Ravenloft - Strahd's Possession
 

Feel free to discuss the game and give hints and tips here.

Download here (if available)

This game is great! Extremely atmospheric with a very eerie soundtrack. I bought the full version of the game a while back, played it all the way through and enjoyed it alot.

Not a great one for me
 

I got this game back in 1994? on a disc that also Al-Qadim and Darksun (first game) on it. I liked Darksun better. Darksun is bleak and hard, Al-Qadim is a real adventure, and Ravenloft is the serious of the bunch.

This game has definitely good sides, but it is something else. I could only ever stand it for a couple of hours.

I never liked the balance between your starting characters and the world they live in. From their portraits and character sheets they seem too polished, too goody-goody and clean cut. The world has nasty wolves and poison and vampires. They should be dirty and bloody and hurt, not packing fresh colors and sparkling scrolls.

Some of the NPCs you meet are acting way over the top. The choices for the dialogue doesn't help. All NPCs speak in this incredibly theatrical way, like "I am done for, it is clear for all to see... I yeild, I am at your mercy..." Enough with the goth acting already, I've had my fill for this life.

All the lady-NPCs have big boobs. Who doesn't like big boobs? I guess the graphics designer wasn't gettin' any, well, it completely destroyed the atmosphere when I met the lady-ninja with a shirt about to burst.

I never really got into the part about the "realm in between", hidden by the mist and so on... If you touch it, you're wounded? Some of my friends wanted to play pen and paper Ravenloft, but I always declined, having seen this.

Excellent release, Abandonia :OK:

@Unregistered the Heroes are not from Ravenloft, they are from the Material Realm. The Mists hurting you is not something used in the P&P version of the game though with some of the Dark Lords when they close the borders the Mists will change to something that might hurt you. Also in the P&P game the Player Characters are normally from the Realms in Ravenloft and don't even know about the Material Realms, though it is possible to play someone from the Material Realm you get a few disadvantages.

It is a pity you never tried out the P&P version because you would have found one of the best D&D modules out there with some of the best stories and atmosphere.

Review
 

The CD version does include additional NPC, dungeons and quests, making it a "bigger" game.

Most of the versions of Strahd's Possession are quite buggy (the one from the AD&D Masterpiece Collection is bug free, though), but the leaving of NPCs is not a bug, but a feature. The story requires the cleric and the fighter to leave the party after exiting the catacombs beneath the Ivlis.

BRAVO
 

I would like to THANK

both Hunvagy and DarthHelmet86 for their perfect work!!

:D

I played the game already, but many AB members now have the chance to meet and destroy bad Ravenloft..

I will wish You both big luck with next saga game -
Stone Prophet...

yoga
:smile2:

Yeah
 

Looks interesting, but the character portraits kinda suck. This is an RPG, so getting into the character is part of it right? Well playing a ranger without a decent portrait. Hmm Lets see, should I play the Human Ranger with the guy who looks like a barbarian? Or the one that looks like a swarthy hobbit or old wizard? I tried a human thief, but the only one that looked like the thief I wanted to role-play was an aged guy in a hood, who was obviously a wizard, but what the hell. But then I was stumped when rolling attributes, the character sheets only show human character ages from like 16-19 yrs old. That doesnt go with the character picture. So what I'm saying is that they should have put in more pictures to select from, but they seem to have this problem with alot of RPGs. I had this same gripe even when playing games like Baldurs Gate, though the limited pics are a bit more workable. With Ravenloft, I guess if you are playing a hobbit, dwarf or hobbit wizard you are good to go, baby

You can add your own portraits in Baldur's Gate 1 or 2 to select for characters, though. If you like any custom ones, I can send you few dozens of good ones (in my opinion).

wha
 

Thats cool that you can add pictures to Baldurs Gate. See, that's thinking about the players. Maybe I dont wanna play a hobbit pimp (you know the pic im talkin about), but the makers of Ravenloft thought otherwise I guess.
Its too bad though I stopped playing BG awhile back and gave it to someone else. Sometimes a small issue like bad player pics will stop me from playing a game, but with Baldurs Gate, I just plain didn't like the other adventurers in the party. LOL

Have you talked about that problem with your psychologist ? :wilco:

Ciao Caro.
 

This bastard Capo.:hihihi:

Ha ha ha

Patch
 

For those complaining about the bugs. I think the game is not patched. On this link you can find a 1.1 and 1.2 updates:
http://chtserv.dlh.net/cgi-bin/pat.c...ef=&sys=&cap=r

Thanks for those patches. The game was really weird unpatched, no companion would carry over to the next map (which is fun since some are essential to have) and when I tried to recruit a female mage by the burgomeister, it gave me this huge bearded guy that disappeared on me earlier. The patch was much needed.

Only thing I am curious about now is how much more there is in the CD version. Matching it against an LP, I found one npc so far (the paladin, or rather, the barred empty house).

Also, damn the image verification, weird smudge of colours that it is.

