Arokhs Lair – A Drakan fan site

There has been a lot of tutorials from the old Surreal News forums rescued by our forum member Shoprat who has put a lot of effort into finding tutorials and other questions and answers on the web and putting them into a handy zip file which is easy to use and find what you are looking for. Most have also been repeated on the forums so if you are struggling with the level editor, a wealth of info can be found there. If you want to download the zip file, it can be found on the downloads page. Thanks to Shoprat for the hard work! Continue reading →

Just to let you know that I have been doing some work on the website converting all pages & scripts from .asp to .php in preparation for the move from a Windows web server to Unix. This is to save costs on running the site as I don’t make any profit from it and all costs come from my own money. I have successfully managed to change the forum from Snitz to PHPBB and import most of the forum posts – only the archives were lost & users would have to request a password reset. This is all running on a test site so when the time comes next year I only have to import the latest data and I can make the switch.

This will halve the running costs of the web site. I will stick with Windows & Snitz for now until the hosting expires (or sooner if the forum database crashes again) so if the site is down in the future, we have not gone and will be back, just bear with us. It’s something I should have done a long time ago but have been putting it off. The reason I went down the Windows route is originally the site was running off my own internet connection at home from an old Pentium Pro server I kept in the basement. It later moved to a proper host.

Now on to something about Drakan. First of all thanks to the forum member Shoprat the level editor tutorial has been updated with an archive of old posts from the defunct Surreal news forums which will help anyone wanting to make levels or mods for the game. Continue reading →

Added unreleased upcoming player made levels & series to the single player level reviews and downloads page. These probably will never be finished and all are in a playable state so are worth checking out. Aergoth is a stunning example of what can be done with the Drakan level editor so definitely take a look! Also check out Assassin and Vader Darth’s levels which add trading systems, employment and the ability to purchase property to the game. Newest levels are at the bottom. I omitted Joaxin’s Relic as this is still in development and is not ready for public release.

I got rid of the webring links on all pages today as the site keeps redirecting you to their site most of the time when clicking on links within this site. This make the site very annoying to use as when you tried to click on a link you got redirected to some random irrelevant site on webring or got an advert displayed. I will pull out of the Drakan Webring scheme now. Also the subdomain http://levels.arokhslair.net now works.

Shelim has now got a moddb page for his Drakan 10th anniversary modification which brings the game more up to date with current graphics and supports new Direct X 9 features (the original game used Direct X 6) and also fixes some bugs. The mod will hopefully be released soon which adds some replayability to the single player game. You can find all information on the development forum and at the mod db page here. drakan-10th-anniversary

Larian Studios have just announced their new game called Dragon Commander previously known as Project D. There’s a trailer at the moment which gives a sneak preview with more details coming next week at Gamescom 2011. This game should be of interest to Drakan fans. You don’t get to ride a dragon but actually get to be one. Link to website here.

I never noticed until now that the levels.arokhslair.net sub domain has not been working since the move to a new server several months ago. Doh! This is due to stupid windows server 2008 running on the new machine so there isn’t anything I can do about it. Well, actually maybe there is but I just can’t be arsed right now. Please go to player made levels on the menu to the left.

I know it’s not Drakan but I thought I’d tell you dragon fans about a new game I have been playing recently called ‘Divinity 2 – The Dragon Knight Saga’ which is a 3D action RPG made by Belgian developer, Larian Studios. Having played lots of games over the years this is the only one that I really enjoyed as much as Drakan. You do get to play as a dragon from about a 3rd into the game and it’s a game that will keep you enthralled for months. Just make sure you get Divinity2: Dragon Knight Saga NOT Divinity 2: Ego Draconis as DKS is a remastered, much improved version with the add on pack Flames of Vengeance included. PC users will not be able to buy a retail copy however you can download it from Steam or Larian’s web site. The game is also available on the Xbox 360. More details at http://www.divinity2-saga.comgo buy it, you will not be disappointed!

Also you may have noticed that the forums have been intermittent. This is because I was experimenting with various ways to keep spambots and knobheads from posting crap or setting up bogus accounts with links to porn sites etc in their profile. This required code changes which had to be tested with the forum off-line so sorry about that. I was also looking at ways to get the site working on a linux server which is a problem as the forum uses Microsoft SQL Server as a back end. Linux servers are cheaper than Windows.