Mon, 2005-10-24 02:00 — ChristopheF

Overview

Description by Paul R. Stevens: This program is a very exact translation of the original Atari ST program, "Chaos Strikes Back". This game, and its predecessor, "Dungeon Master" were remarkable games. They fit on a single floppy disk (before 'high density' was invented) and could be played very nicely on a machine with only 512K bytes of memory. The monsters, setting, and puzzles made it one of the best games of its type. Ever. Games like "Eye of the Beholder" attempted to duplicate the effort but came up short, in my opinion.

I played CSB on the Atari 520ST until it died. Then I was out of luck. I wanted to know how the game worked internally. I wanted to play the game to its conclusion. But I had no computer on which I could do these things.

Finally, after many years, I got my hands on the binary executable for the game. I wrote a disassembler to turn it into human-readable op-codes and proceeded to translate it to C++ using the Microsoft Version 6.0 C++ compiler. Eight hours a day for six months. About 120,000 lines of pseudo-assembly language. Crazy thing to do. But it works.

The game and the source code are free to do with as you please.

Paul also developed a dungeon editor to enable the use of the advanced features he added to the game engine: CSBwin tool - CSBuild.

The game recording feature was used for competitions aiming to finish Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back in the shortest amount of time: Chaos Strikes Back for Windows Competitions.

Here is a screenshot of the Linux version:



Credits

Chaos Strikes Back was orginally developed for the Atari ST by FTL Software:

Director ~ ~ ~ ~ Doug Bell

asst.director ~ Dennis Walker

2nd unit director ~ Mike Newton

graphics ~ ~ Andy Jaros

graphics ~ ~ David Simon

producer ~ ~ Wayne Holder

Backengineering from Atari ST code and port to Windows: Paul R. Stevens (prsteven@facstaff.wisc.edu)

Port to Linux: Erik Svanberg, Rebecka Svanberg

Port to MacOS X: Tomas Zahradnicky (chaos@24uSoftware.com)

Contact and Support

A discussion forum is dedicated to this game. If you have suggestions or find any bug, please post a message in the Cowsmanaut's Dungeon Master Forums (there is a forum dedicated to this program), or write an email to Paul R. Stevens (prsteven@facstaff.wisc.edu).

Features

The game includes the following additional features that are not in the original:

Runs on PCs under Windows or Linux, and on Macintosh with Mac OS X.

Multiple modules support: the game includes both the DM and CSB dungeons and graphics, all from the original Atari ST versions. However, it is possible to add custom modules (dungeons, graphics and Hint Oracle files). Under the 'Modules' folder, there is a subfolder for each module. You have to specify which module you want to play on the command line (or use the supplied batch files).

Keyboard control: party movement, spells, and combat can be done with the keyboard. Once you are used to it, it is much faster than mouse. The file config.txt contains the key mappings between Atari ST and PC. Open it in a text editor to view or customize the controls.

Four levels of zoom for screen size (x1, x2, x3, x4) are available in the 'Misc' menu so that you can adjust the window to your screen. In 1x screen size, you can monitor skill increases and some other values.

You can record / replay your games (like movies). This is useful to debug the program and to show other people how fast you can play the game (see the Competitions section below)

Here is how to enable recording: When standing in front of the prison doors, select "Record" from the "Misc" menu, then resume your game and play.

If you find a problem while playing, you can send the recording and the saved game file to Paul R. Stevens (prsteven@facstaff.wisc.edu) so he can reproduce the problem on his machine.

To replay a session, rename the appropriate record file to "Playfile.log". Then, when standing in front of the prison doors, select "Playback" from the "Misc" menu (the original save game file must still exist).

Although record files are not very large, a new file is created each time you enable recording. It is possible to splice several recordings with CSBwin tool - SpliceCSB.

