For Legend of Grimrock fans: Black Crypt

[Daemongar]

After reading these posts, I recalled that I bought BC the first day it came out and can't remember a damn thing about it other than what the programmers told me about it at Gen Con: It used the full color palette on the Amiga (it used 4096 colors, and there was greater use of color than most other games at the time), the animations were better than in DM (much smoother door and enemy animations), and there was greater use of sound. Otherwise, I can't remember much else.

After reading this thread, all I really want to do is play the original Dungeon Master again because it was that damn good.

 

[Wolfus]

Wolfus is the resident ED expert; maybe he could weigh in on whether there are still any bugs left.

This is very nice to read

Anyway - current version of Evil's Doom is bug-free, so I highly recommend to play it. It is short but very entertaining game. Latest version in preconfigured package can be found here: http://hobring.esero.net/games.htm

 

[Whisper]

Do i need this 'Whdload.key'? What exactly it does?

 

[made]

Do i need this 'Whdload.key'? What exactly it does?

Not for this game. Only if you use WHDLoad a lot. And then it's still a ripoff...

 

[octavius]

After reading these posts, I recalled that I bought BC the first day it came out and can't remember a damn thing about it other than what the programmers told me about it at Gen Con: It used the full color palette on the Amiga (it used 4096 colors, and there was greater use of color than most other games at the time),

Actually it only uses 64 colours, which is the double of what was normal on an Amiga.

the animations were better than in DM (much smoother door and enemy animations), and there was greater use of sound.

Agree about the animations, except the spell effects in BC look silly compared to the more "realistic" effects in DM.
Overall I thought the sound effects were better in DM, or at least of a more even quality. BC has some good sounds, but no sound when drinking or eating, and the sound when killing an enemy is just silly.

Otherwise, I can't remember much else.

Weird how forgattable this game is. It's by no means bad, and is in my opinion the best of the DM clones after CSB. Certainly more fun than Abandoned Places, and more fun to replay than Eye of the Beholder.

After reading this thread, all I really want to do is play the original Dungeon Master again because it was that damn good.

Give BC a try too. And play Chaos Strikes Back if you haven't.

Do i need this 'Whdload.key'? What exactly it does?

Not for this game. Only if you use WHDLoad a lot. And then it's still a ripoff...

No need to mess with hard drive installation with BC. It works with an emulated Amiga 1200 with fast RAM and three disk drives. So there is no need for disk swapping and loading times are very fast.

Black Crypt has definitely been the most user friendly game I've played using an Amiga emulator.

 

[Whisper]

Black Crypt, Crystal Dragon - what similar RPGs you recomend, from Amiga?

Can someone please post a quick re-cap of games like Abandoned places, Legend of Faergal, Fate, etc.

 

[octavius]

Black Crypt, Crystal Dragon - what similar RPGs you recomend, from Amiga?

If you're only ever play one real time blobber, play Chaos Strikes Back

Can someone please post a quick re-cap of games like Abandoned places, Legend of Faergal, Fate, etc.

Haven't played Faergal and Fate, but they are liked by people who enjoys the slow pain of months of grinding, like Blackadder.

Of Abandoned Places I repeat what I wrote some other place:

First dungeon of Abandoned Places was quite fun, although there were no real puzzles and the fighting was extremely basic and not very lethal. The characters regenerate not only spell points, but also hit points, which makes things rather too easy.

The overland map is like a totally different game. It sounded very promising from the manual, and looked quite promising at first. But movement is very clunky, especially entering villages and cities. There are shops, but no prices listed, so you have to check prices for each item individually, something which is incredibly tedious. And once in villages and cities there are nobody to talk to, not even in taverns. I've been to half a dozen locations, including the capital and still have no idea whatsoever where to go, or what to do.
Maybe I'm getting old, 'cause I remember exploring more than the first dungeon the first time I played this game.

This game has a good premise, and a nice setting, but there are just too many annoying things about the game once you leave the first dungeon. And the combat is just too boring; there is no sense of danger whatsoever in the first dungeon or from the random encounters (thankfully they are infrequent) on the overland map.

