Really Obscure RPGs

[Lord_Potato]

WIll you be adventurous enough to start playing it BosanskiSeljak ? I'd love to hear more about this mysterious game!

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

WIll you be adventurous enough to start playing it? I'd love to hear more about this mysterious game!

Definitely plan too. Was thinking about doing a LP, but I already started one with another game and but just don't have enough time to both translate & post.

I'm gonna boot it up soon and see if I can play around with the files and do my own ENG translation since it doesn't exist.

 

[overtenemy]

Bros I've got one, probably.

SUPERSTAR

https://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=4198

You play a poor musician trying to make it big. Character creation, stats. You can get into fights but no actual combat system to my recollection. The game is in getting inspiration through fights, drugs, chicks, then using it to assemble a band, write songs and perform them live. Get popular enough, get record deal, eventually go on big tours etc. If you don't die in a gutter of drug overdose before you get anywhere.

I remember it decently but specifics are going to elude me. I think there's different personalities you can have which affect what things get you inspiration which is needed to write good songs. On account of the creation and stats it could loosely be considered a role-playing game.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080624133944/http://www.daisy-chain.tk/

Archived website. I recently found a folder on an external hard drive and it reminded me of it. My copy is registered. If anyone is interested and can't find it elsewhere I'll probably upload it.

 

[Zariusz]

I like this boxart, it has a cool atmosphere though guy on the cover has shitty pauldrons .

 

[jebsmoker]

you can also get Beltion: Beyond Ritual here: https://www.legendsworld.net/site/download.php?mirror=13918

by "garbage", i assume the person who made this repack removed Starforce and such

 

[Zariusz]

• The Banished
• Mistmare
• Another War
• Shadow Vault
• Vampire Hunters
• Archangel
• Dragonfire: The Well of Souls
• Anito- Defend the Land Enraged
• World of Chaos
• Paradise Cracked
• Dark Secrets of Africa
• Morning's Wrath
• Blind Justice
• Icarus, Sanctuary of the Gods
• Metal Hearts: Replicant's Rampage
• Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon

Anyone heard about these? I only heard about Gorasul and maybe (?) Vampire Hunters

I have Banished and i even made a thread about it, though the version i have is in black speech german so i can't really play it properly and tell you about it.
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...ita-by-studio-nawar-frontline-studios.141110/
Also there is a slight chance that AdolfSatan has some other version, on the other hand when he messaged me once to share it i instead got link to Stones Of Arnhem archive so i guess he probably doesnt have it and i got played lol.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

Dark Secrets of Africa

Fine...

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/dark-secrets-of-africa-i59

How the fuck you open the zip (DON'T HAVE PERMISSION!!). That's gayer thsn this fucking pride month bullshit.

Try the CC-version of this game. To my shame I have to admit that it runs a lot better than my own Qemu/Win95-Dosbox attempts with this game. The game has many flaws but still is quite unique thematically. Played it a good while if I remember correctly. A lot of weird stuff is going on there.

 

[jebsmoker]

i have considered translating Beltion: Beyond Ritual into English by hand, but there are two major obstacles:

1: the massive volume of text i have to translate
2: figuring out how the text is stored, and how to implement the translations successfully

i'd probably do a tiny bit every day so that i don't lose motivation from burnout, but that would probably take over a year - if not more, but this rests on me figuring out how the game stores text

 

[Lord_Potato]

i have considered translating Beltion: Beyond Ritual into English by hand, but there are two major obstacles:

1: the massive volume of text i have to translate
2: figuring out how the text is stored, and how to implement the translations successfully

i'd probably do a tiny bit every day so that i don't lose motivation from burnout, but that would probably take over a year - if not more, but this rests on me figuring out how the game stores text

Good luck! I hope one day it will be possible to play Beltion in English.

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

i have considered translating Beltion: Beyond Ritual into English by hand, but there are two major obstacles:

1: the massive volume of text i have to translate
2: figuring out how the text is stored, and how to implement the translations successfully

i'd probably do a tiny bit every day so that i don't lose motivation from burnout, but that would probably take over a year - if not more, but this rests on me figuring out how the game stores text

I'm doing the same, can knock it out in half the time if we split it up

 

[vazha]

It's not really worth it. Game is decidedly mediocre, it's has all the downsides of a slavjank and none of the usual guilty pleasures. Pass. Play Mistmare instead, if you want an inquisition-themed slavjank RPG.

