Dungeon Master Forum

So, DM came out when I was three years old, and I grew up in a gaming household with an ST. This means that DM was a very important part of my childhood; some of my earliest memories are of sitting with my sister beside my father, staring rapt at the monitor except when something REALLY scary happened and we dashed downstairs to get away. I used to play around on the Hall of Champions, but I was always way too cowardly to actually play the game (it was a family thing - my mom and sister had saves at various point in the dungeon, but only my father ever managed to beat it). As I got older, I actually tried to play the game. I believe I emulated it about five years ago and made it to the level below "choose your door, choose your fate" - which is the absolute farthest I've ever been. Isn't that the level where a whole lot of new nasties are introduced? I could only remember "choose your door, choose your fate" clearly, so once I passed that, I would be going into unexplored territory. Very scary.
I relied on some big maps my father saved off of some sort of message group back in the day, but those are old and kind of waterstained by now, and several of them are lost. I used to have a printout of many months of conversations on that board, which was fascinating because it went from shortly before DM was released (including the usual "is this game EVER coming out? posts) until past the first time people on the list started beating the game. There's nothing like hearing people scoff at how easy the game must be, with food so plentiful - only to get to the floor or two below the Hall of Champions and realise what they've gotten themselves into. Part of me wishes I could have been old enough at the time to be part of that first wave, but I like how magical DM is in my memories.

So, anyway, I've been reading the post about Denise and Slide making their way through CSB (when I ought to be working on an essay for school!), and it's inspired me to take my own journey through DM. I am not a good gamer. I spent most of my gaming career functioning as the navigator for my sister (we played primarily console roleplaying games), so I'm afraid my gaming skills are underdeveloped. Still, I've been working on playing things myself, and this is something I'd really like to do for myself. I'm going to try to minimize using hints and cheats, only using maps if/when I need them. I still remember several of the spells, though I don't know any of the proper names for the runes except ful.

I'm dragging my boyfriend into this too. He's never played DM before, he's a very clever gamer, and he loathes using cheats - so it's going to be like watching one of those guys playing DM back in the day. I imagine he'll manage to pass me quickly, even though I have the advantage of experience and everything - but I'm excited. Maybe playing it with him will help me keep myself motivated to play.

If you guys will let me, I'm going to turn this thread into the story of my progress through the game, asking for help, etc. I'll probably have to learn the real names for things, instead of talking about "blue meanies" and "eyeball octopuses" (authentic names my sister and I used in our childhood). As you can tell, I'm very wordy, so this is likely to be a very long-winded thread.

For nostalgia's sake, I'm going to choose my father's party. Wu Tse (my favorite), Tiggy, Stamm, and Mophus. In retrospect, that's a good and generic party (ninja, wizard, fighter, priest) and probably not the most impressive group, but I think it should be doable. I know it's possible to use even a non-balanced party (my sister got farthest with Chani, Leyla, Wu Tse, and I'm wanting to say Azizi but not 100% sure, some other female character) but as this is to be a nostalgic trip for me ... do you think it would be doable for a neophyte player? Of course I will reincarnate them all.

I'm horribly afraid of going underground and I get way too into my games. I'm half-afraid I'm going to have nightmares from doing this, but I want to at least try.

I won't be doing this just yet, as I want to finish another game first and I'm in the middle of school. I'm going to do it either when I finish the other game or winter break starts, whichever comes first. Unless I break and start sooner.

Nice to meet you all!

Nice to meet you too Selie!

Good luck on you DM delving when you get the chance...And it would like to hear your progress.

If you never get around to figuring out all of the spell symbols don't be afraid to ask us!.

The really funny thing is that I remember how to cast a lot of the spells. I know fireball like nobody's business (it always looked like it spelled the word "one" to do a first-level fireball) and a few others, and I'm probably going to resort to the Encyclopedia's spell listing just because I might as well, since I remember a few of the spells. I'd just like to be able to say the names of the runes, especially since my boyfriend's going to be learning his spells by knowing the rune names and reading the scrolls (like you're supposed to).

