Public Secret - Good News! Shhh though.

What I am telling you is so secret, that I am not even allowed to tell you, so what I can tell you is:

Good News. Coming Soon.

You never heard, nor saw me.

Congratulations New Moderator! Guess who!

After the recent spam attack and the closing of the "Off Topic" section, and the ever approaching release of Return To Dark Castle, I knew I needed another Moderator, to help me keep things under control.

I held a Poll for people to vote on who they thought should be a mod, because after all, this is a community, and I will let them decide for themselves what they want. And so voting commenced.

And now that it's past midnight, so now we have our new Moderator, and I would like everyone to give a hand to our, and you newest Moderator:

gruz!

I know, NO one saw THIS coming :P seriously though, may he help for a long time to come, and be there to help out those in need.

In following, if you missed them before, here are some of the recent additions to the forum:

• Users can now find this board through invisionfree's database under 'Macintosh'.

• 'User browsing this forum' section, and 'users browsing this topic' added.

• Users must now verify their E-Mail addresses manually, which hopefully will cut down on spam

• Behind the scenes prepping for new Moderator.

I still have some aces up my sleeves, so expect some other cool additions over the coming months :) I know, I'm too good to you.. jk.

Another thing to note, is that the "Off-Topic" is opened again, it may be a feeding ground for spam bots for a little while, so be careful, but feel free to use it now.

And lastly! There's one more thing, as a present to this forum, and blog, I spent some hours today working on this, and I think I will share it with you check it out here:

LINK

Forum Troubles and other news...

First off, I know that there have been recent porn-spam-bot attacks, and I have been working on the situation, and have temporarily closed the "off-topic" section. I also have started a topic, fir I realize now that I really do need another moderator, for my forum. If you think you can be of some assistance, don't hesitate to tell me right here:

LINK

In other news, I beta tested Khufu with Zack Morris, and some other people I did not know, it was really fun, and helped Zack out a lot, I plan to keep helping him as much as I can, and you know what? you can too! I would personally suggest trying this game out, it's really fun online, and they need all the help they can get.. I know it's not Dark Castle, but it's nice to be able to help Z Sculpt Entertainment in anyway we can. For more information check here:

LINK

Until next time!

According to Zack Morris, "SHFF has the final say, we are waiting till everything is ironed out and they give the go ahead"

It's time that we show them our support and gratitude for this sure to be great game! We need everyone to email SHFF at whazup@superhappyfunfun.com

Let them know that you are a member of the Dark Castle Forum (if you are), and that we understand that RTDC is near to being released, and that we are offering our support and thanks for working on this great game, and that we are highly anticipating it's release.

 -Izdale

What we know so far....

I finally got around to making the 'What we know so far' topic I have been meaning to start forever...

It will basically be a topic will all the information we know so far (no, really?), which will be helped along by you guys, telling me everything I have forgotten so far.

LINK

I think we have found the best Dark Castle player...

For a while I thought Action Jack was the best DC player, but along came this fellow, who has done the impossible, and claimed the throne of best Dark Castle player... for now... Action may contest it when he gets his computer back, but for now I think we should give KING RICHARD a round of applause.

For those who might doubt his greatness, or are just curious on how he proved himself, look no farther, for Richard has done thus: Starting on Beginner in Beyond Dark Castle, he beat the game, continued on Intermediate, beat the game, then through advanced.... WITHOUT DYING/SAVING/LOADING! The full run clocks, 1 hour, 11 minutes, and 1 second, which in itself is incredible!

Link to the video HERE

EDIT: This is not to say the permanent champion, feel free to try and surpass him, we'd love to see your skills!

Also, Richard as awarded the label of "Current Dark Castle Campion" on the forum

Zack Answered out prayers... er.. Questions...

Zack took the time to answer a lot of questions that had piled up in the forums, and once again I am really excited for Dark Castle 3.

Link

We all know it, and even the best of us fear it...

I am of course talking about the West Tower Wall, Featured in Beyond Dark Castle, and Return To Dark Castle, that level that had you shouting about how unfair it was that you fell in the dungeon on your 83rd try. But what is this level, and what makes this level so feared?

Looking at it right off the bat, we notice that most of the level is above a large pit to the dungeon, and there are many chances to fall into that pit. 

There is a mutant, that is willing to come out at just the wrong time to ruin your day.

Ah, yes the birds, they plague the other half of the level, making it difficult to jump from platform to platform, and impossible to beat the level without killing them.

Looking at all this one might say that this level is a nightmare, but looking upon it, I think that this level is ingenious, with many different skills needed to beat it, and a nice background to go with it.

