My first words were:

We're doomed! Damnit GoG!


Having Played Dungeon Keeper 2 in Windows 7 recently I can confirm it starts out all right but gets increasingly horribly unstable the further you go on to the point of too many creatures in one area is a crash. So for me, if this version is even remotely more stable than that I'd be thrilled.

Kinda weird seeing a chunk of my wishlist on sale. Woulda picked up Theme Hospital if that was up too but alas, another time perhaps :)

Ah, nice. Finally a promo again with lots of games on my wishlist.

Good promo, but why Alfa Centauri without add on?

The main thing is that there seems to be some persistent rumor that e.g. Dungeon Keeper 2 GOG does not work in Windows 7, period. From my point of view, that is BS. Even though I have the hardware that has "the issues", it seems to run fine, even in Win7.

DK2 looks quite fine without "3D acceleration", somehow they've been able to make the SW renderer handle things that normally were available in games only with 3D acceleration, e.g. texture filtering. This is not a similar case as e.g. running Quake with pixellated 320x200 graphics instead of 3D accelerated hires graphics.

I'm trying to get DK2 to run in HW acceleration just to see if there really is any visual difference between the two. In the old days 3D acceleration was a big deal mostly because it was the only way to run hires 3D games with high framerates.

Either way, it would have been stupid not to release e.g. DK2 or Gorky17 on GOG just because a couple of bells and whistles will be missing on some computers (heck, that happens also with new games, and I am not convinced that the 3D acceleration on these titles worked for all PCs "back then" either). People who think this way are clearly missing the point completely. That is like throwing all Chaplin movie originals to trashbin because they don't look quite as good as on the release year, or are missing the last few minutes of the material.

"Nice, you own all games from this promo." Booyah! I mean... Boy, what a sucker I am! =P

Since they just recently released it on GOG, I'm not surprised it's not showing up in the sale.
The "futuristic strategy game" part you mention only has a little bearing on the game as a whole though. Think of it more like Civ on an alien planet. Though I do like that it's unlike the Civ games in several aspects. Significantly more hostile environments, slightly less direct tech tree, customizable units (never to be seen again in one of Sid's/Firaxis's games)... I also always appreciated that instead of actual races/nationalities each faction is based on a certain ideology.

In many if not all aspects I still think Alpha Cenaturi is the pinnacle of the Civ(-like) games. Seeing how its creator, Bryan Reynolds, embraced the idiotic world of Zynga crap as of late I highly doubt we'll see it bested anytime soon.

Edit: I totally forgot to mention the whole 3D aspect of the landscape (also unique to AC). Terraforming is a big part of the game environment (makine a tile more hospitable, lower or raise terrain, etc.). An actual mountain rise will affect nearby tiles (think rainfall and such).

whats the best of them for rts nooby like me?

what wonderfull timing GOG. Are you monitorying my browsing? and reading my mind?
I looked at these games yesterday, thinking to buy them. lol. Now I have. Thanks for the awesome deal. just please work on making DK2 less crashy like the reviews say it is. (if the reviews are correct)

Great promo for Strategy fans!

DK2 looks ugly as fuck whether you have HW on or off. It works fine on SW and staying at 800x600. Rare crash here and there. SW mode even keeps the colored lighting, the only thing it takes away iirc is transparency for water.

That's my experience (and opinion) with it.

Anyways, I now own Populous, Populous 2, and Alpha Centauri. Not bad!

Now that's the good shit I'm talking about. ;)

Any EA promo is a good promo. It gives you the opportunity to rescue some classics from them without feeling too dirty for giving money to such a company;)

Cool promo.

Nice I been meaning to get Dungeon Keeper 1 and SimCity 2000.

I now tried it also on another PC HW accelerated, and now I am a bit confused.

Namely, they look almost exactly the same on both. The only difference in the graphics I could spot was that with HW acceleration enabled, the shadows casted by characters look a bit better, ie. a bit transparent and not fully opaque. But other than that, they look the same to me: filtered textures, all the effects (besides char shadows) look the same, even the water on the second level as far as I can tell (I didn't check it side-by-side though) etc.

When you start the game the first time (without 3D acceleration), it looks a bit poorer, the most visible thing being the blocky non-filtered textures. But after I ran the game in Win7 with the "safe mode executable" that GOG provided, it very much looks like 3D accelerated even though in the in-game options menu "HW acceleration" is unselected (selecting it will cause the "black screen").

So I have no idea now whether the 3D acceleration is running or not for me in Win7, but at least it looks basically the same as the 3D accelerated mode (on another PC). GOG did say this earlier:

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/dungeon_keeper_series/dungeon_keeper_2_stability_issues/post1 So at least for me that solution made it indeed look as good as HW accelerated in Win7, without enabling HW acceleration in the in-game options. It also occurred to me could it be because I have installed a 3Dfx Glide wrapper (nGlide) and it somehow kicks in with this game, but I am unsure if this game has Glide support. There is a 3Dfx logo in the starting screen of DK2, but other than that I don't see 3Dfx mentioned anywhere.

Either way, I personally have no complaints about DK2 running on Win7, at least not so far. Someone mentioned it may become unstable on more hectic levels, I haven't seen them yet.

Is that the animated logo? I was under the impression that it only ran when there was 3dfx acceleration involved, but I'm not 100% sure of that.