No, not the "3Dfx is activating" logo, but when you run DK2, 3Dfx is listed there in small print in the very first screen you see when running the game, the screen saying "It's good to be bad...".

But I presume the game supports only Direct3D, not Glide.

Another weekend comes in and as is becoming usual GOG makes me part with a part of my money. Thank goodness 6 dollars isn't so much money. :) And I'm happy now because I've been wanting to cross DK1 & 2 from my wishlist for some time now.

Thanks GOG. You guys rock.

Dungeon Keeper 1 & 2 for $6 you say?.

So how fast did you throw money at the screen? :P

Money for me is a limited thing, I only have so much to throw-around for frivolous impulse buying, such as seeing that GOG or Steam has a sale on a game or two I'm remotely interested in. This leads me to a conundrum.

Are Dungeon Keeper 1 and 2 related in any way? That is, do I have to play one to get backstory or such? If not, would I be happier with 1 or 2? I looked at the screenshots, and DK1 looked kinda.. odd. But DK2 looked a bit like a clusterfudge, making me nervous.

Populous was one of those games I always wanted to try back on the SNES, but a game like that just doesn't work well without a mouse (which I'm assuming it can use on the PC version). And similar to the problem I have with Dungeon Keeper, the interface and limited visibility of Populous 1 seems like it would be irritating fast, where-as Populous 2 looks like everything is a whole lot more efficient - particularly the visual square not being so small.

I'm kinda interesting in Alpha Centauri even though I'm not big on the Civ games, mainly cause my past experiences were on the SNES and simulation games just don't work as well beyond stuff SimCity 1 or Sim Ant. Which brings me to SC2000. The PC version looks like it would be infinitely more fun with a proper mouse interface, but I've heard there's a much better version of 2000 out there.

I could probably swing all of them, but that is really a lot more than I want to spend. Likewise, is it possible I'd find one of the games in better condition on Steam instead?

Basically, I'm really hesitant cause I'd like to buy some of these, but I'm not sure I'll enjoy some of them at the same time.

Hey GoG, have you actually fixed the terrible compatibility issues with Dungeon Keeper? Because Last I checked you hadn't and that was MONTHS after release. I bought DK2 and can't play more than 5 minutes without crashing to the desktop.

Pretty disgusting of you to promote it in such a state.

Dungeon Keeper 1 you can't play for more than say 20 minutes without the mouse locking up and racing to the corner of the map, only way to fix is to save often, but as I understand that is a bug in the original Bullfrog game, even on Dos.

DK2 is unplayable if you own an ATI video card, I say unplayable because while you can play it in software mode, it looks so goddamn awful it's just not worth playing.

I would recommend anyone buying DK1 though to google KeeperFX, it's a complete PC rebuild of the game, and it plays very smooth and stable, and the GOG version contains a "GAME.GOG" file which you can use to install it. Only problem is, KeeperFX doesn't take the music (last version I checked).

Weird, this bug only happened to me on the Windows version, that's why I started playing the DOS version at some point - never experienced this bug there. I also didn't ever encounter it on the Windows version with the official D3D patch (which massively improved the visuals but eliminated the different symbiosis effects). It's a pity that GOG only offers the DOS version and thus it's impossible to apply the D3D patch here.

Edit: Oh wait, I'm talking about a different bug here. What my Windows version (without the D3D patch) used to do was making the mouse not work at all. At some point it would go through the screen borders and reappear on the other side of the screen and I won't be able to click on anything. I never ever experienced the bug you are describing, in not one of five different releases I've played.

Well, you know, unless you count myself and 100+ others, I don't think anybody on GOG has so much as heard of it before. ;)

I might have something to do using a wireless mouse I guess, as I use one, but from what I've read this bug was constant in both the DOS and 95 versions. Either way though, there's no point really playing either the DOS or Windows 95 versions, KeeperFX is superior in every way. I have emailed the leader of the KeeperFX project some time ago, and he said that they do plan to implement music into a future version eventually, so when you mount the game image it encodes the music into the new game, but not anytime soon.

In the mean time you can just load up the DK1 soundtrack in Foobar or whatever, and just play it on loop while you play.

Fair enough, I don't look at the wishlist much anymore, I'll add my vote though. I was just cruising that site looking at DOS games of old, and it caught my eye.

As I added in my edit (which you probably didn't see anymore as your answer came very shortly after): the bug you're describing hasn't happened to me even once - not in one of five different releases I've played (not counting that I played both the DOS and Windows versions of some of them) and neither did it happen to my buddy who was an even bigger DK fan than me. I'm quite surprised that this can be such a serious and well-known issue.

And as for KeeperFX - as long as I can play the D3D version of my Dungeon Keeper Gold on Windows XP (or maybe even Windows 7 - haven't tried it there yet) without any major isseues I don't really see any point in playing this one.

Repeating myself: not true at least in my case (using ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400, Win7 64bit).

True, I got the "ATI black screen problem" if I enabled HW acceleration in the ingame options, but when I use the "safe mode" executable provided by GOG, it works fine and looks pretty much just as good as the HW accelerated version. The only difference in graphics I could spot was that the character shadows were transparent with HW acceleration, making them look a bit nicer. But then the only cases I paid attention to the shadows were during some of the cut-scenes.

Maybe I should make a "can you spot the difference?" Youtube-video about this. I read somewhere that apparently DK2 can support bump mapping on e.g. lava on some (Matrox?) graphics cards, but it appears that is an obsolete feature that never really caught on widely.

Sorry to hear if that doesn't work for you personally, but still your sweeping statement is untrue.


Works fine here, I think I played it yesterday for maybe 1½ hours without any such issues.

Did you try the suggestions in the related discussions on DK forum? I did run the game in 800x600 resolution, not sure if that made it stable for me.

I think it is a bit harsh to say GOG hasn't done anything, because obviously they have, like releasing the "safe mode" executable for ATI owners, which at least for me allows to play the game fine with good visuals, and apparently for many others too.

Maybe many people still have some issues, but then that's PC gaming for you I guess. You win some, you lose some. Considering that the original retail (CD) Dungeon Keeper 2 apparently has been deemed by many impossible to run at all in Windows XP or newer, seems to me GOG has already done terrific job to make it work even if Win7 for many people.

What I want to know is whether SimCopter is a possibility?
One of the cleverest games I ever played; very little has come close to it since. Plus it's a real novelty to actually play an action-oriented game where you are supposed to be a "good guy" - instead of running around shooting and killing things, you are actually trying to be helpful!
I know the title had something of a checkered history, and it's possible that Maxis like to pretend it never existed, but I would love to be able to play it again.

It's not my statement, GOG themselves state on the game page for DK2 that ATI users can only use software mode, thus no hardware acceleration.