u/TonyTheFuckinTiger

Safe to say the genre would not be the same without this man. Well deserved.

I just finished my play through of Dark Sun: Shattered Lands from Strategic Simulations. I started playing it because I wanted to somewhat see the lore of Dark Sun with the new books from WOTC coming out. I also love playing obscure older titles. So it was a win-win.

I’ve never written a review before for a video game, and it’s my own musings and for fun.

The game itself is notoriously janky and, while I did not experience MANY bugs (I think only 2 and one of which were my own doing), the bugs I did experience set my playtime further back than I’d like and I did almost quit the game. I was happy I did not. Underneath the bugs was a truly fun and unique game. Never have I played a D&D setting where you can triple class your character, and it was practically mandatory.

The combat was fairly simple, especially for my ranger thief cleric character that just multi-attacked with crazy weapons, or cast spells depending on the need. My other 3 characters were also triple classed. I also used a “Thri’kreen” a female only insectoid character that cannot use armor, had a returning ranged weapon so no need for ammo conservation, and claws to do decent damage with.

Speaking of crazy weapons, the weapons cast spell on hit, so many of my characters would multi-attack, then cast a spell and rinse and repeat. Adding to the simplicity of the combat.

The quests were pretty straightforward, having to unite villages against an imposing military threat and do so by doing tasks for them. Honestly the questing and exploration, as well as environmental interactivity, felt very modern for a game that came out in 1993.

My two aforementioned bugs were:
When selecting to do a quest for an elven caravan master, I was given two options. (Option A or B). I selected option A but went and did option B first, then A. When I went to turn in the quest, the quest over was bugged and wouldn’t give me any credit for option B being completed. I THOUGHT that was a mandatory quest giver so I reloaded and did the options in the order I selected.

My last bug was the final battle. It scared me. The final battle simply did not trigger. I had to look for a work around (I was seconds away from looking up the final battle and end scenes on YouTube but where’s the fun in that). I made it work and was able to do the ultimate battle, which was long, and the only difficult combat encounter in the entire game. Having multiple maxed level triple class characters was the only way I could envision winning.

Ultimately, I really enjoyed the game. It was relatively short, a fun, unique and dark setting. I am not sure if I will play Wake Of The Ravager, though you can import your characters from Shattered Lands to Wake Of The Ravager.

Feel free to ask any questions about the game and/or help me decide what to play next. My immediate candidates are:

Baldur’s Gate 2 - started never finished

Arcanum - started never finished

Jagged Alliance 2 - never played

Fallout 1 or 2 - a replay of that

Pillars of Eternity 1 - a replay of that

Tyranny - started never finished

Any Pathfinder Game - started many, never finished

Or any others you may want to add! Thanks for reading

TLDR: Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is a fun, slightly buggy game that takes place in a unique setting removed from the Forgotten Realms of D&D. Also maybe help me select my next game!

Title. I’m not new to classic games, I recently just played Ultima IV for the Sega Master Systems. Have tons of time with early BGs and Fallouts. Is there anything I need to know about Dark Sun before jumping in? Any QOL mods? Any different versions of the game that run better than another. Any tips would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

EDIT FOR CLARITY: I’m talking specifically about Dark Suns: Shattered Lands & Wake of the Ravager

What is “CE”?

In 2022, Alex Balatov blessed us with Fallout 2: CE and Fallout 1: CE (CE stands for “Community Edition”). These modern source engines were buggy, but allowed the original games to be played on all sorts of platforms: linux, Mac, iOS, and Android.

Over the last year a few of us have taken over stewardship of the CE project. The goal is to build a true “*Community Engine*”: the best way to play all classic Fallout games and mods in the modern day. We’ve fixed hundreds of bugs, backfilled a huge amount of the Sfall modding api, and added lots of quality of life enhancements.

Most importantly, we’re building on a modern code base that will make it so much easier to add new features and fix bugs.

How to use CE

Download the latest version here: https://github.com/fallout2-ce/fallout2-ce/releases. You can generally just unzip into your game folder, but there are more instructions right here: https://github.com/fallout2-ce/fallout2-ce.

Mod support

CE has comprehensive HRP (high resolution project) support, including hires main menu, dialog, and map edge correction. We also support a large chunk of the modding surface of Sfall. The most recent addition is a port of Sfall’ hooks system, including implementing a majority of hooks used in mods. As a result, most mods “just work” with CE, including FO2Tweaks, NPC Armor, Party Orders, and many others.

CE also works with the most total conversion mods such as Sonora and Nevada. With the recent addition of hooks and EDG support, Restoration Project Updated (RPU) is now fully supported.

Quality of life enhancements

2-column inventory

Party members can loot!

Party members can barter

Quick loot action on companions

Also:

• Expanded (4 row) barter window
• Expanded AP bar
• Improved controls for touch screens
• Configurable item highlighting (loot, critters, containers, &c.), including line-of-sight.

