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Darklands Restoration Project 0.9.0 is out

The first release is here: Darklands (MicroProse, 1992) rebuilt to run on today’s Windows, without DOSBox, and to play exactly like the original.

Watch the release video on YouTube ↗

This is not a remake and not an emulator. Every rule — combat, prices, saints, alchemy, every card of every city and encounter, the generators of castles, mines and battlefields — is rewritten from the original program and checked against it, function by function. The screens, the music and the sound come from your own copy of the game.

What’s in 0.9.0

  • The whole game: character creation, cities, inns and shops, guilds, banks and churches, the world map and its encounters, real-time battles, camping, saints and alchemy.
  • Saves compatible with the original’s, in the game’s own SAVES folder.
  • The original music and sound: AdLib, Sound Blaster, and MT-32 (with your own ROM files).
  • Any window size or full screen, F12 screenshots.

The source code

The source code is a clean C# codebase. The game logic is kept apart from graphics, sound and input, so it doesn’t depend on any one host and is easy to extend. The code reads semantically, is commented, and every piece cites the place in the original program it reproduces, so it can be checked. This release ships an SDL host for practical reasons; others can be built on the same core.

It is on GitHub: Arkana-Mechanika-Studios/darklands-restoration.

Getting it

Download 0.9.0, unpack it anywhere and start DarklandsRP.exe: it finds your GOG or Steam copy by itself, or asks you once. You need your own copy of Darklands; no game files are included.

Version 1.0 will follow once the last faithfulness checks are done. Bug reports and screenshots are welcome on the Discord.