My favorite spell? "Level one squiggle!" This is, of course, referring to a first-level life (vi? health restorative) potion. It's the best thing to practice priest levels with! I didn't realize that warcry does that too, but now that I know, maybe my Stamm will be less sad. Stamm + Chani is a good way to start, I know, because of the moonstone necklace.

My strategy is going to be soooo bad. I never figured out how to "dance" around monsters, but I guess I'll have to eventually. I know my dad took out the floor-13 dragon by going downstairs, tossing some spells and damage at it, and running upstairs and sleeping. I think. Things don't leave that main room of Chaos's floor, do they? (then again, my dad just ran past the dragon the first time playing the game ... I always pictured his little people running under its legs and getting to the staff. or is it the gem that you get down there? I think it's the gem...)

I'm just rambling now...

Welcome to the boards! Nice to see another person go through a dungeon for the first time, remidns us all about doign it and why we love the game. So ramble away!

Your party should be fine - tiggy has the best mana, just watch out for her stamina if you are in intense dancing situations. Don't be afraid to mix up your characters abilities, especially wizard and priest learning - everyone casting good priest spells and a back-up mage or two is great for the later levels.

Have fun!

recomendations..
Play one of the emulators or clones that give you stereo sound and play with a pair of stereo headphones. It's really the way it should be played. It's something that helps you stay in the game environment as the headphones (unlike speakers) really help close off other ambient noises. Radiators, fridge, traffic.. etc.

Have a pen or pencil and some paper near by.. it's a good idea to have something to work out some of the puzzles or map little sections as you go

Remeber the trail of breadcrumbs in fairy tales? Well in Dunegon master you can do much the same with Zokathra spells they last forever and can be made at any point in the game.. I would use them as markers for areas I've completed so I didn't go back into them if there was nothing left..

use the lowest power.. since it doesn't matter and it takes less mana to cast. then the following symbols.

Zo (three circles like stacked barrels)
Kath (three expanding corners .. supposed to represent an explosion)
Ra (like a star or a sun.. essentially an * sign. )

enjoy the trip!

moo

Is Tiggy's stamina really that bad? I remember it being pretty bad, but do you think it's bad enough that I might want to substitute Chani instead? As much as I love nostalgia, Chani's a character I love too, and I seem to recall she's a bit better balanced. Do you think Tiggy's stamina will get in the way of me surviving the game?

Thanks for all the welcomes and suggestions. I thought zo kath ra was something you had to have the firestaff to do (hah) or in some other way a special spell, but it's good to know what it actually does. Thanks! I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to be playing, as it occurred to me that I'm on a laptop and therefore the key configuration will be off for the turning buttons. Any suggestions? I do have a desktop, but I was thinking that I could play on the laptop too/instead, since it's a better computer and stuff...

well actually it is a special spell and perhaps blasphemy for me to suggest it as a bread crumb replacer.. but to be honest it works too well to ignore that particular use..

tiggy - i like her mana, and advanced with her no problem myself in the early days - i just use boris now as a good in between, but i say play and see how you find her. I think her magic is better, though chani also seems very good in magic abilities

with the clones i beleive you can remap the keyboard to your liking - play CSBwin for as close to DM as possible, play Return to Chaos for the very nice features it has

Oh good, remapping the keyboard may be my only way to play on this laptop. But I'm crazy enough to buy a cheap keyboard to hook up to the laptop if that's what it takes to get my DM fix. We'll see how it goes.

I've heard a bunch of things for CSBwin and for RTC. I'm not planning on importing my characters into CSB at any point, and I don't think that RTC's DM+ (difficult version) is for my skill level, so I'll probably be going with CSBwin. If I'm not mistaken, the creators of both versions are accessible on these forums, right? So just in case something goes wrong or I'm really stupid, I can get answers about the programs themselves.

I want to start playing already! Stupid schoolwork!

