Drakan: Order of the Flame - Community Patch Build 153.01 -------------------------------------------- This installer will update your copy of Drakan to the newest version, which is required to successfully connect to the Arokh's Lair multiplayer servers. It also contains a collection of player-created levels that have been deemed to be of sufficieny quality by community consensus. The Community Patch has been created to make Drakan more accessible to everyone, by minimizing the amount of effort required to install and play. It can even (p)reset some of the most important game settings to their recommended values. NOTE: this Community Patch contains part of the original Drakan 445 patch, as well as the Level Editor - both have originally been released by Psygnosis/Surreal. ---------------------------------------- Also included is an optional DirectX wrapper called dgVoodoo2 (only available on Windows Vista SP2 or newer, due to its software requirements). It can be used to improve the game's graphical quality with more modern features, such as anti-aliasing (AA) and/or anisotropic filtering, which weren't practically feasible at the time of Drakan's original release in 1999. By default, this installer presets dgVoodoo2 for 2x AA and 4x anisotropic filtering. This already provides substantial improvements to Drakan's visual appearance, while causing only a relatively minor performance penalty. NOTE: Using anisotropic filtering in dgVoodoo2 has a minor side effect - the GUI text becomes slightly blurred. This is an insignificant issue when playing singleplayer, since the text is only encountered in the game menu in that mode. However, some users have reported the blurred text as being difficult to read in multiplayer (in the in-game text chat display). If the blurred text is a problem, the anisotropic filtering can be disabled in the dgVoodoo2 Control Panel. Alternatively, just select "Reset dgVoodoo2 settings to the recommended defaults" when installing the Community Patch, since anisotropic filtering is now disabled by default for that reason. ---------------------------------------- The Community Patch also includes the Level Editor, which can be used to create player-made levels, as well as for viewing the "behind the scenes" details of existing levels. After installation, the editor will be located in the \Editor folder. NOTE: Substantial changes have been made to the Level Editor, as compared to its original version. For further details, please see the readme file: "What's new in the Level Editor.txt", located in the \Editor folder. However, no shortcut to launch the Level Editor has been provided - this is by design, since the editor isn't particularly user-friendly and requires considerable technical expertise to use properly; those users who would have trouble locating the editor executable file probably shouldn't be using that tool in the first place. WARNING: Improper use of the Level Editor can easily break the game (!!!) by overwriting critical data files - in effect rendering it unplayable and/or making it impossible to connect to the multiplayer servers. Fixing such a mess requires a complete uninstallation and reinstallation of both the Community Patch, as well as the original game. ---------------------------------------- Changelog: (NOTE: Please visit https://arokhslair.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=3765 to view the changelog for the AiO patch, which forms the backbone of the Community Patch.) Build 153.01: - 32-bit textures are now supported, both in-game as well as in the Level Editor; further details are in the readme file: "What's new in the Level Editor.txt", - Added completely new landscape import functionality to the Level Editor: it's now possible to import Digital Elevation Models spanning the entire map in just a couple of clicks; additionally, the vertical (height) resolution of the imported landscape is vastly improved compared to what the original importer allowed, - Added support for patching the Spanish language version of Drakan, - Added support for Spanish language option in the installer itself (translation of custom message strings courtesy of Javixx95); as with the previously introduced German version, the installer language is completely unrelated to the in-game language, - Anisotropic filtering is now disabled by default in the dgVoodoo2 settings (fixes the issue of in-game text appearing blurred), - Drakan's configuration files (Arokh.ini and Drakan.cfg) are now backed up as Arokh.ini.old and Drakan.cfg.old during installation, to allow manually reverting to the previous settings if they become accidentally overwritten for any reason, - Fixed a single broken texture in the System database (texture ID 5208), - Installing the Community Patch now causes the long-defunct Mplayer utility (which gets installed by the original Drakan installer) to be properly uninstalled, instead of merely deleting its shortcuts, - Map rebalance: reduced the damage output potential of the Fire Katana in Katana War, since in practice it turned out to be unbalanced (too powerful) now that its alternate attack has been rendered actually usable in one of the previous updates, - Minor fix: the Alwarren water fountain "puzzle" now once more works as intended; also its sequence has been tweaked slightly, and the waterspout is no longer misaligned with the stream of water, - Minor fix: replaced an incorrect sound