Playing Classic RPGs

[Pangaea666]

Good point, don't want the start of BG2 to be a rollover. We're pretty strong as it is, thankfully, or Durlag's Tower would have killed us many times over. Don't like that the XP stops, but think I'll just keep the cap in place and move on.

Would be fun to know how much XP it's possible to get from here on and in, but suppose I can try this save at a later point to find out. Will make a descriptive save slot and back it up.

Cheers.

 

[chromie92]

I didn't want to make a new thread for this but look what I found thanks to Brian Fargo.

Make A Spiritual Sequel to the Hit CRPG, "Betrayal At Krondor"!

 

[Blothulfur]

Neal Halford's writing was in my eye far superior to Raymond E Feists, i'd support this but $200 is too much for a game.

 

[chromie92]

Neal Halford's writing was in my eye far superior to Raymond E Feists, i'd support this but $200 is too much for a game.

Same here if I see a kickstarter I'd gladly donate but I can't to this at least now after donating to Project Eternity.

 

[mrowakus]

The problems is, after all those kickstarters the funds of general populace are running low. Also the enthusism has subsided replaced by the sombre awareness that we've got to wait at least 2 years before seeing any results. I don't think it is a good time to start another major kickstarter RPG campaign.

 

[Pangaea666]

Finished Durlag's Tower in Baldur's Gate 1 yesterday. Woot. Some very tough encounters there, and I'll probably never look at chess the same way again

Speaking of, my 'tactics' increasingly centred on wand use, in particular fireballs and summons. Without heavy-handed use of summons I have no idea how to pull off the chess and final battle. Maybe it's cheesy, but found out it's a much safer way to deal with enemies than going toe-to-toe. Even ghouls will poison and deal serious damage way too often for comfort.

Not a very sophisticated tactic, but it means we could often survive without lots of buffing, meaning we could sleep little, and with less reloading frustration. Having said that, though, what would be better ways to deal with enemies, without a wall of summons between you and them?

...
That went from heaven to hell fast... Back in Ulgoth's Beard and I'm getting eaten alive for fun I hate assassins!!!

 

[Pangaea666]

No advice on the BG front, but Deus Ex has just gotten on offer on GOG with a ton of other games.

Apart from Deus Ex and probably Anachronox, what would you recommend? Not a fan of terribly outdated graphics so don't think I can bare Tomb Raider 1-3 although I've never played them.

 

[chromie92]

Theif 2 just had a mod that really updated the graphics so I'd recommend it also it's probably the best stealth game I've played.

 

[Pangaea666]

Not a big fan of stealth missions actually, so not sure I would like Thief - although I've heard good things about it. Will definitely get Deus Ex though, it's *the* game I have wanted on offer over there for a while. LOVED Carmageddon when I was young, but the graphics looked gruesome now, so will have to wait till it gets on offer or the remake comes out I think. Have the old CD somewhere, but it stopped working a long time ago. Wouldn't run last time I installed it, and that must have been on Windows 2000 many a year ago.

Finally managed that darn battle back in Ulgoth's Beard - and even the tosser in the basement. Wrote a bit about it here: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/baldurs_gate_series/spoiler_ulgoths_beard_help

 

[Pangaea666]

Bought Deus Ex and Anachronox in the recent GOG offer, but haven't tried them yet. Been busy with BG1, and am now ready to go in the very last door, and hopefully whip some ass. Only the second time I've played through the whole game, so have only defeated that bastard once.

The top priority in BG:EE should be to fix path finding though. Always drives me nuts to walk through the various narrow mazes as no matter what you do 1 or 2 NPCs are flying off in an unwanted direction. Even at this stage, making them behave like you intend is more difficult than the actual battles, which is saying something.

Don't really fancy new characters, classes and areas in the EE version, would be better if they just worked on fixing stuff and giving it a facelift instead of content changes, but as long as they fix the pathfinding horrorshow I'll definitely buy it.

 

[Pangaea666]

(Talking to myself here it seems, but...)

Blimey! Another excellent GOG promo, with piles on Activision games 60% off.

Have hard good things about Gabriel Knight, so think I'll get those three games. Plus Betrayal at Krondor and finally Arcanum. Many of the others look to be too dated for my enjoyment. Krondor may be as well, but think I'll just gamble on that one after all. Won't have time to play any of these for ages, mind, but may as well pick up some just in case I get the time one day.

Legend of Grimrock decent as well? Half price off until Monday apparently.

Hope they get Monkey Island one day though. Barely touched them when I was a kid, so would be fun to get to enjoy them one day.

 

[Corylea.723]

(Talking to myself here it seems, but...)

I'm reading! I don't always have anything to say in reply, and some days I don't feel well enough to reply, but I read your posts about classic games with interest.

Many of the others look to be too dated for my enjoyment.

Some of the games ARE very dated. Some of them aren't much fun anymore, but you might want to play a few of the famous ones, anyway, just as a student of gaming. Zork comes to mind there.

The top priority in BG:EE should be to fix path finding though. Always drives me nuts to walk through the various narrow mazes as no matter what you do 1 or 2 NPCs are flying off in an unwanted direction.

I hear you! Having to micro-manage each step for the entire party in narrow places ...

Does anybody know if Jim Cummings will still be voicing Minsc in the EE? For me, it wouldn't be Baldur's Gate without Jim Cummings!

 

[Pangaea666]

I've heard good things about Zork, but it just looked too dated for me. Not sure I would enjoy it. As I typically spend a lot of time on a game when I first get hooked on one, I also have quite a few to play already, although I haven't exactly been buying lock, stock and barrel. BG2 alone will take a loooong time. However, Gabriel Knight looks interesting, and both Kondor and Arcanum are classics, so can be a good idea to pick them up now when they're on offer. Less sure about Grimrock as it's still 7.49.

