters you'll have an easier time since you've trained a lot now. If you're used to living on the edge (or dying, that is ;o)) you learn a lot about tactics and taking care - not to mention humbleness. Lots of virtues you may need in this or additional dungeons and that will help you staying alive... :D

Regards, PitD
Locke

Post by Locke »

Wild...

I just found these forums today, and I'm sure surprised there's such a following for such an old game!

I'm still trying to work my way through the SNES version the first time myself...I used to play it as a kid, but then someone bought it from where I was renting it and I never saw it again. So...recently, I bought it off ebay! I'm stuck somewhere on (I think) the 8th level, which starts with the seemingly repeating-circle passage, and you have to backtrack and do certain things to find the way into that level. I think something's generating groups of ogres :/

Ah well...I just got DM2 in the mail. If I can get it to work...life is good :)

I'm 17 now, by the way...and I still know the "new fright" you guys are talking about :P Terrified every time I hear something move...
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JUST RE-TURNED TO THE GAME

Post by Denise »

I played this game when it first came out, my 1st computer, my first game the salesman said "youll enjoy this"! Little did I know the next few years would be spent in sheer terror and frustration and exhilleration of another very real world. My friends and children were serously considering having their "wierd mother and friend locked up somewhere" but I didnt mind as long as I had my Atari and DM, CSB. I only got the computer to fill in the winter evenings in Wellington - wow!

I wasnt the brightest and had great difficulty with some of the puzzles then someone suggested the Editor (I was on the last level now of DM) and I never did succeed in killing the Dark Lord. I never met anyone in my world who truthfully had either - until I came here and read accounts.
I then progressed to Chaos but was prepared with strong champions and enjoyed the 'new toys' such as the power boots and those juicy dragon steaks. Again I got to the final level but never completed it - found it really harrowing and possibly heart attack material.

One day my Atari broke down and I discovered they no longer existed - Commodore was also on its way out and I was devastated! No longer could I play these games and ever since, I have nostalgically reminisced about just how wonderful playing these games made me feel, freed me from the reality of running a business, housework, sleep became a dim memory and when I did sleep it was full of dungeons and purple worms and pain rats!!! Luckily I divorced around this period and didnt have a husband to put up with as well.

That was in the '80's! Recently my son in law visited and asked me if I ever played the early RPG games including DM!!!!! He then downloaded STEEM engine and I have been playing the game ever since. Once again my dreams are filling with those rocks and worms and the dreaded coutls!

I have also played many other games trying to recapture the feel of the DM etc, but even after competing on the web playing Lords of the Realm !! and getting 15th in the world (not bad for a grannie), AOE and all its offshoots including AOM, nothing ever compared to DM and Chaos. I tried UFO for PC shortly after Atari went down and played it for some years but now its so slow and still cant compare to DM etc.

I have found playing these games that there is no age barrier - we all speak the same language - we just love the concept and the game! I am now 58, and can see me still playing these classic games when they try and put me in a rest home!!! When I descend to a new level and see a terrifyingly familiar monster I had forgotten about I cringe, get that sick feeling of "how the hell am I going to get out of this one" and get stuck right on in.

One game I never see mentioned since I am back into RPG gaming, is Captive. Also put out for the Atari ST. This was an amazing RPG game and comparable in many ways to DM and CSB. I dont know anyone else who has played this game - but again, I got to the final level of the first platform (infinite levels here) and got fried repeatedly.

I have only started playing DM again since 28 December 2004 and my current husband is scratching his head and wondering just what he has married!!! Ahhh, good stuff!!! He says he doesnt like dungeons and stuff!!!! well, we have our own computers and he will never know what he is missing!

Thanks Beowuff for sending me this link. Anyone have any recommendations for the best team to send??? and recommendations for the incarnations as opposed to resurrecting. Incarnating i find really frustrating.
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Post by Antman »

Wow, another 17 year old and another New Zealander, Great!
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

Hi Denise and a warm welcome to the forums, you sure a a veteran of the game, hope to see you around some more!

The choice of the characters is entirely up to your taste - in general a team of two mages (in the back) and two strong fighters (up front) is recommended. On the pages found at the links below you can find characters stats and explanations how the skills (open and hidden) work.

http://dmweb.free.fr/DMChampions.htm

http://dmweb.free.fr/DMSkills.htm

Personally, I'd say Stamm and Halk are very good fighters; Chani is a mage you cannot ignore (high wisdom value is sure to make her strong) and Gothmog completes my party. But you can find many threads in here about the choices of various excellent players and their reasons for it.

Resurrecting gives you the characters as they are: stats and levels as you can see them in the champion mirror. Reincarnation sets all experience levels to zero and halves the skill values Health, Stamina and Mana but in the long run your values will be higher than if you start with resurrected characters. If you don't want a tough competition to start with, leave reincarnation out for a while.

