Dungeon Hack (DOS)

Dungeon Hack

Platform:	DOS
Year:	1993
Developer:	DreamForge Intertainment, Inc.
Buy:	Amazon

For other games in the series, see Dungeons & Dragons.

Dungeon Hack is a pseudo 3D dungeon crawler that creates randomly generated mazes for you to explore. The game uses the rules of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragon - 2nd Edition pen and paper RPG and the AESOP engine from Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor (DOS), from which a lot of the graphics are recycled.

There are a wide assortment of monsters, items, spells, weapons, and armor, but only a very basic story. Your master has commanded you to find an orb. As a reward, any treasure you find in the dungeon is yours to keep. As you progress deeper into the dungeon, enemies become tougher, but the treasures become greater.

Since the game lacks a meaningful plot, all of the work was placed on combat and the high-quality (for its time) randomizer. You can customize the dungeon in many ways: how many levels, keys required to open some doors, levels filled with water, magic doors, etc. However, the lack of scripted encounters means there is no surprise to anything that happens after you've seen it once. The game also has an option to turn on permadeath for the truly courageous.

Screenshots

The title screen.

Watching the Introduction.

The main menu.

Creating a new character.

Customizing my dungeon.

About to waste a goblin.

Music

The soundtrack only consists of three rather tame tracks. The music can be played on three different platforms. Songs beginning with a 1 are for the Roland MT-32/LAPC-I. Songs beginning with 2 are for the AdLib/Sound Blaster. Songs beginning with a 3 are for the PC Speaker.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Programmer	Length	Listen
101	Scene One	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	2:58
102	Scene Two	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	0:50
103	End	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	0:49
201	Scene One	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	2:58
202	Scene Two	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	0:58
203	End	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	0:58
301	Scene One	Unknown	Ralph Thomas	3:18

Credits

Ripper: TheAlmightyGuru (XMI, SYX, WAV), Doommaster1994 (VGM)
Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru (MT-32, PC Speaker), Doommaster1994 (OPL2)
Game Credits:
- Audio: Anthony Mollick
- Audio: James McMenamy
- Digital Sound Effects: Ralph Thomas credited as Cooksey
Manual Credits:
- Music and Sound Effects: Anthony Mollick

It is controversial who composed the music to Dungeon Hack. Anthony Mollick said that he only created the game's sound effects, but Jamie McMenamy has stated that he never worked on Dungeon Hack and that Ravenloft was the first game that he worked on. In the game's manual, only Anthony Mollick is credited for Music and Sound Effects, but in the game, both Anthony and Jamie are credited for Audio.

The real name of the Digital Sound Effects designer has been revealed as Ralph Thomas, though Anthony said Ralph is wrongly credited, as Tony did all of the sound effects. He said the sound effects were done by his bass player "Fuzzy" and his brother Scott, then he would use effects on the voices.

Ralph Thomas is credited for Digital Sound Effects, but he was also credited for music programming in Eye of the Beholder III: Assault on Myth Drannor (DOS), a game which uses the same game and sound engine, so he is listed as the game's sound programmer.

(Sources: 1, 2, 3)

Game Rip

Format	Download
	Download (Info)

Dungeon Hack uses XMI for music and WAV for sound effects. There are three forms of the XMI music for Roland LA32 compatible devices (MT-32, LAPC-I, etc.), OPL2 compatible devices (AdLib, Sound Blaster, etc.), and for the PC Speaker. Roland songs start with a 1, OPL2 songs start with a 2, and PC Speaker songs start with s 3. All of the music files were extracted from the Open.res file, and the music was extracted from both the Open.res and Hack.res files.

The Roland soundtrack was recorded by logging the SysEx data using MIDI-OX and then playing the XMI files through Winamp and outputting the instructions to an MT-32, then recording the output.

The OPL2 soundtrack was logged to VGM format during game play using ValleyBell's patched DOSBox 0.74. Though, you can also get accurate playback using Midpak with the sound driver files in the rip (ADLIB.ADV and STDPATCH.AD).

The PC Speaker soundtrack was emulated and recorded through DOSBox. XMI files starting with a 3 are for the PC Speaker. Strangely, only Scene One exists for the PC Speaker; Scene Two and the End music doesn't exist.