ROSS'S GAME DUNGEON: DUNGEON SIEGE

[BTGBullseye]

Also one of my all-time favorites... Though it isn't aging too well.

[Cally]

Well after watching the video I decided to play the game myself.

Noticed 2 things pretty quickly.(These may have been mentioned, I only skimmed the first page of replies)

To start Ross mentions that there aren't many dungeons in the game, maybe he meant full on dungeons that were like raids. But after about 20 minutes of playing I already found 1. But it was a side thing, hidden away in some glade.

 

Also I wanted to explain the story and why you're fighting random animals. So as far as I can tell from the opening cinematic, there was an empire. It got greedy, then died to evil. Except 1 of it's legions which went off to a new continent and lived in peace for 300 years. Apparently they lived in peace because they cast some dark magic, but that magic probably ran out. Because now all the things that were previously peaceful have started attacking them. So I guess the evil doesn't send many minions on it's own, but instead turns everything against people.

 

I'll have to play more to get a better idea on these two things, but so far having a lot of fun with the game.

[Goggles2114]

The GOG team could probably fix all the issues Dungeon Siege 1 has. They were able get Revenant playable for all current versions of Windows with no issues what so ever. http://www.gog.com/game/revenant I don't know how they do it but I swear these guys are wizards.

 

 

You do realize GOG goes with pre-bundled community tools and builds a lot of times right? I'm not trying to say that they do this is bad since from the end user's perspective it makes things a LOT simpler but GOG is first and foremost a distribution point.

[danielsangeo]

Well after watching the video I decided to play the game myself.

Noticed 2 things pretty quickly.(These may have been mentioned, I only skimmed the first page of replies)

To start Ross mentions that there aren't many dungeons in the game, maybe he meant full on dungeons that were like raids. But after about 20 minutes of playing I already found 1. But it was a side thing, hidden away in some glade.

 

From the name "Dungeon Siege", it sounds like you're going to be going from one dungeon to the next rather than a random one here and there and rarely. I think that's what Ross was going for there.

[Cally]

Well after watching the video I decided to play the game myself.

Noticed 2 things pretty quickly.(These may have been mentioned, I only skimmed the first page of replies)

To start Ross mentions that there aren't many dungeons in the game, maybe he meant full on dungeons that were like raids. But after about 20 minutes of playing I already found 1. But it was a side thing, hidden away in some glade.

 

From the name "Dungeon Siege", it sounds like you're going to be going from one dungeon to the next rather than a random one here and there and rarely. I think that's what Ross was going for there.

 

Ah, alright. Makes sense. Guess it would be weird if most of Skyrim took place out of Skyrim unless you took a side path for a while...

[ScottD.Betson]

great episode that i saw on my birthday (it came out at midnight on my birthday so it was awesome for me) thanks for the awesome video Ross

[JezuzLizard]

I found a mod that lets you have npc party members in multiplayer, it uses summoning spells that summon 5 unique characters with their own starting equipment. Unlike a regular summoning spell,you can control the characters like in singleplayer meaning inventories, equipment, skills etc. Probably the most intriguing part is that is no limit to how many you can summon, its apparently possible to control more than 8 but since the amount exceeds the formations it doesn't work right. Also the ui doesn't display the extra characters beyond 8 but they do have inventories and can equip weapons, pick items level up etc, but the ui won't display their inventories. There are a few interface bugs (clicking on a portrait won't work except the main character)

but overall I didn't see anything game breaking.

 

Additionally multiplayer only counts actual players for the formulas, so enemies are really weak for how many characters you have.

 

http://ds.gemsite.org//web/index.php/mods/GET/detail-146

 

That website has a lot more mods on it besides that one mod like the famous Mageworld.

 

edit: only the original 6 save their inventories and stats

[Xeknos]

Dungeon Siege was awesome. As mentioned above, NWN 1-2 gets kind of close to what he wants in a hack and slash, if one were to cross Dungeon Siege with Baldur's Gate.

 

I remember trying to get into the multiplayer for Dungeon Siege, but it was always hard to find a game. They were doing some interesting things with semi-persistent worlds back then.

[Colonel Sergeev]

The most broken things in DS3 (in my opinion) are experience and leveling system. The enemies are ALWAYS the same level you are. Like if you're LVL 3 in one room, then you level up to, say, LVL 30 (artificially, for the sake of experiment) - monsters in the next room will be LVL 30 as well. And they'll kill you in couple of hits, because equipment that you get tied to your current level (and LVL 2 equipment obviously sucks against LVL 30 enemies). That makes leveling COMPLETELY POINTLESS!

But there's more! System actually works the other way as well. When I first beat this game I did every quest plus DLC and level capped at 35. Final boss actually was pretty strong. Then I played only doing main quest and was around LVL 25 in the final boss encounter, who wasn't that strong that time. But then I've played this game the third time artificially keeping my level low (3) throughout the whole game - final boss died in 2 hits (and one of the previous bosses in 1 hit!!!)!

