So, tell us about yourself...

[MasterWuuf]

I've never heard of Turok. First monitor I ever bought was a Commodore 64. Bought it to play VHS tapes on a DVD player I picked up.
I don't believe I ever bought an N64. Was Mario Cart one of the games that supported?

[Prince of Elves]

There is ONE Mario Kart for the N64, yeah, as I think there was one for every single Nintendo since they first came up with it.

[Gambit37]

Bought it to play VHS tapes on a DVD player I picked up.

How does that work!?

[The Journeyman]

I think you have to cut the tape into little pieces and glue it to a blank DVD

[MasterWuuf]

Bought it to play VHS tapes on a DVD player I picked up.

How does that work!?

Ha. Got me there. And the Journeyman wasn't far behind. (I do prefer Super Glue, as opposed to tape. Tape leaves a residue. )

I purchased the monitor to be able to play VHS tapes (which also seem to have now become a thing of the past) to work with a VHS recorder/player.

Hope I covered all my bases there.
I wouldn't want anyone to suppose I planned to use it with an 8-track music system, you know, to be able to SEE the music on the screen.

[MasterWuuf]

I think you have to cut the tape into little pieces and glue it to a blank DVD

I simply can not let this one pass. Well done, Journeyman.
I'm still laughing, as I visualize a person cutting small pieces of a VHS tape, then carefully adhering them to a DVD disc. Perhaps Blu-Ray???

[drake_blue]

Hello, thought I'd finally say hello. I first found this place at least 15 years ago when I first revisited DM... and finally finished it. Only took me 15 years. I've been struggling through CSB for the last few weeks (or 30 years depending on how you measure it) so I've come back again.

We had an Atari ST from the late 80s and one day my Dad let us see this new game "Dungeon Master" he'd brought home. I remember being a little surprised that he'd already played it through to third level. It must have been in late 1989 or 1990 - def some time between Bloodwych coming out and CSB being released. Dad and I played it (and even my sister) for years afterwards, slowly making our way down the levels with rival parties, but we never quite made it to the end - I think I killed the dragon and got stuck. To begin with I used to play with Dad on the movement keys and me with the mouse, but as I grew older I'd play by myself. We played in a very old-fashioned RPG way, meticulously trying to finish every bit and retreat to kill every monster - for a child, DM was rather scary. Playing like that explains why it took years to get anywhere at all.
I tried again in 2006 when I'd just left University and finished DM in less than 2 weeks, not even playing every day. I'd played a lot of Doom and other FPS games and I'd learned movement, risk-taking and not to bother with every single part of the dungeon; it was still great fun. I played through again this year, with a bit more "tourism" and, as a game, it still holds up really well, even if it's not quite so scary as it used to be...

In the 90s we booted up CSB a few times, partly just to see what it was like and partly just to play with the more advanced characters ("look at that mon fireball!"), but with the way we played back then it was impossible. I did a bunch of mapping around the time I finished DM again, but never quite put it all together - I cover a lot of the "ways", but the demon director defeated me IIRC.
With this nasty pandemic going on I thought I'd give it another go. It really is a step up from DM, isn't it? Makes me chuckle at all the kids who moan about newer so-called difficult games. I have to confess I've consulted the walkthrough on the encyclopaedia a few times and I think another 30 years wouldn't have been enough for some of the puzzles. I have much admiration for anyone who completed this without aid back in the day - even just to have had the patience to wait through those inevitable reload times!
So far, I have 3 corbums and I'm struggling up through neta - took me a long time to get out of the area with the grates, pressure pads and oitu/spider things. I took the party I'd used through DM and they're pretty trained up (more than expert/master in everything) - no idea how I'd have got past the next bit with a stock party. I did a throw-away mission to dispose of a corbum as well so I'm fairly hopeful of getting to the end this time.

BTW after starting on Windows, I tried building CSBWin on Mac (using CSBWin as I wanted as authentic an experience as possible without fiddling about with emulators - the actual Atari mouse buttons died a long time ago). It didn't work straight away so I tried building for Linux with SDL2 (still under OS X) hoping it might be similar enough. After stripping out a few (old?) Mac defined bits and tweaking the timer code it seems to be fully functional and I've been using that since (I'm not overly enamoured of Macs these days, but it's the laptop I have atm). I tweaked the display a bit to push the aspect ratio narrower as well. I'm not going to pretend the changes are "production"-grade or whatever, but thought it might be interesting to some of you. I've read about how CSBWin came into existence and I'm amazed and grateful that Paul took the trouble.

