Why no love for Warlords 3 Darklords Rising?

[abradley4]

The second explanation comes from Steve Fawkner himself. Apparently the source code for all versions of Darklords Rising past 1.0 has been lost, and his company isn't particularly interesting in repatching it.

IIRC Steve posted on Warlorder (long ago) that the source code for WL3DLR was lost. Don't know about the other WLs.

As for the manual for WL3DLR, read on Warlorders that there never was one (?), maybe they used the one from WL3RoH. Search the web for RoH manual. I understand the only difference is DLR has more spells.

Am running WL3DLR on Win10, in properties select 'XP SP2' and Administrator, my shortcut target "C:\WL DLR\Darklord.exe" -wincursor

Runs beautifully.

Vectoring, seldom use it, felt it was a sort of cheat, if I vectored the unit bypassed any enemy units in route. I only play versus the computer.

How good am I, lousy, but I enjoy.

Last words,

Players' Encyclopedia





Bunches of info.

 

[Makabb]

Works perfectly in 86box

 

[Life of the Party]

They surely don't.

...
http://gemsofwar.com/

 

[Lagi]

warlords 3 used to crash (and not to desktop :/ ) but with win cursor trick now is ok

this game map looks so empty, that i wonder why not make it play on resized mini-map to fit on a whole screen.

 

[Norfleet]

Vectoring, seldom use it, felt it was a sort of cheat, if I vectored the unit bypassed any enemy units in route. I only play versus the computer.

I dunno, it makes some amount of sense: If you view vectoring as the unit simply dispersing and travelling individually, then realistically, that WOULD tend to bypass enemy units in the field, because in order to stop random individuals, the opposing army would ALSO have to disperse, and thus, no longer be capable of functioning as an army in the field.

 

[Edija]

I will never get why Warlords and Warlords Battlecry don't get more love. If there is any franchise that needs a sequel badly it's that. Many dead franchises like Dungeon Keeper have spiritual successors and devs trying to capture and evolve the original vision. I don't see the scope of Warlords replicated anywhere. Though, it is understandable that a game with so many races, heroes, and stuff could be produced in Paradox manner with 220 mandatory DLCs. Imagine a game like Warlords Battlecry coming out today? It would be chopped up into so many DLCs not even your grandma could sew it all back together. I'm aware that there was some discussion on the old dev forums about a possible kickstarter campaign, better said, the impossibility of raising enough money? To be honest I think that going 3D would be a huge mistake and stylized 2D like, for example, Battle Brothers, Sovereignty: Crown of Kings, could work. I'd buy/pledge for a Warlords game anyway, and I'm pretty sure most of the original fanbase would do the same.

Anyway, where would I get Darklords Rising? I don't want to pirate (I'll do it as a last resort). The games are not on GOG. Does Steve Fawkner hate money?

 

[Jugashvili]

People have been begging for it on GOG for some time now and it's safe to say they haven't got any plans to release it. Shame too, compatibility fixes would be nice since the games can be a PITA to get running.

 

[Lagi]

...Anyway, where would I get Darklords Rising?

warlords 3 bc -protectors mod


http://www.nongnu.org/lordsawar/

 

[Patrick_Winekiller]

warlords 3 bc -protectors mod

Thank you for linking to our mod. I made an account specially for this.

Have fun and see you on the battlefield!

 

[Edija]

I wish there was something like Protectors for the Warlords license. Battlecry is cool, but you know. I think UBIKEKS own Warlords nowadays.

 

[thesheeep]

I wish there was something like Protectors for the Warlords license. Battlecry is cool, but you know. I think UBIKEKS own Warlords nowadays.

I don't think we'll ever see another proper Warlords game, Battlecry or otherwise.

And I don't really need the Warlords Battlecry brand.
A spiritual successor would be just fine. Single-player focused base-building RTS with a strong focus on hero-race interactions and a shitload of weird races and a conquest campaign with missions. No need for perfect balancing, "good enough" to have some fun in the (optional) MP will do. Is this so hard to pull off?

 

[RuySan]

I will never get why Warlords and Warlords Battlecry don't get more love. If there is any franchise that needs a sequel badly it's that. Many dead franchises like Dungeon Keeper have spiritual successors and devs trying to capture and evolve the original vision. I don't see the scope of Warlords replicated anywhere. Though, it is understandable that a game with so many races, heroes, and stuff could be produced in Paradox manner with 220 mandatory DLCs. Imagine a game like Warlords Battlecry coming out today? It would be chopped up into so many DLCs not even your grandma could sew it all back together. I'm aware that there was some discussion on the old dev forums about a possible kickstarter campaign, better said, the impossibility of raising enough money? To be honest I think that going 3D would be a huge mistake and stylized 2D like, for example, Battle Brothers, Sovereignty: Crown of Kings, could work. I'd buy/pledge for a Warlords game anyway, and I'm pretty sure most of the original fanbase would do the same.

Anyway, where would I get Darklords Rising? I don't want to pirate (I'll do it as a last resort). The games are not on GOG. Does Steve Fawkner hate money?

