Can anyone please help me identify this old DOS-era RPG?

This certainly seems the place to ask, as i have spent months banging my head against the computer searching for this game. I apologize in advance for grammatical/syntax/out of place word errors, I am stuck using a touch screen phone that is in dire need of screen calibration, and a very annoying auto correct which cannot be disabled.

The game I am thinking of is one i never owned, though i played around with it a few times at an old friend's house in middle school.

The best way that i can think to describe the game is that is is graphically and gameplay-wise very similar to Dark Sun: Shattered Lands (no it is NOT its inferior sequel, Wake of the Ravager) The game is very reminiscent of the Dark Sun SSI game, though I cannot say for sure it was made by TSR/SSI.

The game had an editor of sorts, in which you could create your own enemies, or at the least modify existing enemies, and if I am not mistaken, place them on the map. (again, I only had a couple of hours with this game, spread out over 3 different instances.) I remember being able to see the weapons and items depicted graphically, and again, they strongly resemble the graphics from Shattered Lands. I even think that I recall seeing black swords, which i vaguely recall being listed as either ebony, obsidian, glass or something along those lines, though i cannot say for certain.

another memory of the game was editing a giant draco-lich looking monster which was one of the most powerful in the game, and I distinctly remember the name of the creature was listed as "Thak the Hammer"
The problem with this memory is that, as stated, enemies are editable, and both myself and my friend had been playing AD&D, and reading the Dragonlance books. In searching for any hint of this game, I googled it, and found it to be the dwarven(?) name for the god, Paladine, in the dragonlance setting.

whether this game was just ripping off of dragonlance, or one of us had already edited it, I cannot say for sure.

Lastly, I am unsure if I ever "Played" the game, or just fiddled with the editor settings. As such, it could possibly be a Dungeon Master's "App", if you can assign that moniker to Dos based games, and possibly not a game proper.

the one abiding fact that i am 100% certain of is that the game graphically represented items/weapons/armor individually, and at least the combat, if not the exploration is done in the style of Shattered Lands.
It may or may not be a SSI game, but it is extremely close in gameplay.

and I have ruled out it being unlimited adventures, or the other SSI game (whose name escapes me at the moment) because the graphics of those editable adventure/rpg games are of an older sort, even though they have at least the combat portions of them in a similar vein as the dark sun games. (not to mention that neither of those games graphically represented weapons, just text entries)

this game would have definitely been released at or before the mid 90's.

any help at all would be greatly appreciated, I have searched everywhere for this elusive game title, and have came up just as lacking as my earlier searches for a complete version of "Roger Ramrod" (a rare, adult themed doom-esque game that will leave you in stitches laughing...)

I will happily offer a GOG.com game (9.99 or under) to anyone who successfully helps me identify and locate this game (I would bet my life that its abandonware at this point)

And if by some miracle, that old friend should be reading this at some point, I will say this;

Matt Taylor, who went to Hughes Middle School in Greenville, SC, later moving to Williamston, then finally (at last contact) somewhere in Tennessee, who had a half sister named Shasta, who for some reason kept walking in on our games of D&D right after exiting the shower, with nothing but a towel around her waist, a beautiful smile, a gorgeous pair, a pretty smile, and a distinct lack of modesty or shame, and a funny looking stepfather, the spitting image of an anorexic Sturm Brightblade, whose favorite, and most memorable line had to have been, (misspelling intentional) "Maffeew! Have yoo seeeen muh sunn-guh-lahsses? Maffeww, you dun seen any kudzoo in deeze woodz?"

So if the stars align, Matt, its me Josh Hines, you know, the long haired guy who sat with you in math(i think it was math?) with the hottest teacher who ever lived, made hotter still due to her love of dungeons and dragons, Mrs. Willett.
There's no way there is more than one person on this planet who can relate to all of that, so Matt, get a DAMN FACEBOOK PAGE ALREADY!!! 20-something Matt Taylors, and not a D&D nerd among them.

