PolB (55) on 9/23/2007 1:07 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

Intro

You are beginning in small outpost, hired to defend it from raid of Greenskins. - For those who know Warhammer, that's saying all - You will be commanding the Cavalry bearing magical sword throwing the flames, Infantry, Crossbowmen and Heavy Cannon, all of finest Grudgebringer provenience.

The Good

Before each battle here's an units deployment phase, pay attention to your artillery if it can shoot where it will be needed - it's sticky. Also it's requiring line of view, same for your crossbowmen. Graphical quality is excellent even to today's standard, real time battle are spiced by reports or threats of units leaders. And you can see them charging, targeting, being beaten, retreating or proudly saying:"We are victorious!" Scenario can follows several tracks, bringing you more or less treasure and experience. The longest way is obviously most enriching, while the shortest means that you are advancing faster and enemy isn't so well prepared. All dialogs, revealing you slowly the story, are well narrated, furthermore portraits are occasionally doing grimaces, and while you are moving to another place map illustrating your way is shown. Voices are perfect, naturally go in English, French and German I think. But it's not only them, here are video cutscenes, seeing how was summoned 'Hand of Nagash' is real one time life experience. Sort of must for all Warhammer fans. Quote: "That mine is mine!", ain't bad either. A big plus is units bestiary, who didn't see would not believe it - it's one of best through this game, very comfortable. One more point is for multiplayer - hamachi. And when I'm in, here's also music drawing you in the midst of the battle frenzy.

The Bad

Slower units cannot autoattack faster units, in some phases also faster units cannot attack slower ones and that complicate situation. AI is suffering from the same problem, fortunately you can keep it covered by your hand - here is a manual way. Be prepared to literally click your path to the victory, such here's an courage button, it's important and if you wish to win you must clicking on it continually and while you are in you cannot command anywhere else. Fullscreen only.

Strategy

• Don't buy an extra armor for your units until is needed, it's increasing per soldier value and you will feel it heavy after losses.

• Infantry is core of the army, send these guys everywhere where's needed, they are slow but three times cheaper than any cavalrist.

• Experienced units are more fearsome, fights better and can keep more artifacts, up to three.

• Logically experienced units soldiers cost more, so don't loss your profs.

• Use '+' or '-' to change formation from noodle to wide line. Shift + click to orient unit and Alt + click to remove artifact, works on retreating unit as well.

• Rely on 'Charge' and 'Boost Courage' commands. Click, click, click - although here's keyboard shortcut too.

• Never let any enemy unit to leave the battlefield. You need theirs experience and artifacts. Nor the one.

• You can shoot on retreating units and you can walk into them or charge them manually.

• Always burn suspiciously looking dark buildings as they may, and mostly will, contain valuable artifact. Nice examples are Vampire's Tower and Greenskin's totem having red eyes.

• Enemy can use artifacts in the same manner as you.

• Enemy can be lured where you want him. Good decoy is artifact or weak unit.

• You don't need to grab all visible treasure, they will appears in your rooster after the battle.

• Horn can destroy summoned undead units in instant, its other effects are also interesting.

• Wizard is most dangerous unit in whole game, don't loose him. Let make loose enemy one.

• Any spell can be dispelled.

• For fast moving units, predict theirs position and shoot here. Works nicely with Elven Archers. Game is trying to autotarget but badly.

• Undead King can be killed by Meteor Shower when you aim precisely.

• Flame blades are natural mummies killer, take them on walk and they will be leaping from your body. Everything between flame blade and it's target is dead, including your own units, don't mix.

• Shield of Ptoloss doesn't protect against artillery but it's good versus arrows.

• I had finished the game with 8043gc having peak around 20522gc, before arrival to Moussilon. So that for your imagination how much can cost two last final battles.

XP Troubleshooter

(adapted from http://hjem.get2net.dk/gamewizard/pages/games.html)

1) Install the game. It really does not matter whether you choose maximum, minimum or normal installation. I, however, like to just install the maximum; it'll run faster.

2) Run the game. It takes a little while to load, but just let i work.

3) When the Electronic Arts logo begins, the picture should be completely fudged up. There is a lot of odd tearing and basically it's unwatchable. Now you have to press "Alt + tab" to switch away from Dark Omen. This will hopefully land you on the desktop. Now all you have to do is pres "Alt + tab" again to get you into the game, and voilá: the screen is normal. Big smile now

4) Now you have to enter the options menu: Put the first option (rendering device) to "CPU" Every other option can be put to max. EXCEPT COLOUR CURSORS I cannot stress that enough.

5) Now you say, "But GWiZ, I'm not colourblind, why should I look at black and white cursors!?" Never fear GWiZ is here. You see, the technique used to show black and white cursors is enormously simple, and therefore I've converted the colour cursors used in the game to the format, the black and white cursors use. These cursors are available here: http://hjem.get2net.dk/gamewizard/files/do_newcursors.zip (28KB Zip archive).

6) After you download the cursors extract them to the following directory: "darkomen-directory"\Graphics\Cursors . Don't worry if you overwrite the old black and white files.

7) TEXTURE folder includes the textures in normal quality. LTEXTURE folder however includes the same set of textures in lower quality - for software 3D. So copy content of the TEXTURE folder into LTEXTURE to get the standart quality, which today's computers can cope without a hitch.

8) You are done. You can now play Dark Omen with colour cursors and everything. Just remember that every time you run the game you have to Alt + tab your way out of the game, and back in again. This removes the tearing of the screen. If you have any problems with this, just send me a mail, and I'll explain it more clearly or something.

Enjoy!

• Here's one troubleshooter appl. in the game, for my ATI Rage Ultra I used a following setup: section Advanced, All Texture Depths, Force 3D Hardware, No PowerVR Check, No 3Dfx Check, Single Scenario Redraw. Force mmx will cause better quality of portraits and units generally but no background at the battlefields, leaving you playing in the black space. Without it quality is worse but you will see everything properly. Without ancient graphics cards (Ati RageII, Ati Rage pro Turbo, Permedia, native 3Dfx - I wouldn't bet for 3dfx wrapper but I didn't tried) particles effect cannot be turned on. Once in the game main menu options switch to software rendered mode.

That should be all. ~ Happy gaming :-)