(Help Wanted) Darkstone: Evil Reigns Master Thread (Help, Patching and Modding)

[Ithamar]

Hey daivin, welcome, always happy to see another Darkstone fan! The online demo just uses the MTF file from the demo version of Darkstone. It should be able to render most of the levels in there correctly, though some textures of some levels are missing (since they are not playable in the demo).

In any case, it is not playable yet, it just renders the quest maps, with some artifacts I need to fix (transparency, and lighting, for example).

Again, happy to see more interest in this project, it always motivates me to keep hacking away

 

[daivin]

Back in the days, i had a friend who was working in Delphine Software studio. He wasn't involved directly in Darkstone, but i believe he had written some tools used in it.
He was working on Moro Racer serie, if i remember well.

He said there were data hidden in the Darkstone assets, which were not used the game (i believe it was… a car. Yes.).
Maybe you'll find them, but maybe they have been withdrawn in the retail version.

He has always seem surprised (and happy) when i was saying to him Darkstone was one of my fav' games.

When DSI was disbanded, he disappeared in the UK, and never to be heard again

Patrick, i you read us, we need you to get informations for reversing the beast !

 

[A horse of course]

I've just started playing this for a new retro review, and whilst it seems to run fine (aside from sound cutting out after a set period), has anyone played it recently at 1080p? I saw a bunch of modified .exe at widescreen gaming forums, but when I install them the main menu text and positions of all the buttons is messed up. Should I be using dgvoodoo AND the modified exe?

edit: meh, I ran it in dgvoodoo at the max 4:3 res

 

[Ithamar]

Hey everyone, sorry for the silence, but I'm still on it!

I've just finished some parsing code that can read the SPT files properly (the quest scripting) and while trying to figure out what does what in there I found out there is a decent overlap in SPT syntax and the DSM (state machine) syntax. While considering how to document this, and wether to duplicate the DSM documentation for the SPT documentation, etc, etc I can to a completely other question:

Where should we document all of this? I'm using ksy files in my code to document the binary formats, but for this more "(power) user level" format stuff, I was thinking of using my darkstone-tools repo's wiki. However, looking at e.g. the Carnivores community using Fandom for very extensive game and modding documentation, I wondered if setting that up might be better for a long-term existance. I mean, if I ever loose interest, delete my github account, or anything like that (I don't see that happening, but still....)

Fandom would also be easier to allow editing by other community members, and could be a good way to collect gameplay suggestions from everyone too.

I would love to hear your ideas about this, as honestly, I cannot wait to be able to play our new and improved version of Darkstone :D

 

[A horse of course]

You should've finished it before I made my video, everybody wants me to play Soulbringer now. Sad!

 

[Ithamar]

You should've finished it before I made my video, everybody wants me to play Soulbringer now. Sad!

Hehe, I wish I could have, but between the actual amount of work involved _and_ RL I just didn't get there in time. I like your video on Darkstone though, getting an entry in my Darkstone playlist on YT

 

[Ithamar]

So I've decided to setup a wiki at https://darkstone.fandom.com but haven't created any content yet at all. I hope to start documenting the scripting "language" in detail there soon, and my intention is to also e.g. create a list of all quests in the game, so I can link from the scripting docs to quests particular features are used in (which makes testing my scripting implementation a lot easier ).

I would like to invite everyone to edit the wiki to their hearts content, and if anyone needs admin access or so just ask. For all intents and purposes, this is meant as a community driven wiki about Darkstone, not just "mine"

 

[A horse of course]

Shouldn't you poast this on a French fansite as well? RPGCodex is Polish.

 

[Golden-Dragon]

Hey everyone, sorry for the silence, but I'm still on it!

I've just finished some parsing code that can read the SPT files properly (the quest scripting) and while trying to figure out what does what in there I found out there is a decent overlap in SPT syntax and the DSM (state machine) syntax. While considering how to document this, and wether to duplicate the DSM documentation for the SPT documentation, etc, etc I can to a completely other question:

Where should we document all of this? I'm using ksy files in my code to document the binary formats, but for this more "(power) user level" format stuff, I was thinking of using my darkstone-tools repo's wiki. However, looking at e.g. the Carnivores community using Fandom for very extensive game and modding documentation, I wondered if setting that up might be better for a long-term existance. I mean, if I ever loose interest, delete my github account, or anything like that (I don't see that happening, but still....)

