Albion and Dark Sun questions

Thinking about playing either Albion or Dark Sun: Shattered Lands next, or maybe both, but neither of these games is on gog.com (yet anyway), so what's the best way to go about playing them? I think both are available on abandonia.com, so should I just grab them there and download DOSBox separately, or are there better ways? Also, any good mods/utilities for them?

 

Can't say anything about Dark Sun, as I haven't played that game.

Albion is one of my favorite of all games of all time though, so I can certainly recommend it.

It works well with DosBox 0.7, but there is also a windows/linux port, which allows higher resolutions, better graphics in the 3D sections and better performance.
You can get the windows version here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByS3DU4n3Ke0Z0IydlpKdk11aFE/view?pli=1
Make sure to click the dwonload button on the bar at the top
Or the Linux version here:
http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=albion_sr

edit: Here's a video of the port to give oyu an impression
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNJ5G1uO-xw&feature=youtu.be


Additionally, if you speak german, I recommend the german version, as that's the original language.

Apart from that, there no mods or utilities I'm aware of.

 

Both games are great IMO, but I prefer DS a bit more. I always thought of DS as the precursor to the isometric rpgs that followed in the late 90s / early 00s. DOSBOX is the way to play them both on a new machine. GOG also uses Dosbox but it's ready to autorun the game. If you go the abandonware route you'll have to set it up yourself, but it's p.easy.

 

The last time I tried to get Dark Sun to run smooth with DosBox I had to fiddle a bit, though the second part is far worse to get to run smoothly.

 

Dark Sun (1) works alright with DosBox (finished it twice). I think you won't be able to see 1 or 2 messages which display on the screen too quickly. I didn't miss them.

Remember to download the manual! There's a copy protection question after the first dungeon.

Mutliclass -- there's a low level cap.

Use psionics.


Oh boy, DS is so good...

 

This was awesome, thank you.

Now to git gud.

 

Dark Sun has a few bugs that can potentially end your game. Always, always keep every message, journal entry, loose page, scroll, document, whatever in a bag in your inventory. Towards the end of the game there is a huge bug that prevents an important event from happening if you've dropped a plot critical scroll on the ground.

 

Totally agree. It's an amazing piece of history -- presaging much of what would come in Infinity Engine / Fallout, and doing some stuff tremendously well. The flexibility in how to beat the first couple areas (which, as is sadly typical, does not entirely hold up) is great. The combat is fun. Some of the powergaming stuff is very satisfying. Art is great. Setting is sufficiently different from standard high fantasy. Albion has good stuff going for it, but it never held me the way DS did/does.

 

I can perfectly imagine how whiny people would be if a game like Shattered Lands was released today. It would be torn apart for the bugs (and Wake of the Ravager even more so). It's sad that these guys didn't eventually get to start the Baldur's Gate era of late-90s CRPGs.

I mean, Shattered Lands has:

• Fallout-style maps
• Turn-based combat like the Gold Box games
• Exploration just like in Baldur's Gate (you go from one map to an adjacent one, and so on)
• Dialogue trees and different paths to your goals
• Completely original game world (sadly music and art does not do it great justice)

In other words, OMG ITZ HEAVAN.

Also, don't include any half-giants in your party, that would be considered cheating. Shattered Lands is a game which won't stop you from cheesing at character creation, remember that.

 

Play Dark Sun. As far as party based and turn based games go there are few more fun than that one. It's definitely underrated.

 

And don't forget to duplicate the fucking sword!

 

When I tried Albion it crashed alot for some reason, which made the game even worse for me.

 

Ok, I grabbed them both from abandoned software sites, as well as DOSBox and that Windows port thing lorn linked. Thanks. I got some other stuff I'm playing through now, but hopefully can get to them soon.

Are those DOSBox front-ends just cosmetic or do they help with other stuff? The DOSBox site has a ton of them. I usually play older games with Gog's DOSBox included, and I think it doesn't have any front-end, though not certain.

By the way, the Albion download was 36 Mbs and Dark Sun was 22 Mbs. Pretty crazy considering that these games probably have pretty large worlds with lots of content.

Another question, if say I like Dark Sun: Shattered Lands, is the sequel worth playing?

 

oldgames.sk has first Dark Sun game with already configured dosbox, so you can just download it and play. They don't, however, allow to download games on CDs for free (Dark Sun is on floppies) so for Albion full version you will have to visit old-games.ru and configure and install it through dosbox yourself. old-games.ru is in russian so you may want to put whole site through google translate.

 

Damn right it is.

 

Pretty sure I picked up Albion from Oldgames.sk

 

I was never able to get into it. The art style changed, much for the worse: the camera angle got all screwy and the sprites became extremely cartoony, in a bad way, all "pillow shaded" and glossy and Liefeld-proportioned. The pacing in the first part of the game is much looser than in the first part of DS:SL; it felt directionless and bland, whereas DS:SL grabs you from the very start -- it's probably one of the strongest RPG openings out there, IMHO, because it doesn't have endless exposition.

I tried to play DS:WOR several times, and never got past the first 60 minutes or so. I also recall it having a lot of bugs -- which is to some extent true of DS:SL, as well, but they seemed more intrusive. Maybe I missed out on something great.

--EDIT--
For curiosity's sake, I loaded a Let's Play of the ending of WOR. Good God, the graphics are a crime against aesthetics. I don't understand how it happened.

 

I was a roleplaying bitch and never copied El's Drinker after the WotR playthrough for continuity reasons.

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It felt really weird having to destroy his unique sword not twice, but three times.

Absolutely. While it IS a bug-ridden nightmare (the number of game-breaking bugs makes it very frustrating at times) and its art is arguably worse than in the first game, it's still the same game system and is fairly fun to play.

 

I transfered my uber party from DS1 to DS2 and it was obliterated in the first fight

 

Ha, that's because if you transfer a DS1 party, your game difficulty gets automatically set to maximum. And it pretty much lives up to its given designation.

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It also makes the timed volcano eruption event raep you before you have a chance to do anything meaningful.

 

Frontends are there to make configuring a game easier. Instead of having to enter everything manually in the dos-window, you can use a windows-style GUI to make the config and later simply start the game with a double-click with all of your preferred settings. The front-ends remove the need to learn dosbox commands and provide a nice menu from which you can start all your games.

Yes, game sizes back then were pretty crazy, textures simply were a lot smaller and more simple, as well as very few voice-lines. My albion-CD has 400MB of content and 300 of it are videos and Demos of other BlueByte games.
But 36MB is a bit low for Albion, weird. Even zipped the albion part on my CD is 60MB. Ah, I just checked the abandonia version. It appears the intro and credits-movies were ripped out. When you start playing, make sure to watch the intro somewhere online.

 

The correct way to play Albion is to install an Amiga emulator and play Ambermoon instead.

 

My party of Half-Giant rangers must have gotten corrupted by El's evil powers, couldn't bring myself to destroy it even in subsequent playthroughs

Managed to complete it several times despite the bugs, having a pirated version, no manual and no internet. Good old times!

 

Same here. In fact, I still remember most of the potentially gamebreaking buggy areas/encounters by heart and how to circumvent them most of the time. Good old times indeed .