The Ambermoon Thread

KasperFauerby said:

I'll definitely look around for some more info about Ambermoon. I've heard the name beforce, of course, but I never connected it to Albion.

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Some useful links:

1. The excellent Thalion Webshrine will get you started with a step-by-step introduction to both Amberstar and Ambermoon. There are screenshots, maps and rune charts (both important) as well as downloads of the games and manuals in various formats (PC/Amiga/Atari ST for Amberstar, Amiga for Ambermoon).

2. Marian from Larian Studios cleaned up the Ambermoon map for me once. The original scan from the shrine has some bad folding marks. Note that strictly speaking, looking at the map is a spoiler (although it looks sooo nice!) — you'll be able to purchase a map in-game at some point, after which you may use the actual map from the game box. Before that you had to explore everything yourself. I found that very charming … ah, they don't make them like this anymore.

3. There's a short gameplay video on youtube that should give you an idea of what you'd be getting into. Combat is turnbased on sort of a grid, viewpoint in houses and on the world map is top-down, dungeon and town exploration is in first person mode.


Depending on how dedicated you are in your venture, you could also play Amberstar first — it is the first part after all, and since there is a PC version getting it to run should be easier (DOSBox, I assume). It didn't look quite as good as its sequel, which was a bit of a turnoff for me (I played those games in reversed order).

Arhu said:

Depending on how dedicated you are in your venture, you could also play Amberstar first — it is the first part after all, and since there is a PC version getting it to run should be easier (DOSBox, I assume). It didn't look quite as good as its sequel, which was a bit of a turnoff for me (I played those games in reversed order).

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You sure make a case for Ambermoon! Sounds like you've really enjoyed those two games! When you mentioned Ambermoon in your first post I did some searching on the all-knowing Wiki, and it actually directed me to that "shrine" site you gave a link to. I'll admit I kinda disqualified it then for two reasons. First its an amiga game, so it would need an emulator, and secondly - the english version was never officially released. So that seems like a lot of things that can go wrong during a play through! I would hate to actually get hooked on the game and then be unable to finish it Did you actually play through the english version yourself when you played it? Anyways, I actually set up WinUAE to run the game - and well, it seems like it work. Couldn't figure out how to save the game though

KasperFauerby said:

You sure make a case for Ambermoon! Sounds like you've really enjoyed those two games! (..) Couldn't figure out how to save the game though

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You can do lots of things with the right mouse button. What you want to do is right-click somewhere on the right side where the hour glass button and all the arrows are. That should switch the icons to a disk, options, etc. You can also use one of the mouse buttons in the 3D screen to change the mouse pointer to "inspect mode" which you use to read signs etc., left mouse button in the 3D screen to move around more comfortably, I believe.

Ambermoon may well be the first CRPG I ever played and it blew me away, I guess others here have similar experiences with other RPGs. Nostalgia aside, it was still a special game and had a lot to offer that I haven't seen in that form in an RPG since, like the travel system. World exploration is done in a similar manner to Zelda: at first you are quite limited in where you can go because of natural obstacles. Then you get new vehicles that you can use to traverse these obstacles and reach new places. First you get a horse for faster travel, then a small raft to reach the next isle, and then … don't want to spoil too much.

I played the game on an Amiga 500 when it came out (about 10 disks … lots of swapping, especially with music enabled, but I couldn't bring myself to turn it off), Amberstar a few years later when I had a PC, didn't know it even existed back then, until the full game appeared on a CD in a games magazine.

I think I briefly tried the English version once. Should be fully playable, although the shrine linked to an !! Important Notice for English Users !! that you should read. Most of the bugs listed seem to have been fixed though.

Gotta say, I'm liking ambermoon...took me a day to get it going in that awful emulator....but yeah liking it so far. Have to start over though, forgot to save

rune_74 said:

Gotta say, I'm liking ambermoon…took me a day to get it going in that awful emulator….but yeah liking it so far. Have to start over though, forgot to save

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Oo, glad to hear it. Did you install it on a virtual HD? If not, drop me a line and I'll try to help you do that. Even with easy disk swapping and multiple drives it's really not a good way to play (one disk had the music, another one was used for saves). Also make sure you have ceiling and floor textures enabled, I think they are off by default. They need more than 1MB of RAM. Fast-RAM or what's it called? I had to play without them on my old Amiga 500.. the last time I played it in WinUAE I used an Amiga 1200, IIRC, but I'm not sure.

