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Incline Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
- Thread starter Satori (original)
- Start date
eric__s
ass hater
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2011
- Messages
- 2,301
I agree. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is the father of modern RPGs. Everything that came after owes Dark Sun a significant debt, and things like Fallout and Baldur's Gate are very clearly the children of this game.
Really? How come?
Cael
Arcane
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2017
- Messages
- 20,522
Higher level cap, more enemies, more varied environments, wider variety of equipment, timed mission, chase sequence, amongst other things. Probably a combination of those. I just like the feel of it better.
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
I just ran into THE BUG 
It literally makes 'the bug' in Ravager look like candy, whatever that bug may have been.
As soon as I enter the sewers, all NPC's and interactive items disappear from the gameworld. There are no ratmen, no skulls, no grates, no bone handle, but OTOH there are also no gates and the way to Dagolar and the fields are both open. I decided to run straight for the fields, and again - no NPC's
I thought, ok, let's head into the desert to see if the corpse is still there, else I'll have to start over (reloading didn't change anything). But the corpse was there, the crazy hermit, the resting place, the saurian NPC and some monsters. I was like ok, let's head to the first village. Again, no NPC's or items.
I've already started over once because the game decided to give me the Earth domain instead of the Air domain, the class name Druid appeared in blue as it does for both Water and Air, but I had the spells of an Earth druid.
They sure don't build 'em like that anymore, I think I'd rather have played Bloodlines on release
It literally makes 'the bug' in Ravager look like candy, whatever that bug may have been.
As soon as I enter the sewers, all NPC's and interactive items disappear from the gameworld. There are no ratmen, no skulls, no grates, no bone handle, but OTOH there are also no gates and the way to Dagolar and the fields are both open. I decided to run straight for the fields, and again - no NPC's
I thought, ok, let's head into the desert to see if the corpse is still there, else I'll have to start over (reloading didn't change anything). But the corpse was there, the crazy hermit, the resting place, the saurian NPC and some monsters. I was like ok, let's head to the first village. Again, no NPC's or items.
I've already started over once because the game decided to give me the Earth domain instead of the Air domain, the class name Druid appeared in blue as it does for both Water and Air, but I had the spells of an Earth druid.
They sure don't build 'em like that anymore, I think I'd rather have played Bloodlines on release
Elwro
Arcane
Wow. Where did you get your copy? Maybe it's a matter of switching some binaries? I completed DS a few times and have literally never encountered anything resembling this. Amazing.
I did, however, hit the game-stopping bug at the end once, but I'm assuming you know about this issue
I did, however, hit the game-stopping bug at the end once, but I'm assuming you know about this issue
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
Wow. Where did you get your copy? Maybe it's a matter of switching some binaries? I completed DS a few times and have literally never encountered anything resembling this. Amazing.
I did, however, hit the game-stopping bug at the end once, but I'm assuming you know about this issue
That shit was actually the GOG version. Avoid at all costs people. I'm serious.
I'm now running an iso of v1.1 with a manually configured DosBox setup and it works like a charm. Sounds a lot better than before with Roland music and SB Pro II sounds - you can't emulate those in the GOG version. Also looks a lot better now, with a new scaler, resolution to fit my screen, SVGA emulation etc. I tried the GOG configurator but it doesn't look half as good, you can't change all the values you can manually in DosBox.
The game also runs like a charm now, before I had fucking stuttering even at very high CPU cycles
e.g. when there was a lot going on like half a screen worth of Entangle with a few monsters stuck in it. More memory and some other tweaks help here.And the icing on the cake is, all the bugs I had before are gone now. Like all of them. Also the hangups that would happen during a long session where the mouse would get kind of sluggish and unresponsive when hovering over interactive objects.
Seriously folks, boycott GOG in this case. You know what to do.
edit: ok so apparently they put in new config files
but that shit doesn't even open properly on a simple editor. And that still leaves the problem with the bugs. Never had many issues before with GOG Dos games so I never tried fooling around before but I've seen enough cases of GOG breaking things instead of fixing them.
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
After reading that post in the Ravager thread where the guy got attacked by chairs at the start I would say avoid both Dark Sun games from GOG. That guy also had the switched cleric domains in Shattered Lands bug.
Also the difficulty is way different - Hideous difficulty was truly hideous in the GOG version, even though I had heavily re-rolled chars (no stat editing but still) I hardly hit anything, got hit plenty and most of all, psi discipline checks kept failing like 10 times in a row when you had a 14/20 success chance and monsters almost always made their saves. Now I'm running a less optimized party and still steamrolling the game on Hideous.
