Dungeon Keeper
What is it?
It had lots of things wrong with it. Too many icons. Too many game mechanics that were just wrong. It ended up being too dependent upon little bits that were supposed to be there as jokes. In the end I didn't feel as proud about it as I had hoped. It was good, but it had that one mechanic where you could pick up monsters anywhere. It would have taken ten minutes to change and the game would have been a million times better.
A strategy game that is basically an inverted RPG. You are in charge of the dungeon and have to fend off the heroes coming down. Often, unfortunately, you have to fight rival keepers instead, like in all those real time strategies out there. There was a sequel, Dungeon Keeper 2, after Peter Molyneux had already left Bullfrog.
Dungeon Keeper comes in a DOS and in a Windows 95 version. Both will always be present on any CD. In general the Windows version has the reputation of being less reliable than the DOS version. From my personal experience, I can confirm this. The first time I tried to play it (on a Pentium II 333MHz with Windows 98) it installed fine, but then the game locked up each time after the intro.
Later I tried it again it on an 1100MHz Duron, still with Windows 98. This time, it would both install and play, but there was some erratic behavior. Sometimes when I moved my mouse the game wouldn't stop scrolling till I was somewhere at the edge of the map, and I couldn't go back, or even exit the game correctly.
Much later again I tried to install it on a Sempron 3000+ with XP
SP1. First I got a severe
warning that Dungeon Keeper requires
Windows 95 or NT 4 or better. This was fixed by running the setup in
compatibility mode. The game itself would start fine, but lock up
again after the intro, just like in the good old days.
While officially a Pentium 90 is required, the game has been reported to run well on a 486 DX4 100. Only the opening movie was seriously affected, Lynn J. Alford, the Programmer in Black, says in her review. Dungeon Keeper can run in VGA mode or at 640×400, the first is default for the DOS, the latter for the Win95 version, but you can change resolution in both versions with Alt-R. A Pentium 133 and 32 MB RAM is recommended for SVGA mode. I have played it on a Pentium 120 (which is more than 10% slower than a 133) with 48 MB RAM, and it played nicely. Only in bigger battles there was a noticeable slowdown, but not enough to spoil the fun in any way. Still I suppose for absolutely smooth gameplay in high resolution a Pentium II would be best.
Dungeon Keeper uses Redbook Audio (CD music). At least some collection compilators did not include the music tracks. I have one such CD, so I don't know anything about the music. You can put any audio CD into the drive, and the game will play it.
Sound consists of speech (40 wav files in the ATLAS subdirectory for the introductions and conclusions of the 20 levels, and a 11MB SPEECH.DAT for the in-game messages) and sound effects (23MB SOUND.DAT). For these, Dungeon Keeper supports an impressive list of soundcards:
Additionally the game has an AWE32 MIDI driver and three custom soundbanks (ATMOS1.SBK, ATMOS2.SBK, BULLFROG.SBK) of about 1.5MB in total. So obviously, if you have an AWE32, the most common sound effects are loaded into the card's memory and played from there. This should provide a small performance boost.
The install process basically copies most of the KEEPER directory structure to the hard drive. For those files that come in several language versions it picks the appropriate one. After installation, copy any missing files to your harddrive; you only need the subdirectories DATA, LDATA, LEVELS, and SOUND. Then, edit the INSTALL_PATH in the KEEPER.CFG to point to the game directory. If, for example, you installed the game to C:\KEEPER, that's what the INSTALL_PATH should read.
That's all. No need for FakeCD or even a SUBST command. The total size of the KEEPER directory is just below 150MB. You can reduce it further by deleting the INTROMIX.SMK file in the LDATA subdirectory (about 24MB). This is the intro movie, which is fun to watch once, but not repeatedly. The game won't throw an error if it doesn't find it.
The only thing really undocumented in the game is what to sacrifice in the temple and what not:
GOOD SACRIFICES Fly + Spider Warlock Beetle + Spider Dark Mistress 3 Spiders Bile Demon (higher level if more?) Bile Demon + Dark Mistress + Troll Horned Reaper Imps Reduces the cost to create more Imps. 2 Beetles Completes whatever is currently being built. 2 Flies Completes whatever is currently being researched. BAD SACRIFICES Chickens, Ghost All chickens explode. 2 Bile Demons Turns your monsters into chickens. Horned Reaper Makes all of your monsters angry. Vampires All of your monsters will be diseased. Money Funny quote (try it, it's harmless).