Not had any time for BG2 today, but was playing Settlers 2: 10th anniversary, then had to go out shopping and so forth, and wound up talking to some folks out in the corridor for a couple of hours. When I got home again the victory screen was all but showing. It's an odd game Very slow paced, you can basically read a book while playing it, but it's a lot of fun.

 

[volsung]

Just wanted to inform this honorable committee that I have acquired a copy of the classic role-playing game titled "Betrayal at Krondor" from the Good Old Games website. I had been pondering on the possibility of adding said game to my personal collection and decided to proceed and complete the transaction, especially motivated by the temporary "discounted" state of this item at the digital retailer.

 

[Corylea.723]

Just wanted to inform this honorable committee that I have acquired a copy of the classic role-playing game titled "Betrayal at Krondor" from the Good Old Games website. I had been pondering on the possibility of adding said game to my personal collection and decided to proceed and complete the transaction, especially motivated by the temporary "discounted" state of this item at the digital retailer.

*chuckle* I hope you've just decided to be silly, and you haven't been exposed to a lot of pomposity in your real life lately.

I bought that game a few months ago, when it was strongly recommended in the favorite RPG's thread, but I haven't played it yet. My health has been poor, so I've been playing more casual games, since I haven't been up to long or intense games while I'm under the weather. And on the few days when I AM well, I'm working on the game I'm making. (Yes, MAKING games IS still the best game ever, thank you for asking. )

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, once you've played it! Since I agree with almost everything you say, I value your opinion even more than most people's.

 

[volsung]

*chuckle* I hope you've just decided to be silly, and you haven't been exposed to a lot of pomposity in your real life lately.

Actually both Applying for funding and things like that. I have to let my frustration out somehow, since I can't, realistically, kick people in the face.

I bought that game a few months ago, when it was strongly recommended in the favorite RPG's thread, but I haven't played it yet. My health has been poor, so I've been playing more casual games, since I haven't been up to long or intense games while I'm under the weather. And on the few days when I AM well, I'm working on the game I'm making. (Yes, MAKING games IS still the best game ever, thank you for asking. )

Maybe we can exchange opinions, sometime after we've both played it. I really hope you start feeling better soon.

This semester I am teaching a programming class for (non computing) engineers and my students chose to make a mini "game" for a homework, although I favor numerical methods and things like that. Scientific and parallel computing, which is what I actually work on, is simply out of the question at their current level, but some game programming might let them apply principles of matrices, vectors and basic algorithms. The point is I worked briefly on prototypes and came up with, among other things, this simplistic Rogue-like dungeon crawler, all text based. Programming it was as fun as actually playing a game!

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it, once you've played it! Since I agree with almost everything you say, I value your opinion even more than most people's.

Wow, thanks I'll let you know what I think.

 

[volsung]

Sorry for the double post, but I figured this was worth a separate message.

I have been only messing around with Betrayal at Krondor, trying to run it in Linux using DOSBox (which is used for Windows too). I realized the game wasn't playing the audio CD music so I tried to "debug" that. After doing everything manually (instead of loading the custom DOSBox config file included with the game, dosboxBAK.conf) I was able to get the audio CD music started (which is miles ahead of the original early 90's MIDI's ). Then I read through the custom DOSBox config file and found the following errors:

(Last lines of GOG's dosboxBAK.conf)

@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
imgmount d "bak.inst" -t iso -fs iso
c:
cls
KRONDOR.EXE
exit

As you can see, DOSBox mounts the games directory onto "C:" and then tries to mount the audio CD image onto "D:", which fails because the file "bak.inst" is unreachable. The proper order should be:


@ECHO OFF
mount C "."
c:
imgmount d "bak.inst" -t iso -fs iso
cls
KRONDOR.EXE
exit

And in case anyone is interested, running these games under Linux is very simple. Just call DOSBox with "-conf [GOG's custom config file]". Except in this case their file has errors.

 

[Pangaea666]

Have bought a fair few games on the recent GOG sales, but am having a blast with BG2 at the moment. Still very early, but suffice to say, some of the fights are on a whole different level. Mages have quite a few tricks up their sleeves.

 

[volsung]

Have bought a fair few games on the recent GOG sales, but am having a blast with BG2 at the moment. Still very early, but suffice to say, some of the fights are on a whole different level. Mages have quite a few tricks up their sleeves.

Did you play BG2 before?

Some people say the preferred class for BG1 is the fighter, as it is a low-level campaign and we all know spellcasters start off very weak. BG2, on the other hand, evidently favors mages. And this is shown clearly by tossing some of the most formidable mage opponents at you, including the main antagonist.

Just wait until you open the wrong door and end up waking an old Lich, who without a second thought casts spells like Improved Mantle, Meteor Swarm, Time Stop, Wail of the Banshee, and so on. Your party shreds to pieces while your magical weapons don't even harm the bastard. Good times!

EDIT: Did you guys see the Divinity sale on GOG? I normally stay away from hack-and-slash pseudo-RPG's because I am a snob. But is it any good? I do like the way it looks, I'm a sucker for isometric and "old" graphics.

 

[Pangaea666]

Have never played it before, so everything is a bit of a mystery for now. Thankfully haven't come across beasts like what you describe yet, but have had a few incredibly tough multiple-mage fights. They hit a *lot* harder in BG2! Still just fumbling around in the city locations, trying to finish one quest, and then getting sidetracked with 2-3 others

Lovely game.