Fandom would also be easier to allow editing by other community members, and could be a good way to collect gameplay suggestions from everyone too.

I would love to hear your ideas about this, as honestly, I cannot wait to be able to play our new and improved version of Darkstone :D

Does this mean you are able to alter the script of the game? For example: The appearance of the Monolith is after obtaining the fourth crystal. Can it be change or even skip it entirely? Can you please try it, if you got some time.

And the wiki https://darkstone.fandom.com is fantastic. Maybe you should post it on the steam forum as well.
I always see someone asking about Darkstone. Trying to get as many people to join the Darkstone community

The user Conkwer is always pretty active. Here is his website: https://oketado.ru/darkstone.html
Check it out guys.

 

[Golden-Dragon]

Hey guys,

I found something on youtube.

Maybe it can be helpful:

Reverse engineering Darkstone game archives (2 Solutions!!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIFPcPu_uy0

 

[vivienne]

I'm sorry for being very late to this party but here are some files I've just uploaded which may help: I saved them a long time ago; mostly contributed by the Darkstone gaming community: namely Malleus, Pilgrim, Luberon, Foucter, Skipper, Chasm, Lia Dewaide and others I've probably forgotten. They were mostly to help quest makers and dug deep into the game files extracting areas, 'statemachines' and objects and instructions on how to use them in quests.
https://archive.org/download/pc-darkstone-64bit-compatible-manical/misc_darkstone_help.7z

 

[vivienne]

I found you guys through Conkwer. His website: https://oketado.ru/darkstone.html is quite awesome for us Darkstone lovers. I think it includes all the files that were able to be downloaded such as patches and quests etc. The wiki https://darkstone.fandom.com is gone...

 

[SilentMRG]

Hello everybody!

So, everyone knows that this game opens in full screen at a resolution of 640x480 with no option to change, and that's bad, complete shit to be honest. Today I decided to play Gorky 17, a tactical RPG game, and I noticed that it uses GOG's "dxcfg", in short this is a Wrapper for games that use DirectX 1 to 7 and all the "magic" (higher resolutions and other cool stuff) happens through "ddraw.dll".

Anyway, getting straight to the point, Gorky 17 is a game with pre-rendered scenarios and 3D characters, and Darkstone is also a game with 3D characters and some pre-rendered graphics here and there. What I mean is that these games use the same renderer, that is, the same "ddraw.dll", and what I did was use Gorky 17's "dxcfg" in Darkstone, and I managed to make the game fill the entire my screen, at my monitor's native resolution! And there were no bugs! I played for hours and everything was fine. For those who want to test and see for themselves... Here it is: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1T7Rz2XPxUaRbL2JPi2PkT_7lLsAgbTGC/view?usp=sharing

Just unzip anywhere and copy/paste the three files to the Darkstone root directory. =D

Note: For some strange reason, GOG forgot to add the "dxcfg" configurator when adding "ddraw.dll" to Darkstone. Well, I'm glad they didn't forget to do that in Gorky 17. Remembering that this was tested on the GOG version, perhaps it will work on the Steam version or any other version. =)

Good fun for everyone!

 

[SilentMRG]

Hello...

Well, for anyone who wants to test it, I got this wrapper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TVFl5aatadsFXCOnA3kSDoW72ZgvOY3n/view?usp=sharing

From "Heroes of Might and Magic 4 - Complete" from GOG; version - 3.0 win11 2022-09-06.

Perhaps, and according to the version "win11 - 2022-09-06", this wrapper works better on Windows 11. At least on two machines I have here (Windows 7 and Windows 10), it worked very well with Darkstone and I had the impression that it worked better compared to the previous wrapper. If anyone wants to test it on Windows 11, the time is now! =D

Cheers!

 

[vivienne]

Pilgrim released dsp005QEMod and dsp009QEMod v2.0 for Darkstone back in 2010...

I was reading through this thread today and from what I remember is that 'dsp005QEMod' and 'dsp009QEMod' are to be added to the Darkstone folder and used ONLY with the Quest Editor to access the 'unlocked extras' and should be moved somewhere else before playing the game otherwise the game crashes or something else bad happens. Maybe somebody else can verify.