At this point I'm suspecting that either they fucked something up when cracking the game - this happens a lot with older games - or the GOG versions are actually the unpatched versions.
I would say avoid both Dark Sun games from GOG. That guy also had the switched cleric domains in Shattered Lands bug.Also the difficulty is way different - Hideous difficulty was truly hideous in the GOG version, even though I had heavily re-rolled chars (no stat editing but still) I hardly hit anything, got hit plenty and most of all, psi discipline checks kept failing like 10 times in a row when you had a 14/20 success chance and monsters almost always made their saves. Now I'm running a less optimized party and still steamrolling the game on Hideous.
At this point I'm suspecting that either they fucked something up when cracking the game - this happens a lot with older games - or the GOG versions are actually the unpatched versions.
Darth Canoli
Arcane
I didn't have a lot of problems with the gog version but i patched it just in case (or maybe i've read you had to in gog forums, i'm not sure).
Well, had the switched domain once and ran into some minor bugs, when i restarted without any domain switch, everything was fine so maybe that domain switch fucks the game or something weird is going on.
Didn't finish my second playthrough, seemed like i was close to the end and i really hate to reach a very good game's end.
Well, had the switched domain once and ran into some minor bugs, when i restarted without any domain switch, everything was fine so maybe that domain switch fucks the game or something weird is going on.
Didn't finish my second playthrough, seemed like i was close to the end and i really hate to reach a very good game's end.
That does suck balls, I tend to quit a game that I REALLY like right before the this-is-it™ part and just start over
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
Played to the final battle on Hideous without edited stats, perfectly doable. The final battle would have been easy too if I had ever bothered to stack some Domination on my dudes - I guess dominating just 2 out of those 3 Black Mastyrials means you can just sit back and watch shit go down.
For my next playthrough of both SL and WotR I'll go without even rerolling. Go in, select the classes you're going to use, and take whatever stats you get. Leave difficulty at balanced.
I have a hunch this is how SL was meant to be played; it's just not a combat game and it breaks apart too easily if you have high combat stats. There are so many ways to avoid combat in this game, you're basically breaking it from a pretty good puzzle/ adventure RPG into a very broken piss easy SRPG if you go with edited or re-rolled stats.
Dorateen
Arcane
The Wrymias quest arc is really well done.
Love some of the dialogue options.
Love some of the dialogue options.
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
I would have loved more options to actually side with the baddies.
One of the funniest ones is to tell Balkazar that you'll side with him and get whisked away to the temple where he tries to summon 'the Unnamed One', but due to his crippling Alzheimer's always critically fails. I made it through 4 or 5 waves of 4 x level 12 fire elementals before I told him to cut the bullshit. I doubt you can actually persuade him to stop the summoning shenanigans, and the Unnamed One also probably never appears. I still kept going because the lines with which you can berate him keep changing, so I thought it might be going somewhere.
One of the funniest ones is to tell Balkazar that you'll side with him and get whisked away to the temple where he tries to summon 'the Unnamed One', but due to his crippling Alzheimer's always critically fails. I made it through 4 or 5 waves of 4 x level 12 fire elementals before I told him to cut the bullshit. I doubt you can actually persuade him to stop the summoning shenanigans, and the Unnamed One also probably never appears. I still kept going because the lines with which you can berate him keep changing, so I thought it might be going somewhere.
I played the GOG version of Shattered Lands. Apart from the bug with the wrong domain I didn't run into any major bugs. And I was able to complete the game fine with the character that had the wrong domain in my party. Trying to import her into Wake of the Ravager is when things became funny.
Of course I had read about the bugs that can cause the final battle not to trigger and how to prevent it but I think that exists in all versions of the game. Near the end of the game, sometimes my inventory would bug out and duplicate an item I selected (iirc it couldn't be put into any slot in the inventory and would cause the inventory screen to lock up, displaying the loading icon, so I reloaded when I got that bug).
Of course I had read about the bugs that can cause the final battle not to trigger and how to prevent it but I think that exists in all versions of the game. Near the end of the game, sometimes my inventory would bug out and duplicate an item I selected (iirc it couldn't be put into any slot in the inventory and would cause the inventory screen to lock up, displaying the loading icon, so I reloaded when I got that bug).
Sacred82
Self-Ejected
You should definitely get an iso and try that. It was way smoother sailing for me.
I also got one of Ravager and will play that afterwards. Expect way less funny behaviour.
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