Here is how to enable recording: When standing in front of the prison doors, select "Record" from the "Misc" menu, then resume your game and play. If you find a problem while playing, you can send the recording the saved game file to Paul R. Stevens (prsteven@facstaff.wisc.edu) so he can reproduce the problem on his machine. To replay a session, rename the appropriate record file to "Playfile.log". Then, when standing in front of the prison doors, select "Playback" from the "Misc" menu (the original save game file must still exist). Although record files are not very large, a new file is created each time you enable recording. It is possible to splice several recordings with CSBwin tool - SpliceCSB. The game includes a 'Move Counter' which records the actual number of moves (turns, punches, spell selection, etc.). This is intended as an alternative measure of how quickly you can play the game.

Adds a different way to win the game: if you want to explore every corner of the dungeon and learn all the tricks it has to offer then try the 'Items Remaining' option in the 'Misc' menu.

Command Line interface to play recorded games: try the DemoDM.bat file for an example.

A 'Speed' menu allows you to play the game much more slowly.

Ability to trace Timers, Attacks and Functions in log files (in 'Misc' menu).

Ability to dump in a text file (HINTDUMP.TXT) the contents of the Hints file used by the Hint Oracle. This feature is available when you run the Hint Oracle. This data has been used on the Chaos Strikes Back Hint Oracle (English Release 1) page.

Ability to dump in a text file (ASCIIDUMP.TXT) the contents of any saved game. This feature is available when you load a saved game.

The following features were not ported from the Atari ST version because they are not mandatory:

The animated introduction sequence.

The portrait editor from the utility disk.

Downloads

Latest versions:

You can also download Conflux 3.5 WIP, the latest available version of one of the best custom dungeons ever made, which is based on CSBwin.

Older versions:

Clone-CSBwin-Windows-DungeonMaster-12_100.zip CSBwin v12.100 for Windows with the original Dungeon Master dungeon. Clone-CSBwin-Windows-ChaosStrikesBack-12_100.zip CSBwin v12.100 for Windows with the original Chaos Strikes Back dungeon. Clone-CSBwin-PocketPC-DungeonMaster-100.zip CSBwin v10.0 for Pocket PC with the original Dungeon Master dungeon. Clone-CSBwin-PocketPC-ChaosStrikesBack-100.zip CSBwin v10.0 for Pocket PC with the original Chaos Strikes Back dungeon.

If you want to use the direction pad on your Pocket PC, you need to add the following lines to the config.txt file:

mscan 1 000026 113 87 L ; up = move forward

mscan 1 000027 130 9e L ; right = turn right

mscan 1 000025 f8 9e L ; left = turn left

mscan 1 000028 113 9e L; down = move backward

mscan 1 00000d 113 9e R; enter = show inventory/show dungeon view Clone-CSBwin-Linux_i486-ChaosStrikesBack-12_100.zip CSBwin v12.100 for Linux (executable only, you need to also download the Windows version for the other necessary files) Clone-CSBwin-MacOSX-DungeonMaster.tgz CSBwin for MacOS X with the original Dungeon Master dungeon.

This archive contains a port to Mac OS X made by Tomas Zahradnicky (zahradt@1stplugins.com). Note that it is not based on the latest version of CSBwin. Clone-CSBwin-MacOSX-ChaosStrikesBack.rar CSBwin for MacOS X with the original Chaos Strikes Back dungeon.

This archive contains a port to Mac OS X made by Tomas Zahradnicky (zahradt@1stplugins.com). Note that it is not based on the latest version of CSBwin. Clone-CSBwin-PC-30++.rar Chaos Strikes Back for Windows ++ Executable Version 3.0

This ++ version (based on Chaos Strikes Back for Windows v3.0) was made by DjArcas (djarcas@hotmail.com). It adds a cheat menu to the game (check the CSBwin++ topic at dungeon-master.com forums for details). Clone-CSBwin-SourceCode-12_100.zip Chaos Strikes Back for Windows and Linux Version 12.100 Source code

You don't need this last archive to play the game. Download it only if you want to look in the source code to understand how the game engine works, or if you want to compile the game yourself.

How to run the game

For the Windows version, run one of the .bat files to play the game with the dungeon of your choice.

For the Linux version, run one of the .sh files to play the game with the dungeon of your choice.

History

This section contains the release notes of all the versions of Chaos Strikes Back for Windows.