Dungeon Master Forum

In DM's graphics.dat there are three shield graphics: A dense blue outline, a sparse green outline, and a sparse cyan outline.

As best I can tell, the blue shield is a spell shield (+Anti-Magic?), given by drinking ya potions or casting ya ir. The cyan shield is a different kind of spell shield(??), the only way I can get it is by using a wand's "SPELLSHIELD" method. The green shield is a fireshield, castable by wand or spell.

Does anyone know the difference between the blue and the cyan shield?

Cyan was anti-magic sheilding from the teowand (got passed a nasty sucinum trap once with that) and blue was physical protection to your armour factor I thought (tested against golems and knights)

I'm colourblind, so beyond useless at this point... but I can vaguely recall a spell, think it was something to do with anti-magic that had a similar "look" to an des ew spell but did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

I just realised that this doesn't have much to do with your question...

The only spell I can think of that looked like des ew would be zo, and it opens and closes doors with buttons, which would appear to do nothing, unless you shot it at a door.

It wasn't all that useful to me, but it was pretty useful-- for the vexirks who used it against you.

Then again, you did need it to get past "cast your influence, cast your might."

I actually remember the cast your influence bit, Sophie! (Can I call you Sophie? Thanks - you can call me Sir).

But yes, I recall something that fired a spell at me and it looked like a ghostbusting spell (des ew??? I'm pretty sure it is) but it did nothing.

Vexirk it may have been. Can I ask, how did you know what the creatures were called? I didn't find out what a Vexirk was tilll just recently. Until then I just called them "those things that look a bit like those "weechi wa-wa" aliens out of Star Wars that nick R2 D2 and try to sell him to Luke Skywalker's aunt and uncle.. although Vexirk IS a bit snappier...

CSB had a scroll in it that gave you the names of monsters-- the infamous "NO CREATURE" scroll. (A lot of people actually never figured out what this thing was for!)

Either that or there were the DM hintbooks and such, and the DM authors gave an official list of monster names in an interview shortly after DM came out.

I've got an amusing monster name story, too, though:
When I first started playing, I thought the monster's name popped up in the same place as the item you were carrying, if you were able to click the monster-- which was a bit hard to do considering they were always skittering around and attacking you! Anyway, at some point, for a split second, while fighting the blue guys on level 3 (Trolins as they're known officially), I happened to get a club in hand very briefly, and so "CLUB" flashed onto the screen. I misread it as "GLUB" and thus, forevermore, to me, the blue guys are known as Glubs.

I think that's a better name for those things than Trolin anyhow

Love those Glubs...

But I never would have thought of calling 'rusters' rusters, you know? They were 'those weird, scurrying, hard armadillo things."

I knew what the 'NO CREATURE' scroll was for! I worked it out immediately! Not that it was much use, it was tedious to get it out in battle and the CSB hint oracle told you the names anyway... it would have been better of the scroll showed you the name of the animal and then stated what it's weaknesses were - an excellent point, well worth italicising...

I also called 'Screamers' toadstools, 'Trolin' blue ogres, and those weird eye things that phase in and out on level 13 (I think) will be forever known to me as ... Ethereal Triffids."

So there.

Those weird ghosty things on the top leve of CSB I just called...er..."Weird Ghosty Things", I think. Most of the mob names I used I took from the DM hint book, like Sorcerers, Generic Monsters, Blue Trolls, Flying Screamers...

Mummies, screamers, trolins (because it said in the book and the name seemed to fit), rock monsters, worms, wasps, ghosts, flying snakes, poison blobs, skeletons, beholders, golems, gigglers (why i knew that as their name i have no clue), rats, jawas, no name (but ruster did seem to fit later), scorpions, water elementals, knights, air elementals (seemed logical at the time, they were ethereal and shot things like poinson cloud itno the air), spiders (the word oitu from the book didnt' register), demons, fire elementals, dragon, chaos

I probably missed soemthing!

I think you got 'em all!

I've been listening to the sound effects on the creatures bit of this site. I can't stress this enough: hearing them again after more than a decade is strangely overwhelming!

Dragon still sounds lame...

Yup...worms sound better!

Spiders screaming? Whose idea was that???

Gigglers - wow that takes me back...

My names for creatures (in order of the levels in which you first encounter them)...
Mummy, Screamer, Rock Monster, Blue Troll, Giant Wasp, Ghost, Purple Worm, Flying Snake, Flying Screamer, Beholder, Skeleton, Stone Giant, Thief, Giant Rat, Generic Monster, Sorcerer (though later, I think once we played CSB, Vexirk), Giant Scorpion, Water Elemental, Black Knight, Spell Vine, Giant Spider, Fire Elemental, Demon, Lord Chaos, Red Dragon.
Most of those names are rfom the hint book we used. But I bet I managed to bloody miss one .

I like the way people are saying 'we' when they talk about playing the game - me and an elder sibling would play for hours... my friends were not interested, they called me a geek!!! Can you believe that!?

What do you mean, you can?

The relief of finding a fountain, the joy of seeing a flight of stairs, the anticipation of looking in a chest for the first time. Loads of little precious moments.

Yeah, when I got back into DM throuh amiga in secondary school there were like four of us trying to play it seperately and help each other!
Yes, nothing has loked so good as that fountain staring you in the face on the slime level, and nothing as evil as a poison blob guarding it!