So, tell us about yourself...

[Saumun]

Hi makeplayhappy, and welcome to the forum.

[Ameena]

Hey cool, welcome to the forum . Feel free to reminisce or otherwise share any funny/silly/interesting anecdotes about your time playing DM/CSB. We also have a Discord server, which I expect I last linked a few posts before this one when someone else joined the forum. I, too, played DM on the Atari ST, though it was my dad's rather than mine since, you know, I think I was likely around three-ish when he got it . These days I use an emulator to play most Atari games on my PC if I want to.

[Prince of Elves]

Hello y'all,

so I finally got around to registering. I've already been reading here for quite some time now, but nicknames don't come to me easily - so I never crossed the threshold. ^^ But as my lady likes to say (managing a forum herself): "If everyone only wants to read instead of writing, then no one can read anything!"

So, what about me? I first came across Dungeon Master in the mid '90s on a friend's Amiga 500 and I truly liked the experience. We played for hours into the nights when actually we should have been learning for the final school exams (the german "Abitur"). Funny thing is, you can actually play DM in co-op mode, with some coordination efforts, that is. He had control of the mouse and thus spells and fights while I steered us through the maze.

Well of course, that way accidents are bound to happen: just when we finally got our first EE level fire ball to work, I turned against a wall and wiped out most of the party. Well, we both got annoyed at each other, then had a great laugh - and it took a while for us to see that spell working again, must have been a really early lucky shot.

So I was really happy when I found your forum and the huge amount of custom dungeons. I already played quite a few of them. (Well, I don't seem to be able to finish any game any more, about half way through my mojo fizzles, but that is not purely DM-related...) Right now, I'm playing Saumun's Trail and it seems to be the right mixture for me, I really love it.

That's it for now, great to be finally here

PS: The only things I know about D&D I got from Stranger Things...

[Ameena]

Hey cool, welcome to the forum properly then, oh newly-emerged lurker . That sounds cool about your co-op play. I did something like that with my dad when he used to play Frontier Elite II - when he got into combat I was allowed to man the lasers (aka the space bar ) while my dad lined himself up with the enemies so I could shoot them . But I think we've all managed to fireball ourselves at some point in DM - I've done it even in relatively recent playthroughs when I've cast one at an enemy and then immediately started running toward said enemy, thereby running straight into the back of my own Fireball...which hurts just as much as running in to the front of one, wouldn't you know?

[Prince of Elves]

Ouch, yes I did something like that in the Trail when I chased a wall-spawned Fireball. Happens if you have to run because the next one will hit you from behind...

The most funny thing I remember from the good old days (and I believe I read about something alike posted here): Quite early into the game we accidentally killed a mummy with a thrown bread. I guess we fought that mummy before and it ran away but we didn't dare following it to uncharted territory. So we practiced throwing said baked thingy and just at that moment the mummy came back around the corner - and vanished in a cloud of dust. We almost fell over laughing. As you can see, we seemed to laugh a lot with this game. ^^

Perhaps I'll try CSB someday properly, but the few times I tried it I got annoyed really fast: I'm a mapper, which seems to be almost impossible with CSB but I also hate playing by walkthrough. Well, we'll see...

[Prince of Elves]

By the way, Ameena: you got a cool dad. My parents were always skeptical - almost afraid - of video games. My mum still is, even thogh she likes online Sudokus, sometimes for hours - but that's something totally different of course.

[Ameena]

Haha well, my dad is basically the one who got me into computer games - I've been using computers since I was physically able to do so, so I suppose I would've been about two or three years old or so when I first started. Some people seem to have this idea that "games are for kids" (as are various other things such as cartoons/animations) and that once you reach some kind of arbitrary age you are suddenly "a grown-up" and must never touch some things again. And then there are those of us who go "Well, games are fun, therefore I want to play them, and now I am old enough to earn my own money I can use it to buy more games, yay ". There's a quote I read somewhere a while back which was something like "You don't stop having fun because you're a grown-up, you grow up because you stopped having fun" or something. And that one from CS Lewis, the last part of which is roughly "When I became a man, I put away childish things such as the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up". Grown-ups are boring. I'm not one of those, I'm just an adult. Apparently .

