Dungeon Master Forum

Hi there, since my Dungeon Master walktrough videos are coming to an end I'm starting to prepare the obvious sequel.
Differently from Dungeon Master, I finished Chaos Strikes back only once so my memories are very, very vague.
I have a question for you, if anybody has ever tried doing that: is CSB hand mappable? Or is it going to drive me completely insane if I try?
I'm asking because, when a kid, I played it basing my steps only on the magical map you can find near the beginning, thus never trying to handmap it myself.

Thank you in advance

I hand-mapped much of Chaos Strikes Back while playing
the Atari version (The computer died before I finished).
But you can only map small segments directly. Eventually
you will discover how to put the segments together into
a whole. So come prepared with an eraser or be prepared
to remap several times as you begin assembling the pieces.

Unless you really enjoy the challenge of hand-mapping, I think
you should cheat.

If you played the ST version, the only recourse you would have is to handmap, a nigh-impossible process. In short, it would put you in the looney bin for six hundred sixty five lifetimes.
Me? I only ever played the ST version via CSBWin, (Thank you, Paul Stevens!). My mapping system was to cheat with CSBuild.

PS: If you do decide to handmap, my advice would be to use MS-Paint or something similar, that way you don't waste graphite and rubber with pencils and erasers. Keep a backup at all times. Edit-posted in response to Paul Stevens' recommendation above.

Have a Merry Christmas in advance,
Jay.

I hand mapped all of Chaos Strikes Back Atari version.
As said by Paul Stevens, at the beginning you can only map small parts of it.
It takes a lot of time to gather enough small pieces and clues to start putting them together.
To do so you will learn all the tricks with the magic map and the spell to see through walls.
Here is the reason for this many parts you cannot easily put together.

Spoiler

At the cross of the ways where you can choose Ku, Dain, Ross orNeta there are actually 3 of them on top of each other, at 3 different floor levels. When you enter one the ways depending of timers you are silently teleported into one of the 3 floor levels.
So, you have 12 small pieces of dungeon, you will have a hard time to paste together

Sounds like a good challenge
Maybe I can find some "Mapping" tool that lets me to easily cut&paste map parts like a jigsaw. Or... I could jigsaw my own pencil&paper map parts together... could be fun if done right

When we (my dad and I) played it back on the Atari (back when I was about six), we had the handbook thingy for DM so had maps for that, but we never had the same for CSB so played that entirely withoug any kind of maps and made no attempt at making our own. And we were both able to finish it, so it's fine .

That is one of the reason I adore this game, the level design is unique and unforgettable, every bit of this masterpiece of a Dungeon is eternal, the first big worm room, with its simple and yet beautiful design, the journey that starts there with all its moments..

The Junction of the way, Supplies for the quick, the DDD Chamber, The ROS zoom maze, the corbums level with all those pits, should I go further?!

Those guys from FTL knew what they were creating, they were architecting their Dungeon, that what I miss, not just a dungeon with new puzzles, FTLs are the true Dungeon Masters.

I played and finished Cyberpunk 2077 with its expansion Phantom Liberty which takes no less than 100 gb on my Disk, and I find myself coming back to this 512 kb and 35 years old game.


Magica

Oh yeah, I still come back and play old games like these every now and then. Even the newer games I play tend not to be super mega ultra triple-A games with all the fancy graphics and stuff, because I'm not really fussed about that. I just want to play something and have fun - if it looks pretty, that's more of a side bonus, really.