The Return of Mitch

[Boggit]

Oh, I forgot to mention that I have found many pages written by myself (as a bad-tempered Troll) in ST Action to do with DM and Chaos. For example the big debate between players regarding Chaos when it was first launched.
As I was writing the Dungeon & Disk Drives column at the time I have quite a few readers letters which featured in my column, plus the Troll's ill-tempered replies.
Interested?

Mitch (Troll, Boggit)

[ChristopheF]

Yes!
We want it all!

[Ameena]

I don't really think you need to ask us if we're interested in this stuff, you know .

[beowuuf]

Two pages from the Dungeons & Disk Drives column in ST Action, Issue 22, Feb 1990:

http://www.dmjump.net/dd0001.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/dd0002.jpg

At some point I will echo all these on the fist post for ease of reference.

[ian_scho]

Oh maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan, there were people with no brain back in the '80s too. I never knew. In the second page someone writes a letter asking how to get past the portcullis in the hall of champions.

Thinking about it though, there are no artefacts on the floor to interact with, so that's one less pointer...

I suppose the only difference between now and the '80s was that we have an acronym for it -> RTFM

[Boggit]

Well I have sent the forum five pages to begin with. In this case it was a long review of Chaos Strikes Back.
If the Dungeons & Disk Drives articles prove to be of interest to everyone I'll send them. As they dont always refer directly to DM or Chaos perhaps I should create a different forum for those who wish to read about other DM clones which were created as a result of DM's popularity.
Incidentally, when I moved from ST Action to ST Amiga I created a new RPG and Adventure feature which was called Boggits Domain. This was similar to Dungeons and Disk Drives and proved to be very popular as the Boggit character spent most of his time slagging off the letter writers. I have only recently bought some of the mags which I found on Ebay and I confess they made me laugh out loud as I forgot how rude the Boggit was. If you like RPG's and adventure games which were around at that time I think you'll be amused by it all.

Mitch

[beowuuf]

CSB review:

http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0001.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0002.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0003.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0004.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0005.jpg

[ChristopheF]

I have added the andy Jaros interview on http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/100
and the CSB review on http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/891

Thanks again for all the scans!

[Gambit37]

CSB review:
http://www.dmjump.net/chaos0001.jpg [etc.]

Oooh, I had that one! I definitely remember it. Unfortunately it was in the big bag of magazines I disposed of over 10 years ago

[Boggit]

Okay, I have sent in another batch of Troll letters which no doubt will be set up soon.
My God, I'm back dealing with Troll letters and playing Dungeon Master until 2am again.
Where did it all go wrong?

Mitch

[beowuuf]

You mean, where did it all go right?


Scans here:

http://www.dmjump.net/troll0001.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/troll0002.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/troll0003.jpg

[beowuuf]

Cool little dungeon drawign thing showcased on page 3... Funny to see the discovery and guesses abotuthe CSB working too

[Sphenx]

Page 2 ... Someone asks about the mysterious scroll in CSB .. with slight differences from what we know ! What is it ?!

[Gambit37]

He he, I found some scans of the Boggit's Domain on AMR and discovered one of the letters I sent in> Check out this page, scans 13 + 15: http://amr.abime.net/issue_85_pages
Yes, Hackman Hobbs was me, one of my dumb old role-playing names! (I was obsessed with Calvin & Hobbes at the time)

[Sophia]

Ooh, this raises a new mystery. It's fairly obvious in retrospect that the weirdly colored rats were just the wrong palette in use, but the mystery is, why did throwing an object at a monster that was using the wrong palette cause the game to crash?

[Sphenx]

I think the answer is in the first sentence : "I have been messing about with the dungeon master editor". Wrong palettes and crashes may occur when creatures were not placed correctly in the creatures list of a level. I assume that the dungeon master editor were producing unstable dungeon in that case; that would not suprise me if the game crashed later.

[T0Mi]

Now the kitchen in Conflux suddenly becomes a scary place.
(I bet something weird happens when you kill the golden rats using thrown stuff. Probably drop a spanish fly for the horny pillar)
We need that friggin source, so you code-heads can have your way with it.

Anyway:

Thank you, Mitch!

Lot's of ppl here are taking a full nostalgia shower right now.

I see you mentioning that you're playing DM using an emulator. DM has been completely reverse engineered (meaning the original *.PRG of the Atari ST has been disassembled and transfered from pure machine code to a readable C/ASM code), and there are literally no more secrets left. And kind of no more misterys, sadly. The only missing piece of the puzzle may be the original source code. So it's not just CSB finished in 7 (seven!) minutes. There is a whole programming language built around the original DM engine. If you wish, it can probably create a *.mp3 from a streamed YouTube music video while warcrying a screamer.

