"Dungeon Keeper II (2) on Windows XP and Vista" by Troy H. Cheek on Sep 28, 2009
As I was saying recently, I've been playing a lot of Overlord II (PC version) lately. It became quite a minor obsession with me there for a while. I tend to do that. I tend to do that so often that I think my next book will be entitled The New Videogame Diet. "Buy a new videogame and lose 20 pounds!" the tagline will read.
With the original Overlord, I ended up using walkthroughs and hints and whatnot from various websites to get through some of the tougher sections. Some of the puzzles just didn't have a logical solution that I could figure out. Some solutions still didn't seem logical even after I'd read the hints. To make matters worse, sometimes I'd squeak through with the weirdest, stupidest, most illogical plan I could come up with, surviving mostly due to luck and the willingness to sacrifice most of my minions, only to check the hints later and find that this was the way I was supposed to be solving that puzzle. Or it may have been the expansion pack Raising Hell that was so frustrating. Anyway, the occasional "send three red minions over to this corner for no particular reason" solution would knock me right out of the game world and back into reality.
I don't like reality. If I wanted to spend time solving problems in the real world, I wouldn't be playing so many games.
I've been trying not to rely on walkthroughs and hints so much with Overlord II. I've been able to stick to that for the most part. I have given into temptation and checked a few things that were giving me trouble, only to find out that I was doing it "right" all along. I just wasn't doing it "right" enough or something. Again, this tends to knock me out of the game world and back into reality. Still, this is about the only real fault I've found with the Overlord series, and you younger gamers might find these solutions obvious, so don't let this keep you from buying every Overlord game that will run on your gaming system of choice.
Playing the Overlord series reminded me of its spiritual predecessor, the Dungeon Keeper series. I never really played the original Dungeon Keeper. I bought a combo pack with the original, an expansion pack (I think), and Dungeon Keeper II all together. As I remember, I ended up giving DK I to my girlfriend of the time because the system requirements were more of a match for her system, whereas DK II was more of a match for mine. While she eventually got a better computer and played DK II quite a bit, somehow I never got around to playing DK
Overlord borrows heavily from Dungeon Keeper, especially in the humor department. Dungeon Keeper II's tagline during development was "It's good to be evil" though by the time it actually came out, the tag was "It's good to be bad." In Overlord II, you'll find the statement "It's good to be bad, but it's better to be evil." Assuming that some of the same people weren't working on both series of games, somebody's copying something from somebody somewhere.
After a particularly frustrating round of Overlord II one night, I decided that I'd really like to play Dungeon Keeper II again. I didn't think I'd be able to. DK II was designed back in the Windows 98/Me days, and I think that's about the last time I remember it working right for me. I'd played quite a bit under Windows 2000 and, even though there was a patch which updated it for that operating system, it never worked right for me. I checked online and tried all the options and, in the end, had to completely disable sounds to get the game to play almost correctly most of the time, at least until it crashed. The crashes were the most annoying part. Not only would they come just after I'd made some great progress and before I could save the game, but they'd completely lock up the computer. No crash to desktop, no causing an error and being shut down, not even a blue screen of death. Instead, the computer would just freeze, ignoring all input, until the physical hardware reset or power buttons were pressed.
I figured this game from 1999 didn't stand a chance against Windows XP on my main system or Windows Vista Home Basic on my notebook computer. Still, nothing ventured and all that...
I started out on my main system with Windows XP SP2 or SP3 or so. I'm not sure everything's up to date because at some point I got irritated with the automatic updates and turned them off. I dusted off the old installation disk and stuck it in the drive. Installation seemed to go fairly well, as did the update to version 1.61, which was the update on the installation disk. I tried to start the game and it exited right back to the desktop.
I uninstalled (unstalled? destalled?) everything and started from scratch. This time, I dug through some old backup disks and found the upate to version 1.70, which was the last one that came out and the one I'd successfully used in the past. I tried to start the game and it exited right back to the desktop.
I looked around on the net for solutions. Apparently, I'm not the only one who still likes to play Dungeon Keeper II. I'm also not the only one having problems. While most people were complaining about garbled sound effects or corrupted graphics or that hard freeze I remembered, a few had the same problem I did with the game not running at all and dropping straight back to the desktop. This problem was blamed on either DK II trying to switch the monitor to a resolution it didn't support or a failure of the copy protection.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure what all resolutions this new widescreen monitor supports, so that could be a problem. Also, I noticed that the CD activity light wasn't even lighting up when I tried to run the game, which it should have if the copy protection was trying to verify I had a legitimate copy before launching the game itself. Thinking back, I seem to recall Bullfrog or EA or somebody releasing a patch or utility or something that let you play DK II without needing the CD in the drive. Unfortunately, I couldn't locate such a critter in my backups or online.
After being fairly methodical for a couple of days, I went crazy and did all the following with minimal testing:
Lo and/or behold, after this, the game actually ran. In fact, I've not experienced any garbled audio, corrupted graphics, or hard freezes yet, and last night I finished the single player campaign.
The problems that I have experienced are problems with the game itself, not the operating system. After a certain point in the game, my portals no longer appear to generate goblins. I've also yet to see a firefly arrive. This makes starting the later levels a little more difficult because these two types are usually the ones to first arrive. The others need specific rooms to attract them. Also, except for the levels in which they are introduced, I've seen no black knights or dark angels regardless of which rooms I build. This also makes later levels difficult because they are some of the best fighters. I believe I remember these same problems with the game back when I was running the operating system for which it was intended. The last patch caused these problems (along with fixing several others and adding some new options) and the next one was supposed to fix them, but the last updated turned out to be the last update.
I've yet to try the skirmish missions or My Pet Dungeon missions, so I don't know how well they work.
Once I was fairly confident that Dungeon Keeper II was working with XP, I decided to try my Vista notebook.
Again, it seems to work. I didn't have my notebook mouse with me at the time so I only played a little, but I noticed no problems at all during those few short minutes. I've gone back to the XP system and undid all the compatibility settings. It appears those were unnecessary and I only think I remember the game not working until I'd tried them. As I said, I made a lot of changes without a lot of testing just before things started working.
On XP with a Nvidia graphics card, I'm not sure 32 bit everything is actually doing anything. I'm not sure I've seen any difference with it there or not. As long as the game resolution is set to something the monitor can display, the game plays, though if it's not a widescreen setting the graphics are horizontally stretched to fit the screen. The menu and cut scenes are stretched anyway. I think they're 640x480 regardless.
On Vista with ATI Intel-based integrated video, without
32 bit everything there's a clipping
problem so the dungeon and creatures more than about halfway up the
screen are blacked out. Again, the game works as long as the
resolution is set to something the monitor supports. I was able to
find a setting in the drivers which scales keeping the original aspect
ratio, so non-widescreen resolutions display normally (with some extra
blank space on the sides). The menu and cut scenes are never
widescreen and actually look better on the notebook.
Minor quibble on both computers is that when playing with custom resoltuions, the option menu you pull up inside the game (the one that reminds you of your goals for that level and lets you load/save games, change options, exit back to Windows, and so on) is completely lacking in text. Online sources say that this is because the game has no font defined for those resolutions. I'm familiar enough with the game that most of the time I can remember the level objectives and know what icon to click on if I want to restart the level, so I guess that's okay.
While I had intended Dungeon Keeper II to just be a quick diversion from the minor frustrations of Overlord II, I realize that I've not played any Overlord game since I got Dungeon Keeper II working again. Somebody with half a brain needs to patch or re-release this game for modern operating systems and resolutions.
Well, back to gaming!