Killing that Mummy with bread, that's pretty funny yeah . I was once playing CSB in the RTC clone version (which isn't entirely accurate to the original as it was made from scratch rather than using the original code or whatever) and using the sneaky route to get to the Ful Ya pit, a secret passage through an illusory wall that bypasses that whole area that's full of Demons and stuff and brings you out just around the corner from the Pit. I'd stopped briefly to clear my inventory of random junk I'd been carrying around (not sure why, since I was a few steps away from completing the game) and left a pile of stuff on the floor next to the illusory wall that was the "exit" from that passage. I stepped out, and Lord Chaos was right there so I panickedly stepped back again thinking "Well, maybe he didn't see me", only to have him promptly appear through said wall in front of me. So I grabbed a random item from the top of the junk pile - a Ful bomb, and threw it at him. BOOM. Poof. Cloud of grey smoke. Confusion. Stepped out and went about my business finishing the game. So it turns out he has like 1hp in that version of the game, I later read on the forum .

As for mapping...yeah, it's harder in CSB 'cause of all the invisible teleporters and stuff, but it is still possible to navigate your way around and remember which spots can teleport you to which places. We managed to finish the game "back in the day" when there was no Internet and we have no guide book (though we did have one for DM, which I later scanned and sent to help add to the resources on the Encyclopaedia website).

[Prince of Elves]

Hehe, great, I can't be bothered to grow up either (Well, some parts can't be helped as I have to earn money and somehow organize my life after all...) Thankfully, my lady is in touch with her inner child too. So one day, we were just walking around and passed a playground. In the spur of the moment we grabbed us a pair of swings and had lots of fun - luckily for the swings, we both don't weigh that much. ^^ Some parents with their kiddies chuckled and said: "So here come the big kids!" But to be fair, my parents never had anything against games, it's just the "video" part that stressed them out.

By the way, I always wondered: what's a Murafu? Well, I tried the forum search after Googling didn't yield anything useful, so what I patched together is about the following: An RPG creature/character of your own build that more or less resembles a pain rat with higher brain evolution? No offense, of course, I'm sure you can explain it a lot better.

[Ameena]

Haha well, murafu are indeed a race I made up. There was another forum member on here, Beowuuf, who's been a member for longer than I have (he's not visited the forum for a long while now but he's still around elsewhere on the Internet) and who ran a DnD campaign here some years ago in which several of us took part. He let me make up my own race and that was what I came up with (he was using a sort of modified version of DnD 3.5 to make it a bit more simplified and closer to Fourth, though really the mechanics didn't come up all that often outside of combat as we were very RP-heavy ).

Rats are my favourite IRL species so I made a race that is basically giant, sentient ones based on how intelligent and social real rats are. Physically a murafu looks like a rat that's about the size of a medium-sized dog, but with opposable thumbs and a more obvious spark of intelligence in the eyes. I had a whole load of other info on how they are mentally and socially and all that but it didn't really come up in the game because my character was the only one ever shown.

I'm pretty sure the RPG in question is still on the forum, I think it's in the "Creative Endeavours" section and might even be stickied if you wanted to go and check that out. It lasted about two years IRL or about two days in-game .

Oh, btw, while I remember, there is also a Discord server which I expect I'll have linked several posts prior to this one when a previous new person joined the forum. Some of us are members there and though it's pretty quiet, feel free to join if you want to have some "live chat" when some of us are around .

[Prince of Elves]

Sounds like you (all) had a lot of fun, so who cares how long it took to progress? I tried something similar once, with much simpler rules, and it was fun while it lasted but it trailed off because people dropped out, those who joined didn't last long, and when the GM quit, they tried to keep it going (even got some infos from GM before she left) but there were way too little people by then and just dragged on, no fun anymore. I don't know how "your" RPG endeavour finished, but what I have read sounds like fun indeed.

Hehe, you writing about favourite species and opposable thumbs made me remember that in my youth that species would have been raptors (well, what was wrongly called "raptors" later in Jurassic Park anyway ). They don't even have thumbs, but opposable hands, which is believed as a sign for (or a means to) higher intelligence as well.