[VoraofFJ]

If I may Ross, while I don't know this for sure, some of your issues in running older games on modern systems might be that your current PC is multicore, whereas Dungeon siege and many other games from early 2000s and before are only single threaded.

[Heliocentrical]

If I may Ross, while I don't know this for sure, some of your issues in running older games on modern systems might be that your current PC is multicore, whereas Dungeon siege and many other games from early 2000s and before are only single threaded.

I think that might be the case. I remember playing Dungeon Siege on a PC with a dual core CPU with Windows and I had the exact same issues with the exact same fixes as Ross did.

[Heliocentrical]

I wonder how difficult it would be to make a port of Dungeon Siege. The elder scrolls III Morrowind has a port called Openmw https://openmw.org/en/. It might be difficult but not impossible.

[JezuzLizard]

I think the reason why Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) runs like garbage is not because the hardware is old or new, or good or bad. Its due to Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) not being very well optimized, I actually did a little experiment for a mod I was making. Anyway I forced the game to load the entire first region in Kingdom of Ehb, which is about from the farmhouse to the entrance of the forest.

 

Here is some pics of multiple areas fully loaded:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lysuL1W-PtenBzTEZNdnI4dVU

 

20 fps zoomed all the way out on this system:

GTX 980

i5 4690k 3.6 ghz

Windows 10

 

When I zoomed all the way in I get 80 fps, meaning the GPU is the bottleneck despite being one of the top 10 GPUs money can buy. Ironically that also means that the Dungeon Siege engine would make a better rts engine because of how fast and optimized it is for running ais and scripts.

 

Now that would fun, an RTSARPG where you outfit your small army, and massacre other small armies.

 

If your curious about the development of this game here is a link to Scott Bilas's blog:

http://scottbilas.com/games/dungeon-siege/

[Ross Scott]

I think the reason why Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) runs like garbage is not because the hardware is old or new, or good or bad. Its due to Dungeon Siege 1(and 2) not being very well optimized, I actually did a little experiment for a mod I was making. Anyway I forced the game to load the entire first region in Kingdom of Ehb, which is about from the farmhouse to the entrance of the forest.

 

Here is some pics of multiple areas fully loaded:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7lysuL1W-PtenBzTEZNdnI4dVU

 

20 fps zoomed all the way out on this system:

GTX 980

i5 4690k 3.6 ghz

Windows 10

 

When I zoomed all the way in I get 80 fps, meaning the GPU is the bottleneck despite being one of the top 10 GPUs money can buy. Ironically that also means that the Dungeon Siege engine would make a better rts engine because of how fast and optimized it is for running ais and scripts.

 

Now that would fun, an RTSARPG where you outfit your small army, and massacre other small armies.

 

If your curious about the development of this game here is a link to Scott Bilas's blog:

http://scottbilas.com/games/dungeon-siege/

Those shots are awesome, would be neat to see the great northern forest, dunes, and swamp area from the multiplayer map since they're so huge.

 

As for the optimization, my guess is it's optimized for different hardware. Again, I don't remember realtime shadows being a huge issue when I was on XP.

[Gaikang]

Just sent Ross an e-mail mentioning these games, but hey I can't possibly leave everyone else out of it and I might be totally off-base.

 

Yall heard of "Kyn" or "Aarklash Legacy"? Both of them seem to have a lot in common with the first Dungeon Siege. Particularly Kyn gives you full gear customization with control of six dudes, and Aarklash has got four dudes all in real time. With some pause or slow-down options, but yeah.

[imperial1scout]

An eight party hack-and-slash beatdown simulator?

 

...Downloading NOW! That sounds awesome, thanks for the heads-up Ross.

 

I think this is the first Game Dungeon game that I've actually wanted to play. (Not that that's any sort of criticism, that's doesn't really seem to be the POINT of Game Dungeon.)

[DonRadkos]

Now that would fun, an RTSARPG where you outfit your small army, and massacre other small armies.

I take you've never played Spellforce The Order of Dawn or it's sequel?

It's kind of what you're looking for.

[UndeadNecro]

I'd play this if it worked on newer OS.

[Cybershaman]

After rewatching this episode of Ross's Game Dungeon, I thought I would share one of my fondest memories of the game...

 

One of my favorite aspects of DS1 was how its classless system worked. You would just work on using a particular weapon or type of spell and the game would come up with a name for your class based on your skill level in a particular area. Got a guy who's good with Melee and Nature Magic? You're a Paladin! So, one day around 2003, I got a bright idea... I would play the game all the way through and train ALL of my guys in EVERY area of expertise: Melee, Ranged, Nature Magic, and Combat Magic.

 

What I did was pretty cool (at least I thought so). With a party of 8 (eventually), I would arrange them in a 2 wide x4 deep formation. The 2 guys in the front used the Melee skill, the next 2 used Ranged attacks, the next 2 Combat Magic, and, finally, the last 2 would alternate between using attack and healing Nature Magic in the form of lightning spells or individual healing before finally getting the group heal spell. When someone would level up a particular skill, I would rotate them back through the ranks and switch them to the next skill that I wanted them to improve. After a while, I began to see the results of my efforts when the game informed me that one of my guys was...a Master! Eventually, I finally ended up with what I was looking for: EVERY member of my group attained the level of...GRANDMASTER!