And to everyone else, (who I hope pardon my going off on a nostalgic, run-on-sentence-from-hell tangent) if you have any idea of what this game might be, please, i beg you, post, email, PM me, just do something. its been driving me nuts for years, not being able to find that game.

thanks in advance for reading my post, and for any help any of you might be able to give me. and on the off chance any of you know the Matt Taylor I'm talking about, that would be an excellent help as well, since it was his game that I am trying to locate.

Thanks again, hope to hear something soon.

-Volyren Nightsong (Josh Hines)

 

Al-Qadim had a similar graphics style but I don't think that's it.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=fantasoft realmz&source=lnms&tbm=isch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz
?

 

Realmz and Blades of Exile come to mind as RPGs with editors in them from the 90s. Though neither really look like Dark Sun that much.

 

Must be Realmz or Blades of Exile. FRUA did not have graphical inventory, and no other game with an editor is anywhere near being similar to Dark Sun.

 

I first thought BoE as well but only because of the editor. i didnt play it apart form on a demo cd

 

DnD with a topless female audience? That's gotta be pretty rare.

 

maybe Mr Luzur can help

 

What about Shadow Sorcerer? It's a Dragonlance game which appears to be customizable.

(A Google Image search should help jog Josh's memory)

 

actually, I think that it may in fact, be REALMZ.
the name is unfamiliar, but something about that cobblestone pattern in the screenshot link provided by CappenVara seems to be very familiar. I will have to check it out on dosbox, but you may have earned a GOG freebie! I will let you know once i have a chance to check it out, and I want to thank everyone for being so helpful and quick. I have been wracking my brain for so long, and I don't think I have even heard of Realmz before. Matt was the first friend I knew with a computer, and it was a few years later before I got one myself, so I don't have the best memory recall, as in the end, I knew (at the time) I would probably NEVER own a computer. The cheap ones were still around 1500 at that time. (god, i remember the horrible christmas where my family thought they were doing me a favor by purchasing a used IBM PC-Jr. at the flea market. It had books and books and more books of code you had to type in just to see a simple screensaver, and there was no memory to save it on, so you had to type 12 pages of nonsense to get a silly light show which you promptly lost the moment the power went out. I remember a Space Invader like game that was around 60 pages, and I had entered about 43 when a thunderstorm knocked off the power, and I never booted that monstrosity up again. (at least I had a nintendo...)

Oh and if anyone here would like two hard to find games (well, four actually) I've managed to track them down.
I have both the demo for Roger Ramrod (Cleve would brick a shit after that whole wiz 8 craziness about the wang monsters...)
As far as REAL games go, I have the full trilogy of the Yendorian Tales, which is like a hybrid of Might and Magic and Eye of the Beholder, except for the very first game which is nearly a clone of early Ultima games. (its only a demo) but I have the full versions of the first person, four member party adventures that is yendorian tales books 2 and 3. they are very enjoyable, and it took me digging around in my old CD-rom drawer to find them, as only demos of them can be found on abandonware sites. (I have hex hacking guide on gamefaqs that will allow you to play the entire game by bypassing a certain point where you are blocked in the demo.)

anyone who has any interest, I can post links, if that is allowed here. (they are hosted on a forum I run, along with many other emulation resources and collections (only cartridge based, no Playstation or non DOS PC games, with the Dungeons and Dragons Arcade Games being the sole arcade exception)

 

sounds like Realmz or Shadow Sorcerer.

cant remember if The Summoning had editable enemies or even an editor, although it is kinda like Dark Sun.

kinda.

 

"Thak the Hammer" is another name for Paladine, so this is starting to smell more and more like Dragonlance game.

A more exact year would help a great deal.

 

yeah, but Thak was represented as an undead dragon thing, so I am pretty sure Matt had just added the enemy. I am nearly positive it is Realmz but I wont know for sure until i get home later tonight. (if i can find a copy of realmz somewhere.

and @ Monty: I never could tell if she was flirting with me (I was 14/15? at the time, and she was 19) or if she was just messing with Matt, who always had memorable dork/nerd/panic-attack freakouts about women at the time (he was the shyest person i have ever known around women, LITERALLY screaming and running away from them on regular basis...) She could have just been doing that to mess with him. His step dad was freaking hilarious with some of the stuff he would ask matt, just off the wall. No lie, the guy took us fishing, where i caught a deformed baby catfish with two sets of fins growing out of the same areas. We all found the fishing to be boring, and ended up swimming and all of us got sick and had the most god awful case of leaky, squirting mudd-butt I have ever had to endure for over a week.
I recall the water occasionally had foam on its surface...
Later our little group of friends went back there on our own, and after walking over a tall hill, realized we had been swimming in a natural waste-water run-off pool...
To this day, I will go to a lake to fish, or to swim, but never the two shall meet.

