The Lords of Midnight - getting updated for 20XX

[Rahdulan]

I'm not exactly sure how I'm supposed to feel about this. ??
http://www.thelordsofmidnight.com/

 

[Kukulkan]

The fact that it will be available on an Android gives me great reason to be concerned over the quality of the game. Still, I've never played the '84 game so I'd like it for anyone who has to inform the Codex about the quality of the game.

 

[SCO]

It's a minimalist game; ie: lost art.

Here is a unfinished LP (images sometimes missing)

As you can see, more of a strategic game than anything else, challenging if you want to recruit (and thus save) all the lords.

 

[Metro]

Well, the game wasn't that complex... of course it was made nearly three decades ago so I'd say it's suitable for iOS.

 

[Luzur]

i still got my copy for Spectrum (forgot to pack it when i shipped my Spctrum 48k away) but i only played around 5-6 min of it.

 

[circ]

The fact that Mike died unfortunately earlier this year doesn't seem to matter to whomever is releasing this? Cash grab.

 

[mondblut]

The fact that Mike died unfortunately earlier this year doesn't seem to matter to whomever is releasing this? Cash grab.

Mike and Chris Wild were working on the remake together, and it was finished with the blessings of Mike's family. Don't be an ass.

 

[circ]

Oh.

 

[Anthony Davis]

I have fond memories of playing this on my Commodore 64 as a young teenager and not knowing what the hell I was doing and not understanding why Corleth the Fey could not defeat an entire army all by himself.

I might have to pick this up.

 

[Sputnik]

The game is now available for Android, for £2.99/€3.99/$something.

Now waiting for Doomdark's Revenge to be completed...

 

[Name]

So is this game basically about playing and losing enough times to know the location of lords, and then start again and recruit them into 1-2 giant armies and hold the fort until Doomdark used up his number?
(I did the quest route, somehow get two of the three destroyers killed, but the wise man saves the day).
The game is advertised as rpg on GOG.com store page, but I can't see any RPG elements. You only have two weapons for loot, sword of wolfslayer and sword of dragonslaying. Those magical places seem to be largely useless too, except the Movement Point Reset one and HP refreshment. And why can I only rest once in every keeps/castles/taverns?
There is also no in-game story/dialogue whatever. All the lords are just blank and bland too. Maybe except those who happen to be at some interesting location to be memorable.
By the way how's the remake handling the victory conditions?

Spoiler

What would happen if I took Doomdark's castle at the same day as Morkin brings the Ice Crown to the Wise man, the Dragon and the traitor skulkrin together at the Lake Mirror?

 

[mondblut]

The game is advertised as rpg on GOG.com store page, but I can't see any RPG elements. You only have two weapons for loot, sword of wolfslayer and sword of dragonslaying. Those magical places seem to be largely useless too, except the Movement Point Reset one and HP refreshment. And why can I only rest once in every keeps/castles/taverns?
There is also no in-game story/dialogue whatever. All the lords are just blank and bland too. Maybe except those who happen to be at some interesting location to be memorable.

What do you expect from a 1984 game? Morte and Annah discussing metaphysics?

It's not an RPG of course, it's a genre-defying (or genre-preceding really) hybrid of first-person strategy and adventure.

 

[Name]

The game is advertised as rpg on GOG.com store page, but I can't see any RPG elements. You only have two weapons for loot, sword of wolfslayer and sword of dragonslaying. Those magical places seem to be largely useless too, except the Movement Point Reset one and HP refreshment. And why can I only rest once in every keeps/castles/taverns?
There is also no in-game story/dialogue whatever. All the lords are just blank and bland too. Maybe except those who happen to be at some interesting location to be memorable.

What do you expect from a 1984 game? Morte and Annah discussing metaphysics?

It's not an RPG of course, it's a genre-defying (or genre-preceding really) hybrid of first-person strategy and adventure.

Well when there is that quest I thought it will at least be like having some story in it. But in reality you just need to get enough hints from the wise in the tower and explore the nooks to find those special characters.

 

[mondblut]

Well when there is that quest I thought it will at least be like having some story in it. But in reality you just need to get enough hints from the wise in the tower and explore the nooks to find those special characters.

It has a plenty of story.

Spoiler

in the accompanying novella

 

[Name]

Well when there is that quest I thought it will at least be like having some story in it. But in reality you just need to get enough hints from the wise in the tower and explore the nooks to find those special characters.

It has a plenty of story.

Spoiler

in the accompanying novella

I've only read the prequel one. Is there any more explaining the in-game event or ending stuff? Like who's that dragon?

 

[mondblut]

I've only read the prequel one. Is there any more explaining the in-game event or ending stuff? Like who's that dragon?

Nah. In oldschool games, the story bullshit ends when starting a new game happens

 

[Infinitron]

Digital Antiquarian on Lords of Midnight: http://www.filfre.net/2014/01/mike-singleton-and-the-lords-of-midnight/

The story Singleton wrote, the preamble to the War of the Solstice, would eventually be included with the game as a novella. Taken on one level it’s just another Tolkien knockoff, if reasonably well written as such things go. We’ve got the usual stand-ins for Sauron (Lord Doomdark), Aragorn (Luxor), Frodo (Morkin), Elrond (Corleth), Gandalf (Rorthron), Gollum (Fawkrin). The game itself flies its Tolkien flag with equal pride. There are two ways to win which neatly parallel the two stories told in The Two Towers and The Return of the King: use Luxor (Aragorn) and as many of the thirty other Lords of the Free as he can rally to his banner to defeat Doomdark (Sauron) militarily, or sneak Morkin (Frodo) deep into Doomdark’s realm to destroy the Ice Crown (One Ring), source of Doomdark’s power.