 

Now, I have to mention one thing to any would be Grandmasters out there: this was one heck of a SLOG. I consider this approach to the game to be the equivalent of those who try to beat Fallout 4 without directly killing anyone. (Yes, it can be done! Please see http://kotaku.com/guy-beats-fallout-4-without-killing-anyone-nearly-brea-1749882569 for more info. It's a pretty crazy story!) It. Was. HARD! Creep and save is the order of the day when approaching the game in this fashion. Sometimes I would have to park my guys in an unreachable spot and have everybody who was able throw magic bombs or grenades (I think it was the Goblins that drop a grenade launcher) until it was safe enough to proceed or engage directly with my entire group. There were some areas of the game where I would have one guy sitting in a particular spot repeatedly chucking area effect stuff on a particular spot in the hope that the splash damage would eventually take out a target(s). On top of that, what does attaining the level of Grandmaster get you? Mostly just bragging rights. I know that certain weapons and spells will increase your Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence, but I always had the feeling that higher stats in those areas just simply allowed you to use better weapons and armors. I did a quick search and it looks like those attributes actually DO affect your character's performance (http://dungeonsiege.wikia.com/wiki/Character_Attributes_and_Skills) but I was never really able to scientifically demonstrate the benefits.

 

In short, I really enjoyed playing the game in that fashion. Yes, at times it was mind numbingly grindy and torturous, but, hey... My guys were freaking GRANDMASTERS! After rewatching Ross's take on the game, I think I'm going to have to replay the game now. At least the first one. And I never did play the expansion to the first game so now I think I simply MUST play it again! Sadly, if I took any screenshots from the time I leveled my guys to Grandmaster, they apparently didn't survive to this day. At any rate, I really enjoyed this game and, yes, to my knowledge NO ONE has done anything similar to the approach they used in DS. If I ever make good on my promise to retrain a group of Grandmasters, I'll be sure to let you guys know and maybe I'll even document my progress. I still have a couple of favorite mods, one of which improved the enemy's A.I. and even sometimes allowed the enemies to have health potions themselves! (The other allowed your guys to automatically drink potions to replenish their health and mana.) I also went and downloaded the Ultima 5 and 6 mods because after hearing Ross say that the links were slowly going dead, I didn't want to miss an opportunity to try out what sounded like pretty awesome mods.

 

Anyhoo, if you made it this far, I want to thank you for reading my giant Wall O' Text. Apparently, hanging out in Discord is where all the cool people go, so maybe someday I will join you guys for some delightful chat. Until then, Dungeon Siegers, stay frosty!

[RandomGuy]

It's an old thing, but rewatching this video I got reminded about Ross's DLC vs expansion pack rant. I think Ross wasn't quite characterizing the former fairly, or at least painting them with too broad a brush. When you look at DLC totally for a lot of games, it's more that the developers chose to release what would have normally been an expansion pack in an episodic format, for about the same price and length. The standard for an expansion pack in the late 90s to mid 2000s was, roughly, a single-player story-driven campaign one third to one half the size of the base one, a few new weapons/powers/units/whatever, a few new bosses, a few new enemy types, and occasionally some minor new gameplay mechanics. A lot of collective DLCs give a similar value for what an expansion pack would have retailed at, e.g.

 

(total cost listed in parenthesis, playtimes ascertained via howlongtobeat.com) 

 

Bioshock Infinite: Clash in the Clouds + Burial At Sea Episodes One and Two ($40)

Dark Souls 2: Crowns of the Old Iron King, Ivory King, and Sunken King ($30)

Dark Souls 3: Ashes of Ariandel + the Ringed City ($30)

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Parts One and Two ($40)

Dragon Ball Xenoverse: GT Pack One + GT Pack Two + Resurrection F Pack ($30)

Elder Scrolls Skyrim: Dragonbord + Hearthfire + Dawnguard ($45)

Fallout 3: Broken Steel + Operation Anchorage + the Pitt + Point Lookout + Mothership Zeta ($50)

Fallout 4: Far Harbor + Nuka-World ($45)

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money + Honest Hearts + Old World Blues + Lonesome Road ($40)

Mass Effect 2: Price of Revenge + Stolen Memory + Firewalker + Overlord + Lair of the Shadow Broker + Arrival + various weapon/armor DLCs ($40)

Mass Effect 3: From Ashes + Leviathan + Citadel + Omega + various weapon DLCs ($50)

Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone + Blood and Wine ($30)

 

This isn't even getting into multiplayer DLC, which for the most part is free and, in concert, easily doubles or triples the content of the game in question (or its multiplayer mode). Especially for fighting games.

 

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but inflation must be considered too. $40 in 2002 is equal to $51 in 2012 (to give a random example).

Edited November 21, 2020 by RandomGuy (see edit history)