Well, Strahd's Possession is 4 years older than Baldur's Gate and I don't know of any RPG that was able to import character portraits back then in the DOS era. I guess it was simply not yet possible in 1994.

Not really... Quest for Glory series, Realms of Arkania series, Eye of the Beholder series, Ishar series, just to name a few... all support character import even before 1994.

Not character import, character picture import. Two different things there.

Well, you probably could manage that by hacking the game's resource files. Just saying.

BUG is not problem for brave.
 

:)
I finished the game even with the bug - No companion would carry over to the next map-.
Nice game, indeed!
I like it.

Ravenloft: CD Version Not Abandonware?
 

Hello all,

I do not have a full grasp of how the intellectual property situation works for abandonware when it comes to CDs, but why is the Strahd's Possession version here not the CD version? I owned the CD version years ago, but most anything I find online is a ripped copy anyway, so I'd rather get it here than pay for a ripped version on E-bay. I would imagine including an ISO would not be difficult, especially given DOS-box can read such images.

Just curious and trying to figure out how this all works -

Thanks,

Jack

We do have the CD version, it is in our ISO Cellar that only members can see on our forums. The reason it isn't on the main site is size, ISO images are large and we can only host games up to a certain size. We have recently had that increased and might be able to host some more ISOs on site but for now if you would like to play the cd version of the game you will need to sign up for the site, it is free and is just like signing up for any forum once you are you will be able to see the ISO Cellar and from there find the games ISO.

This one's only 102 MB. Perhaps we could replace the archive with it (if it can be gotten to work without being more hassle for the end users than the current archive is).

There are some differences between the CD and floppy version of the game. I would think we should have the ISO up as an extra perhaps instead of the main game...or the other way around. Either way a link to how to mount ISOs tutorial should be there as well.

Ravenloft ISO Extra Would be Great
 

Alright, I registered for the site - found the ISO cellar as well. It would be very kewl to get the ISO up on the main site, as I find navigating 3rd party sites like 4shared to be a relative pain, and AVG wags its fingers. Plus, freemium sites are a hassle for abandonware, as the size of the files is negligible for Strahd's Possession.

~Jack

By the by,

A walkthrough for noobs like myself on R00/RAR conversion to ISO (hopefully using open-source) would be useful as well, as I am a bit outmatched by the files found in the Strahd repository.

~Jack

*.rar and all the *.r00 files are part of the same archive, you will need
http://www.7-zip.org/
And yes, it's freeware.
Put all files in the same (temp) folder and hit the *.rar file.

There is no "conversion". The RAR contains the ISO inside it, R00 (and any further Rxx) files are simply subsequent parts of the archive. You can use WinRar or 7-Zip to decompress it.

Then I must be doing something wrong, as 7-zip informed me on the first go that there was an error - CRC did not compute, or some such. I cannot imagine why a checksum error would have occurred, so I could use some advice.

EDIT: Repeated process after making sure that all files were present. Received this error: CRC failed in 'RLOFT_V1_1.img.ecm' File is broken.

caveat: although I think I did it the first time, I believe I did not include a system information file this time. Should that be included?

EDIT 2: tested the rar-open with all files present in a folder except for cluebook and manual. Used both 7-zip and Peazip; encountered the same error.

EDIT 3: Ok, it works. I obviously was not thinking it through, as a failed CRC on a file should have prompted me to check for a corrupted download. Used 7-zip to complete download.

~Jack

Did you try it with WinRAR, as recommended by The Fifth Horseman in the post above you? I don't encounter any such problems with WinRAR, the files in the archive are good and can be decompressed without any errors.

4shared. Download might have been corrupted. Should indeed check with Winrar, that atleast tells which volume is broken, so you can download that again.

Most likely culprit is a truncated download. The first archive should be 50 000 000 bytes long. The second should be 48 460 147 bytes long.
There seem to be issues with downloading the second archive; several attempts from me ended up frozen or truncated.
No and no. That's mostly irrelevant to the issue at hand.
Only extract the RAR and ZIP files. NFO and SFV are not archives.

There are several possible explanations here - bad RAM (altough you'd probably experience random crashing in that case), failing hard drive (again, there are symptoms you'd notice) and faulty download. Try redownloading the files, perhaps using a different download tool (or browser, if you downloaded them through one).

Kewl, re-downloaded, CRC appears to check out (har har), 7-zip works out. So, as a newb, I must ask two questions:

1) How do I install the patches?

2) For the img.ecm, do I just use that as my .ISO for mounting on Dosbox, then? What do the other files do?

Noob thanks in advance,

~Jack

Depending on the game, there are two appproaches. One where the "patch" is actually a set of replacement files that need to be put in the same directory you installed the game to (obviously, you must confirm overwriting the originals). The other is something you're probably more used to - the patch is a separate program that needs to be ran in DOSBox and directed to the original files so that it can modify them.

Run UNECM.BAT and wait for it to finish - then you'll have a useable image. ECM extension indicates the image has been additionally compressed using that compression scheme.