Yet there’s a sense of the timeless to The Lords of Midnight which is seldom seen in other games then or now. Singleton does not just appropriate the surface tropes of The Lord of the Rings but also manages to capture some of its epic grandeur. In their advertising copy, Beyond would ceaselessly pound on that word “epic”: “The Lords of Midnight is not simply an adventure game nor simply a war game. It is really a new type that we have chosen to call an epic game, for as you play The Lords of Midnight you will be writing a new chapter in the history of the peoples of the Free.”

“Epic” is a word, like “tragedy” or “hero,” that’s been overused by our Hollywoodized culture to the point of meaninglessness; these days movies based on toy robots are epic sagas, and that party your friendly local teenager went to last weekend was epic, dude. The Lords of Midnight, however, reaches back to the word as it applies to The Iliad, The Odyssey, Paradise Lost, and, yes, Tolkien’s modern epic The Lord of the Rings. Not that I’m making direct artistic comparisons here, mind you. It’s just that there’s a similar if more modest windy majesty blowing through Mike Singleton’s land of Midnight, something I can’t quite put my finger on that makes it more than your typical fantasy pastiche. One need only read a few comments from the many players who remember the game well to realize that I’m not the only one to feel it. More so than strategic depth (which it has to a surprising degree; folks continue to discuss and refine their strategies to this day) or anything else, thatfeeling seems to be the defining trait of The Lords of Midnight for most players. It manages to be epic in the classical sense when other games settle for adjectives like “exciting” or “interesting” or “immersive.” It’s in the graphics; it’s in the simple elegance of the mechanics (there are only a few actions each character can perform); it’s even in the text, which is stately, literate, and dignified while necessarily remaining very succinct. Even when you lose — and you will lose, early and often, before you work out how everything works and develop a serviceable battle plan — you feel like the destruction of the People of the Free also has an epic resonance of its own; the story of Hector can be as compelling as that of Odysseus, after all.

 

[octavius]

Chris Wild has posted on GOG and mentioned plans for random scenarios, or including player made scenarios from MMU, in future updated of Lords of Midnight. But for the time being the free Midnight Engine, also made by Chris, is a better option if you play on a PC.

I'm also looking forward to the remake of Doomdark's Revenge. It will be a faithful remake, warts and all, but IIRC it will include a much needed auto-map. Hopefully some of the design flaws of DR will also be ironed out eventually.
DR is a much more dynamic game than LoM, with the lords being able to move, and having their own agendas, but sadly it had a few flaws that LoM lacked. The worst was that only player controled characters could use the underground passages, thus being completely safe. It was also fairly annoying that the players can't chose their battles. If you Attack an enemy lord, and there are several hours left of the day, there will be no combat if the other lord decided to move, despite computer controled lords supposed to move only at night. This made the strategy part too weak, IMO.

 

[index.php]

They think I am a foolish old man with a hopeless dream​

Posted on March 4, 2024

A spring release for The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark’s Revenge. Version 2.0.8 has hit the stores. There are a number of LoM changes but it’s a huge DDR update. Check out the last post for full details of all the changes. Last thing for me to do with this update is to get it back one GoG.

Unless there are any problems then this will be the last Cocos2d-x release. Don’t worry – there is a replacement plan…

As you will be aware if you’ve paid attention to my many troubles with development over the years, I moved from Marmalade SDK to Cocos2d-x a few years ago due to Marmalade getting out of the SDK game. It’s been two years since I managed the v2 release which was the first under Cocos2d-, and. it was six years ago that I managed my last Marmalade build.

Well Cocos2d-x is pretty much no longer supported. After they released v4 they have not done any updates in 3 years. As we all know, mobile platforms move forward very quickly, and there is always the chance that either Google or Apple will change something enough that the games don’t work anymore, and then even though it’s open source you’ll need to be luck enough that someone fixes the problem for you, or you are deep in to it yourself. However, changes are usually just small fixes, if Apple decide something fundamentally needs to change in the system, low level c++ SDKs are going to need a lot of work. There are already bugs in the Metal implementation that have dogged my port since I released it that have never been addressed.

Luckily, there is a new supported fork of Cocos2d-x called Axmol. They’ve pushed the SDK forward and fixed a huge amount of issues that existed in Cocos2d-x. I’ve been eyeing it for a while but I finally took the plunge earlier this year and have ported to it. It was a relatively smooth transition as far as most of the engine was concerned. Because it’s based on Cocos2d-x it was mainly about getting the project setup file correctly formatted and not much about the code. However there were a number of issues with the OSX port, which is the one I started with, that were probably unique to me. I say that because I suspect at this stage not many people have released Mac games fully through the App Store with Axmol, or indeed Cocos2d-x to be fairl. But the team were fantastic and we got them all ironed out relatively quickly.

I just have some tweaking on the Windows version which is more to do with building with multiple assets, (my projects are setup to be both LoM and DDR which is not quite the expected process for Axmol). But I expect to be fully operational across all platforms very soon.

I’d like to get test versions out soon, and will likely start that process in the next month.

With the move to Axmol I believe that the games will be safe on the current platforms for at least a few more years yet. I actually think it’s remarkable that it’s been 11 years since I originally released LoM on iOS.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the latest updates…

 

[luj1]

There was a really dope Midwinter remake that died