Ambermoon Remake - New Version

The Ambermoon Remake project is making progress:

Ambermoon - Open source remake of a fantastic CRPG gets the best version so far! (Amiga/Linux/Mac/Pi4/Windows)

As we said before in November of last year….Originally released in 1993 for the Amiga by Thalion Software, Ambermoon was the second part of an unfinished trilogy and sequel to Amberstar that was only released in Germany. In was an incredible RPG for its time, and featured 3D graphics that were considered revolutionary for the Amiga, but sadly for the company it couldn't save them from collapse.

Although we did get to play the English version as the last beta release by a1exh which was previously available through the Thalion Webshrine and as an easily playable HD package for your Amiga. Today's news is something special indeed for fans of this great Dungeon Crawling/CRPG. As thanks to Alexh letting us know once more through the EAB forums. He has said that if you head on over to the github website linked below, you can try out the latest and best version of an open-source remake of Ambermoon so far; an open source version of that classic game which aims to bring this awesome Amiga RPG to many other platforms including Linux, Mac, Pi4 and Windows.

Do note however even though the game is still in a development stage by Pyrdacor, and many people such as Metallic, Hexaae, Maynef who have been diagnosing and fixing bugs in the Amiga version. What Alexh has said is "The latest test release of Ambermoon.net is out and OMG it is pretty close to the original while improving the 3D areas considerably. The amount of work that went into the native Sonic-Arranger music player is mind boggling. Not to mention 10's of new bug fixes in the original datasets (English and German)". So there you have it, certainly sounds like a great release for Friday and well worth downloading.

Update: Alexh "The patched datafiles that Ambermoon.net uses are backwards compatible with the Amiga versions (German & English). So if you want to play Ambermoon on your Amiga then you will be able to benefit from the endless hours of work that went into fixing these files for Ambermoon.net"

More information.

Wow. I've only played the original version when it first released, so I'll certainly be checking this out when it releases. If it comes out this year, it has a good chance of ranking high in my games of the year!!

Nice!

Amiga was awesome back in the day but do you think it's still playable? I'm all for oldschool gameplay and difficulty but I do need a few modern conveniences like auto-mapping to be bothered.

I was trying to play Grimoire again, the other day, but it's just really little things that annoy me too much to bother. I need faster combat speed with the spell animations and the non-stop sound effects are extremely annoying!

Some of those games you just need to break down and drag out the graph paper, or you'll be frustrated half the time, if not more. And I hear you big time about annoying audio, which is why I usually have games muted when I play, with the stereo thumping instead. Faith No More was my go-to for Grimoire, btw.

Originally Posted by SirJames
Amiga was awesome back in the day but do you think it's still playable? I'm all for oldschool gameplay and difficulty but I do need a few modern conveniences like auto-mapping to be bothered.

The game had pretty convenient auto-mapping to begin with, including quick-travel to important previously visited locations within a dungeon or town. Should be fairly playable. However, the remake guys have planned some additional UI additions and conveniences after 1.0, so it might be better to wait for that depending on ones tolerance for old game interfaces.

I don't mind waiting. Still haven't touched BG3!!

Looking at that indie retro news site, it's crazy there's still people releasing games for Amiga. I thought I held out a long time and I was pretty much sold on PC by the time Mechwarrior 2 came out.

Yuppers, I'm another bloke that doesn't mind waiting for a superior product. Take the time, get it right, make some people that remember the game vocal about it, and you might get a swarm of new customers!

Download, unzip, double click and it runs … this calls for extended test drive soon.

So, is Amberstar still playable and easy to run on Win10?

Originally Posted by crpgnut
So, is Amberstar still playable and easy to run on Win10?

You'd probably be better off running the Amiga version in an emulator.

Originally Posted by JDR13
You'd probably be better off running the Amiga version in an emulator.

Noooooooooooooo. That's Impossible!!!!!!!!!!! 'nut chanelling Skywalker I'm too lazy to do this probably, but believe it or not, I think I have the floppy disk version of Amberstar. Now all I need is a floppy disk drive. A motherboard that still supports a floppy controller and…..okay nevermind.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Noooooooooooooo. That's Impossible!!!!!!!!!!! 'nut chanelling Skywalker I'm too lazy to do this probably, but believe it or not, I think I have the floppy disk version of Amberstar. Now all I need is a floppy disk drive. A motherboard that still supports a floppy controller and…..okay nevermind.

Heh heh.. I've never ran an Amiga emulator, but if it's anything like most console emulators, you can probably get it up and running in a matter of minutes.

I have played this on an amiga emulator…if I recall it was not hard to use.

Also played it on WinUAE emulator. I remember it needed WHDLoad.key software to allow running the games from HDD. At that time I had to register online and pay for it, but it seems its free now. Not sure how it works now in detail, but I guess it shouldnt be big problem to find out.

I really loved my Amiga in early 90's….so much fun.

Ambermoon.NET 1.0 has been released.

Github project: https://github.com/pyrdacor/ambermoon.net
Main developer page with downloads: https://www.pyrdacor.net/

Pyrdacor also wrote about his future plans:

Originally Posted by Pyrdacor
So this is the agenda:

• Ambermoon Advanced (Amiga and PC)
• Additional features only for Ambermoon.net (contains Ambermoon Advanced stuff as well)
• Third part of the trilogy

Great. Now I have my Baldur's Gate playthrough, the upcoming Pathfinder: WotR and this to compete for my September time.