 

[Lord_Potato]

It's not really worth it. Game is decidedly mediocre, it's has all the downsides of a slavjank and none of the usual guilty pleasures. Pass. Play Mistmare instead, if you want an inquisition-themed slavjank RPG.

Tell us more about it! Did you play a lot of it?

 

[vazha]

More than halfway through back in the day. I remember it went through development hell - initially was touted as a thinking man's rpg about inquisiton, with grimdark atmosphere and lotsa C 8 C and then, "poluchilos kak vsegda" - they had to downscale the utter shit out of it and it was a half-baked, boring mess of a game. It's still playable if you are a die-hard slavjank junkie, but the experience isnt rewarding at all.

 

[jebsmoker]

i decided to attempt the hard part of Beltion's translation today - figuring out if i can even find and work with the files that contain the text strings. did i make any progress? well..

first thing i did was install the repack i found on Adventure Legends. i wanted the repack in specific for one reason:

StarForce is basically unimaginable suffering in digital form - it claimed one of my CD drives years and years ago before i learned what cracks are, so after i installed the repack, i canvassed the game's files to see if there were any traces left:

whoever made this repack completely purged StarForce, so they have my utmost respect. now, onto why i downloaded this repack for an obscure Ukrainian Gothic clone that all of 5 people care about: translating it

let's see what we have to work with:

perhaps Beltion contains some of its text strings in xml files?

nope, these are too small in size. i looked at a few of them and none of them actually contain any text strings. let's see what's in texts:

damn, no luck.

i figured i might try viewing the scripts file with notepad++:

well shit.

however, i did look in the video directory and did find something interesting:

let's see what we got here:

oh FUCK yes, this saves me some effort. it's a little weird that that the dev's abandoned attempts at the English translation still exist in the game, but it helps.

one more thing of note: i did search for 'dialogues', but the only thing i found related to this were animation files for dialogue-related animations. i'm not giving up yet though, i'll dig some more later

 

[jebsmoker]

i asked someone who knows emacs to view Beltion's 'scripts' file with emacs, and what we found was this:

a little more digging revealed something that says "SFFS" inside it, which gives a clue how this file is encrypted

to summarize what i'm trying to do: "scripts" very likely contains the text strings meant for dialogue and item descriptions and such. however, it's encrypted with an algorithm that StarForce developed (SFFS), which kinda of a huge 'fuck you' to anyone trying to translate it *if* the text strings are contained within this file. i found a program called SFSniffer that'll help me decrypt it, but i can't use it for now because it needs a StarForce-specific driver file and i gotta figure out a workaround of some kind. StarForce's SFFS has been used for numerous other games - Ice Pick Lodged used SFFS to encrypt asset files in early releases of The Void, but it was later taken out because it's a pain

 

[Catacombs]

i asked someone who knows emacs to view Beltion's 'scripts' file with emacs

Why Emacs specifically?

 

[jebsmoker]

i asked someone who knows emacs to view Beltion's 'scripts' file with emacs

Why Emacs specifically?

it would have probably revealed a clue - and it did, revealing what kind of encryption it uses

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

This is so obscure you’ll wish it vanished from existence.

“Do you dare?”

“Really?”

“You sure?”

“Last Warning….”

OK… your funeral!”

The link.

 

[lightbane]

^That abomination was made by a Sonic fan that went insane and became a "she", adopting the persona of a cyborg bunny for further alienation. It checks out why the char designs are hideous.

 

[Zariusz]

^That abomination was made by a Sonic fan that went insane and became a "she", adopting the persona of a cyborg bunny for further alienation. It checks out why the char designs are hideous.

Its funny how being a part of Sonic fandom often equals with insanity, and that was probably true even before the current era of ever-present madness.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Lol. I knew you’d luv it.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Probably posted before but this amiga game I saw in a goriest top ten piqued my interest.


https://www.dungeoncrawlers.org/game/bloodfest/

http://www.oldgamesfinder.com/?m=2&q=Bloodfest
Archive & Animet seem ok for DL. There was a forum saying they configured it for emulator hard drive but the link has been scrubbed.
https://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=28836

 

[CryptRat]

Bloodfest is Legend of Grimrock dude's game.

 

[Adeptus]

"Gorasul: Legacy of the Dragon" is German game I played as a child, one of my first cRPGs, I think that it is nearly totally forgotten.

 

[Grauken]

Just do a search for Gorasul on this thread alone, lots of people mentioning it.