DM PC (Dosbox) warcry + positioning

[ferala]

Hello there,

In a moment of nostalgia i started a pc version of DM and i am playing it atm in Dosbox. Originally i played it on the Amiga.

I have a few questions about it:

- Atm i am facing a door with 2 warriors in the back and shriekers (green mushroom thingies) behind me clicking War cry until my fingers hurt. My warriors got priest _and_ fighter levels this way. However my priest and wizard only get fighter levels even though their fighter level is higher than their priest levels. Does this mean that you only get priest levels until you gain a certain level? Or does this mean that you get rewarded more fighter experience than priest experience?

- My warriors are in the back to take damage from the shriekers. They both take damage, but only my green fighter is actually facing the monsters. My yellow fighter faces the door like my casters. How can i control what way they face? And does it matter in how much damage they receive?

- I wanted to know how much experience i got per attack so i found the dmweb.free.fr website ith all kinds of interesting info. But the page about how much experience you get for an action in the game seems to be missing a table. http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/692 says "(see table below)" but there is no table on that page. Is there anywhere i can find how much experience an action gives (before multipliers)? I assume i should also know about the cooldown of an action to know the efficiency but still.

I will leave this post with an anecdote (i don't have much opportunity to talk about DM as i don't know anyone else who plays/played it). Back in the days i borrowed a "my first physics kit" from a friend and build a flashing light. I opened my mouse and connected the wires to my mouse button. I used this to train my characters hitting doors ofc But because i used a relais this was making too much sound at night so i covered it with empty egg containers to muffle the sound. Every x hours i had to set the alarm clock to feed them else they died. This way i got them up to archmaster and after i continued playing i noticed i was already at the end of the game so basically i had done all that work for nothing. I assume you guys will find this a lot more normal than the people who visited me at that time and saw the construction i built

[Ameena]

Well, firstly, welcome to the forum .
Now then...I don't know about the exp problem as I don't use War Cry and never bother training (till I get halfway down the dungeon and have each character repeatedly chuck a boulder so it lands on the same square because no-one has any Ninja training so I do that for each char till the boulder lands one square away, at which point I can't be arsed to move and pick it up so that's where I stop ), but I expect someone else can help you with that .
However, I do know how to change the direction your charcters are facing - either right-click the icon for that character (the coloured top-down little image thing in the top right corner of the screen), which rotates it 90 degrees, or left click to pick it up, which auto-turns it to face the front (if it isn't already doing so) and then you can click it on another icon to swap them if you want to change the party order. Note that this doesn't affect the order in which your chars are displayed along the top of the screen, just the order in which they're physically standing. So if you want your back row to get in some melée practice, swap them witht he front row, give them a wep each, and kick some arse .

[ferala]

Thank you for your answer! But you don't know if you receive more damage is you are attacked from behind and your character is not actually that enemy? Not sure if opponents bypass armor/shield that way or not.

Meanwhile i found the table i was looking for: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/690

That page also mentions that War cry trains Influence and Parry, but it says (a)(b)(c) referring to different versions of DM. However DM for PC isn't mentioned. Maybe that website doesn't care about the PC version.

<edit> i checked your suggestion (right click on party member in top right corner) but what it does for me is open/close inventory screen of that particular party member. Same as when you right click them in the top of the screen.
</edit>

[ferala]

One strange thing i forgot to mention:

I noticed the following: i can cast like 30 times War Cry and nothing happens, but when i reload that situation and i cast 1 small priest potion i get a priest level. It is as if the priest experience is at a treshold of getting the next level but only a real priest action pulls it over the treshold to the next level. Weird.

[ferala]

Now i have started playing DM again and finally speaking other people who know the game i come up with more questions:

- What is the empty (brown border) icon directly to the left of the save game icon for?

[ChristopheF]

The party leader (the champion whose name is yellow, others are white) is always facing front (what you see in the dungeon view), even when under attack by a creature on a side or behind.
The other champions in the party will automatically turn to face the creature attacking them.

Right clicking a champion's icon does not make him turn 90 degrees (I checked in CSBwin, DM PC and DM Amiga 3.6). I don't think there is a way to force a champion to face another direction than the one automatically selected.

The tables on my site were extracted from the Atari ST versions (binary items in graphics.dat), that's why it only mentions these versions. The PC version probably uses the same numbers as (c), but I have not checked to make sure this is correct.

[ChristopheF]

What is the empty (brown border) icon directly to the left of the save game icon for?

