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[sluissa]

Apparently Hasbro owns the license now, through a convoluted set of buy outs and such. I'm guessing Hasbro gets the share of the profits. Good for em if the original developers get anything, but I see that as highly unlikely.

[Sowelu]

The relaxed pace continues.  Engine rewrites are no fun when you do similar things for your day job.  Sadly there is no amazing release lurking just around the corner.

Unambiguously out of "abandonware" (ha) status now, huh?  Guess that means that efforts to rip out original resources need to be stepped up.  That's one big problem here...the same issue that loyal X-Com rewrites have.  DL's original writing and graphics were great, and if you lose them, you lose some of the point.

I think that a release very soon in release time will contain zero Darklands resources, but require you to own a copy for graphics.  Those are fine but the text still needs rewritten from scratch.

[G-Flex]

I think that a release very soon in release time will contain zero Darklands resources, but require you to own a copy for graphics.  Those are fine but the text still needs rewritten from scratch.

You know, I wouldn't even have a problem with requiring ownership of the game for text as well. Or anything else. It's only six bucks, and you'd get to preserve the game's resources while ostensibly supporting the original developers... or whoever's getting the money, at least. I'd prefer having to shell out six bucks to actually buy the game, myself. After all, this project is a recreation of the original game, so I'd find it a tad intellectually dishonest to claim no intellectual-property connection to the original just because the text and graphics have been rewritten. In effect, this would turn it into more "fan patch" territory, albeit the kind of "patch" that reimplements the entirety of the game.

I was looking through the hint book again and it's amazing how much info they included in there about algorithms, hit probability, and so forth. Makes your job easier, eh?

[ranbir]

I think that a release very soon in release time will contain zero Darklands resources, but require you to own a copy for graphics.  Those are fine but the text still needs rewritten from scratch.

That would be best, I think. It is exactly how open TTD does it but also the Theme Hospital remake, which requires you to have the original assets to use on the updated engine.


I wholly agree with you about not using the original art, etc loses the magic of what made this game good. Playing the original recently one of the issues of course is the font which is difficult on my newer higher res.

Hang in there Sowelu!

[G-Flex]

I wholly agree with you about not using the original art, etc loses the magic of what made this game good. Playing the original recently one of the issues of course is the font which is difficult on my newer higher res.

Really, the font is just difficult, period. The game ran in (I think) 320x200 resolution (nonsquare pixels ahoy!). Using the kind of highly-stylized font the game uses in that resolution... doesn't pan out very well.


Sowelu: You might want to keep in mind the nonsquare-pixel thing. Displaying any of the game's art/text/UI assets with a square pixel aspect ratio will look a bit off. I think the original pixel aspect ratio was 1.2 (or 12:10 or however you want to put it).


Speaking of technical details... it's pretty strange how the game seems to generate random contents. There's a certain seed, I think only one or two bytes large, that determines the outcomes of random events. This seed is retained throughout the game, and is used to deterministically... determine... things like the names of people, what goods are available where, and what formulae/saints are available where. Obviously, this was so they didn't have to actually store any of that in memory... one problem, though, is that it would make it difficult to alter anything about the game world without altering everything by changing the seed (which is possible via save editors), and there are artifacts like many cities having duplicate copies of saint/formula lists, limiting what you can get. Certainly, I think that a remake project should actually store that stuff in memory instead so it can be more properly determined and, if necessary, changed throughout the course of the game.

[olemars]

The original Darklands does a lot of memory juggling and insane optimizations, since MPS for some reason decided it had to be able to run on 286 computers.

[G-Flex]

Another thing that always bugged me about Darklands: Attacks that ruin your armor (vulcan fire attacks, potions, traps). I can understand things like that damaging armor, but the fact that armor is impossible to repair and so expensive to replace just made it annoying beyond reason. Anyone else agree or have any ideas on how to improve this? It probably doesn't help that all armor types are equally susceptible (only quality matters, and only for certain effects). I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense for armor to be very reparable, but considering how godawfully expensive it can be, the situation as-is isn't very fun either.