No it took all day because I was trying to get the hardrive to work, good to go...not sure I like the 3d controls but combat was fun...like the inventory.

I have played amberstar before....

Is there a complete list of spells for the game...the only one I got has only healing spells....

rune_74 said:

Is there a complete list of spells for the game…the only one I got has only healing spells….

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Hm, the page on the Thalion Shrine seems to be broken. Here's a version I downloaded in 2003: Ambermoon Spell List

Cool thanks....I learned a spell called blink...and its not even on there...any idea what it does?

Whew .. no idea. Just try it out and tell me, I'm curious. Where can you use it? IIRC, some spells can only be used on the resting screen, others on the map, some in combat etc.

Hm, maybe teleporting a (friendly?) target to another cell during combat?

Thats exactly what it is....game is cool I got my first companion in the first town...

rune_74 said:

Thats exactly what it is…

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Whoa, really?! There is hope for me yet! It's been ages since I played it.

The good news is a spent a awhile getting the sound to work nice and using different display settings to get it almost full screen and clear.

Would you mind putting your settings on paper so that others can profit from your patience? I'm almost tempted to start playing it myself, but Wiz8 is first and I've got other stuff to do before that.

Sure...will have to do it a bit later....how long is the game in total? it seems pretty big...no journal though

rune_74 said:

The good news is a spent a awhile getting the sound to work nice and using different display settings to get it almost full screen and clear.

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The way I set it up was like this: I created a virtual harddrive and installed the game to it. I then boot up Workbench in the emulator, and can then start the game from there. Did you find an easier way to run the game from hd in the emulator? It does take a little while to first start up Workbench..

Oh, and I believe you can save your settings in WinUAE to a file. Maybe you could simply do than and maybe post it?

rune_74 said:

Sure…will have to do it a bit later….how long is the game in total? it seems pretty big…no journal though

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If you have only just gotten Egil, there is still much to look forward to, yes. And yeah, I think you'll have to use a pen and a paper to make some basic notes. You won't need to draw maps or anything, but in case you tend to forget what your next objectives are, it might help. The path is clear enough in the beginning, but the world opens up a lot once you can travel to more places.

KasperFauerby said:

It does take a little while to first start up Workbench..

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I read about a key combination you can press to have the emulator run on a faster speed temporarily. end+pause/break. This is also useful to speed up combat in the game in case you find the animations too slow. Apparently it's also possible to increase the reading speed of floppies, although that doesn't seem to apply here.

Should I create a new Ambermoon thread and move these postings over there or are you still testing the waters?

Arhu said:

Should I create a new Ambermoon thread and move these postings over there or are you still testing the waters?

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By all means, go ahead

It sounds like you managed to get rune hooked on the game at least, and I'm definitely also still considering it! I'll stick to my current plan about playing Albion first though - as I wrote earlier I managed to find a mint copy of it, which is on its way to me! But, depending on how that goes, I might give Ambermoon a try afterwards - especially since rune appears to be willing to test it out "for me" a bit first

If you make a dedicated Ambermoon thead then I'll surely follow it!

Yes a dedicated thread would be great

The game is addictive...I hate zombies in it though...and breaking weapons and no blacksmith in the first town.

I didn't use work bench, you don't need to...just load up winuae with no disk installed and it will boot in amiga dos...then type
<name of hardrive>:
<name of directory you installed to>
ambermoon

so for me

amber:
ambermoon
ambermoon

then its running.

I'm running the game at (I will list only the changes I made)
CPU FPU
68040
Match a500 speed

Ram
memory settings 2 mb chup and 8 mb fast
z3 fasr at 128mb

display
fullscreen 1024 by 768
blacker then black
remove interlace artifacts

filter

Direct3d
auto scaling

I'm having a killer time trying to find the bandits house....is it in the city?