A placeholder for an icon to switch music on/off. But it is not used in the PC version as there is no music See the original graphic extracted here (graphics item #17):
http://greatstone.free.fr/dm/db_data/dm ... s.dat.html

This button only works in the FM Towns versions of DM and CSB. It is also present, but always disabled, in DM for PC and CSB for PC-9801. In all other versions, this button is not present at all.

[ferala]

Ah, that explains!

@Christophe: I just read on your site (and i wondered if that is correct):

http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/692
Fighter training: War Cry: Barehand with no creature
Priest training: War Cry: Barehand in front of creature

The above is certainly not true for the PC version of DM. As standing next to a monster i am gaining (only) Fighter levels it seems.
And i have gotten both Fighter and Priest levels for my warriors in 1 situation (so that was either with or without creature present)

[Jan]

Welcome to the forums, Ferala! Although I can't answer any of your technical questions, I'm looking forward to reading about your experiences with the game itself. And especially about Chaos Strikes Back.

[ferala]

Welcome to the forums, Ferala! Although I can't answer any of your technical questions, I'm looking forward to reading about your experiences with the game itself. And especially about Chaos Strikes Back.

hello Jan,

I am new to this forum but not to this game. I have finished this game in the old days (Amgia). But i started playing again. This time the PC version in Dosbox.
This game has always been in my top10 of best games. I played a lot of games on the Amiga, but this one was the first Wow! game. Apart from Bloodwych on the CBM64 this was my first encounter with roleplaying games. And i have played a lot since.. I have also played CSB but i am unsure if i actually finished it. I recall having more difficulty remembering the map layout than i had with DM. This might be because i played DM a lot more. Later i have also played DM2 The Legend of Skullkeep on the PC, but what i remember most is that it was a really short game.


So now DM in Dosbox. It works great. The biggest issue i have at the moment is that i am playing on a MacBook (yes with Windows XP on it) so not only doesnt it have a numeric part of the keyboard also the arrow keys do not all function as one would expect. Apart from that i have a trackball mouse (all aforementioned stuff is borrowed from my brother). This all results in having serious trouble in parts where time is of the essence. I have to do all movement with the (trackball) mouse. Not funny. Maybe i should figure out how to reconfigure the arrow keys. They are awkwardly small and badly positioned but they will let me get past certain points in the game.

[ChristopheF]

I have added one more note here http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/690 regarding War Cry, and fixed the mistake you found on http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/692
I think this will clarify things a bit about 'War Cry' (I remember several discussions here about this action and which skills it would improve).

Oh, and in Dosbox, you can reconfigure keys as you want (have a look in the doc)

[Ameena]

Okay, I think I was forgetting about the turning-party-members-round thing. Yeah, right-clicking always takes you to the leader's inventory screen unless you right-click when the cursor is within another party member's "box". You can change leaders at any time by left-clicking another character's name - it's that person's hand that is the hand visible in the viewscreen when you pick stuff up, etc. I dunno where I got the idea from that you can rotate party members - I thought you could. Oh well, it's been a couple of years since I last played DM, I think, so maybe I'm forgetting .

[ferala]

In http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/690
it says Experience gain for Calm and Blow Horn = 0

I read that there are multipliers when getting experience.
/2 if not fighting
*2 if fighting
* depth_multiplier for dungeon depth

But if the base experience gain for Calm and Blow Horn are 0 then it would mean that you would never gain any (Priest) experience for those 2 actions. Am i correct or am i missing something?

[ChristopheF]

You seem correct, but I would have to study the source code in more detail to make sure only war cry can give experience.

[ChristopheF]

I added more details to note (d) on http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/690
This should explain how Calm and Blow Horn (and the other actions) can still give experience.

[ferala]

I have a feeling that the explanation could be simpler.

d) "Each action adds experience in the Improved Skill listed in the table. In addition to this 'regular' experience addition there is a second experience gain in skill 14 Influence (Hidden Priest skill)"

Most skills with d) only have the Influence skill. That makes the previous quoted sentence a bit weird. There is only 1 Skill with a secondary experience gain: War Cry. And with this skill Influence is mentioned first and not second.

With hard coded you mean a fixed number? So it isn't influenced by any multipliers?

You imply that you need a creature nearby else there is no creature to pass/fail the test, but other skills in the same list also give experience when there is no creature nearby.


I don't want to be a nitpicker but i think atm it might be a bit hard to understand

[ChristopheF]

I changed the text a bit. Is it easier to understand?
Hard coded means fixed numbers in the program, by opposition to the values in the table which are stored as data, separate from the program.