file of Rynn saying "Ooh, la entrada a las minas!" instead of the expected "Oh! El cristal agrietado!" in the Spanish version, - Minor fix: replaced one of the textures in Fountain of Life 3 with a slightly improved version (made possible by the new fixes to the Level Editor's alpha map import code - see below), - Names of the Start Menu shortcuts created by the Community Patch installer are now in the same language as Drakan, instead of the language that the user selected during the setup process; obviously, this only matters if those 2 languages are not the same, - Reformatted the "Quick Start and Troubleshooting Guide" for better readability - it now has a table of contents, as it was beginning to get too long for its old format, - Some further tweaks to the Level Editor's undo functionality have been introduced by UCyborg's AiO patch; the undo limit is now 50, and the setting for the number of undo levels is remembered between sessions, - The Level Editor received a substantial overhaul of the way it handles texture imports/exports - in particular, exporting alpha-mapped textures is now possible (both the 16-bit and 32-bit formats); also importing separate alpha maps no longer causes them to be subtly corrupted by the import process, - The installer now checks for the presence of existing savegames from an old (pre-AiO patch) version of Drakan; if such savegames are found to exist, they will be moved to their correct location automatically, - To help with diagnosing any installer-related bugs, the installer creates a log file named "CPInstallLog.txt"; it can be found in the Drakan installation directory, - Uninstalling the Community Patch without having first uninstalled Drakan now leaves the base Drakan installation minimally functional (previously it would have been left in a completely broken state instead), - Uninstalling the Community Patch after Drakan has already been uninstalled beforehand no longer results in some of the old patch files being left behind. Build 139.01: - Added two recently released MP maps: The Keep (Duel) v2, which is an improved version of the original Keep, as well as Fountain of Life 3, which is a further improvement of the already excellent Fountain of Life 2 map, - Added the Music Common database, which contains royalty-free background music loops for use in player-made maps; please consult the Music Common.txt readme for further details, - Added the Weapons Common database, containing (as its name suggests) new weapons, - Added the missing "Drakan_WINE_Settings.reg" file from the AiO patch - it can be found in the Drakan installation directory, - Added some of the Drakan Common database files to the patch, to safeguard against cases where these files have been modified by the user; this doesn't include the animation databases (as these are highly unlikely to be modified by accident) nor the sound databases (because of the large file sizes), - Increased the size of animation and sound buffers in Drakan.cfg to 16MB, to prevent buffer overflow crashes that were happening when trying to play sound effects longer than several seconds (eg. sounds from the Music Common DB), - Modified the Level Editor executable to allow up to 99 undo levels (from the original maximum of 16); also removed the original (now superfluous) message warning about "high hemory usage" when setting the number of undo levels to more than 4, as modern computers should have no problems handling the new maximum of 99 with plenty of RAM to spare, even when dealing with huge maps, - Removed the "component uninstall warning" which (incorrectly) appeared when the user tries to uninstall dgVoodoo2 (after it had been previously installed) by selecting the "Full installation but without dgVoodoo2" install type during reinstallation; the warning (an automatically generated Inno Setup message) was stating that the component in question would not be uninstalled due to being deselected - which is not the case here, - Updated the included dgVoodoo2 DirectX wrapper to the most recent version (2.55.2), - Updated the Quick Start Guide with some more information about running Drakan on Linux, taken from UCyborg's AiO patch readme. Build 135.03: - Added support for the German language version of Drakan - the installer will autodetect it and apply the correct version of the 445 Patch, so that the in-game text will still be in German after installing the Community Patch, - Added support for German language option in the installer itself (translation of custom message strings courtesy of Pat86); NOTE: the installer language and game language are NOT linked: they are handled completely separately, allowing patching the German version of Drakan with the English version of the installer, and vice versa, - Added two recently released MP maps: Amen v2 and Katana War v2, both of which are improved and rebalanced versions of the original maps, - Added an option in the installer to make the Level Editor use dgVoodoo2 - this should greatly help prevent random 3D View crashes, - Added missing Player.db file (this was preventing the two "Multiplayer Training" levels from working), - Fixed a minor issue, where reinstalling the Community Patch without dgVoodoo2 (after it had been selected during a previous installation) caused the "Drakan dgVoodoo2 Settings" Start Menu shortcut to not be removed as intended. - Installer now recognizes a manually installed Drakan Gold Pack as