I wonder if anyone actually finished Abandoned Places?

AB was released a month or two before Black Crypt, but it is less emulator friendly. It requires some disk swapping, making a working save disk requires some Amiga knowledge, it crashes sometimes and it was very easy to accidentally making double clicks with the mouse.
There is a DOS version, but it's considered inferior and buggy.

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Abandoned Places is a very easy game to complete (compared to similar games of its type in that timeframe). Abandoned Places II...now that was more difficult.

Of course...the game is on the bigger side...

Perhaps the game was just too big for you?

 

[octavius]

Abandoned Places is a very easy game to complete (compared to similar games of its type in that timeframe). Abandoned Places II...now that was more difficult.

Of course...the game is on the bigger side...

Perhaps the game was just too big for you?

Big is not beautiful unless you fill the bigness with something interesting. DM, CSB and BC all are rather short games. I completed them in 1/2 to 1/3 of the time I used to complete most turn based classic CRPGs. But the dungeons are full of content and there is a sense of danger that I missed in Abandoned Places.

Still, I would have liked to complete AB sometime. Do you remember what you are supposed to do after emerging from the first dungeon and taking a ship to the mainland?

 

[Wolfus]

I assume you already played Ishars, so you can try Knightmare or Crystals of Arborea.

 

[octavius]

Abandoned Places is a very easy game to complete (compared to similar games of its type in that timeframe).

Maybe you can help a poor Swede finding his way?

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Abandoned Places is a very easy game to complete (compared to similar games of its type in that timeframe).

Maybe you can help a poor Swede finding his way?

Just noticed your request.

If memory serves, he looks to be still on horseback. Get off and trek to the centre of the mountain range. The dungeon is there.

Edit: Actually, I could have sworn things were a little different with my playthrough (bear in mind there are a few different playthroughs, at least according to magazines of that time...). Now, bear in mind this was over 20 years ago...after getting the Book of the World, I seem to remember talking to a mage in Vo Marris, who then sent me to get a scroll in a dungeon near the mystic mountains.

There is a dungeon in 'the steps', but I don't remember heading there that soon. However, as I said above, there was supposed to be a few different playthroughs that sent you to different dungeons. Getting off the horses to get to certain dungeons is still a necessity though.

 

[Saintus]

Thanks for your information. I will try to go by foot to search the mountains and see if I can find my dungeon.
There are supposedly three different paths in the game depending on which place you start to visit. Therefore the missions
might come in different orders. I don´t know if one are supposed to visit every place regardless but in another order or not.
Anyway, good to know somewhere out there still have first hand experience of the game.

/Saintus from http://http://crpgrevisited.blogspot.se/

 

[Murkwater]

I remember it was the last game I bought on my Amiga 500. I never got deep into it, but I remember the title music theme was insane.

 

[Luzur]

Thanks for your information. I will try to go by foot to search the mountains and see if I can find my dungeon.
There are supposedly three different paths in the game depending on which place you start to visit. Therefore the missions
might come in different orders. I don´t know if one are supposed to visit every place regardless but in another order or not.
Anyway, good to know somewhere out there still have first hand experience of the game.

/Saintus from http://http://crpgrevisited.blogspot.se/

jag har läst den förut en gång, bra blogg faktiskt.

men jag gillade Dragon Wars, så där håller jag inte riktigt med.

 

[Phelot]

http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/black-crypt

I want to play this game, but I can't find a full version anywhere for DOS! I downloaded the demo of it, but it's some weird "test" or something. It is actually a Win95 program but it runs too fast. Of course, DOSbox can't open it. I tried compatibility mode, but it didn't do anything. Anyway else to slow it down? Also, of course finding it on Ebay would likely be useless since I don't think this was ever released on CD.

And I might as well ask: Is this game any good? Looks like a standard Eye of the Beholder clone, but after playing Raven Games, I want moar.