[ferala]

Yes, this text explains it better. thanx!

[ferala]

BTW i notice that i spend far more time training my party then actually playing the game. I have a feeling that this is totally unnecessary and that i will be over prepared for the rest of the game. Any idea what skill levels a party woud have if you never ever stop to train your party? So if you meet shriekers you act to kill them asap! (would the game be a serious challenge?)

[Gambit37]

People play the game in different ways. There's nothing wrong in extreme training early on in the game, but it does make the rest of the game incredibly easy.

[Jan]

I never train too much, because it's sooooo boring. I usually don't use the screamers' room too much, but rather spend some time in the rats' room. When I play with one character only, I tend to end up being LO Master fighter and wizard, and Expert priest and ninja, or something like that.

[Ameena]

I don't bother training except for a bit of boulder-throwing to get everyone a couple of Ninja skills once I'm about halfway through the dungeon. Usually end up around Adept/Expert-ish levels, I think. This is with a two-person team, so possibly if I went with a full four they'd be lower than that as the exp would be spread around more of them doing the work .

[ferala]

Isn't getting ninja levels by throwing boulders cumbersome? You have to pick up the boulder with the mouse for each throw right? Just clicking punch or something can more easily be repeated while not having to pay attention to the game at that moment.

Another thing.. i found 2 ncklaces that (read this in the spoiler) give hidden priest levels. When i played it on the Amiga i had no idea what these items did and i don't think there was a way to know this. But isn't having a higher hidden Priest level negative? Like it would cost you more effort to increase your Priest level by using that hidden skill?

p.s. all my 4 characters are around artisan/adept skill levels for all skills

[Ameena]

Yeah, you do have to pick up the boulder again, but I stop doing it once the boulder actually flies to the next square so I have to move in pick it up again .
Having a skill level of around Artisan-Adept sounds like you're doing alright - you could probably finish the game with that kind of level. How far through are you? I think I do occasionally manage to get someone to Lo-Master in something, possibly, though I can't really remember now. Ninja just tends to be the skill that gets a bit neglected, I think, hence the bothering to do a minor amount of training about halfway through the dungeon or so (when the exp bonus is higher) .

[ferala]

I just reached a depth level of 6 (counting hero level as 0). Nothing has seriously threatened me.

Shame there isn't a direct heal/cure poison spell. Sometimes when low on hps it feels that it takes too long to make a pot with char A, open inventory of character B, drink it and bring empty flask back to hand of A. Btw my 2 casters always have a shield in their left hand and an empty pot in their right hand. Is that the normal way to play?

Btw, does it make sense to give full plate to your casters? Does plate influence spell casting in any way?

[Jan]

Shame there isn't a direct heal/cure poison spell.

Games just used to work like that a few decades ago. DM is not Diablo.

a shield in their left

Shields, unfortunately, are pretty useless in DM. Basically, they don't make much difference. Other people here will tell you more, I never remember the details.

Is that the normal way to play?

I usually have a sword in my right hand and a flask in my left hand.

does it make sense to give full plate to your casters?

Dunno. I never bother wearing plate things. They're too heavy. I prefer Mithril or simply leather. I prefer being light and fast and "manoeuvrable".

Does plate influence spell casting in any way?

I don't think so.

[ferala]

On level 8 now. Level 6 and 7 were very fast (didnt have the right keys for 6).

Should there always be a gigler on lvl 7? I looked everywhere and didn't see/hear one.

[Ameena]

Level 7...erm hang on so if you're counting the HoC as zero, that's...Level 6 if HoC is considered Level 1. That level just has Beholders and Skellies on it, I think. Level 7 (or 8, to you ) has nothing on it that you can access right now as the Ra doors are, obviously, locked . Level 8 (9 to you) can be...fun .
I get confused when people use the other numbering system (HoC as 0), lol - I have to actually work out what level they're talking about. I dunno what the split is between people who consider the HoC Level 1 and those who consider it Level 0...I wonder if there are more people who think of it one way than others?

[Paul Stevens]

Level 7...erm hang on so if you're counting the HoC as zero, that's...Level 6 if HoC is considered Level 1.

You must be using a negative number base.

If you increase the name of the top level then
you would normally increase the name of following
levels. Else his level one would become your
level zero....The one above the Hall of Champions!
Heaven?

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

[ferala]

I think you are confusing yourself a bit there

Anyhow i am at the level with all the rats. I assume you guys train here because the experience muliplier just jumped to *3 and the rats are rather harmless? In any case there are many of them.