Anyway, just thought I'd better stop lurking and finally introduce myself,

G

[The Journeyman]

I think another 30 years wouldn't have been enough for some of the puzzles

a lifetime for Dungeon Master. You came to the right place, my friend

Thanks for the memories. I myself played it on my brother's Atari, then on my Amiga and when those two got sold, I got Dungeon Master II for the Mac, used an Amiga Emulator to play CSB on the same Mac, then switched over to the PC-Version of Dungeon Master. Then Dungeon Master Java, DMuted Dungeons (if I remember correctly), ReturnToChaos while it was still being developed and finally Dungeon Strikes Back and CSBWin.

Writing this I'm starting to get the feeling that it's quite hard to get away from Dungeon Master. I blame Lord Chaos...and an abundance of food in the dungeon.

I guess it's a bad sign when you start having twenty screamer slices in your fridge.

[MasterWuuf]

Hello, thought I'd finally say hello. I first found this place at least 15 years ago when I first revisited DM... and finally finished it. Only took me 15 years. I've been struggling through CSB for the last few weeks (or 30 years depending on how you measure it) so I've come back again.

We had an Atari ST from the late 80s and one day my Dad let us see this new game "Dungeon Master" he'd brought home. I remember being a little surprised that he'd already played it through to third level. It must have been in late 1989 or 1990
Anyway, just thought I'd better stop lurking and finally introduce myself,

G

Welcome back drake_blue.

I started on an Atari ST also. Finally purchased a colored monitor. That was also in the late 80's.
No internet, no one playing the game (at least, that I knew of back then).
Finally figuring out how to beat Chaos and Order took forever, but the small room at the far end finally worked for me.

Enjoy the other DM games. Don't forget to check out Conflux.

[Ameena]

Hey, welcome to the forum, fellow Atari-user . I got into the game in a similar way to you, through my dad getting it on the Atari. We didn't play together but I used to sit and watch when he played whilst also having my own saved game disk for when I wanted to play. I did manage to complete both games by myself, and with no hints in the case of CSB as we didn't have the hint book for that (but we did for DM). And my dad finished them both too, of course. I can certainly remember wandering cluelessly lost around CSB on occasion, though. DM is basically tutorial mode compared to that .

[oh_brother]

Welcome Drake Blue.

I was also scarred and traumatised by CSB as a child. It wasn't until I joined these forums in '09 that I went back and beat Chaos for the second time. Well worth the wait!

[Saumun]

Welcome to the forum drake.
I’m a fellow ‘Didn’t complete CSB back in the day’ guy.
It was only after revisiting DM in the 00s that I thought it time to have another crack at it.
Half of the battle for me was finding my way around it, but I got there in the end.
No doubt you’ll be thwarting Chaos a second time soon.

[MasterWuuf]

Welcome Drake Blue.

I was also scarred and traumatized by CSB as a child. It wasn't until I joined these forums in '09 that I went back and beat Chaos for the second time. Well worth the wait!

Traumatized as a child? So that's why you wear that 'cloak of darkness' on your avatar.

Drake Blue. Makes me think of a section in Might and Magic 6. All those drakes on the other side of the mountain.
The blue dragon is also one of the pets in that game.

P.S. Oh Brother, how did you get that note in your comment that leads elsewhere on the forums? Nice feature.

[oh_brother]

You just wrap your text in url tags. In the first tag you have "url=www.google.com" or whatever lnk you want (all inside square brackets, quote marks removed). Then finish up with [/url]

Traumatized as a child? So that's why you wear that 'cloak of darkness' on your avatar.

One reason among many

[drake_blue]

I realised I'm actually on Dain not Neta yesterday - just made it to the Demon Director again. I have so many keys I'm struggling to carry them all, but it took forever to work out how to get the one I needed (winged key); I ended up walking almost back to the junction and going through all of it again. The girls killed so many Couatls they'd have filled several fridges if leave Couatl slices were a thing. And nary a gained level for it either!

Drake Blue. Makes me think of a section in Might and Magic 6. All those drakes on the other side of the mountain.
The blue dragon is also one of the pets in that game.

I've never really played any of the Might and Magics, but I've heard good things. If it has ducks in it, it must be worth it (I guess it's dragons, right?). Maybe if I finish CSB I might be able to play some of these other games at last...

Ironically, it was stumbling on Conflux again that's brought me here (I mistyped Confluence while working and didn't regret it). I have it primed and ready to go. Apart from being washed away in a flood and encountering some rather nasty biting trees I didn't get very far with it, but it looks fun for the next 30 years...

For me Dungeon Master is up there with a very few other games that pushed back what was possible _and_ delivered a fully polished experience. Something like Doom or Half Life would be other obvious examples, but I'm tempted to say that DM innovates in more places and has greater depth (at least for me). I still catch myself thinking of DM as being somewhere I've been rather than something I've played (sure I've seen someone else say that too). I suspect it's partly because I have to think so hard to get past some of the puzzles and remembering where I am in the dungeon and where I'm going is so crucial.