 

my apologies if this counts as double posting, im having issues with my computer at the moment.

For the life of me I cannot get realmz to work (win 7, go figure) ive done all the usual permission/admin shuffling, but still cant get more than a minute into it before i get a crash. however, I am nearly 100% certain that this IS the game in question, albeit his version was on a MAC laptop back in the day, which explains the slightly different look.

So CappenVarra claims the bounty I placed on the info. (he was the first to reply with the correct (im nearly positive) response.) I am a man of my word. Any GOG.com game of $9.99 or less is yours. I can either purchase it on my account, send you the email reciept and set up a link (just until you download it, as I don't like game piracy) or a torrent if the file is too large.
or if there is a way for me to gift it to you on their main site, that would probably be easier.

I had won a 500$ online gift card that was only redeemable to a few sites a while back, and GOG is about the only one I had any interest in. I still have money on the card, even after buying all my old forum regulars a game, and I have every game from gog that I care for, so its not a big deal for me.

Also, if anyone is interested in either the roger ramrod (not posted on my site) game or the Yendorian Tales/aka Book of yendor/aka Yendor 1/2/3 just let me know. I actually spoke with the devs (two of them, not sure how many there were) when they noticed my guide at gamefaqs. They said that they didn't like the term "abandonware" but that they had no way of selling the game anymore, and understood that this was about the only way for people to still enjoy the games.

The link to the forum post (at my old forums, dedicated to Rage of Bahamut, a rip-off "freemium" game on mobile phones) containing the Yendor games is here.
http://rob-elementals.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=emulationstation&action=display&thread=72
There is some other stuff there as well. Normally I kept the downloads to a member's only section but have since removed the restrictions so that anyone can see them. Feel free to check them out. I believe that I included a copy of dosbox and D-Fend reloaded with the 3 games already set up inside it, because the members at my old forums were not well versed in emulation, especially dosbox. I tried to make everything easy, so that it could be put on either the computer, or the phone. (though dosbox on the phone has crappy mouse emulation, last i checked.)

Anyway, thanks again, and I hope you like the games.
and CappenVarra, just message me or email me with what you would like to do about the GOG game.

 

Try setting the Processor Affinity to use only one CPU. Lots of older Windows games, if you can run them at all on Win 7, will crash after some time on a modern machine with several cores.

 

Er, it's not quite my piece of bread, so no thanks:

 

i have tried that too. unfortunately I have a crappy laptop with a video card that goes on the fritz ALL the time.
for instance, I have been watching naruto over again, online. i can go to animefo and watch an episode, but it HAS to be the second version from watchcartoononline, and even then I have to be especially careful to pause the video before making it go to or from full screen, or the computer just goes either to a black screen (with NO CPU activity at all, the light doesnt even blink) or i get a black and white checkerboard screen. either way i have cut power to the computer and restart.
however, if i try to watch the same exact video from the source, watchcartoononline, i will be lucky to make it five minutes into the episode before a crash.
Games are hit and miss. most dosbox games seem ok, as do emulator games, except for MAME. I first started noticing the problem when I installed FTL. (Faster Than Light) a game I very much would love to play, but the computer crashes about 30 seconds after i start the tutorial.
since then I have had this problem. (I deleted FTL, checked my drivers, did everything i could think of, but bottom line, I am probably going to need a new computer...)
So for now, I guess Realmz is out of my reach. ( I can't seem to play any of the avernum games either, which bums me out, I was really wanting to give those a full playthrough.

 

"The file you requested has not been found or may no longer be available."

