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[humorguy]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Aug 18 2007, 12:41 AM) [snapback]305199[/snapback]</div>

Thanks for the pics info. I had the 4 pic in the main directory! Anyway, this is the greatest RPG, how could the score be 4 - it should be a 6! And as for 3.3 for the user score, well, anything great get's knocked down by idiots, we all know that! This is the only game I would take, if told I could only have one PC game to play for the next year. So quite simply I know therefore that this is my favourite game of all time!

I will repeat here for those that also don't read previous messages that I have uploaded the cluebook to www.replacementdocs.com for those that need help or want to get even deeper into the Darklands interesting mythos!!!!

As a P.S. I will also say that in this game if you don't take on the missions quickly enough the world can change. Let's say you take on a quest to kill a dragon in a certain area, and separately you take on another quest that entails travelling to a town within that same area. Well, if you take your time killing the dragon, it will burn down more villages, and so the greater chance that on visiting that village you will not be able to do that quest as all you will find is a smoking ruin! Now how cool is that - that;s what I call a 'living world' that so few, if any games can muster today! And oh, by the way, come back to that area in 20 years and there may be a new village standing where you can get a new quest!
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I agree totally! This is the greatest RPG and the score should have been 5 not 4! Also, I now have version 7 and you can save outside of inns, etc now, I believe. I am not 100% sure because I always role-play which means saving at an inn while my party 'sleep'! If this game could just be re-done with Baldur's Gate or Planescape Torment graphics it would be brilliant, it wouldn't need to be turned into an Oblivion or anything!

Thanks so much Abandonia for making this games available for people to see how great they are! I have an original copy, but nonetheless am grateful you exist - thank you, and keep up the good work!

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Aug 18 2007, 12:41 AM) [snapback]305199[/snapback]</div>

I will repeat here for those that also don't read previous messages that I have uploaded the cluebook to www.replacementdocs.com for those that need help or want to get even deeper into the Darklands interesting mythos!!!!
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I tried to download the cluebook from www.replacementdocs.com but I keep getting a 404 file not found error. Has the file been removed?

[humorguy]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Sep 3 2007, 05:11 AM) [snapback]308463[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Aug 18 2007, 12:41 AM) [snapback]305199[/snapback]

I will repeat here for those that also don't read previous messages that I have uploaded the cluebook to www.replacementdocs.com for those that need help or want to get even deeper into the Darklands interesting mythos!!!!
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I tried to download the cluebook from www.replacementdocs.com but I keep getting a 404 file not found error. Has the file been removed?
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There is a problem with Planet Mirror. It is not a replacementdocs.com problem. This Planet Mirror problem has existed for a couple weeks now, so I don't know what's going on. I would just check back to the replacementdocs homepage every now and then and read the news section or the message thread on the right hand side.

Someone here claimed that the copy protection would disappear after correctly answering one or two times. In my game that is not the case... The protection shows up after each wilderness encounter (including town departure). Even after twelve events it does still show up. Any idea what I´m doing wrong?

Also, could anyone explain to me what Intelligence is used for? The Manual does not explain this in detail. It just says Intelligence is needed to deal with Intellectuals... which I found not to be very helpful. Does it also increase your chances to create potions or something?

[humorguy]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Guest @ Sep 4 2007, 05:15 PM) [snapback]308811[/snapback]</div>

Someone here claimed that the copy protection would disappear after correctly answering one or two times. In my game that is not the case... The protection shows up after each wilderness encounter (including town departure). Even after twelve events it does still show up. Any idea what I´m doing wrong?

Also, could anyone explain to me what Intelligence is used for? The Manual does not explain this in detail. It just says Intelligence is needed to deal with Intellectuals... which I found not to be very helpful. Does it also increase your chances to create potions or something?
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I would say intelligence is what helps charisma, and helps learn Latin to talk to people, so I think the number one advantage of intelligence it being able to communicate better.

