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Prelude to Darkness is a pretty damn awesome RPG

Lord_Potato

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I've been playing this for most of the week and I am really impressed.

Sure, the game's buggy as fuck, with regular freezes and ctds, that can be however mitigated by frequent autosaving. The visuals will not impress anyone, they were already dated when Prelude was released. There are places, where the game seems simply unfinished. Characters with almost no dialogue, buildings that noone occupies, even though they look like someone lives there.

But underneath all the problems, there is a hidden gem. Starting with character creation that will immediatly charm any true RPG fan. You create a party of 3 characters, with 3 more slots open for recruitment of NPCs you meet along your journeys. The options are numerous: you choose bloodlines (PtD version of races), backgrounds, base stats, skills. A classless system allows you to shape your heroes any way you wish. Then there is the first town, or rather a village you visit, Kellen. It's a small place, but filled to the brim with content: quests (some of them really complex and with many ways of approaching them), interesting characters, secrets to uncover.

Once you're done with Kellen - and you better spend some time there, gathering much needed experience and developping your skills - the whole Valley becomes open to exploration. That is, if you don't get killed in some random encounter. Prelude does not fuck around and will not hesitate to murder you at first chance you give it. So, keep your swords sharp and your wits sharper - for the enemies can be tough and the villains' plots even tougher to unravel.

Prelude to Darkness offers a good progression system, an intriguing world, and a dark plot with lots of opportunities for backstabbing, doublecrossing and switching sides (which you might want to take, because you too will often be backstabbed, doublecrossed and simply betrayed). It does not however offer AAA production values or even a slightest bit of polish. It is certainly a gem, but a rough one.

I still have a lot of game before me (hope my playthrough does not die because of some gamebreaking bug) but I can already recognize greatness when I see it. And Prelude is a truelly amazing RPG, which obviously came through development hell and was unable to fully realize its potential and receive recognition it actually deserves. Today however, we can do it justice. I think every fan of the genre should at least give it an honest try - after all, it's freeware now, so you risk nothing. Just go an play it! Here's the download link.
 

Ninjerk

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As I recall, there was some kerfluffle here over source code (if anyone is interested in Codex lore).
 

Modron

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As I recall, there was some kerfluffle here over source code (if anyone is interested in Codex lore).

They were supposed to release it, but never did, right?

A pity, this game could use some fan love and fan patches (beyond things possible by editing the text files).
A developer said he would post the source code after he got home from his vacation around 14 or 15 years ago he must have been saving up vacation days for a while.
 

Black Angel

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Jun 23, 2016
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Location
Wonderland
Anyone got access to v1.7? It seems 1.8 is rather unstable, and knowing I got an ancient piece of laptop that can't handle a lot of games properly, I'd like to get an access to 1.7
 

Modron

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May 5, 2012
Messages
9,934
I wish there was a greater repository of versions of PtD out there, I remember something like version 1.41 played best with my windows XP pc back then and that stability varied from version to version and system to system.
 

AdolfSatan

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Dec 27, 2017
Messages
1,871
Hell yeah! PtD is one of my favourite rpgs ever.

Anyone got access to v1.7? It seems 1.8 is rather unstable, and knowing I got an ancient piece of laptop that can't handle a lot of games properly, I'd like to get an access to 1.7
Dunno where that idea came from, I had a better experience with 1.8
But I digress. My internet's moving at a glacial pace lately, but I'm trying to upload it.

EDIT: here it is. Posted it also on the sticky
https://www.dropbox.com/s/nfrpzi7zz96o536/PreludeInstall1.7.exe?dl=0
 
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Darth Canoli

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Tried it years ago but it just kept crashing. Really obnoxious experience.

Just tried it and surprise ... Got a crash in the first village, right clicking a bit too much while examining weapons (to get their stats, they're not displayed otherwise).

I remember trying to play it years back but had two crashes in a row during the intro fight and didn't push the experience any further.
This time, it didn't happen.

First impressions :
The character creation is great, different background and classes + stats and skill points to distribute.

The visuals are one thing (it's ugly but playable, no flashy colors so it's alright) but the UI is so so, not terrible but not good either.
Picking-up items feels like asking a Parkinson's to play mikado.
Slugish walking pace ...
Also, during the intro fight, my hunter couldn't fire a fucking arrow, giving me a "no ammunition" message but there were ammos in the ammunition slot ...

Talked a bit with the NPC and then the crash while browsing the weapon shop ...

In spite of the flaws i just mentioned, i'll give it another shot, or two, it might be alright if i save often.

Lord_Potato Any more infos on your current playthrough ?
 
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Darth Canoli

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I managed to complete the quest. You can prevent the crash from happening if you zoom ALL the way in and keep the camera at as high an angle as possible. Got some great stuff from the area too, and my thaumaturge can now use golem.

I knew i wanted a Thaumaturge, i started to roll one but couldn't get the offensive magic skill (needed 2 free skill points) so i rolled a disciple instead, now i'll have to roll a new party with a Thaumaturge ...

Edit : Did just that and guess what, in the starting inn, after talking with everyone, i was scrolling while hitting escape to save and the game froze ...

Should i launch it in Windows 3.1 compatibility mode or something ?
 
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Lord_Potato

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Free City of Warsaw
Lord_Potato Any more infos on your current playthrough ?