And yes, thanks, I know about the Discord and perhaps I'll drop by there sometime. But I tend to get stuck in chats for far longer than I intend to. I like "forum chats" (so basically OT threads) like this one better, also because there's no rush and it doesn't matter if the people are there at the same time.

[Ameena]

Well, it doesn't matter in the Discord really if you're there at the time, or at least it doesn't so much in this one because it's so quiet - days can go past with nothing being posted .

You mention raptors in Jurassic Park - my understanding is that they are indeed raptors, just not velociraptors, which IRL were much smaller (around the size of a turkey, apparently). The Jurassic Park raptors are in fact much more like utahraptors. The raptors in Ark Survival Evolved are much the same (but with feathers, because RL scientific understanding has moved on a bit since the '90s ), along with being able to be saddled and ridden . Anyway, yes, opposable digits is suggested to lead to higher intelligence because it enables more fine-tune manipulation for tools and stuff. That said, plenty of non-opposable-digit-wielding species have been shown to use tools of some kind (things like chimps and corvids) in order to help acquire food and stuff, so it is merely a contributing factor, I think .

As for the DnD, yeah, it was a fun game and we did have an actual end - it didn't fizzle out early or anything. So that was nice. I'd like to play in a tabletop game but haven't got anyone to run for me. I've been running one myself for the few people I've managed to scrounge up to play DnD, because none of them wanted to run but I figured it was the closest I was gonna get to playing any time soon. . Obviously we're on something of an enforced hiatus right now, because pandemic. But, you know, we'll get back to it when we can .

[Prince of Elves]

Oh wow, now you got me to refresh my memory of dinosaurs. Back then, I think I knew about anything that was known (which was not that much, actually) and as far as I remember, there were only two raptor species known at the time: the Velociraptor you mentioned - and aptly described - and the Deinonychus which I believed got the role on stage. (Just checked: the Utahraptor was discovered in '93 which is also the year the movie was released, so that one came probably too late - and is way too big.) The D. fits much better, about 1.5m high, 3m long, throw in a bit of additional groth for effect and voila. But I understand why no one wants to pronounce that guy.

Opps, checked once more and now I know again, why I was p... - erm: annoyed. The book and also the movie explicitly call them Velociraptors and only shortened it lovingly to raptor to spare some breath. ^^

Haha, I believe now we actually managed to steer off topic (on the other hand, we ARE still talking about the both of us, so... ).

PS: I hope, you'll find somone who takes the GM role for you, it's something entirely different after all, even though both positions may have their charm.

[Bozotros]

Hello everybody, Bozotros here! Like many of you I played Dungeon Master on the Atari ST. I was actually introduced to it by a friend with an Amiga. I was brand new to the world of computing and computer games. I will never forget the first time that Dungeon Master gave me an adrenaline jolt of fear! I was hooked! I played it so much I traveled its hallways in my dreams at night. I remember my favorite characters and how I managed to turn Halk with zero inherent mana, into a badass Wizard (starting with an amulet that gave him just a tiny bit of mana.) I did manage to beat DM after a few months (I've never been good at action games!) I tried Chaos Strikes Back but didn't get far. It was too tough for me.

Anyway, flash forward about 30 years and here I am under Rona lockdown and looking to return to the game I loved in my youth. I downloaded "DSB" and got it running on my computer, but its in a bit of smallish window. Can't figure out how to make it full screen. Also I can't figure out how to load anything but a "Test Dungeon" that is included with it. I also tried "Dungeon Master Online" but it seems a bit unreliable and occasionally slow to respond to mouse clicks. That could be fatal in this game! I also found a beta of Dungeon Master for Android in the Google Play Store. Its ok, but I'd really rather sit at my computer like in the old days of the ST and have it fill my screen!

So, I need some advice. What's the best Windows 10 Dungeon Master experience I can get? The original Dungeon Master layout would be nice, but I wouldn't mind experimenting with customized dungeons and new graphics and such, as long as it was still a relatively easy game. I couldn't figure out how to load any custom dungeons into DSB. I'll need help with that and suggestions for not-too-difficult dungeons. I saw that its possible to load in some maxxed out characters, but that seems like it would take away some of the fun of developing skills myself.