RAR and R00 Files
 

Quick question: Do I need both the RAR and R00 archive for this game, or are they just both potential ways to extract the .ecm to get the ISO?

~Jack

My noobness continues - when I run ecm.bat, the command console flashes (I assume the .bat unecm command executing), but nothing happens. What error am I making?

EDIT: Never mind, After failing many times, I ran it again after posting, and it worked. Deep magic, man.

So, now I have a .img file. Do I use that as an .ISO, or do I convert it to a .ISO type?

~Jack

When you extracted the files, the program treated the RAR and R00 as one item. Picture this as a cargo load divided between two transport trucks and you've more or less got the idea.
As an ISO.

Ok. So that makes sense. Any suggestions for converting the .img to an .iso file? I am not certain of open-source software that can accomplish a pure virtual to virtual conversion.

EDIT: I used Imgburner after looking around on Sourceforge and CNET. Quickly did a build and converted. For whatever reason, IMGtoISO did not work with the rloft image.

Now, I am going to go to the tutorial forums (http://www.abandonia.com/vbullet/forumdisplay.php?f=90) and figure out how to mount this image. Keep getting the "The image must be on a host or local drive" message

EDIT2: I realized logically I had to mount a drive as "my drive" (virtual drive) for C. Now, its time for the meat: using the CD for strahd.

~Jack

Fascinating! Is there a wiki-link you know of on how that works? I am familiar with the basic math for RAID5 and whatnot for data backups, but I never thought about splitting file data into two archives for later reassembling, although its rather obvious in retrospect.

~Jack

You don't need to convert the .img file. It will work just like an ISO in any mounting program and dosbox's own mounting system will be able to use it.

Image - No Iso required?
 

Alright,

so do I then just run it as -fs fat format? I got the .iso to work, but not the .img. Obviously, It will not mount it as .iso in .img format. Also, on a related note, will games automatically read from a imgdrive mounted as D, or do I need to do anything to ensure that files of D can be referenced by the ravenloft application?

~Jack

How are you mounting the image? Are you using another program to mount it to a virtual drive? Or are you using Dosbox to mount the image itself?

Mounting
 

I am not using a frontend to mount the drive; I am just trying to mount the rloft file to the D drive as IMGMOUNT. Unfortunately, when I do so as an ISO, the files do not appear to be accessible, and it does not recognize the .img as its own directory right now. The iso itself, however, can be sort-of-mounted with IMGMOUNT D [INSERTDIRECT]\File.iso - t iso

This command is not useful, however, right now...

EDIT: I see now why the ISO file would not work - I did not convert the file, I just placed the file in an ISO wrapper - useless :)

Mounting the .img as disc would probably be a better solution since my .iso file is not really a .iso file.

~Jack

The easiest way to do this would be to use a program like Magicdisk or dameontools lite or some other similar program to mount the image file as a virtual drive. Once that is done you just need to mount that drive i.e. mount d g:\

Image Drive Mount
 

Alright, coolness, thanks! I used daemon tools lite. Magic disc is too much of an issue on Windows 7, it appears - or I just did not know how to use it right =)

I placed the IMG in a virtual drive, now it runs just fine, as I can mount it as a CD image.

That said, if it were not for the VERY EXTENSIVE and kind help, my nostalgia, my basic computer knowledge and the fact I have planned D&D and clones thereof for many years, I may not have been obsessed/willing enough to go forward. An ISO in the extras, along with instructions for setting up virtual drives or using virtual drive software is a must for the casual Abandonia user.

Thanks again to all. I will have to set up detailed thanks on this thread. For now, I must play the heroes... going off into the mist!!! Strahd awaits.

~Jack

No. FAT filesystem does not have anything to do with CDs.
Less than intuitively, -t iso covers ISO, BIN and IMG formats. If mounting the image is not working, a screenshot of the error message would be appreciated. According to DOSBox wiki, it also supports loading the images using the CUE sheets - if there's a CUE file together with the IMG, try mounting that instead. As a rule of thumb, you don't normally need to use the -fs switch.

Castle Ravenloft
 

Is anyone experiencing a bug in Castle Ravenloft?
The door that exits back onto the road inside the castle refuses to open.

Lets play youtube videos shows that the door automatically opens, but ive done my best to do this with no success.

About loading Strahd's Possession...
 

I just downloaded Strahd's Possession, and it went down fine. But, I am having problems loading the game - I tried running various files for the game, but I am getting error screens. Can anyone tell me which file to run to play? Any help is appreciated!

Are you using dosbox?

I have DosBox on my computer...
 

Yes, I have DosBox installed on my computer.

But did you start the game inside DOSBox?

Honestly, I am new to DosBox as well - how do I start the game in DosBox?

The easiest way is to create a shortcut to DosBox and put it in the game's folder. Then just drag and drop the game's executable onto the shortcut. It should run just fine :)

Problem loading this game...
 

I downloaded this game a few weeks ago, but today is my first chance to actually try and play it. I am able to boot the game, but the game window is small, and there is no sound. Can someone help me?