Actually, it's going pretty fine. Didn't have much time to play lately, so I'm about 10 hours in. Explored Kellen, Land's End, the Academy and the surrounding areas. Solved most of the quests, except for the most obscure ones there. When all my main quests stated leading me North, in the direction of the first big city, I decided to explore a bit and left the road for the wilderness. I saw High Lake in the upper left corner of the map and decided to get there and look around. After navigating the hills and searching for passes for the last two hours, finally I decided to come back to the main NS road and move ahead with the plot. If was not wasted however. Fighting random encounters I managed to level up numerous skills of my party and I also added a new member, found in the middle of nowhere.

I like the quest structure of the game. Quests are often strongly integrated into the world. For example, in the Academy my spellcaster could learn the art of thaumaturgy. It wasn't however as simple as buying spells with gold. No, every spell (and several skillpoints trained) was a reward for a quest. I had to search for reagents, sometimes solve a mystery, sometimes fight. Once I had to bring back a memory of an amnesiac student (a result of a spell gone wrong). It turned into an investigation of leads and excercise in applying different kinds of stimuli to achieve the desired effect.

As for the technical issues... I am honestly surprised PtD runs so smoothly on a reasonably modern device - a 2011 laptop with Windows 10. I was expecting more troubles from a game that was made with older systems in mind and never updated. I am experiencing quite rare freezes that force me to reset the computer (maybe once every 3-4 hours), much more frequent ctds (fortunately autosave set to every minute helps). The game almost never ctds during combat, and even when it does - it happens during beginning of the fight before any moves are made, so no progress is lost. Caves and caverns cause more ctds, but still its bearable. Ofcourse it might change in the future. I might come upon some script bugs that will break quests or maybe even the main quest. But so far I'm moving ahead and having fun. So let's hope for the best! I'll report back when I have at least 20 hours under my belt.
 

Darth Canoli

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Thanks for the feedback, i'm trying on windows 7 compatibility mode + some exceptions for my anti-virus, let's see how it goes.

Guardian + Druid + Thaumaturge party, i really like the background + skill system, reminds me of The Dark Eye system.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I really, really enjoyed the little I played of this game a couple years ago before I gave up due to freezes that would make me unable to close the game (managed to open task manager in Win 7 but did not manage to switch from the game window to the task manager window as the active window, leading me to be stuck in an unresponsive game window, with the only way out being a hard PC reset... and that quickly kills your motivation to continue).

It had cool role-playing ideas, lots of detail where it matters, great quest design, good character development, and the atmosphere is amazing. I find the graphics beautiful, actually - yes, it's early 3D but I like the look of it, and there's something very atmospheric about the blocky 3D visuals and rough textures.



10/10 atmosphere, man.

Funnily enough PtD was the initial inspiration for what has now become a 50+ page design document of mine. Mostly due to the atmosphere, usually overlooked skills like music playing a role in some quests, and little details like how when you visit the hairdresser with a female character and ask to get your head shaved the hairdresser will be shocked and ask if you're sure, while with a male character she just goes ahead. It's rare that cosmetic elements like that get acknowledged by NPCs.

This could be a true classic if it didn't crash every 5 minutes.
 

Darth Canoli

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Well, i added two antivirus exceptions for the exe and the whole directory and it seems to work better (launches faster, no crash this time), also playing in windows 7 compatibility mode but i'm not sure it's the right version of windows (might have been developped for windows xp).

Also increased time between autosaves to 60 minutes, just in case, i'll just have to think about saving often manually.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
This could be a true classic if it didn't crash every 5 minutes.

Do you happen to recall which version you were playing with?

I tried both 1.8 and 1.7, and my statement of "crash every 5 minutes" was hyperbole.

It ran stable enough, but when crashes happened they were so annoying (freeze that got me stuck in the game window with no way to close it, forcing hard reboots) I stopped playing at some point.

There are also areas where you have to be careful with your camera angle if you don't want the game to crap itself, etc. No matter which version you play, the game has issues and for the majority of players these issues make it unplayable. Rough gems often become classics, but not when the roughness is of a gamebreaking nature.
 

TigerKnee

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You create a party of 3 characters, with 3 more slots open for recruitment of NPCs you meet along your journeys.
I really wish more RPGs would do this - it's normally full party creation or the sadly more common Biowarian "1 PC and the rest precreated"
 

Darth Canoli

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I tried both 1.8 and 1.7, and my statement of "crash every 5 minutes" was hyperbole.

It ran stable enough, but when crashes happened they were so annoying (freeze that got me stuck in the game window with no way to close it, forcing hard reboots) I stopped playing at some point.

There are also areas where you have to be careful with your camera angle if you don't want the game to crap itself, etc. No matter which version you play, the game has issues and for the majority of players these issues make it unplayable. Rough gems often become classics, but not when the roughness is of a gamebreaking nature.

I played a bit more, you get random encounters JRPG style; as in invisible enemy groups ambushing you; also, i didn't create a combat focused trio, the thaumaturge is a "decent" archer but the druid is useless and the guardian, is apparently the main character so when he dies, it's game over and as he's the tank ...
Of course, enemies are tough, groups of 4-6 enemies against your early party of 3 and they're all have combat oriented builds with a lot of HP.

I'm sure a PnP version of their game would be great but this is hard to love.
 

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