Of course, all these are optional, and the option to play with a purely vanilla experience is supported.

Many, many, small fixes

We're constantly polishing small annoyances in the original engine. Ever have the problem of interacting with an item which is close on screen but the path is far away, and the game decides to make the character walk slowly along the long path? Now run vs walk distance is calculated based on the actual path length. Or, have you been annoyed that the music restarts on every map transition, even if the track is the same? That's fixed. You no longer have manually balance caps—the right amount is auto-selected when you drag them into the barter table. Speaking of dragging, you can avoid that entirely now with ctrl-click'ing to loot, equip, steal, and barter.

Many of these enhancements are from Sfall, and others started in CE and were ported back to Sfall (which is very worth updating if you haven't in a while).

For modders

Providing a better platform for mod support is one of the main goals of CE. We're just getting started with this part of the project, but already have some interesting capabilities:

• Use .pngs for (static) assets, .ogg or .wav files for map music or sound effects (with 44.1 kHz output)
• Rebuilt BIS mapper that runs on any platform CE runs on.
• Cross-platform command line tools for extracting and creation FO1/2 .dat archives, and for converting between .frm and .png

What's still to do

Getting Fallout 1 working is a major goal. Getting other total conversion mods working and tested would be great as well (like Olympus and Resurrection).

We still have a lot more to port from Sfall. If you have a specific mod that you want to see working let us know!

We also need a new name. We're still CE, but this project is no longer linked to just Fallout 1 or Fallout 2.

This is no longer
FO2:CE Fallout 2: Community Edition
but
FOR:CE Fallout Reimagined: Community Engine

Acknowledgements

So many people have contributed to CE, from Alex who created the project, to the dozens of folks who have contributed code, graphics, or testing. It would also be almost impossible to pull off a project like this without being able to build on other projects in the Fallout modding community. Sfall in particular has been an invaluable resource both in the decades of work put into it but the direct help from the authors.

Hi! I have had an obsession with retro-games. Maybe it is Majuular's videos. Maybe it is my computer slowly being unable to keep up with modern games (RTX 2060). I have been moving BACK in time for games worth playing.

Watching Majuular, I have gained a huge appreciation for Ultima. I have played Ultima Underworld and loved it. I want to know where to jump in to the other more CRPG oriented games.

For conciseness, I want to know what series are worth playing and where to start. I will make a list of what I have played or own. Prior to Ultima Underworld, my oldest played game was Fallout 1, and it is one of my favorite series.

List:

Utlima IV - Own (Have started playing)

Ultima V - Own

Ultima VI - Own

Ultima VII - Own

Ultima Underworld - Played, Loved, One of my favorite Games!

Ultima Underworld II - Own (Have heard divided things about)

Bard's Tale Trilogy (Remastered) - Own

Might & Magic VI, VII, VIII - (Started playing VI on the "all games in VIII" mod, enjoyed but bounced off)

Wizardry 6 - Own

Wizardry 7 - Own

Wizardry 8 - Own

Usually I am a HUGE CRPG fan, though something about these games make me also want to jump into classic JRPGs so feel free to recommend those too.

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi! I have had an obsession with retro-games. Maybe it is Majuular's videos. Maybe it is my computer slowly being unable to keep up with modern games (RTX 2060). I have been moving BACK in time for games worth playing.

Watching Majuular, I have gained a huge appreciation for Ultima. I have played Ultima Underworld and loved it. I want to know where to jump in to the other more CRPG oriented games.

For conciseness, I want to know what series are worth playing and where to start. I will make a list of what I have played or own. Prior to Ultima Underworld, my oldest played game was Fallout 1, and it is one of my favorite series.

List:

Utlima IV - Own (Have started playing)

Ultima V - Own

Ultima VI - Own

Ultima VII - Own

Ultima Underworld - Played, Loved, One of my favorite Games!

Ultima Underworld II - Own (Have heard divided things about)

Bard's Tale Trilogy (Remastered) - Own

Might & Magic VI, VII, VIII - (Started playing VI on the "all games in VIII" mod, enjoyed but bounced off)

Wizardry 6 - Own

Wizardry 7 - Own

Wizardry 8 - Own

Usually I am a HUGE CRPG fan, though something about these games make me also want to jump into classic JRPGs so feel free to recommend those too.

Any help would be appreciated.

Following the community discussion, ideas, and poll in the previous threads: AI Content is banned.

This is not the subreddit for AI generated games, fan-art, mods, etc.

The content will be removed and the user warned, if violations persist the user will be banned. This is not to punish indie game developers, it is to ensure that the content and quality of games on this subreddit remain to the liking and expectation of the community. Generative AI games are low-effort, AI Slop, that steal assets from other games and hard-working developers.

Thank you for the discussion today. Any further questions or concerns please feel free to vocalize them here.