Are you still in contact with the Yendor devs? I quite enjoyed Yendor 1 (never got around to play 2 and 3, unfortunately, even though I love the classic MM titles and anything that even remotely resembles them) and would have a few questions for them (also regarding the unfinished Yendor 4) if we could set up a codex retrospective interview with them.

If you haven't already, I'd suggest you play Exile I-III in Dosbox w/ Windows 3.1 instead of Avernum for now (Avernum 1-3 are - mostly inferior - remakes of Exile I-III, in case you didn't know). All three Exile games have become freeware recently and can be gotten from the Spiderweb Website here:
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/productsOld.html

 

I've read that other people had problems getting the Windows version to run, too. Apparently you have to use the Mac version with an emulator.

 

Good to hear it. I like Exile the most of all the Spiderweb games.

 

Do you still encounter problems to install this? Cause i had absolutely no troubles using it under windows 7. First step, i gathered a few infos about the game and the free rgistration from the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realmz, then downloaded the game from there: http://rlmz.org/ . Unzipped it , the trick is not to run the relamz.exe in the unzipped folder, use the installer and then only use realmz.exe in the new created folder .
It works flawlesssly, no need of compatibility mode even. I suspect the adventure you remember is a third party mod , a dragonlance rip off named dragon of death.

 

Thats the serials given for free according wiki:

 

My problem isnt the software, I registered it correctly and everything. It's definitely hardware related, and there is nothing I can do about it, unfortunately.
I appreciate all the help and advice, and to show it, I will extend the free GOG game offer to anyone else who has posted here in this thread up to this point. My gift card will be expiring in a few weeks, and there is nothing else I can really do with it, unless gog comes out with a bunch of games I want, AND, don't already have. I just hate to see the rest of the money go to waste.

Thanks again for all the help though. I should be able to get a newer computer within the next few months, and I will definitely check out Realmz, as I am fairly sure that it IS the game I was looking for.

Desktop Commander
Sorry about the files. It has been a long time since I used the forums. ( I got REALLY tired of Rage of Bahamut and its money-grubbing tactics. After I had spent nearly 200 dollars total to get a superior set of cards to enjoy the game with, they decided to take all of the cards that were popular and downgrade their power, making my set nearly worthless. Then of course, they introduce a new set of cards, even harder to get, that are the same power as the cards that they just downgraded. That was the final straw for me.) I can get those files uploaded somewhere. It isnt a big file to begin with. I will post the link back here when I find a decent spot to upload it to.

EDIT: I could not find the original file, as it seems to have been deleted from my account (along with everything else. probably due to leechers since i removed the members only restriction at the forums) I have made a zip of all 3 games, taken directly from my virtual HD in DFEND Reloaded. yendor 1 is a demo (cant find full version anywhere, but its not that great, anyway, just an ultima rip-off) the second and third game are like might and magic and both those are full versions.

here is the link.
http://www.fileswap.com/dl/WxItwjgZfS/yendor123.zip.html
If this doesnt work, let me know and I will try to find another service to use.
the zip file should be about 9MB

PS, I was never in "contact" with the devs. They sent me an email after finding me on gamefaqs. I replied and if i recall, they responded once more, but that was on my old yahoo email address which I no longer have. I would have no idea on how to contact them now. I dont think there were any further communications, and we never really "talked". It was more or less just a few paragraphs back and forth.

 

It shouldnt be too expensive to get a pc to run it, the cheapest ones on the market are overkill already. I wonder if basilisk or wine could not work on a raspberry pi even, could be fun to try it .
Its surprising there's not much discussion about realmz , its an underrated game , after testing it to see if it could run with windows 7 , ended playing all the evening. Its really as good as a gold box game or at least jeff vogel's exile . A let's play on some obscure rpg site ( http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/lp-realmz-city-of-bywater-ch-3-pt-10.66374/ ) , a yahoo group and thats about all i could find.

 

It might require less usual admin shuffling, as it creates its config file inside the windows root dir (as in, c:windows/acampref/RealmzPref), and I can only imagine how jealous win7 is about letting third party apps write into its root when it's already picky about allowing to write into program files. Just thinking.