Arcanum As A Windows 10 App

[@MandaloreGaming]

These changes sound so promising. I'd love to see a proper re-release happen

[@realbillyb]

Hey, it’s the King of Limbo!

[@valdenn3073]

@@realbillyb still one of the best videos on YT.

[@Alamar1]

Ayyy MandaloreGaming. Your Arcanum review is simply wonderful.

[@CainOnGames]

Thanks. I love your review of Arcanum. Our reach then may have exceeded our grasp…but our grasp is longer now.

[@GGPoohBah]

Well we meet again, Mr. Mandalore...

[@LandBark]

Okay, we need to make a petition to Microsoft, to give permission to release the changes that Tim Cain implemented (all packed in Arcanum TC: Ultimate Edition mod). The changes made sound amazing, would play this revitalised version of Arcanum.

[@SCARaw]

use unofficial arcanum patch and universal setup mods it will work

[@whiteegretx]

I'll sign that petition

[@alpha007org]

Microsoft talks big about preservation of old games. This could be one small step to actually do something about it.

[@tezzy5584]

There's surely someone we can get ahold of at Microsoft? Letting the creator of Fallout do a passion project with a 20 year old game would be good publicity for them if nothing else.

[@alpha007org]

@@tezzy5584 I'm down. Let's go hunting.

[@MortismalGaming]

That was really cool, hope Microsoft sees it!

[@mementomori771]

With Microsoft gaining ownership of Activision and by extension Arcanum I'm hopeful we will someday get an enhanced edition of this classic

[@waltarron]

It makes me feel so happy to see the game i deeply loved still being cared by its developer, you sir are truly a legend.

[@Marandal]

Exactly, i couldn't stop smiling at how awsome it is.

[@Carcerian]

I would LOVE to see Arcanum Enhanced Edition!

[@ruskyandrei]

You're a gem Tim. I hope Microsoft gives you a chance to bring some of these amazing games back to life!

[@patrickboutin9268]

If the rights aren't for sale - let's talk "spiritual successor!" - let's kickstart this thing!!!

[@robcampion9917]

Would love a sequel and/or remake of Arcanum.

[@maksimkharbyshev4525]

bro i will be really happy if that happens!!!

[@knastrarn]

Would be lovely to have the turn based combat of Arcanum be as rigid at the turn based combat from Fallout 1.

[@Marandal]

I couldn't stop smiling. Your passion and joy for playing with the source code is contaigous. Arcanum is one of my favorite games & just hearing the fun you're having was enough to make me super happy.

[@CaptmagiKono]

Just going to say, I really liked the "sort" function in Arcanum's inventory when I played it recently. Always liked the grid-based inventory system like in Diablo 2, and having an nice sort function was pretty neat to see.

[@PointReflex]

If my memory serves me, Arcanum used Direct Draw for pretty much everything under DirectX 7 or 8 (since i don't think DX9 existed at the time). However the Unofficial Patch includes a high resolution mod that replaces the old and more than broken ddraw.dll with a modern one wich allows the game to run under higher resolutions and manage the framerate and mouse sensibility (among other things like switch between software or hardware render). While there are still some graphical bugs (like the characters turning into a mismatch of broken pixels when you steal their gear out off their cold corpses) and memory related lag (like in the Dark Elves City having severe lag when other characters are movin on screen), the game is stable enough to not crash a single bit in the last two playthroughts I had just recently.

[@sneugler]

It’s great seeing Arcanum getting some love, I for one would be thrilled to see the game being modernized, optimized, and bugfixed. Even with the patches it’s still a very hard game to get and keep running. You could even make it a video series :)

[@gonza666]

We need a remaster version of this masterpiece like the one they did for Diablo II! 🙏🙏🙏

[@walfordfiore]

I also love these two games

[@MrZoichi]

Arcanum is worth it's (figurative) weight in gold. I need to try to get it working again so I can play a Tech-only playthrough. Thank you for the many hours of joy in this game!

[@WolfHreda]

The Shocking Staff is bonkers, especially in real-time. But it eats through batteries super quickly. If you want to use the Electric discipline, prioritize the schematics for charges. One is in the Chemistry branch, the other can be bought at Inventor Shops. Enjoy.

[@cburger4life144]

These videos are truly a highlight of my day. Particularly the Arcanum vids. And, oh my gosh, hearing about you working on it after all the years is really something. Would be amazing to see an Arcanum Enhanced Edition or something. But even if it’s just these updates on your personal projects, thank you for sharing with us.

