Demise FAQ

May 20th to 30th was the debut of "The Scavenger Hunt" a competition for Demise players of all levels which involved answering some 20 questions about the game based on screenshots taken mainly from the first five levels of the dungeon. Congratulations to Sortiri, KC and Greg who came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd respectively! Feel free to play the game anytime by clicking on the link above. The answers may be found "here"!

FAQ Index (Click on the Ku'Tan)

	Cheats & Spoilers !!!		Crashes
	Custom Portraits		Download the Demo
	How To: Find My Computer's IP Address
	How To: Patch my "Gold" version ...
	How To: Preserve my Demo Characters ...
	Server Lag Issues

Well we don't actually offer any "cheats" on these pages, the game can be spoiled by those who suddenly appear on-line with a billion gold coins and characters stats of 999,999,999,999,999,999 and 999 ! Mess around with your characters experience and enter my guild hall ... the 'Hall Records' are screwed and when I notice, I reset the server and everyone else gets cheated out of items and spells they've worked hard for!

There is some information available here that some may rather find out for themselves, or only need in rare circumstances - so if you're sure about it you can have a peek here ~> Spoiler Pages

Crashes:

Lets just say DEMISE demo is a 'little' fragile, but there are some ways to deal with it that can make things a little easier for everybody. Try to enter and exit MP games this way ... First, entry to town from the multiplayer screen is straightforward - but once you are 'in town' give the game the minute or so it needs to set everything up before you try to chat - (You can chat while you're in the multiplayer menu, so you can do your "hellos" there if you wish.) If other players are on the server, to minimize the server lag they will experience when you enter the dungeon, once you're in town just click on the map icon - this will pre-load the dungeon BEFORE you actually need to enter it and you can tell when its done by looking for the flashing red arrow in the map which indicates you're location. This is actually useful when you're dodging between servers frequently! Now for the worst bit .... EXITS! Everyone will experience their own "crashes" or their ISP will shut them off from time to time - and this can't be helped. BUT if you have time, when you are leaving ... get back to town. Select the main menu, select Multiplayer and then click on disconnect. This is the cleanest way to exit from the MP game ... a minute or so later, the EXIT button on the lower right hand corner will become active - you can return to the main menu and then Quit or go to Files Configuration and do a manual backup ( to preserve your characters, their inventory, their banked gold and items AND your map.)

What's behind this is that server problems and other crashes seem to happen significantly more frequently when players exit the game while they are still in the dungeon - or worse still, while in mid-fight. Occasionally a server bug seems to be triggered by this where monsters on a level will no longer fight. The server shows repeating combat related error messages and often it will only clear after the server is shut down and restarted. Don't worry - I know that when you're dead (!) you have to go server hopping for a rescue to save all that gold and that aging, but somehow that doesn't seem to cause problems - so IMO its if you're alive and leave the game suddenly that the problems seem to occur.

Custom Portraits:

DEMISE can import custom portraits, the recommended size is 150 x 150 pixels, format *.bmp using MS Paint works fine ... in fact a test "portrait" of 100 x 100 was imported OK !!

Portraits can range in detail and realism too, here's a few 'working' samples courtesy of the most frequent visitors to Decklin's Domain I of late ... I'm not sure I can tell which are the 'real' pics ...


IDONTCARE	WHATEVER	TRACY	ALLEN

Note that it is an extremely large file, approx. 100 MBytes, and to avoid difficulties with the download, one of the best download utilities I have found (and use myself) is
-o-O-o-
GetRight - Faster, Easier, Better Downloads.

Well as you're reading this page using a web browser, you are probably familiar with URL or Uniform Resource Locator which is the means by which a web page is addressed. http://www.DecklinsDomain.com/Games/notices.htm is the address for this page for example. Just typing an URL into a browser doesn't automatically zip straight to the page, however. Amongst a number of other steps, a device called a Domain Name Server (DNS) is an electronic directory of sorts where the domain name portion "DecklinsDomain.com" is translated into an appropriate Internet Protocol or IP address in the form 70.239.192.101 . The latter is a typical example of a "fixed" IP address allocated by an Internet Service Provider for a DSL service.

Note that if you are using a dial-up modem, you probably will be allocated a temporary IP address by your ISP for each session.

Windows has a command line executable that you can run in order to find out your current IP address. It is called winipcfg.exe, and can be run simply by starting a DOS box within windows and typing its name followed by [Enter] or by clicking on [Start] then [Run] and filling in the command box with winipcfg.exe and then clicking on [OK]. A small windows box appears and typically the first screen is not the information you need, ... what you want to do is click the downward facing arrow till you can highlight your modem or ethernet adapter. You will then see several data fields. The first "adapter address" is the unique identifier that your network connection card has (yes - outside systems can read that and use it to trace you! ) The second "IP address" is what you need to know!

If you followed the defaults when you installed the demo version, you will see that there is a large group of files (and yet more sub-directories) in the folder ...
C:/Program Files/Artifact Entertainment/Demise/System/demise
One of these files is DEMISECharacters.DED ... now bear in mind that all the items that are in each characters' inventory and in their 'bank' vault, as well as their gold, are contained in this file - so you may want to sell all items for gold or consolidate the items before taking the next step. Copy this file to your desktop or to another folder of your choice which is NOT in the Artifact Entertainment directory tree.

Now for the big step .... use [Start] [Settings] [Control Panel] double-click "Add/Remove Programs" , ... select DEMISE with a left-click and then click [Add/Remove]. Close all open windows, then use [Start] [Programs][Windows Explorer] to find C:/Program Files/Artifact Entertainment .... highlight the folder and delete it and all its sub-folders and any remaining contents.

Restart your PC, then insert the full version CD and follow instructions to load the gold version. Do NOT play the game yet - this is very important!!

Locate the file DEMISECharacters.DED and copy it into ...
C:/Program Files/Artifact Entertainment/Demise/System/demise/

Locate the DEMISE program group, select the DEMISE Render Configuration utility and select the same format you were using successfully with the DEMO. Finally, click on the DEMISE (WIndowed Mode) Icon and play the game! The following is extremely important, you MUST do this before applying any patches (as of February 1st 2001) ... you may play in the full screen mode normally, but by selecting the windowed version you have a chance of staying 'in control' should there be any problem with the installation.

From the main menu, check your characters have been recognized ... and select at least one. Go into town and check the bank and the store, finally enter the dungeon and at least wander around in the entrance hall before stepping back into town. This checks that everything is operating as it should be and allows the encryption that is applied to the character files to be set up correctly! Note that, unfortunately, the map cannot be transferred and you will have to repeat that exercise.

This brings you up-to-date and lets you log on to the maximum number of servers if you are playing multi-player. Additionally, you will no longer require the CD to be in the CDROM slot to start up your game, a number of game balance issues (including guild quest items that were rare) have been fixed and the mysterious rumoured T*A *O*M has been added.

Note: This approach uses the smallest download files possible, is not the ONLY way of doing things but it does seem to be more reliable for the majority of users. If you haven't seen my plug for GetRight (which IMO is faster and more reliable than the default Windows download) have a quick look here ...

In general, when a group are playing on a server, the slowest connection that any one person has will determine the playability for all. As players move through the dungeon, the position of each individual player has to be up-dated for everyone in the game, so tokens or messages are being passed via the server to all 'attached' players all the time. When anyone is in the store, remember the database or store inventory is maintained on the server (both shop and confinement). As the inventory management doesn't seem well optimized, its better to wait for the Store screen to reload before selling the next item. Further, if you can play without the CPU intensive effects and sounds on your local game, you will be less likely to cause other players to experience lag.