RPGWatch Feature: Dungeon Lords Retrospective

We're planning to publish an irregular series of retrospectives going forward and Michael "txa1265" J. Anderson is first cab of the rank, starting with D.W. Bradley's Dungeon Lords. Why Dungeon Lords? You'll have to ask Mike about that but in the meantime, this article should give some insight. Here's a snip:

Braindead: when advancing in tiers of your class path you will be presented with the requirements for that level and whether or not you meet those requirements. For example, if you start as a Mage and complete the quest to become Sorcerer as a second-tier Mage class, the guild master will say ‘The Requirements are X, you meet those, would you like to advance?’ But you might realize that you don't actually meet any of those requirements! Don't worry - class advancement requirements are on the honor system! Seriously though, it looks like they wanted to implement them but didn't integrate them well enough that folks would be prepared, and the thought of forcing players to trudge back and forth checking requirements caused them to pitch the requirements…but not the dialogue stating whether or not the player met them.

Read it here.
More information.

I'm going to be a smarty and say that vinegar was being too kind right from the get-go.

I'd have liked your thoughts on the character classing system. I like the way you can buy skills at any time but the forced multiclassing adept/fighter/paladin/samurai/crusader/war witch combinations are ludicrous and paper-thin. Sure, you can create some bizarre multi thief/samurai bastardisation but it makes absolutely no sense and there's no depth in any of the classes.

However, the balancing decision DWB made was to make spell regeneration so slow - even when resting - that it turns the game to an 'inaction' RPG.

I found it funny that you could actually pause the game and have your spells regenerate while the game was paused. Saved my bacon a couple of times when I found that my ubar spells had depleted. Took a while, so I just used it as an opportunity to get off my arse and have a coffee.

(Was this errr ….'feature'… removed in the CE?)

Originally Posted by Dhruin
I'd have liked your thoughts on the character classing system.

I think that what you said more or less echoes what I said. Unlike a game such as Divine Divinity where you can easily cross-classes, the requirements in DL force it to such a degree to completely mess with even the most basic choices. My 'pure mage' (most commonly played character) was a mage / fighter / thief in reality in order to survive and get to quest required elements.

I think most of the points made in the article are pretty dead on. In my opinion, it is a little too kind overall. Or maybe way too kind. Maybe my expectations were high. I figured HP and DWB had to have gotten their act together after W&W. I was wrong. All in all, a good deal of promise, and good bit more dissapointment. Oh well, I still have my dosbox and my Wizardry 7…

This game sold over 1 million copies? How did that happen?

Probably budget and covermounts.

Although Mike´s article could be understood otherwise I think it´s not confirmed DWB´s company is involved in the next DL games.

Always thought he should have sticked to W&W - while not perfect the game was much better than Dungeon Lords. He should have improved on the first part really and do a second W&W.

Dungeon Lords was simply meh… don't know why, but I liked the artwork… but that's about it.

I really liked Wizards and Warriors..very Dungeon Master-esque..Dungeon Lords wasn't as good it has to be said.

Dungeon Lords is a very good dungeon crawler and I haven't played the CE version yet

Wizards and Warriors was ok but it was very poorly coded, it's almost impossible to get it to run properly on any OS later than Windows 98. I recently tried to get it to run on XP with a new nVidia card and finally gave up after wasting 6+ hours.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Wizards and Warriors was ok but it was very poorly coded, it's almost impossible to get it to run properly on any OS later than Windows 98.

Well, plenty of people play it on 2000 and XP so it's hardly "impossible". It has never taken me much effort. Or several Codexers who have been giving it a go recently.

I was going to recommend this thread for instructions on what to do:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/…ad.php?t=31762
…but I see you're already posting there.

That's interesting, because a couple of years back I tried to get W&W going in XP and couldn't. Did a google search and came up with nothing but complaints, so I assumed it couldn't be done.

…eh, but I don't have the motivation now.

Oh well, your Google-fu must suck ;-)

I first completed the game on XP about 5 years ago and have reinstalled it since. There are plenty of people that have never got it going (whether through giving up on it or their particular OS/hardware set-up), but I would hate for people to think from the get-go that it is "impossible" and never get the opportunity to try this… ummm… "flawed gem".

(Championing the Shit Games Liberation Front right to the end… :-))

Originally Posted by Shagnak_oopswotlogin
Well, plenty of people play it on 2000 and XP so it's hardly "impossible". It has never taken me much effort. Or several Codexers who have been giving it a go recently.

I was going to recommend this thread for instructions on what to do:
http://www.ironworksforum.com/forum/…ad.php?t=31762
…but I see you're already posting there.

I didn't say "impossible" so stop misquoting me, I said "almost", and it is.

I have tried every known trick on the net to get it to run on my system with no luck. You say you played in on XP about 5 years ago so that means you played it before any of the service packs had been added, that might be the reason you were able to run it. I have talked to others who have tried to run it on WinXP+ SP2 and I haven't found a single person yet who got it to work properly.

There was one person over at Ironworks that was experiencing the same issue I was who finally got it to work by using a program called QEMU, which actually emulates an entirely different system on your computer. I downloaded it and gave it a try but couldn't quite figure out how to run it. I finally decided it just wasn't worth going through all that.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You say you played in on XP about 5 years ago so that means you played it before any of the service packs had been added, that might be the reason you were able to run it.

Yeah, originally. But I have played it within the last couple of years and that is likely to be post - SP2 (SP2 was released mid 2004).
And, as stated before, there are people on the Codex who have been playing it recently and I can't imagine that their secret was to have a computer that they haven't updated for over 2 years.

Originally Posted by JDR13
There was one person over at Ironworks that was experiencing the same issue I was who finally got it to work by using a program called QEMU, which actually emulates an entirely different system on your computer. I downloaded it and gave it a try but couldn't quite figure out how to run it. I finally decided it just wasn't worth going through all that.

There are other easier to use alternatives than QEMU for emulating another OS. VMWare Server is free, as is VirtualBox and that MS one (VirtualPC?). No idea about W&W success - but I imagine that the virtual video cards in each case lack the 3D functionality required. I could be wrong.

Anyway, this bears more investigation…
I've been meaning to load it up yet again.

Apologies for the thread derailment txa!

Originally Posted by Shagnak_again
There are other easier to use alternatives than QEMU for emulating another OS. VMWare Server is free, as is VirtualBox and that MS one (VirtualPC?). No idea about W&W success - but I imagine that the virtual video cards in each case lack the 3D functionality required. I could be wrong.

Yes you can use those, but then it would run only in software rendering.

No worries about derailment! W&W is one I have meant to get playing again. I had it going on XP a couple of years ago, but I also think it was pretty 'funky' to get running. I assumed it was laptop support factors.

Interestingly, the cover of Dungeon Lords I see here is very different from the one I know from Germany.

Look here: http://www.amazon.de/dtp-Entertainme…0592972&sr=8-2

I often see similar differences … Neverend, for example. Totally different covers.