Thanks in advance!
BOZOTROS (the inept!)

[Saumun]

You can make DSB fullscreen by pressing ‘escape’ to get to the menu.
As for DM, you’d have to download it from the forum’s ‘custom dungeons’ section and load it into DSB, but the link to Joramun’s conversion seems to be broken.
Anyone have it?

Alternatively, a CSBwin version will play exactly like the original Atari ST version. I couldn’t find a link in the custom dungeon section, but there may be one elsewhere.

There is also RTC. It’s pretty close, but there are some aspects that don’t play exactly like the original (spell power, monster behaviour) because it’s a scratch build... but it comes packaged with DM, CSB, and DM2.
The original link to George’s site is down, but you can still get it through the Onedrive here... https://7cqv5q.bn.files.1drv.com/y4msKV ... 4nD5Is7pGQ

As for other dungeons, check out the ‘custom dungeons’ section in this forum.
It has plenty of content for CSBwin, DSB, and RTC.

[ChristopheF]

DM on CSBwin: http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/Games/D ... ption.html

[Paul Stevens]

I wrote CSBwin. But I recommend the DSB version of Dungeon Master
because CSBwin has no true full-screen mode and you seem to want that.

DSB never implemented Conflux so you will have to use CSBwin if
you ever want to try something infinitely more difficult.

[Saumun]

I know it was for Bozotros, but thanks for that link.
I’d like to play the CSBwin version myself.

[Bozotros]

Ok so I found a working link to an Original Dungeon Master for DSB, elsewhere on this site, (not the broken link, this one works.) This link brings you to a bunch of custom dungeons and if you scroll around within you can find "dm_for_DSB.zip"

https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=%21A ... 18BAED6EC0

[ChristopheF]

There is also an easy way to play the PC version of DM with the DosBox emulator. It supports full screen.
Download DM-Game-PC-DOSBox.7z from here: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/622#toc20

[Bozotros]

And thanks for the tip about how to get to fullscreen in DSB. Everything is working fine now and I'm having fun on level one. Now, out of curiousity, are there any custom dungeons that are spiced up with slightly more shall we say "risque" graphics?

[Ameena]

Huh, that's weird - I made a post here yesterday including a link to CSBWin and some info about it and the other DM clones but it doesn't seem to be here. Maybe I misclicked and it didn't send or something. Oh well, someone else linked it anyway so it's all good .

[Saumun]

I’m not personally aware of any that could be considered risqué, but many custom dungeons have different graphics and scenarios to vanilla DM.

[Gambit37]

@Bozotros I'm working on a graphical update to DM for DSB, but it's slow work, and not risqué! I don't think there are any custom dungeons in that style, because most dungeon designers are hobbyists who use existing graphics from other games.

[Bozotros]

So here I am 4 levels down and I feel like I'm reliving my childhood. (Except I was already in my 30's when DM came out.) What is it that makes this game so compelling? I'm really not much of a gamer. I remember when Castle Woflfenstein and Doom came out in this era and the 3d gave me motion sickness. The only other game I got into for a while was Ultima Online because the isometric view didn't make me nauseous and I enjoyed the crafting and owning stuff - a little bit like DM. Never got into Warcraft much, Starcraft was ok. But nothing has really grabbed me like DM and I guess, Ultima Online, where I really felt empathy for my characters and the training I'd invested in them. Have you all found any other games that have you drawn you in like this?

[Ameena]

I've played a lot of RPGs so yes . And not just RPGs, actually, but any game where I had a thing I might've got attached to or whatever. I have played a great many games so I probably shouldn't attempt to list them here . But DM is indeed one of those that I still go back to from time to time - a lot of what I play originally came out at least a couple of decades ago and is still fun today. I do play some more recent games too, and whlie a few of them are "big name" titles I think a lot of them are more kind of Indy-type games. You know, the ones made by people who still enjoy the same kinds of games as us and aren't just interested in milking as much cash as they can from the idiot public .