I love how international this board is. I know that the ST reached all over the place, because we had a subscription to ST Action when I was a kid and it was a British magazine. I still have a bunch of old issues of that, including some that talk about DM and CSB.

I guess I will have to play through til the end to see what Zo Kath Ra is supposed to do - unless it makes those glowy cages to trap Chaos, in which case I know what it is (and can imagine how those would be very good to mark your place!). I always thought you had to use the Firestaff to make them, but now I know you use it for something else. Ahh, the confused memories of a little girl.

DM+ on RTC and the higher skuill settings are just an option (play with a spellbook that limits your spellcasting, increase mopnster speeds, etc). So you can play RTC as normal. And CSBwin lets you improt parties anyway (get the latest version, of course)

and yup, both creators still read these boards, so no worries if somethign strange happens

And you will see what the glowy thing/firestaff have in common when you finish!

For fun though, the original manual told you to tale the firestaff and go back to the beginnign with it for lord linbrasulus - create a seperate save game and take it back some time

Ohohoho - I've SEEN that. It scared the pants off of me when I was little. My dad, being a gullible player like many people, figured that was what you were supposed to do. My sister thought it was the best thing ever, and though she never beat the game, I do think she made it to the end and went up there just because she wanted to see it again (this as an adult replaying the game).

Theoretically, I've seen almost the entire game played through from start to finish, including both endings, though there were large chunks of levels that I didn't see because dad kept playing after my bedtime. It'll be hard to spoil things for me. I'm going to try to poke my boyfriend into joining the forum when he starts playing, because I think it will be awesome to have someone playing through for the very first time. He's vehemently anti-spoiler, like I said ... but though I'm not an old hand when it comes to playing the game, I'm familiar with a lot of it, if loosely.

One goal I have: I AM going to get the skeleton-key staircase open on all levels I can. I had lots of dreams/nightmares about DM when I was a kid, and I remember that most vividly. I wasn't even sure that it was really a part of the game, so I was excited to discover that yes, it exists.

I'm reading a little bit about some of the levels, and I feel better about my previous failed attempt at playing because apparently the level I left off with is considered (at least by the "Lost Scrolls of Mt. Anaias" on the Encyclopedia site) one of the nastiest levels, if not the nastiest. If I can just get past there, I'll be gold until I get to the ghost arena. My memories of that place are dim, but if half of what I remember is true, it's a scary place.

I can't decide how I feel about spoilers! I'm reading everything DM I can get my hands on right now, because I'm so excited, and I just can't stop myself - but I'd like to at least attempt to solve some of the puzzles on my own, since I don't really remember any of those past Choose Your Fate. Is the Grave of Whatever in one of the later floors? I've heard that's really, really, really hard, but I can't remember it at all so I don't think I know it (just that my dad got stuck there).

yeah, we're well meaning spoilers here...it's like some children's complete the sentence game!

"you'll meet something nasty on level 10, you'll need...something...from earlier to beat it"
- "yup, that dragon's nasty, you'll need somehting pretty powerful to beat it"
- "yup, that dragon's nasty, find the sword of damage to beat it"
- "yup, that magic resistant dragon is really nasty, make sure you get the sword behind the door in the temple to beat it"
etc : )
we apparently can't help it

the worm area is fairly intense for going through the first time - stock up on food, get the best weapons, and charge through : )
grave of king filius and milius are two rooms later on, yes - a nice set of puzzles
skeleton keys - you can't open every stairwell (not enough keys)...but you can open most...

the worm area is the first "real" level, i was stuck there for 2 years while my mom was able to sneak through the whole level (killed the last 8 worms via teleporting from the pit) and proceeded to the rat-level.
but it's a great place to learn the hit and run-tactics which means hitting your foe in the back. and again. and again.

Oh cool someone new to DM . Yes, I grew up with it too...we had an Atari, and I did play it, although I think I was scared of the Dragon (whom I now consider my favourite mob who is also fun to kill, not to mention the reward for doing so ).
Don't worry, we won't give you spoilers unless you really, REALLY can't do something . There's people here who seem to know every tiny little technical thingy about the game, and loads of posts on various threads relate to programming and stuff so I ain't got a clue what they're on about lol.
Oh and JFYI, the names of the runes, in order...