Age of Wonders 1 was basically Warlords with tactical combat and the magic system aped from Master of Magic. Even the UI looks like the one from Warlords. You could call the AoW series the spiritual successors of Warlords.

I do remember buying Warlords 4, but don't remember much about playing it. Only remember that it was isometric and the combat was weird.

 

[Naraya]

Warlords 1-3 Out on GOG.

 

[Makabb]

Is the GOG version of Darklords working properly ?

 

[catfood]

On Windows 7 at least, yes.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

Works fine on Win10, with game cursors and music. Sometimes the music stops but it resumes after ending a turn.

 

[catfood]

Works fine on Win10, with game cursors and music. Sometimes the music stops but it resumes after ending a turn.

This fixes the music problem.

 

[Boleskine]

Warlords III and the Warlords I+II pack are each 50% off on GOG.

https://af.gog.com/game/warlords_iii_darklords_rising?as=1649904300

https://af.gog.com/game/warlords_i_ii?as=1649904300

 

[index.php]

http://www.warlorders.com/forum?func=view&catid=13&id=3798

Music update for GOG version

Since the GOG version of DLR has some timing errors in its music tracks, I've created some high-quality ogg rips off the original CDs.

This link contains both the Darklords Rising and Reign of Heroes soundtracks, so you can interchange them freely. The RoH tracks have a lot of long silences at the end of each track on the CD, and I've used a tool to shorten those.

I've also included SteamWarlord's RoH reskin.

www.dropbox.com/sh/grt4zul0mvwlj7l/AACKR...NNMpzfLRQBgT5ma?dl=0

Let me know if there are any problems, I don't use dropbox that often.

 

[weirwood]

I've got something more for you. The Reign of Heroes stand-alone scenarios had text introductions, but those were all cut out in the Darklords Rising release.

Now you can install them in DLR, and experience the full glory of the Puzzle Quest Expanded Universe.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pw8t14nysuztamf/Warlords3 scenario intros.zip?dl=0


RoH:

DLR:

 

[Ladonna]

I always hoped Reign of Heroes would be released with DLR, including the funky little mini movies with Lord Bane smack talking the player and the OST. It seems that one has been truly lost. I have the original game here, but getting RoH to work on modern systems seems even harder than an original version of DLR.

 

[gaussgunner]

Holy shit, this is what I used to play back when most codexers were into BG2 and Fallout. Nice to see it getting fully restored.

 

[weirwood]

I always hoped Reign of Heroes would be released with DLR, including the funky little mini movies with Lord Bane smack talking the player and the OST. It seems that one has been truly lost. I have the original game here, but getting RoH to work on modern systems seems even harder than an original version of DLR.

I got you, fam.

If you want to play Reign, and still have the original disc (or an image, I suppose), there's a much easier way than bothering with a virtual machine or the like. Install OTVDM, then you simply drag and drop the setup.exe from the disc onto otvdm.exe. Do the same thing with the RoH 1.02 patch, then create a shortcut and add -wincursor after war3.exe. You need -wincursor so the game doesn't crash in Windows 10, and you need the patch to enable the wincursor option for Reign of Heroes, but it should run perfectly fine afterwards.

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/otvdm.html

There's also a way to patch the game with _inmm.dll so you can play the game with a no cd crack and a rip of the original soundtrack instead of CD music, but I've never bothered with that, so I can only point you to this thread:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=35984

For DLR, getting it on GOG is definitely the most convenient way.

 

[Ladonna]

I always hoped Reign of Heroes would be released with DLR, including the funky little mini movies with Lord Bane smack talking the player and the OST. It seems that one has been truly lost. I have the original game here, but getting RoH to work on modern systems seems even harder than an original version of DLR.

I got you, fam.

If you want to play Reign, and still have the original disc (or an image, I suppose), there's a much easier way than bothering with a virtual machine or the like. Install OTVDM, then you simply drag and drop the setup.exe from the disc onto otvdm.exe. Do the same thing with the RoH 1.02 patch, then create a shortcut and add -wincursor after war3.exe. You need -wincursor so the game doesn't crash in Windows 10, and you need the patch to enable the wincursor option for Reign of Heroes, but it should run perfectly fine afterwards.

https://github.com/otya128/winevdm/releases
http://www.columbia.edu/~em36/otvdm.html

There's also a way to patch the game with _inmm.dll so you can play the game with a no cd crack and a rip of the original soundtrack instead of CD music, but I've never bothered with that, so I can only point you to this thread:

https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=35984

For DLR, getting it on GOG is definitely the most convenient way.

Thanks for that. I will try this out asap. I got a 404 on the second link though, would you have another one handy?

I assume the RoH patch is easy enough to find through a search engine.

 

[weirwood]

The columbia.edu link? That's strange it works fine for me. Maybe try it on a different browser? But it's only a description of OTVDM, you don't need it.

For the patch, you can go back straight to the source:
https://web.archive.org/web/19981207075928/http://www1.warlords3.com/shoppe/download.html

Don't forget to download the bonus scenarios.