[Prince of Elves]

I did love original DM and looking for it was what brought me here. But playing it through once more was enough to last again for some years, I guess. What keeps me playing "DM" is the community who put all that work into custom dungeons.

But if you ask about games I liked to replay after some time, a few come to mind (though mostly console games): I greatly enjoyed the Metroid Prime series - however, I tried it again not so long ago, and I find it doesn't work for me any more. It's from that time period where the games had strategically placed save points, and within MP, they're placed annoyingly: If you want to make progress, you'll have to plan for at least half an hour (more likely a full hour) of playing, the the safe spots are AFTER the boss fights - so your hour may well have been "for the cat", to literally translate a German proverb.

I always like to come back for the (3D) Zelda series, starting from Ocarina of Time and that first is one of those I still like best.

I'd like to recommend The Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but: it's extremely buggy, even with patches, mods and all. And I'm no fan of those enemies leveling with you (well, there is a mod to cut that out, but never tried it myself). I like to reach a point in the game where I can just mow through most of what the game throws at me, perhaps with the exception of some well placed "supers" to keep things interesting. What I reaaly hated was practically getting weaker each time I leveled. With some reading and careful planning I managed to have fun for hours and hours anyway, but I strongly suspect the game killed one, if not two of my laptops.

[Ameena]

Oblivion is okay. I have played all five of the Elder Scrolls series so far but my personal favourite is Morrowind, which I've played maybe four or five times now (Game of the Year Edition, so it includes both expansions too). Skyrim is good but ugh, the UI is terrible . Wish they'd basically kept the Morrowind UI in subsequent games. I've only played Oblivion through once (again, Game of the Year Edition) but don't recall having any particular problems with it in terms of bugs or difficulty.
Currently I've got a couple of games on the go - I have a Grim Dawn character I'm playing through alongside my friend when he's online, usually in the evenings. Then there's Caveblazers, which I tend to try and play at least once a day if only to do the "Daily Run", because that's a roll of the die as to whether or not I get really far or die in the first minute or so . And errmm, oh yeah, I finally got round to installing and loading up Viscera Cleanup Detail about a week ago so I've been playing that too, and spending time meticulously cleaning up all the junk, goop, and body bits from various scientific research facilities and the like .

[Prince of Elves]

OK, never heard about any of those (except Moroowind of course which is a classic even though I never played it myself). Guess I'll have to do some research, perhaps there's something I'd like, too. On the other hand, I don't have the nerve for MMOs again as I like to play when I like and how I like and while teaming up can be fun with the right people (you don't even have to now them before ), sometimes I just want to play in solitude and especially don't want to worry about faction clashes or any PvP outside of special arenas for that matter.

PS: I peeked in on Discord earlier, had a quick look around, was like "Aaaaargh!" and dropped off again. It may happen sometime again in the future until I can decide if I have the nerve to stay there, or rather stay off. That's just me, sometimes I grin at myself but I can't help it. A guy I knew once called it "blossom tactics" (talking about himself but works for me too): move in on the subject, run again, take some time, go in again and repeat - and if you draw that, you get the image of a flower.

[Ameena]

Well, the Discord is super quiet - usually there are a few weeks between anyone saying anything, though I suppose if a conversation starts up then people might join in. I'll certainly say hi if someone new shows up and introduces themselves, though it may delayed if they do it while I'm offline .

