AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I was helping Bryan West with
a Dungeon Master problem and
he asked:

Of course I had no idea what he was talking
about. So I thought I would ask here where
people seem to know how to spell AD&D.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Well, I may know how to spell AD&D, but I can't necessarily type it correctly. ;)

I personally don't know any widows who play AD&D (oh come on, how often is it someone other than me with the misspelled word?). ;)

Seriously though, I played this game a couple of times, but long ago lost the ability to fit the 5.25" inch disks into anything meaningful. I can tell you that it was not part of the same line of games that spawned FRUA.
I've not seen a clone for it, and I do check every couple of months for all clones and editors of AD&D games. I know it's been released in the ROM community, but I'm not really into that, but if your friend just wants to play it again, that's probably the route to go. Here is a link I found to such a place.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I remember reading about this game and looking at the game in the store, but I think I decided not to buy it :D

It was a kind of strange side-scroller RPG, if I remember correctly, based on the Dragonlance campaign (and books).

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Well, who is not hoping for clones... I am still hoping for a dungeon master clone, but with editing options similar to those of DC... :D

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

You made the wiser decision. ;) You did get to walk around in a top-down view, which was really new when it came out and when I bought it from the bargain bin in like '93 or something. But the side-scrolling part was, in my opinion, kind of lame; especially all the jumping over crap.

Isn't Dungeon Master II the editor? This is another one of those games I picked up a couple of years after it came out for only a couple of dollars and only played a time or two - in this case because it was installed the week before I moved back to Oregon and after mys computer sat in storage for 6 months I wiped it clean and re-installed the OS. :)
I remember playing it for about two hours, and then building my own dungeon. The editor was definitely not like DC, but it seemed to do what I wanted it to (says the guy who's only used the game for two hours). :D:D:D

I've never played the first Dungeon Master, so for all I know, that has an editor too...

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

A new and innovative top-down view? You mean like Rogue?

I had it, but never got into it. Brian O'donnell, however, is on record as saying it's the best computer game ever made. It must have something going for it.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I actually didn't play Rogue until right around the time I got into DC, oddly enough. :)

I guess I never got into the game b/c I'm not the biggest Krynn fan and I didn't do very well at the game. :D:D:D

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I played it on Amiga, it was a joystick game. We are talking about the days of games being restricted to floppy disks, it was fairly straightforward. It was not Planescape: Torment or Baldur's Gate 2. It was not Gold Box because it did not use the 3D explore, isometric view combat format.
Where to find it? It is now abandonware so look at such sites.
Edit:
There was a brief Wikipedia article on it, mentioned an MS-Dos version. Frequently you will find Wikipedia articles on AD&D topics.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I was a Krynn fan, but I didn't like the jumping part (I think), so I didn't buy it :D (I did get Champions of Krynn, though.)

I did spend some time playing Moria (kind of like Rogue) way back when, but I didn't like it too much - too hard!

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

There are several free editors for Dungeon Master, both for the original game and for various windows clones (e.g. Dungeon Master Java, Return To Chaos etc.). But of course none of them would have the options to program such a variety of events and use scripting, I guess that's what Dinonykos means...

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I was just getting ready to write that I was not thinking of Dungeon Master when I wrote that, but of Dungeon Keeper I and II. Big difference. :)

Dungeon Master is Paul's territory. :D Dungeon Keeper is a completely different beast and is much newer than Dungeon Master...

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Ummmmm....My CSBuild editor and CSBwin engine
certainly allow a great deal of scripting flexibility.
Much of what we are doing with DC was inspired by it.
Dungeon Master is quite different from UA, of course.
But it has many features that are much better, IMHO.
Real time combat is one. The ability to put items
on the floor and see them there and pick them up
is another. Event triggering flexibility. Seeing
enemy approach and ability to avoid them.

If you want to play a CSBwin dungeon that represents
the very best that can be done, try ConfluxIII. It
is a tour de force. Unbelieveable what that man did
with my engine. Much of what the engine can do is
a result of his needs and requests. Awsome.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Ah, I forgot you did one of these editors, too (must have read it somewhere before). Too be honest I haven't tinkered with any of them but DM Java and the one for the original game and that only on a very superficial basis. I'll make a note to check out CSBwin & ConfluxIII some time. Thanks for the tip! :)

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Same here!
I played around with DM Java for a short time and looked at Paul's project, but I have not yet looked at ConfluxIII. Seems I should do that. Looks like CSBwin allows event triggers to a degree a wasn't aware of...

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Wow, Paul, you made CSBwin and CSBuild?! The few screenshots of ConfluxIII I managed to Google up look great! :D

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Perhaps someone will post a link to Paul's CSBWin and to Conflux III...?

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I managed to get ConfluxIII to run well on
the Pocket PC (a bit of a pain---opposite
endianess from Intel). Here is a demo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21bOT9MpYG0

List of DM-like games

http://www.dungeon-master.com/forum/...p?f=31&t=23916

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Thanks for the links, Paul.

I had spent some time with this a while ago, but with whichever editor I was using was limited to 256 color bmp files for the graphics so never tried to get into it. :( Or did I miss something that means I should give it another look? I of course would want to do all of my own graphics for any project I made in CSBuild. :D

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

No. No. No. CSBwin is not for anyone
interested in graphics. God, no!!!
The puzzles are the biggest
strength of most games and the monsters
come in second. But you gotta have
imagination to get past the 320x200 16-
color graphics!!!

A couple of other clones allow arbitrary
graphics and sounds. There are some
very good designs for them, too. RTC
has the most followers. But there is nothing
else like ConfluxIII.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Well, it sounds like DC is still stuck with me then. :)

I don't mind playing games with limited graphics, I don't think of that as a drawback at all - if the game is good, that is usually independent of the graphics, this is true for all games.

But when it comes to designing games, I like to do my own and derive at least as much if not more pleasure from the art than the actual game creation. :)

I will be playing ConfluxIII when it gets to the top of my queue. :D

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

It will be a long, hard uphill climb.
I doubt very much that you can
do it without playing lesser games
first to get a feel for what a
designer might do to confuse you.
ConfluxIII is a big, mean game. But
it does come with a wonderful hint
library and lots of help in the form of
maps and spoilers.

It has been too much for me. I cannot
put my mind to it hard enough and
long enough. It is too much like a
tough course in engineering.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

I do imagine that I'll be playing more than one of those games. ;) I'll just make sure the other ones come first.

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Hmm - maybe we can get some inspiration from this game ourselves! :D (Time to make a mean, hard, long dungeon?)

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

For me, they're all kinda mean, hard, long dungeons when I'm making them. ;) This is of course regardless of the story or setting...

Re: AD&D - Heroes of the Lance
 

Back to the original post in this thread, Heroes of the Lance was basically an arcade game. I played it on the Amiga Commodore and liked it. It was good in its day, twenty years ago. Manikus supplied a link on page 1 of this topic. You may need to use Dos Box 0.72 to get it working properly.
Looking at the posts above you can see it has impressive competition these days, Conflux&. If you like the Krynn world there are not too many Krynn arcade games. Not that many Krynn games at all. There was also Dragons of Flame, much like it. Then there was Shadow Sorceror which was a cross between Heroes and a Gold Box game.