I think that, despite the level being so darned hard, it was one of the best levels in all of Dark Castle So far...

Do people think that DC3 might have even harder levels?

Do people agree with what I said?

Please, post comments!

Online Soreboards

I started an online scoreboard for speed runs of Dark castle and Beyond Dark Castle, be aware though, you'll need video proof of your feat to have it accepted.

Link

Positive and Negative Beta User Reviews Episode 2

The second episode on this topic, this time targeting Macupdate, which has less reviews..

Pros:

4.5/5

There's a lot lacking here, as people have mentioned - various bugs with screen and control handling (still can't change my controls from the defaults, even after the download), and it took some patience to figure out what the controls even were (documentation sucks). However, gameplay is smooth and it's so nice the play DC again, even a little bit.

Good enough for a teaser release, but thus needs to come together soon. There are still some basic gameplay bugs in this demo (death is sometimes cancelled by falling down a chute, for example), and it is ANNOYING to go back to the main hall every time you stumble into a level that is not part of the demo. Just put me back where I was, please :(

 -Alden Stradling

(Macupdate)

4/5

wot the hell us up with you moaning mo fo's!!

Sure there are a lot of problems and nothing is 100% complete, but it ain't even at v1 yet!! :(

To the author, great release and thank you - appreciated over here. :)

 -Anonymous

(Macupdate)

5/5

Its like being in a time machine going back to the set of a black and whie film, very eerie. I love the attention to detail in this version, no other game has ever had as many bricks! You still need skill to play this game too. Please can we have an OSX release of Solaris II next.

The weirdest thing is the price of a mac has dropped since the game was first released in 1991, $5,000 dollars bought you a 20 mhz Mac IIsi with 5 megs of RAM 40MB hardrive and 13" of glorious 256 color.

 -Anonymous

(Macupdate)

5/5

I know the game as i played it on the mac plus, but the beta 11 wouldn't start up, it complains about a "NewpixMap" Does anyone now what that means. I did play beta 6, and i loved it!

 -Darcastler

(Macupdate)

3.5/5

This game isn't to good yet but by the time it's finished it should be really cool. I hope it has customizable keys.

 -Zoolander

(Macupdate)

4.5/5

This us a great game, as was the original. Everything is looking good so far. It has all of the excitement of the original ad then some (yes, I'm old enough to remember playing  DC and BDC for hours on my old Mac SE). The only problem is it will occasionally crash for no reason, but that's to be expected as it is only a beta

 -Anonymous

(Macupdate)

4/5

As a veteran Macgamer, I cans still remember playing te original Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle on my dad's SE. I had nightmares about swinging around on a shap pendulum. The atmosphere of the old games and the good old rock chuckin' fun has been flawlessly reproduced and enhanced. The stars are give are JUST for the beta demo. I have high hopes for the finished project, as it would be difficult to screw up such a great game.

 -Lester

(Macupdate)

5/5

this game is stupid just kidding it is so good I play it every day butt I want the hole game please tell me where to buy it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 -JAMESON

(Macupdate)

5/5

the best game I have ever plade. the music rules.graphicks are good

 -john

(macupdate)

CONS:

2.5/5

Would be a decent little game is a) there weren't so many bugs (major ones that make game play impossible), b) the demo didn't crash, c) the "training" area worked in the demo and e) if there was some clear way to learn the controls. It's got the graphics and sound, it's just missing in the details department something fierce

 -John

(Macupdate)

2/5

Poor Default controls. And it requires you to download and instal extra drives so you can configure the controls! Just plain lame. Apple has API for this stuff, even a cross compiling library lets you access keyboard and mouse events. It's not that hard.

It defaults to a low resolution, low color full screen mode. Switching to window mode causes the game to crash.

Level exits are poorly defined; I have to walk offscreen instead of going through one of the doors? That isn't intuitively obvious, there are other side scrolling games that have done this better.

So it's essentially a side scrolling game circa 1995. It's been done before, and they couldn't even be bothered to do it well apparently

 -Tomis

(Macgamefiles)

2/5

shite

 -ben

(Macupdate)

3/5

This game is too unfinished to give a correct score, but it is looking good. I like the idea of developers releasing unfinished "demo betas" of their products, so that people will know weather or no to anticipate the product.

 -Hugh

(Macupdate)

And there you have Macupdate.com, it seems to be filled with more varied responses, but highly positive ones.

Final Take: A lot of people still bash it due to the beta state it is in.

More episodes will be on the way later.