Deathlord Relorded!

[Arthandas]

If you removed the permadeath, what are the consequences of dying? Is it even possible to lose the game?

 

[rikkles]

Version 1.0.4 released, with fixes to swamp damage resistance and the Radeon 570/580 crash solution.

 

[rikkles]

If you removed the permadeath, what are the consequences of dying? Is it even possible to lose the game?

The consequences are that you have to restart from your last save point or backup. Just like a modern non-permadeath game. And speaking of permadeath, everyone used to make backups of their scenario disks anyway, to avoid having to completely restart the game.

What does "lose the game mean"? The original documentation has this to say:

Should the same deadly fate befall the entire party, the game stops. Remove the scenario disk, insert the boot disk, and reboot the computer. You can then disband the characters using the Character Options and use another character (who's alive) to resurrect them. Another option, although not the most honorable, is to copy the characters from the last backup disk you made of your group. A final alternative is to assemble an entirely new group of characters and head out anew.

 

[Arthandas]

The consequences are that you have to restart from your last save point or backup. Just like a modern non-permadeath game.

If you lose a fight in a modern rpg, you can just load the game and try again with zero consequences.

What does "lose the game mean"? The original documentation has this to say:

It means getting a game over screen. Some games end if your entire party is wiped out and some (like early Wizardies) let you continue the current save with a different party or even retrieve the corpses.
From what you quoted, Deathlord seems to fall into the latter category so you can't actually lose the game. It was fine in Wizardry, even though you couldn't get a game over screen, dying was always very risky thanks to resurrection %, and risk of losing characters permanently.
Since you removed permadeath, unless I'm misunderstanding something, there's no longer any risk involved. You can't lose your progress, you can't lose your characters or items, dying seems trivial. It reeks of popamolization.

 

[rikkles]

 

[Arthandas]

According to your quote, this isn't a real game over screen since you can reboot and resurrect them...

 

[4-bit]

As someone who generally preferes to play these games as they were before modding, let me just kinda come in here and counter this point:

Since you removed permadeath, unless I'm misunderstanding something, there's no longer any risk involved. You can't lose your progress, you can't lose your characters or items, dying seems trivial. It reeks of popamolization.

Question 1: Did you ever play the original Deathlord to see how this would be different from how it played? Or are you just doing this to be pedantic?

Question 2: Define 'removed'. You can still play the game as originally set forth with death being something you need to fix in game, but have the option of not doing it. Don't have the will power to avoid using it? That's on you.

Question 3: Really, more of a comment. Here's a snippet from the Quick Reference card included with the game: http://c64sets.com/details_db.html?id=4823&t=Deathlord&i=getting started guide page 1 "Backup Character Roster: Copies your character roster onto another scenario disk. Good precaution to take after completing a tough dungeon or acquiring a special item. If you run into trouble (for instance, everyone dies), you can use this backup. Follow the onscreen instructions." Meaning, the game literally encourages you to saves scum.

Having a hard time getting out of a dungeon, disband the party, reform the party, boom. You're back at the start. Everyone die? Have your mule character haul them to town and rez them.

..

Which is one of the things I want to say about this fetishization of permadeath. A lot of the games you remember don't have an actual PERMA death. It's more "dead but fixable" at the worst of it, even on those 'hard core old school' games. This is just a time saving thing. You still have to fight your way down there, but there is never a 'true' risk to completing the game past your own ability to deal with the grind to get there and figure out where you need to go. Whether you resurrect on the spot, by going back to the beginning, or hauling the dead guy out and going to the nearest town it's not some great skill thing you achieved.

Sincerely,

Someone who loves the game, was thanked in one of the walkthroughs, and responsible for some of the maps ASchultz used for his guides.[/QUOTE]

 

[Arthandas]

Question 1: Did you ever play the original Deathlord to see how this would be different from how it played? Or are you just doing this to be pedantic?

Yes, I did. Original Deathlord automatically overwrites the save the instant someone in your party dies. If you died, you died. In Relorded you can just re-load like nothing happened.

Question 2: Define 'removed'.

No I won't, even the changelog states it's been removed.

Which is one of the things I want to say about this fetishization of permadeath. A lot of the games you remember don't have an actual PERMA death.

Thank you for telling me how I remember things.

Whether you resurrect on the spot, by going back to the beginning, or hauling the dead guy out and going to the nearest town it's not some great skill thing you achieved.