 

[octavius]

Black Crypt was an Amiga exclusive, so you'll need an Amiga emulator to run it. The DOS or Windows version was never finished.
I've played quite a few Amiga games on emulator over the past few years and Black Crypt was the slickest of them all, since it supports 3 extra floppy disk drives and 8 MB of fast memory, making loading times very fast.
Black Crypt is also the best Dungeon Master clone I've played (except the brilliant Chaos Strikes Back of course), even though it's not quite in the same league as DM and CSB.

 

[Phelot]

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/for-legend-of-grimrock-fans-black-crypt.71453/

Did you move that before? It happened so fast I thought it was some weird bug. Retardo thread or merge, plz. Thanks!

 

[Phelot]

Black Crypt was an Amiga exclusive, so you'll need an Amiga emulator to run it. The DOS or Windows version was never finished.
I've played quite a few Amiga games on emulator over the past few years and Black Crypt was the slickest of them all, since it supports 3 extra floppy disk drives and 8 MB of fast memory, making loading times very fast.
Black Crypt is also the best Dungeon Master clone I've played (except the brilliant Chaos Strikes Back of course), even though it's not quite in the same league as DM and CSB.

Thanks for the info. It's a shame it wasn't made for DOS at all. Is there an easy to use Amiga emulator? Also, anyone have any idea where to find this thing?

 

[Jaesun]

http://www.amigaemulator.org/

http://www.winuae.net/

Also note:

you need a Kickstart ROM image file for most purposes. Software to transfer that from your Amiga to your PC is included in the source distribution, as well as documentation on how to use it.

Please note: The Kickstart ROM is copyright 1982-1997 Amiga Corporation (formerly Hi-Toro) and its successors and licensors and we are not allowed to distribute it here.
Officially licensed Amiga ROM and OS files are available both for download and on CD-ROM as part of Cloanto's Amiga Forever package, which includes Kickstart files up to v3.1 (the latest version).

EDIT: I forgot there are 2. IIRC WINUae is the better one?

 

[octavius]

Black Crypt was an Amiga exclusive, so you'll need an Amiga emulator to run it. The DOS or Windows version was never finished.
I've played quite a few Amiga games on emulator over the past few years and Black Crypt was the slickest of them all, since it supports 3 extra floppy disk drives and 8 MB of fast memory, making loading times very fast.
Black Crypt is also the best Dungeon Master clone I've played (except the brilliant Chaos Strikes Back of course), even though it's not quite in the same league as DM and CSB.

Thanks for the info. It's a shame it wasn't made for DOS at all. Is there an easy to use Amiga emulator? Also, anyone have any idea where to find this thing?

The easiest to use emulator is Amiga Forever, but it's not free. For free, but less user friendly last time I tried it, follow Jaesun's link.
For Black Crypt itself: http://www.thegamearchives.com/?val=0_2_1_0_0_4_17_0_2_7_0
You need three disk files + the save disk file.

 

[Phelot]

Thanks to you both. Well, I'll have to dig further into doing this.

Off topic: At some point, it'd be pretty cool to have an emulator sticky in General Gaming or someplace that has links and instructions on how to set up emulators for everything. Could have one for Amiga, DOSbox, console emulators, old Apple OS's, etc.

 

[Jaesun]

Thanks to you both. Well, I'll have to dig further into doing this.

Off topic: At some point, it'd be pretty cool to have an emulator sticky in General Gaming or someplace that has links and instructions on how to set up emulators for everything. Could have one for Amiga, DOSbox, console emulators, old Apple OS's, etc.

That actually is a very good idea.

 

[made]

Is there an easy to use Amiga emulator? Also, anyone have any idea where to find this thing?

Just use the pre installed version from the OP if you only want to try this one game http://thecompany.pl/game/Black Crypt There was something odd about it that annoyed me but I don't remember what it was; will be good enough for you.

PS: fuck the forum split

 

[Stabwound]

The main problem I had with the prepackaged version in the OP is that in-game saves would not persist once I closed the emulator. I had to use save states only. I have no idea if that is a problem with Windows 7 (x64) or not.

It's probably a lot better to set up the emulator and play the game that way, but I'm pretty good with computers and even I had a hard time getting the Amiga emulator to work properly.