Lo, Um, On, Ee, Pal, Mon (the Power runes)
Ya, Vi, Oh, Ful, Des, Zo
Ven, Ew, Kath, Ir, Bro, Gor
Ku, Ros, Dain, Neta, Ra, Sa

I'd list some spells too, but I'm sure you'd rather find them out by yourself . Anyway, you said you knew Fireball, which is the best and most useful one (apart from Magic Torch...and any spell which may be essential to pass a particular puzzle or whatever).

So I was playing it on my old desktop computer (it's really only about 5 or 6 years old) - I downloaded the most recent version of CSBwin and my boyfriend was walking around through the Hall of Champions trying to decide on his people. He reincarnated Alex and resurrected Halk (not a final party, just to get the controls) and was stepping through the grate door towards the apple and stuff when the game locked up. Now, the mouse had dropped a few times, so we thought it was just that ... but nothing would respond, not even ctrl-alt-delete. I ended up resetting the computer - and Windows wouldn't load.

Crap.

I'm going to see if I can come up with a solution in the morning. I'm completely baffled as to how this could happen or what went on. Any insight would be much appreciated. Not only would I like to be able to play DM, but I'd like my computer to be working!

I've heard a bunch of things for ... RTC. If I'm not mistaken, the [creator is] accessible on these forums, right? So just in case something goes wrong or I'm really stupid, I can get answers about the programs themselves.

Yep - I'm here and read the boards most days. RTC is pretty stable and recently I've only seen problems with people creating their own dungeons, not playing the original DM or CSB.

Nevertheless, if you decide to take on RTC (you can set the difficulty setting yourself, so don't let that put you off!) then I'll do my best to fix any problems you find...

Have fun!

Well, I was playing on CSBwin and my computer seems to have died. Not sure if there's a connection. If I get it working again, I might see if it can handle RTC instead.

I really, really hope I get it working ... this would be the second computer that died this year (this one's old, but the other one that died was only two years old - now I'm having to borrow a laptop from my stepmom) and I think I would just cry if I lost everything on there...

RTC is quite demanding -- I doubt it would run acceptably on a machine 5 or 6 years old.

Oh, that's a shame. Maybe I'll play on the more recent laptop.

How about CSBwin? Do you think that might have been the problem?

Maybe I just ought to go back to emulating... my computer can certainly handle pretending it's an ST.

I've been playtesting for hundreds of hours all the CSBwin versions in the last 2 years on several computers and never got the total crash you described. I think your lock up is not related to it.

Hmm, all right. I had installed some new hardware (we had some problems with it not recognizing the driver for my optical mouse, even though I've used that mouse before with it for years! also got a wireless adapter to work so that I could download the game and such) and that might have been it. It does seem kind of strange to me that it won't load Windows or even recognize that it should be trying ... do any of you guys have any suggestions? I know you're DM gurus but not necessarily overall computer gurus, so I'll probably see if it's either resolved more easily in the morning or if someone I know can help...

Before each release, I test RTC on a PII-450 and it's fine on that. If you turn down the "extra" settings (anti-aliasing / transparancy etc) in the RTC config file, then it even runs OK on a PI-200. Any less than that though and it struggles!

In the config file there's an option to display the FPS should you wish to play with the settings...

How about CSBwin? Do you think that might have been the problem

From Windows' perspective, CSBwin is about the simplest program it can run.
There is no way it could damage an otherwise healthy operating system/hardware.
But if, for example, your file system were damaged then any program whatsoever
could accidentally destroy the system files. So, in that sense, CSBwin could certainly
have added the last straw that made your system un-bootable.