[Lord Dullard]

Perhaps adding some way to create armor-protecting potions to alchemy would do the trick? It shouldn't go as far as to making armor indestructible, but perhaps vastly reducing the chance of complete damage/destruction would go a long way to making the system a bit less annoying while still preserving the possibility of your armor breaking sooner or later (just not AS soon or as often).

[G-Flex]

Perhaps adding some way to create armor-protecting potions to alchemy would do the trick? It shouldn't go as far as to making armor indestructible, but perhaps vastly reducing the chance of complete damage/destruction would go a long way to making the system a bit less annoying while still preserving the possibility of your armor breaking sooner or later (just not AS soon or as often).

Those already exist. Hardarmor potions increase the quality of armor, which should partially protect against fire effects. Firewall potions do a much better job of it... but sources of fire protection appear to be horribly bugged in Darklands, giving you permanent defense bonuses against apparently everything. Neither potion helps against Eater-Water potions.

Of course, I'm not sure how much Hardarmor helps, but it's better than nothing and should last a whole mission.


But yeah, I think the problem is made worse by bugs. St. Policarp is definitely bugged in a fairly game-breaking way, other sources of temporary fire protection are probably also bugged in the same way, and also, if you have multiple copies of the armor you're wearing, quality goes down for all of them. In other words, if you're wearing 23 q chain(V) and have another 23 q chain(V) in the same character's inventory, they'll be part of a stack and both get damaged. Obviously, all these bugs are easily fixed.

It's worth mentioning here that the armor-damaging effects are not affected by armor thickness; padded armor is just as damaged as plate.

[Prince of lies]

just found this project and am very happy to see it! 

just wondering if you ever thought about perhaps cooperating with some music group that plays medieval music to be used in the game ... ok helium vola is perhaps too commercial but they turned the best known middle high German poem of the 12th century (if not the whole middle ages) into a wonderful song ... 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiy0A0iEDiI

Dū bist mīn, ih bin dīn:
des solt dū gewis sīn.
dū bist beslozzen
in mīnem herzen,
verlorn ist daz sluzzelīn:
dū muost och immer darinne sīn.

Chume, chum, geselle mīn,
ih enbīte harte dīn!
ih enbīte harte dīn,
chume, chum, geselle mīn.

Suozer roservarwer munt,
chum unde mache mich gesunt!
chum unde mache mich gesunt,
suozer roservarwer munt.

Ih wil trūren faren lān,
ūf die heide sul wir gān,
vil liebe gespilen mīn,
dā seh wir der blumen schīn.

Ih sage dir, ih sage dir,
mīn geselle, chum mit mir!

Suziu minne, rāme mīn,
mache mir ein krenzelīn,
daz sol tragen ein stolzer man,
der wol wīben dienen chan.

is there any way a native German like me with no coding experience could be of use to you guys?

[G-Flex]

It's pretty hard for vocal music to work well in a videogame, especially a videogame where you might be in the same place or doing the same thing many times and for a long period. Videogame music has to be enjoyable or at least not annoying even when looped for a long time, or repeated, or cut short and repeated, etc. etc. This is much, much harder when vocals are involved. For instance, if the hymns used for the Darklands overworld music had had vocals in them, it probably would have gotten pretty irritating.

It would be nice if it could work, I'm just not sure how it could be pulled off successfully.

[Cyber Troll]

OMG.....  Been looking off and on for something like this for years.  Even signed in to the SourceForge site mentioned earlier...

This is one of my favorite games of all time, but what made it so was the psuedo historical aspects, alchemy and the saints.  The armor, weapons, combat, etc were decent for the technology at the time, but annoying even then.

If you simply added:

A modernized and balanced version of the Alchemy system
A balanced version of the Saints and Saintly powers
The psuedo historical references of the Hanseatic League cities, each with their specific Saint, Armor smiths, Weapons Smith, Alchemist and such.
Historically accurate armor and weapon types, and their advantages and disadvantages when compared to each other.

To:
A more modern and complex computerized combat system
A wider group of abilities and skills
A more modern graphics,

You would have an awesome game.

Not sure you would even have to re-invent the wheel actually.  As you might be able to use existing game engines to work with.  The Oblivion engine as others have recommended, although nice, would not work for the 4 character party concept of a single player game.