Yeah, go play Wizardry (since you clearly never had), then return here and tell me how you can just resurrect anyone and there's no actual permadeath, I just remember it wrong...

 

[Late Bloomer]

I like that the documentation is 19mb and the game itself is 12mb.. Nice. I just wish it could still have that game manual smell too. Oh well.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

There are many games I wish perma death was just a toggle option. Sometimes you want it.... sometimes you don't.

 

[Ladonna]

Here you go guys, knock yourselves out.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/deathlord-4sx

https://www.dosgamers.com/commodore-64/c64-emulator-winvice

All the permadeath you could ever wish for.

 

[rikkles]

I like that the documentation is 19mb and the game itself is 12mb.. Nice. I just wish it could still have that game manual smell too. Oh well.

You could get it to a printer maybe?

The game size is that big because the portraits take up 25%, and another 30% is all the C++ Windows libraries that I bundle as overkill to ensure it’s just a double-click-and-play thing for everyone. Most machines shouldn’t need the libs.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Many years ago I saw a blurb in a computer game mail order catalog about Deathlord for the C64 that said, "Over 200 hours of content!" I was like "Wow-Weeee! I wish I had that game! I'm salivating here!!!" These days when I see any cRPG that claims even just "60 hours content!" it makes me want to run away... and keep running.

 

[rikkles]

Many years ago I saw a blurb in a computer game mail order catalog about Deathlord for the C64 that said, "Over 200 hours of content!" I was like "Wow-Weeee! I wish I had that game! I'm salivating here!!!" These days when I see any cRPG that claims even just "60 hours content!" it makes me want to run away... and keep running.

I'd say that considering Deathlord Relorded is much faster at everything than the original Deathlord, especially mapmaking and reboots, it's probably a 50-hour game or less if you don't do the optional dungeons (and you read up on which ones are optional).
If you go in completely blind, and never read a FAQ, then it can be much much longer. Inversely if you use a walkthrough.

 

[samuraigaiden]

As someone who generally preferes to play these games as they were before modding, let me just kinda come in here and counter this point:

Since you removed permadeath, unless I'm misunderstanding something, there's no longer any risk involved. You can't lose your progress, you can't lose your characters or items, dying seems trivial. It reeks of popamolization.

Question 1: Did you ever play the original Deathlord to see how this would be different from how it played? Or are you just doing this to be pedantic?

Question 2: Define 'removed'. You can still play the game as originally set forth with death being something you need to fix in game, but have the option of not doing it. Don't have the will power to avoid using it? That's on you.

Question 3: Really, more of a comment. Here's a snippet from the Quick Reference card included with the game: http://c64sets.com/details_db.html?id=4823&t=Deathlord&i=getting started guide page 1 "Backup Character Roster: Copies your character roster onto another scenario disk. Good precaution to take after completing a tough dungeon or acquiring a special item. If you run into trouble (for instance, everyone dies), you can use this backup. Follow the onscreen instructions." Meaning, the game literally encourages you to saves scum.

Having a hard time getting out of a dungeon, disband the party, reform the party, boom. You're back at the start. Everyone die? Have your mule character haul them to town and rez them.

..

Which is one of the things I want to say about this fetishization of permadeath. A lot of the games you remember don't have an actual PERMA death. It's more "dead but fixable" at the worst of it, even on those 'hard core old school' games. This is just a time saving thing. You still have to fight your way down there, but there is never a 'true' risk to completing the game past your own ability to deal with the grind to get there and figure out where you need to go. Whether you resurrect on the spot, by going back to the beginning, or hauling the dead guy out and going to the nearest town it's not some great skill thing you achieved.

Sincerely,

Someone who loves the game, was thanked in one of the walkthroughs, and responsible for some of the maps ASchultz used for his guides.

Just to get it straight no nonsense, you can still get a full party wipe and keep playing, right? Or if that happens now the only option is to reload a previous save? I'm obviously confused.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Many years ago I saw a blurb in a computer game mail order catalog about Deathlord for the C64 that said, "Over 200 hours of content!" I was like "Wow-Weeee! I wish I had that game! I'm salivating here!!!" These days when I see any cRPG that claims even just "60 hours content!" it makes me want to run away... and keep running.

