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Dungeon Keeper 2
2011-Apr-23, Saturday 07:14 amAs usual, digital rights management (DRM) succeeds only in annoying paying customers while doing nothing whatsoever to eliminate duplication. I fingerpoint at Electronic Arts as being an industry leader in treating customers like thieves.
I do like my computer games. One of my favorites is an oldie from 1999 called "Dungeon Keeper 2" (DK2). It was produced by Bullfrog Productions, famous for the Populous series (which I played many times on the Amiga) and for being co-founded by Peter Molyneux (a famous game designer). The fun thing about DK2 is that it turned around the traditional dungeon crawl. You play the bad guy, building your dungeon of doom while the annoying "good guys" keep crashing into your dungeon to steal your treasures. Your evil minions have very amusing animations and audio to match their talents.
I pulled the disc down from my bookshelf this morning to install on Windows 7. I couldn't get the patched version to work, and I blame EA.com's usual awful DRM. The game kept freezing when trying to check the cd rom for my disc (which was there). If you check at gog.com, they don't have the game available yet but it has already bubbled up to the Top 10 list for most wanted titles. I searched around online and found that someone posted a free download back in 2008 with a cracked and fully patched executable with bonus packs.
Use the above link then burn the iso to disc. After installation, it works great. No need to keep the disc in the drive. You will need to set Windows 7 compatibility mode, and I succeeded with the "Windows XP SP3" setting. In the game menu, go to graphics options and DISABLE hardware acceleration. You'll still get graphic glitches until you finally load into a game. Afterwards, it remembers the setting and the menu will stop glitching.
Other helpful hints for program compatibility:
I do like my computer games. One of my favorites is an oldie from 1999 called "Dungeon Keeper 2" (DK2). It was produced by Bullfrog Productions, famous for the Populous series (which I played many times on the Amiga) and for being co-founded by Peter Molyneux (a famous game designer). The fun thing about DK2 is that it turned around the traditional dungeon crawl. You play the bad guy, building your dungeon of doom while the annoying "good guys" keep crashing into your dungeon to steal your treasures. Your evil minions have very amusing animations and audio to match their talents.
I pulled the disc down from my bookshelf this morning to install on Windows 7. I couldn't get the patched version to work, and I blame EA.com's usual awful DRM. The game kept freezing when trying to check the cd rom for my disc (which was there). If you check at gog.com, they don't have the game available yet but it has already bubbled up to the Top 10 list for most wanted titles. I searched around online and found that someone posted a free download back in 2008 with a cracked and fully patched executable with bonus packs.
Use the above link then burn the iso to disc. After installation, it works great. No need to keep the disc in the drive. You will need to set Windows 7 compatibility mode, and I succeeded with the "Windows XP SP3" setting. In the game menu, go to graphics options and DISABLE hardware acceleration. You'll still get graphic glitches until you finally load into a game. Afterwards, it remembers the setting and the menu will stop glitching.
Other helpful hints for program compatibility:
- If you have problems navigating the menu using the DISABLE hint above, use regedit to change HKEYCURRENTUSER / Software / Bullfrog Productions Ltd / Dungeon Keeper II / Configuration / Video to set EngineID=4 instead of 2.
- Only use 800x600 mode. It doesn't cause crashes like 1024x768 mode.
- It might also help to add "-softwarefilter -32biteverything" to the end of the target information on your shortcut, after DKII.exe(endquote).
- Likewise, if sound seems to be the culprit, you can add "-disablegamma -nosound" to the end of the shortcut target info, outside of the quotes.