[Japo]

In Darkland's game system chance percentages are often obtained adding attributes and skills. So, I think I recall, both Latin and Intelligente would add when talking to intellectuals in the universities, and both Alchemy and Intelligence would add when creating a potion, etc. Charisma is for communicating better with everybody, Intelligence is for performing intellectual tasks which include communicating with intellectuals. So maybe both Charisma and Intelligence (and possibly other attributes and skills) add when talking to an intellectual, but only Charisma does when talking to other person; on the other hand it's more difficult to establish successful communication with an intellectual so you get an additional attribute to add to your chance percentage.

The game manual doesn't tell you about the innards of the game system but it provides some hints.

[font=Garamond]<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Hans85 @ Jul 6 2007, 08:05 PM) [snapback]298214[/snapback]</div>

I cant seem to swallow potions no matter what I do they dont work... I played Darklands on my old 486 when it originally came out and remember beating it then... However I think I did it without consuming essence'o grace and other healing p.. Help anyone?
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Here is a list of keyboard and mouse controls that might be of help to you.

F1 - F4 : Opens character screen
+ or - : Increase or decrease attribute (character generation)
ALT X : Quit darklands (if this doesn't work try ALT Q)
P : Drink or use potion
D : Drop item permanently
SHIFT + mouse : Scrolls combat screen
Spacebar : Pause movement
Right click and hold at the top of the darklands screen will reveal the menu bar.

k:

Hi there,
probably the thread is not that dead...
Anyhow, reading it all - esp. Borodin's deep insight into the several issues around Darklands -, having it one of my decisive favourite, interested in the possibilities in open-ended RPG's storyline and aesthetic/dramatic possibilities (I believe this gender has the greatest potential), and the interest and remembrance to this ancient game, I have the impression that this game would find its gamers.

This question is addressed to those having more insight in game industry and development:

What about the idea of putting the concept into the Open Source Community for dev? I think it is not necessary to point to some of the great Moddings (One very impressing is the Morrowind - Tamriel Rebuild project)
Personally I use Linux where this kind of collaborative work has its long tradition (there are some nice games there too, incl.strategic, and promising projects).
I think the scope of this game, its dense background would much meet a modest (but good!) graphical world. I believe that dropping an announcement at different Open Source projects would recruit a crew to start work on it.

I feel that with such background (I can recall the very detailed, excellent manual on Medieval stuff !!), the atmospheric world it does deserve revival.

[humorguy]

sinDOHR, an update has been attempted a couple times, but to no avail, seems there is code that is hard to get at without conversion software and such. ou would be much better off going to the Darklands thread at Yahoo - when you consider in the last 7 days the Yahoo thread has had 40 new messages and 2 new members it show you that there is still plenty of life in this game beyond this Abandonia thread!!!, which has been going from day one and has some pretty experienced people. I know one guy on there is just finishing a world editor to enable many changes in the game through editing the save file. He has produced lua scripts to make the editing easy and I believe is going further to allow editing via notepad with text files. Anyway, if you want to check it out, along with some of the incredible technical messages that get put up both gameplay wise and program wise!) then go to:

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/darklands/

Good luck! I have no programming skills, I am more at the marketing end, and from that viewpoint there is no doubt in my mind that Darklands would be a massive commercial hit if it was just done in the Baldur's Gate engine, never mind the Oblivion or Source engine and such!

Thanx a lot for this info.

I hit this forum by accident during a spare 5 minute surfing and I did not know about the yahoo-group. Regarding dev: I think the platform (old MS) is very deprecated - not to mention the occasional backward compatibility problems of MS products.
That is why I think a rewriting should be targeted.
Commercially I think Open Source way is not that successful (being not really commercial), but concerning developing it is often progressive. And it wold worth checking out some GPL-ed engine.
Anyhow, I do not think that a very modern engine is required.
I recall Heroes of Might and Magic: III is more modest than the later ones, but the later ones are less impressive, playable for me.

Baldur's Gate - Was it a Troika game?