I'd say that considering Deathlord Relorded is much faster at everything than the original Deathlord, especially mapmaking and reboots, it's probably a 50-hour game or less if you don't do the optional dungeons (and you read up on which ones are optional).
If you go in completely blind, and never read a FAQ, then it can be much much longer. Inversely if you use a walkthrough.

Actually, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure the original ad I saw in that catalog said it was 400 hours long, so call Guinness! But yeah, I'm sure it's been streamlined considerably in the reboot/remake, and thank goodness! Doing your own mapping would alone probably add many dozens of extra hours.

 

[rikkles]

Just to get it straight no nonsense, you can still get a full party wipe and keep playing, right? Or if that happens now the only option is to reload a previous save? I'm obviously confused.

You have both options. The first option is what we call "keep playing" :

You reboot, disband your current party, create a new party with a healthy char and 5 of your dead ones, then play and go to town and resurrect these poor souls. THEN you reboot again, disband the party, recreate the original party, play and go to town to resurrect the last chap who was dead. That, believe it or not, was the standard technique in the old days after a full party wipe when you had games like Deathlord that would autosave on the single save slot.

Now the second option involves a backup. In the original, it was a bit of a pain to do, and you needed multiple diskettes, etc... In Deathlord Relorded it's just a matter of going in the menu and choosing "Backup Scenario Disks". If you die, select "Restore...", reboot, and off you go. In the old days, you'd have to manually copy the backed up diskettes again over the main ones, and restart the game.

What 4-bit said is that, contrary to "popular" belief, old-style ironman games were not really ironman games. You could _always_ back up disks (and the Deathlord manual recommends it), and you could revive your original party. by doing the disband/recreate party trick. That technique, incidentally, was often used by players stuck in a dungeon who had no way to get out. They'd disband and recreate the party. Poof, you're on the mainland.

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Unfortunately my graphics card is not good for it? Radeon HD 5770
Double-click on exe then ucrtbase.dll error.

 

[rikkles]

Unfortunately my graphics card is not good for it? Radeon HD 5770
Double-click on exe then ucrtbase.dll error.

Are you on Win10?

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

Unfortunately my graphics card is not good for it? Radeon HD 5770
Double-click on exe then ucrtbase.dll error.

Are you on Win10?

Yes.

 

[rikkles]

Install the latest microsoft c++ redistributables and let me know if it still fails. What is the exact error?

 

[TheDeveloperDude]

I installed: Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages for Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022
I get this error:

 

[WhiteShark]

Toshi (elf) – I have no idea where this came from. Since toshiyori means “the elderly”, I wonder if they focused on the longevity aspect of elves, looked up a word related to that, and cut the word in half.

Toshi (年) by itself can mean age or old age, so that would relate to elves. An alternative though less likely explanation is that it's the classical adjective toshi (敏し) meaning quick or sharp.

Nasu (heal) – I assume the root word here is naosu which means “to fix/cure,” but they left out an important letter and ended up with the word for “eggplant” instead . I imagined the priest summoning vegetables with curative properties, like a fucked up version of Goodberry in D&D.

Oh, this one's easy - it's "nurse" transliterated into Japanese as "naasu" (ナース) and then transliterated back into English as "nasu".

Unmei (finger of death) – Unmei means “fate” and I thought this was a rather poetic name for such a spell, then realized it’s more likely that this word was chosen due to some confusion in translation between “fate” and “fatality" .

This one is totally rad, so I want to believe they just made an inspired choice, but searching up "fatal" in my JP dictionaries brings up definitions relating to "fate" before "lethal" so you're probably right.

 

[rikkles]

I installed: Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable packages for Visual Studio 2015, 2017, 2019, and 2022
I get this error:

If you’ve got them all installed, try to remove all the dlls from the deathlord relorded folder and run the game. You shouldn’t need them.

 

[Fatberg Slim]

Nasu (heal) – I assume the root word here is naosu which means “to fix/cure,” but they left out an important letter and ended up with the word for “eggplant” instead . I imagined the priest summoning vegetables with curative properties, like a fucked up version of Goodberry in D&D.

Oh, this one's easy - it's "nurse" transliterated into Japanese as "naasu" (ナース) and then transliterated back into English as "nasu".

Ah, that could be. I wasn't even sure if naasu was a real Japanese word since I've only ever heard it from people who I assume didn't think I knew what kangoshi meant.

I still like my Goodeggplant spell theory though.