such, and will (if applicable) put the extra content into the existing "Extras" and "Mods" folders, instead of creating new ones in the directory where Drakan.exe is located. - Moved the Level Editor's Engine.exe to a separate folder, to prevent the Editor's 2D window from also trying to use dgVoodoo2 (which would cause graphical corruption of the 2D window's contents); note that the editor paths get updated automatically by the installer to account for this change, - Prevented the installer from creating a (duplicate) Desktop shortcut for Drakan if the shortcut icon created by the Drakan installer still exists; in that case, no option will be shown for creating a Desktop icon. - Set "DontBlockOnInactivity=1" in the Level Editor's Arokh.ini - this results in much more fluid movement in the Editor's 3D View, - The installer will delete the "Zugehörigen Server starten" Start Menu folder when patching the German version of Drakan; there's much more to meaningfully running a dedicated server than just clicking a single shortcut - and in any case, there are better methods of starting a dedicated server available nowadays (eg. by using UCyborg's DrakanServer.exe launcher, also included in the Community Patch). - Updated the Quick Start Guide with more information about running Drakan on Linux - thanks UCyborg! Build 135.02: - Added the Drakan: Order of the Flame soundtrack to the "full installation" options (it gets installed to {INSTALLDIR}\Extras\Soundtrack), - Also added a Start Menu shortcut to the soundtrack location, - Added some files that were missing from the Level Editor (this prevented it from working when the CP was installed over a fresh copy of Drakan), - Added missing dependencies for the fanmade singleplayer maps, - Added missing Multiplayer Common databases (required for some of the included multiplayer levels to work, eg. Bloodland), - Added installer option to remove the known bad fanmade levels when installing the CP over the Gold Pack, - Changed the default controls for improved ergonomy, and to help prevent the dreaded "weapon change instead of alternate attack" annoyance (only affects first-time CP installations on top of vanilla Drakan), - Changed the wording of options to update the registry settings at install time, to make their functionality unambiguous, - Included the Auropolis MP level, which has previously been incorrectly declared as being broken; it's been added to the "novelty" list, due to its specific nature, - Included the "Basic MP Level" editing template (not listed in the .LFL files, as it's meant for level editor use only; it's not a playable map), - Included the Katana War MP level, for historical reasons; however, because of its poorly balanced gameplay, it's not listed in any of the level lists, - Updated the Quick Start Guide with information about running Drakan on Linux, courtesy of Discord user hemebond; also added information about the known problems, and corrected some minor errors, - Updated the CP Readme with new information. Build 135.01rc0: - First stable release, - Added updated versions of 2 multiplayer maps: DQtest (aka DragonsQuest) and Wartok Canyons (Air), - Fixed bug that prevented successful patch installation when quotes were present in the registry uninstall entry for Drakan, - Improved the method used by the installer to determine whether a given folder already contains a Drakan installation (this prevents installation errors from being caused by errant copies of Drakan.exe present in unexpected locations), - Added some sanity checking to the installer, to prevent the installation from being unable to continue if the user has renamed or moved the Drakan installation folder after it had been installed. Build 134: - First alpha build (limited release), - Technically largely functional, but incomplete. ---------------------------------------- Credits and special thanks go to: Psygnosis & Surreal Software - for creating Drakan in the first place, Arokh's Twin (aka Teekus) - for running the Arokh's Lair site (www.arokhslair.net) throughout all these years, providing us all with a place to gather, Dege - for developing the dgVoodoo2 DirectX wrapper, hemebond - for providing information about getting Drakan to run on Linux, HeNniFerBoB (aka JeNnDyLyOn) - for making the "Community Patch" text which appears on the installer bitmap image, as well as for helping debug the installer functionality, Javixx95 - for providing the Spanish version of Drakan, which made it possible for the Community Patch to support patching the Spanish version of Drakan, as well as for translating the installer user interface to Spanish, Mechanist - for creating this installer, as well as various fixes and new functionality which has been added to the Level Editor, Pat86 - for providing the German version of Drakan, which was instrumental in allowing the Community Patch to properly support patching the German version, as well as for his German translation of the installer user interface, UCyborg - for all the hard work he's done on the Drakan AiO patch, including all the fixes which made Drakan multiplayer actually playable, zalasus - for his reverse-engineering of the Drakan database format, which proved to be a valuable reference for the modifications performed to the Level Editor, Others from the Drakan community - for all their contributions to the cause, YOU, the player - for playing this awesome game about dragons!