Oh. And if you should like to have a new kind of Dm experience, have a look here: http://ragingmole.com/RTC/
The engine includes the possibility to play the "classical" Dungeon Master and Chaos strikes back but also can be played with a new spellbook variation and other very nice additions.

Again, welcome to the forums and may you have a lot of fun when fusing Lord Chaos for the first time!

Regards, PitD
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

As an afterthought: I did not know that you were recruiting, Beowuuf ;o)

Regards, PitD
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Post by beowuuf »

Ressurection halving stats is a CSB thing - DM it doesn't, so usually is the better option there (each level takes double the previous in experience to get - so you get stronger characters regaining the old levels as fast as gaining one new level)
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Post by Denise »

Thanks guys for your encouragement.

Antman, I am not 17 years old - sadly, but a mere 58 years old. What part of Wellington do you live? I lived there until 1997, went to LA for 4 years and returned to live in Auckland.

I also made an error in my original post - I started the game again on 28 December 2003, and not 2004 as stated.

As a matter of humerous interest, when i originally played back in the dark ages, I noticed mention in the hint book of VORPAL BLADES in plural. I never managed to find the second vorpal blade until someone gave me the Editor. And I managed to get to the Dark Lord with just one blade!!! Until later, thanks.
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Post by Antman »

I live near Khandallah, and I ment the guy who posted before you who said he was 17, sorry. Maybe you could compete in Dungeon Master or Chaos Strikes Back aswell, there are small competitions to see who can finish them the fastest.
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Post by cowsmanaut »

Hey Captive! I remember that game.. much more scifi than fantasy since you had a little laptop interface controlling your robot character. I seem to remember the vew screen being much smaller too.

There was annother game made by the same people.. can't remember it's name but it had trees that hit you.. was very dark and sinister.. same set up but more fantasy.

I don't know if such a set up could be redone effectively with our current clones but I'm sure someone could try :) Besides.. DM is so much better right ;)

moo
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Post by JCG »

The other game you mention (made by Antony Crowther who developped Captive) is Knightmare
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Post by beowuuf »

Denise: Hello, btw, glad you found the forums fine : )

PitD: Just a redirect, since people still post on the old encyclopaedia forums too...does everyone here still check them out?
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

Denise: Both Vorpal blades in DM are in level 5 (the one after the treasure stores), the first one is hidden in a secret area right after you pass the three doors with the warnings ("You better turn and run"), the second one near the end of the level in a room with skeletons.

Beowuuf: Rarely these days. There's only the upload forums left, right?

Regards, PitD
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Post by beowuuf »

There's still the general one for the Encyclopaedia, so it does get posts about DM too
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Post by WolfHeart »

[quote="cowsmanaut"]Hey Captive! I remember that game.. much more scifi than fantasy since you had a little laptop interface controlling your robot character. I seem to remember the vew screen being much smaller too.

There was annother game made by the same people.. can't remember it's name but it had trees that hit you.. was very dark and sinister.. same set up but more fantasy.

The other game your talking about is probably Knightmare. I played both of them as well. :roll: My favorite has always been Dungeon Master but along the way I have played many other clones and enjoyed them all. I played almost all of the Might and Magic series, All ofthe Eye of the Beholder series. BloodWych, Captive, Knightmare. Dungeon Hack was kind of interesting and allowed me to make my own dungeons as well. Heck I still have almost all the 1st party RPGs mention above and more here and there around my house. I have many emulators for the PC and I have an Atari 520 ST as well as an Atari Falcon. I even have my original Dungeon Master disks for the Atari hehe and last time I booted on one the Falcon it worked fine. my son who played Dungeon Master on the ST at the age of 2 or 3 is now 17 and still plays it often.
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Post by PicturesInTheDark »

There's many custom dungeons available for Dungeon Master at the encyclopedia upload forum (see quick links above)... have a look there :wink:

Regards, PitD
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Post by Lunever »

Hey Denise, welcome to the forum!
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Post by ToolMan »

I never found a game with comparable atmosphere... I remember me nearly throwing my mouse away when I first stood in front of a scorpion after walking around an edge :D . It caused me running away most of the dungeon... :oops: But after keeping breath I came back.. :twisted: .