More can be found on the Cheat Page of Thanatos' Dungeon Keeper Realm. Of course, this isn't a cheat.
I found some cheats listed on various webpages, but could get none of them to work. Pressing Enter on the keypad is supposed to bring up a cheat menu. This is a particularily complicated one that is reported a lot:
Here's a real complicated one… ok? First, grab a chicken drop it in your treasure room. Pick it up and drop it in your lair. Pick it up once again and drop it in your training room. Pick it up again and put it in your hatchery. Pick the SAME one up and place it in your library. Now it is invincible. Put it as close to lava as you can get and let it wander in. If it doesn't, then get another and do the stuff over again. Now, smack it (don't worry, it is totally invicible). After doing this, posess it. It is your invincible, super powered chicken. Now you can control it around, and it has lots of randomly generated abilities.
There are many easter eggs in the game. They are usually triggered by the system date. On January 13, for example, you will get a "Happy Birthday Mark Healey" message after the intro movie. On days with a full moon, you get an extra level. Of course, you could simply set your computer clock accordingly to get it. Try 1997-07-20. 2003-01-17 should work too.
Some creatures just do not get along well with certain others. They will start fighting if they are together too long. This list is not necessarily complete:
On levels where you know you will be confronted with this problem a lot (mostly the later levels) you should build seperate accomodations (lair, hatchery, training room, if possible treasury) right away. They should not be too close together, so that the creatures are likely to stay in their quarters.
Dungeon Keeper stores most of the data as comma-seperated values in standard text files, even with the extension TXT. The CREATURES.TXT in the DATA directory stores not only the stats for the creatures, but also things like the amount of gold per gold block. In the LEVELS there is a similar file for each level.
The following info is taken verbatim from Daves Dungeon Keeper Site, that unfortunately went down some time between August 2006 and July 2007. The author's name is, I think, Dave Bywaters. It explains the entries in the level files:
| An Action Point | ACTION_POINT |
| A Player's dungeon | DUNGEON |
| A Player's Dungeon Heart | DUNGEON_HEART |
| The dungeon of the player with the highest score | APPROPIATE_DUNGEON |
| Steal gold from the Treasure Room | STEAL_GOLD |
| Steal spells from the Library | STEAL_SPELLS |
| Attack any enemies | ATTACK_ENEMIES |
| Attack the nearest Dungeon Heart | ATTACK_DUNGEON_HEART |
| Attack the nearest rooms | ATTACK_ROOMS |
| Defend the other creatures in the party | DEFEND_PARTY |
| Red Player | PLAYER0 |
| Blue Player | PLAYER1 |
| Green Player | PLAYER2 |
| Yellow Player | PLAYER3 |
| Heroes (white) | PLAYER_GOOD |
| All Players | ALL_PLAYERS |
I don't think anybody still actively maintains a Dungeon Keeper site. But quite a few are still up, though I fear in time they will wither away, too.
The reviewers liked the game. Many mourned the lack of IPX or Internet multiplayer, but none said it was anything but a great game. About every other compared it with Simcity. These reviews are all contemporary.
Any real-time gamer, with a yearning for the dungeon life and nerve to slaughter an army of Monks, Fairies and Lords, will be pleasantly surprised with Dungeon Keeper. After all, how can you not want to wreak havoc underneath towns called Cozyton?
For a game being in hiding so long, it became evident that it has been well worth the wait. With its unique gameplay and superb artificial intelligence (not to mention the highly detailed graphics and dynamic lighting), Dungeon Keeper is aiming to be the hit of the summer and possibly the hit of the year!
All in all, this is a definite keeper (no pun intended). There are about a million real time strategy games around the corner, some more interesting looking than others, but Dungeon Keeper feels like something more. It's quite different from the pack of them, and it'd be a serious shame if it got lost in the shuffle.
Though every game has its flaws, none of these detract from Dungeon Keeper enough for me to consider dropping the score. I can even forgive lack of a level editor and out-of-the-box TCP/IP support. To me, Dungeon Keeper, is well…a keeper. It's a damned fine game, and I highly recommend it to fans of realtime strategy games, especially those who are getting a bit tired of the same old, same old.