Of the games I mentioned, Grim Dawn is an ARPG (the same genre of game as things like the Diablo series). It's considered the "spiritual successor" to an earlier game called Titan Quest as it is made by many of the same people and uses the same engine (the company which made TQ, Iron Lore, went under some years ago so the Grim Dawn company is a different one called Crate Entertainment). It's currently my most-played game on Steam, somehow (over 700 hours and counting) .
Caveblazers is a "Roguelike" 2d platformer with retro-style, pixelly graphics. It's very challenging - expect to die a lot, often within the first level or two. It's similar to another platformer called Spelunky, which I don't own but have seen played by my sister on a console (personally I think Caveblazers is easier ).
And Viscera Cleanup Detail is a first-person...cleaning simulator . Imagine some kind of, I dunno, scientific research facility, for example. Somewhere where they were conducting experiments on...er..."volunteers" to test some new mutagen, or maybe they found some weird alien life form somewhere and have been poking it to see what it does, etc. Then, shockingly, it all went wrong and all those sciency people got eaten/murdered/disembowelled (etc), and then some people with big guns and stuff (á la Doomguy or similar) turned up and...dealt with the problem. And now as the danger is gone they have left the scene...and the mess. So now the cleaning company shows up, mop and bucket at the ready, to get the place spick and span and ready to continue being used by err...some more scientists or whatever, I suppose . So basically there are a bunch of different maps, usually various facilities, labs, research stations, etc (the one I'm working on currently is a prison), and they're a bit...well, there's some mess lying around. And you have to get in there and clear it up. With friends, if you have anyone you know who wants to play the game with you (not sure on player limit but my first exposure to the game was seeing a trio of people play it on YouTube).

I don't like PvP - I'd much rather play with people than against them. The only MMORPG I ever played was Everquest, "back in the day" (started playing in 2001) and haven't seen anything since which particularly caught my interest. I don't mind playing games with people I know but so far I really only have one person I regularly play with (and we've certainly played plenty of differen games together ). I'd like to play Ark with someone (because I think it'd give me more to do if I could help out one or two other people as well as doing stuff for myself) but the aforementioned friend has said he's not really interested in it .

Anyway, I can certainly go on for some time about games I've played and enjoyed and stuff, so if you are looking for any suggestions or recommendations, maybe I can come up with some ideas for you if you can maybe give some idea as to what kind of games you like. The ones I've mentioned so far are pretty different from each other, after all .

[Prince of Elves]

Thanks for your descriptions. I did check out the games you mentioned (and I guess I finally have to get a Steam account these days ) but your summaries are much more fun to read. You do have a way with words. (On that regard: what happened to your homepage, or are you a hypnotist now? )

So, let's start with those. I played a few Rogue-likes, but most of them don't work for me, especially if they go full-on random. I like to take SOME knowlegde with me from previous runs. In the 90es, I still had the nerve to work through 20-40 levels of Mouse Trap or Manic Miner (both jump'n' runs) and each time starting over from the very beginning, but no more.
The sanitor thing looks funny if a bit gory for my taste, but I actually have no idea if I could get to like it or not. Grim Dawn on the other hand may be something for me, as I enjoyed Diablo 2 (the only one I've played so far). Though I do have problems with complex skilltrees, I know quite a few people who actually like trying them out and tweaking the characters into strange new classes, but not me.
As for that Ark thingy, now that looks truly beautiful. I believe I could fall in love with that one, though I'd have to take a serious look at the payment conditions first (just scanning over, I read something about a "season pass" and with 50-60€, I'll have to think carefully if I really want to try it if I get a full game for that. If we're talking about abonnement or having to pay for each new chapter ("DLC"), then sadly it's a no.

As for what I like, genre-wise or other, I can't really say. It's most often the feeling of a game that catches me or doesn't. But some things I do know, as I said, PvP is not for me and the same goes for pure action. I'm not good with combos, so let's list some classics I never got really far into: Devil May Cry (don't even remember which title of that series), Prince of Persia (Warrior Within, I believe and it was just plain boring AND hard), Star Wars Battlefront II (like that one, actually, but at some point in the campaign, there was just no going forward no matter how much I trained).
On the other hand, I came across some titles I would never have bought on my own, but got stuck with them for a while. I bought my Gamecube used via Ebay and there was a bundle of titles that came with it. Had much fun with Tony Hawks Pro Skater 4, to my own surprise. And I actually enjoyed Resident Evil, despite all the gore - but beneath that, it's a well designed series.

When I go looking for new games to try, these days I tend to look for RPGs first, even cheap ones. Most of the time those work for me, at least a while (and I'll put DM and its fellow dungeons into the RPG category, too). What never works for me, though I do like the jokes inside them, are pure adventures. Had some good laughs with Monkey Island, but playing on my own, I would never have finished that. It's just too much "click on that with this one or the oher way round, oh wait, you have to turn off the light first - try again..."