BTW I saw some messages about Captive in the Other games section..
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Post by Big-J-Q »

ToolMan wrote:I never found a game with comparable atmosphere... I remember me nearly throwing my mouse away when I first stood in front of a scorpion after walking around an edge :D
I don't remember if I have ever mentioned this here, but when I was a kid, I was playing Dungeon Master with my friend and we were on level 6 (Riddle Room-level) and we heard skeletons dragging their bones in a distance. We weren't sure where the skeletons actually were. We turned around a corner -> A group of skeletons appeared in the front of us -> "GAAAHHH!!!" we yelled and ran outside and stayed there for about 5 minutes too afraid to get back into the game :D Ah those were the times.
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Post by Paul Cassel »

ToolMan wrote:I never found a game with comparable atmosphere... I remember me nearly throwing my mouse away when I first stood in front of a scorpion after walking around an edge :D . It caused me running away most of the dungeon... :oops: But after keeping breath I came back.. :twisted: .
For sure. I have never felt the sense of dread this game had on me (in 87 on the ST) either in another game or even in the cinema. The only thing that came close were EOB I and II. I also identified with my chars like never before or after.

-Paul, NM, USA
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Post by ToolMan »

Yeah, good old days (we sound like very old guys, don't we ?).. I am wondering if this feeling about a game can only be achieved when you're young, because after that I never had this kind of experience..(maybe DOOM 1 had comparable atmosphere, but not that gameplay)..
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Post by Gambit37 »

I think it's a combination of things.

Certainly, age may have something to do with, but only from an experience point of view. In life, we tend to remember much more clearly our first experience of something because of the fact that it's new and unknown: our first exciting book, our first holiday, our first date, our first kiss... I think the same thing can be said for computer games, and it's made even more special if the game in question is something as well designed and executed as Dungeon Master.

Secondly, I think it's still possible to go 'wow' at a computer game even when you're much older, if it's something that hasn't been done before or is especially well designed. The first Tomb Raider game had a similar "Dungeon Master" effect on me, as did Thief: The Dark project. These were both games that certainly weren't as intricate as DM but were very well designed to do what they set out to do. The atmosphere in Thief for example is top notch, and even quite scary in places, something I've not experienced in a game for years (except maybe Resident Evil 2).

I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts.
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Post by Paul Cassel »

I doubt there have been many products, games or not, that have been so much of a leap forward as DM was to the gaming world. If you look back at the state of the art in the mid 80’s you’ll be surprised at how far DM advanced the industry – or at least showed how far it could go. It wasn’t until many years later that PC games got to the level of realism that DM showed on the ST or the Amiga.

For example, I always wanted to try CSB, but never did get to it and then, for reasons I forget now, I sold both the ST and the Amiga. I’m trying (without any success!) now to play the port that Paul did of CSB to Windows. Still, this game seems fresh to me and very involving. In fact, I find Paul’s port of CSB to be more involving than modern games such as GPG’s Dungeon Siege which is graphically much advanced. CSB, DM and RTC plus the others have an immediacy that the others lack. Some were hooked by Doom and its derivatives, but for some reason that family of first person shooters left me cold. I think that whilst Doom and DM were similar to the hack and slash your way though something, DM / CSB and this family also had a sense of exploration.

That sense seemed to me to be enhanced slightly by EOB and more by EOB II. Of DM, EOB and EOB II I think EOB II was the best mostly because it had DM to build upon. It was not the leap forward of DM, but IMO, nothing else before or after has been. Oh, as a comment, my problem with CSB is, I think, mostly due to this wireless keyboard which drops too many keystrokes. It’s an inconvenience when typing, but fatal when playing. There does seem to be a heck of a lot of a need to run fast in CSB where it was rare in DM. I’m also constantly lost after dropping through some pit or another. There does not seem to be some way to return to where you were whence you dropped through – or so I haven’t found yet.

Well, back to the topic. In sum, I think the world of first person dungeons is one that hooked many strongly, but which was a bit limited. So we have seen an end t o these games mostly the genre yielding to orthographic views. Some, like me, have played Dungeon Siege as a single to regain some of the flavor of DM / EOB, but perhaps it’s age or my being jaded, but I can’t seem to re-capture the sense of involvement I felt with the DM family including what I now feel in CSB.

My daughter, age 11, tried RTC. She did get involved, but too much so. She found the game too harrowing and impossible to prevail. The defeats were so upsetting to her, that she abandoned the effort. IMO, that’s the first game that she’s had that reaction to. -Paul Cassel, NM, USA
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Post by Lunever »

Slide: 2 things:

1) Does the game run smother if you try a different keyboard? I use a wireless one too and don't have any problems with RTC or other games. Recently I did have that problem, but it did disappear after a change of batteries.

2) Although I enjoyed EOB I+II very much, they are not more advanced than DM, on the contrary! They do have more pretty grafix, but the engine is far inferior to DM, for example it's unable to support more than 2 monster types per level and it's unable as well to do all those nasty little things that DM/CSB (and moreso RTC) does to monsters and characters alike: For example a trapdoor will not open in EOB when a monster is standing upon it while the DM engine will drop down that monster and either the monster gets killed that way or it gets just damaged and is ready to face you again later, and many more such small details that make DM so superior. And yes, DM actually is a challenging game, much more challenging than todays auto-walkthrough games like Diablo II and similar games.
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