Debugging suggestion...Can you get to the BIOS setup page (usually DEL while
booting)? If not, then your disk or memory or CPU died. If so, can you boot
DOS from a floppy? If so, can you run one of the bootable memory tests?
Are you using FAT file structure? If so can you read the HD files from DOS?
The answers to these questions will pretty much determine what is wrong
and where to go next. It may be simply a question of reformatting your
system disk and reloading the operating system. Not too uncommon with
Windows, unfortunately.

Paul - Going through the grate - would the new sound handling routine have anything to do with this then? I don't mean that this caused the crash directly, but point to something with the sound card as being the crash causer, and the bad luck being windows messing up afterwards? Since the floor pad is probably the first time you generate any sounds, and there you are generating both the foot pad click and the four door strage noises simultaneously.

Selie - Maybe the new hardware drivers are conflicting with the old stuff?

Also, when you say windows can't reload, do you mean at all? If it's crashing at the start of windows, can you try getting into it in safe mode? If you could, that would point to some bad driver or driver conflict for sure

would the new sound handling routine have anything to do with this then

It is not default. It would have to have been explicitly selected
from the menu. If it were selected, then this would have caused
DirectX to be used for the first time and nobody ever accused
DirectX of being a simple thing. But to make the thing suddenly
un-bootable would require an extremely unlikely combination of
events, IMHO. Unless, as you say, the thing is really booting up
but failing to finish the process because of some driver incompatibilities
or conflicts or because of some system settings that were changed
by sound driver.

It manages to boot to DOS just fine, it just can't load Windows. I've tried what I THOUGHT was the DOS command to load Windows (and variations of it) and that doesn't seem to be working. I'm going to look at it again today, though, and see what I can do.

I don't mean to have made you defensive about CSB - I've heard really good things about your program, but I was just trying to see if anyone had any ideas about what could have caused this. It's probably a driver problem from the hardware I installed? I'm still really suspicious about that mouse ... my boyfriend was over so I could show him the game, and when I plugged in the mouse it wouldn't work, and he tried to install it and didn't believe me that I had used the mouse in that computer before, because it couldn't identify the driver. Only when he actually looked for the driver and found that it was actually truly there, that my computer was just failing to recognize it, did he figure I wasn't remembering things incorrectly. Very frustrating.

In order to get the wireless adapter to work, we had to disable one of the computer's dialup ... things. It said there was a limit to IPX/somethings that could be in use, so we looked at those and there seemed to be three we couldn't get rid of, and one (dialup) that I don't use. I really hope that wasn't the problem.

So, if the computer is friendly with DOS, but can't/won't load Windows, what's the suggestion?

if you can get into dos, it's nothing hardware related (CPU, memory, etc)

next, try check out your harddrive (dir c:\) and see if you can see all the files
run scandisk (c:\windows\command\scandisk) and check it out incase there has been a hardrive error that has taken out some system file...

the command for getting windows to run in dos is 'win'

was it not running in safe mode either?

Yeah, I tried "win"... but here we go! Selie is the stupidest person ever! Either that, or 3 am is way too late to be trying to play anything on the computer...

You know what the problem was? I was trying to get the driver off of the floppy that came with the mouse (shut up, yes, I know it's all old), and I left the floppy in. So it was trying to boot from the floppy. OOPS. Something was up with the monitor so I couldn't see it was A:\, I just saw the : \ and not the drive name ... but I checked the directory out of curiosity and saw that it listed off the files that were on the disk, meaning it was looking at A:\ and no wonder it didn't understand the "win" command ... oops ... so I took it out and life is peachy.

Let's hope this isn't a sign that my adventure is doomed from the start!

I will say, though, that I have tons and tons of respect for both Paul Stevens and George Gilbert. I've got confidence in both programs now because you guys are clearly both responsive and concerned about everything going well. Kudos for following up on this. (and thanks to Paul S. for offering general suggestions on the problem afterwards)

Please don't think I'm too stupid - at least I solved the problem myself now that I'm no longer exhausted. But I'll probably be this bad at playing DM.

hope the original crash doesn't happen again!

Selie is the stupidest person ever

Just for today, perhaps.
( I won't tell you about those other days...too embarrassing! )