For example:  The AD&D engine used in NWN1 or NWN2 could work perfectly.

A combat system should be behind the scenes, and with both NWN1 and NWN2, you can have a "Pause," make decisions "Unpause", engage in combat, "Pause," make decisions gameplay.  Just like in darklands.

The AD&D skills could easily be adapted to the Alchemy, Skill Use, Combat, and Hit Points of the original Darklands too.  An advantage being, that the Raubritters, and other encounters could scale with the party.

All you would have to do, is strip the existing God/Spell/Crafting from the engine, and add one for Alchemy, Saints and Darklands skills.  Plus, there is lots of custom player created contect that could be added to make the world more intense.

Just my $.02

CT

Just an observation from a fellow fan of the game.

[G-Flex]

The AD&D skills could easily be adapted to the Alchemy, Skill Use, Combat, and Hit Points of the original Darklands too.  An advantage being, that the Raubritters, and other encounters could scale with the party.

Things in the world scaling with the party seems like a very un-Darklands idea.



Regarding historically accurate weapons and armor... I have no idea about most of that, but I do know that "studded leather" is basically a bullshit/made-up videogame thing. Not sure if I've mentioned it before, but it kind of sticks out as an example of something Darklands gets wrong.

[Cyber Troll]

G-Flex,

   Actually it predates Video Games by decades.  It was one of the original armors in basic D&D in 1977.

   There is some precedence for it, or a similar armor of Cuirboillee Leather or Lamellar with large metal disks (Read:  Studs) in key places on the armor to protect vital areas, and also to provide som emeasure of style.

   No, it was not as common to Europe, as plain cuirboillee leather, ring or Brigandine armors.  See Jacquerie (Jack of Plates), Indian Chihal'Ta Hazar Masha (Coat of ten thousand nails) or Japanese Kikko armors.

   The Jacquerie and Kikko were normally sewn to cloth, but since leather was a very common clothing material of the time, it is conceivable that they could have been made on a simple leather coat instead of cloth, like the Indian Chihal'Ta Hazar Masha.

   So, not a Video game creation, and not a verifiable 100% authentic armor type, but close enough to historical types that did exist at the time, to be believable.

[G-Flex]

   There is some precedence for it, or a similar armor of Cuirboillee Leather or Lamellar with large metal disks (Read:  Studs) in key places on the armor to protect vital areas, and also to provide som emeasure of style.

Those are completely different things. "Studded leather" is a misinterpretation of brigandine armor, as from the outside, brigandine tends to look like it's just leather with studs in it, the studs actually being what holds the metal plates onto the underside of the leather. There is also a big difference between a "large metal disc" and a stud.

No, it was not as common to Europe, as plain cuirboillee leather, ring or Brigandine armors.  See Jacquerie (Jack of Plates), Indian Chihal'Ta Hazar Masha (Coat of ten thousand nails) or Japanese Kikko armors.

Again, those are completely different. Cuirbuilli (or however you want to spell it) is just treated leather. Ring armor is basically covered in metal rings. The Jack of Plates and Chihal'Ta Hazar Masha rely on... well, actual plates, as does brigandine.

The Jacquerie and Kikko were normally sewn to cloth, but since leather was a very common clothing material of the time, it is conceivable that they could have been made on a simple leather coat instead of cloth, like the Indian Chihal'Ta Hazar Masha.

   So, not a Video game creation, and not a verifiable 100% authentic armor type, but close enough to historical types that did exist at the time, to be believable.

It's not really not "close enough". The ones you mention, or at least the ones I can find information about, were not similar. "Studded leather" (the videogame/D&D creation) is simply leather with small metal studs spaced out throughout the thing. This is very different from the metal plates, rings, or discs used in other armors, and wouldn't serve much of a purpose at all. It's also pretty clear that it's just a misinterpretation of brigandine, and it's especially silly to call it anything close to authentic based on its similarity to eastern armor designs, since we're talking about medieval european fantasy here.

From the outside, brigandine armor looks (or tends to look) almost exactly like "studded leather" does, and there's a reason for that.