[The Journeyman]

I have so many keys I'm struggling to carry them all, but it took forever to work out how to get the one I needed [...]

just get the lock picks and you're set for life. At least that's what we thought when the giggler stole it from us. He was never to be seen again. Then we died.

[Ameena]

Hehe, plus those locks where the picks don't work. And the ones where they do, but they don't have the intended consequences...

[drake_blue]

And thus Chaos was defeated once more...

Took quite a few attempts to get past all the demons and zytazes (zytazi?) on the top floor although (ironically after last time) I stumbled on the key carrier really early on only to struggle with finding the way to the pit for most of an hour

Nevertheless, the girls done me proud and it's all over after 30 years. Great game(s).

[Saumun]

Well played, Drake.

[Ameena]

Woo, gratz . I don't think I've ever done it fighting across the big room - I used the "back door" through the secret wall, which has far fewer demons and, as my dad used to call them, "witchy things" (the black ghost thingys with the single orange eye). Must be a hard job trying to find your way through the mega-room with all its hordes and Lord Chaos.

[The Journeyman]

congrats and nice custom portraits, drake_blue! Are those 30 years old as well or are they a corona side effect?

[Ameena]

I think they're the "upgraded" versions of the original character pics, accessible in CSB - can't remember if they were on a separate disk or something originally (there was a "CSB Utility Disk" that I can remember, which I'm pretty sure had the Hint Oracle and a few other bits on it).

[The Journeyman]

Ameena, I thought so, too..at first. That is what makes them so great, because they totally blend in with the dm graphic style.

They still seemed a tad unfamiliar so I went ahead and double checked the encyclopaedia. It turns out that the upgraded CSB portraits are totally different (apart from Azizi).

[drake_blue]

You're far too kind about my random clickings . They're a corona side effect. They look like the DM ones because I just altered those (in a way I had to - see below). The CSB ones, at least for those characters, seemed a bit OTT for my taste and the method to change them didn't play nice with pasting them in. I got a bit carried away with the tufty hair, Sonja still looks a bit goofy and Azizi's portrait was pretty good (and the right colour) to start with so I didn't change it much.

Back in the day we discovered you could load a DM party into the CSB utility, edit the portraits and save back into a DM save (at least on the ST). We used to change the colours of the portraits to match the colour of the character in the game. I think my sister preferred editing the portraits to playing the game tbh.

Long explanation

When I was getting CSBWin set up to play, I noticed that the utilities are listed in the options. I was a little disappointed to find that the portrait editor didn't work. I did a quick search on here and found an old discussion about exporting the characters from a save using CSBuild. So I tried that and it seemed to work.
I do a bit of pixel art for game development myself so I opened the export in my sprite editor and tweaked the portraits a bit (I think I did it while on the phone or something - otherwise I'd have been playing the game). But then I couldn't get the import to work - the colours came out weird. By this point I'd got a bit invested and partly as I used to maintain a texture conversion tool in a previous job I began to see this as a bit of a challenge.
I know that modern editors don't tend to work well with paletted images so I wondered if the problem was due to that. I did a bit of searching and found an editor that seemed to be able to preserve the right 4-bit paletted format (JTL Ultimate Paint, I've since found aseprite which I suspect would be a better choice), but I had to redo the changes.
Doing them a second time seemed to come out better (practice, I guess). Then I imported back into CSBuild. Maybe I should go through it again and write up how I did it (I'm not sure I've remembered all the steps here).

[drake_blue]

Also, now I've finally been "allowed" to look at the maps, it's clear that I'd have saved a lot of reloads if I'd found that back way in. Ah well. Maybe I'll have another go some time.

[The Journeyman]

nice going, drake. When can you do the rest of the portraits?

[drake_blue]

I guess it'll depend on when I'm next stuck on a phone call with nothing else to do...

Journeyman, I couldn't help noticing your odd choice of sleeping place. On the last trip through the demon director, after getting a bit gung ho with the Horn of Fear and Cross of Neta trying to get the rock monsters to move onto the right space they got a bit frightened of me, went the wrong way and ended up blocking the stairs back. There weren't any demons about so I had to wait a long while for them to regain their nerve. I figured the girls could do with regaining some mana - so they had quite a long nap.

[Grindalf]

Hi everybody.
I first played Dungeon Master on the snes many years ago and loved it. I always wanted to make a similar game and tried a couple of times over the years and never got very.
I'm currently making one at the moment and will probably have to play through dungeon master for inspiration

[Ameena]

Oh no, however will you cope with having to undertake such a trial of playing DM once more?
Welcome to the forum, nice to have another new person .

[ChristopheF]

Welcome to our little community and good luck with your pet project!