All the things that we dreamt about to be a reality in DM became true. Custom wallsets, rusting armor, (un)cursed weapons, trollins trowing (poinsoned) clubs, custom sounds and overlays, stone golems that push you back when they hit the party, critical hits, level caps, character specific abilities, heck - you can have chaos poop pink gems when you (accidently) put the hidden chastity belt on Tiggy.

So check out the custom dungeon section if you feel like it. You will be amazed what people have done.

[Ameena]

Actualy, I believe there is still one other mystery - that weird scroll in CSB which I don't think anyone's ever made sense of (so maybe it was just the game devs creating it deliberately to mess with players' heads because there is no secret to it other than it's a load of gibberish ).

[Boggit]

I'm Back!
I have just emailed a further offering - the Dungeons & Disk Drives column from March 1990 which has references to Dungeon Master and Chaos. I assume they will be with you soon.
As for nostalgia trips, I'm pleased you like reading the old stuff, I had forgotten how rude I was as the Troll. However for real rudeness you would need to read my Boggits Domain columns, boy I did lay into some readers.

Enjoy

Mitch

[beowuuf]

And here they are!

http://www.dmjump.net/staction0001.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/staction0002.jpg
http://www.dmjump.net/staction0003.jpg

[Gambit37]

Nice! I forgot to mention that in the Gallery of Avatars on this site, there's a folder of old avatars I made about 20 years ago. One of them is an exact copy of the Troll that was printed in one of those Dungeons & Disk Drives columns:

When you could see the actual pixels from a 320x200 screenshot blown up big in a magazine, it was obviously easy to copy

It's kinda amazing to think this even survived: at some point I managed to transfer a bunch of data from my Amiga to PC floppy disks, and kept them until recently. The disks were a bit knackered, but I managed to save some DM stuff and some old DPaint work. The rest is a history only I will recall...

[Boggit]

Well I tried to take the advice that I should try out some of the custom dungeons in your archives and I selected Tower of Champions. Whilst the game runs I have no sound. Which clever hero is going to tell me what to do about it?

Mitch

[beowuuf]

Tower of Champions through RTC? RTC should have no sound issues as an engine. Check the game options through the inventory screen - there should be a musical note icon you can use to adjust both game and music sound. See if, for some reason, it's been set to 0.

[ChristopheF]

If using CSBwin, then try the "Attempt using DirectX" option in the "Volume" menu.

[Boggit]

Yep, the Direct X works

[Adamo]

Boggit, I guess there was a confusion and you downloaded Tower of Chaos instead of Tower of Champions (names of these games are pretty similar). You`re probably playing Tower of Chaos (CSBwin), not Tower of Champions, wchich is RTC clone. Tower of Champions was released olny for RTC, not CSBwin.

[Boggit]

Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!
You are correct, I have downloaded the wrong blooming game.
Okay, I give in how do I download and play the Tower of Champions?
From what I see in the relevant page describing the game there are a number of files shown with no indication how to use them. In addition when I do download and try to extract the game files of the one which looks like the game file I get asked for a password to extract the Rar files.
Now come on guys. If I slip back into Troll mode and tell you how I feel about poor user instructions, ears will start to burn!!

[Gambit37]

Download RTC, that's the game engine for Tower of Champions.
http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/

Where did you download ToC from? If you got it from the dedicated thread on the forum, the password is right there in the first post:
http://dungeon-master.com/forum/viewtop ... 31&t=28336

To be honest, I'd start with some of the more classic custom dungeons first. Tower of Champions is an extremely sophisticated game, and given that you couldn't even find the right engine to play it, I don't think you're up to scratch.

Ah, it feels good to have a little dig at the Troll after all these years!

[Adamo]

List of custom dungeons is here: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 31&t=23916
Towers of Champions thread is here: http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/vie ... 31&t=28336

Password was made by a dungeon creator.
ToC on Encyclopedia: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1451

Download the game from:
ToC download: http://dmweb.free.fr/Stuff/files/dun ... ns_3.3.rar
I guess in that last download file there`s everything, the clone and the game. From what I see in a forum thread, password is JUNIUS.

[beowuuf]

On last hoop - you will need to place the ToC.rtc file into the 'modules' directory of RTC if the pages don't tell you to do that. There is a list of dungeons available when you start up RTC. Amongst the normal dungeons and the example dungeons you sould find Tower of Champions as an option to play!

Most custom dungeons have a unique name, but it's a dungeon designer option, so just to warn you that there might be the rare custom dungeon where it's still called the default 'new dungeon'.


Tower of Champions is good, the very first room is VERY un-DM like in terms of the puzzles needed to get out (in a good way, but it might have you screaming). After that, it settles into a more DM like (Or maybe DM 2 like in a good way) game, though you will need to find runes and keys to make the magic and water/food management easier

I see I have a new e-mail, so I will post a separate post with some new links!