[@peadarmcmahon1275]

MandaloreGaming has a great video on Arcanum, and has some good tips to get it to run smoothly. Thank you for all the great lessons Tim!

[@valdenn3073]

Warlockracy also has a great Arcanum video. His channel covers several classic CRPG’s as well as mods.

[@pnutz_2]

@@SpaceDwarf45 ah yes, mandalore's mister hyde alter-ego I didn't realise why mandalore-without-his-meds was making the jokes about the gnomes until I saw regular mandalore's video and learned of the International Gnomish Conspiracy. Dunno how that would fly nowdays...

[@FathDaniel]

​@@SpaceDwarf45Sseth review is succinct but I loved Mandy's review more.

[@TrueNeutralEvGenius]

All the mentioned videos about Arcanum under this comment section suck, they are all awful.

[@fgfsgdomagerd]

imho the Russian RPG Mandalore has the best Arcanum video, but he's longform, so it's kind of cheating...

[@nevernerevarine8071]

It would be simply amazing if the work you did/are doing on Arcanum made it out to the rest of us one day. The game is a masterpiece, it just needs polish

[@StrikeSven]

My favourite game of all time. Still give it go yearly. Keeping my eye on your channel dear sir.

[@Norpal]

Regarding the bit about game balance: I remember the most brokenly OP thing I ever had in this game was that one dog you could acquire as a pet. That good boy just absolutely demolished *everything*.

[@Hurlebatte]

I've spent some time imagining a version of Arcanum where updates never stopped. I like to imagine what Arcanum could be with decades of content and fine-tuning. It's not realistic, of course, but it's a fun idea to me.

[@Deus7447]

Arcanum is such a marvelous, ambitious and unique game. The main theme will be forever engrave in my memories right next to Ultima Online ''Stones'' and Divine Divinity ''A Wind of Aleroth''.

[@davidcolby167]

As a hardcore turn based player, ditching realtime sounds win win to me! EDIT: Oh, also, being able to control your NPCs would be AMAZING.

[@echoness_]

This is way too awesome! The industry trends are going for better graphics, more game mechanics, longer play hours. But really sometimes players just need compatibility and support update to appreciate classic games. Thank you Uncle Tim! Couldn't ask for something better.

[@thegreatestcait]

In 3 years, on the 25th anniversary, Tim and Microsoft release a remastered version of Arcanum. Any takers?

[@PhaserRave]

Even though you're not able to release it, it's really cool that you're doing this. We should petition Microsoft to let you patch/re-release the game (if that's what you wanted to do). I hope they do something with it.

[@Mordrevious]

The madman actually did it. And he's threatening to do more. Tim, you're an absolute champ.

[@Nuk4Dud3]

Arcanum was my very first rpg. The soundtrack, the story, the quests, the super voice acting! the world! We need a re-release for this! No wonder i fell in love with fallout after this.

[@LTPottenger]

I like the idea of a Harm spell that is low damage and low cost. That is something mages kind of lack. But the way it is now is crazy obviously. I would keep the one point method but combine each school so there's half as many. So you have to take 8 points before 9 and 10 give the top spells. The monsters going at once in arcanum is an amazing feature, just love that.

[@backslashzero]

Hey Tim In Fallout 1, was the "Tell Me About" box originally going to have more of an impact? I remember trying it a bit, then forgetting about it and completing the game without ever using it again. Any other features in games that you wish you could have expanded on. Also, I think you are awesome, and I hope that even though there's lots of complaining, or trolls, you know there's tons of people who watch your videos and think you're just the cat's meow but don't post anything. I'm sure you'd get tired of the praise. Thanks for the informative videos

[@StodgyAyatollah]

I'd speculate it's implementation was due to Tim's history with MUDs and was left in a sort of vestigial state due to being ignored by the team as a whole, much like you and everyone else did while playing. I think he may have brought it up in a previous video but not sure.

[@Jaqinta]

My older cousin showed me a some joke on that when you use that feature on esspecially on aradesh and tell him that Stupid Aradesh , he responds as yes it's me :D

[@backslashzero]

@@StodgyAyatollah Thanks for the reply. That makes sense. Each play through I'd first wonder if it had importance, then forget it exists. I hope to run across that previous video you mentioned, I'm going through all his videos so I'll find it eventually.

[@zakatalmosen5984]

Don't know if you're aware of this but there's various topics of conversation you can only breach with tell-me-abouts, you can find a list around somewhere. I'm not 100% on this but I seem to remember you could even solve the crop rotation quest in Shady Sands by typing "crop rotation", allowing you to bypass the science requirement. I think you either don't get XP or you don't get +rep for it though. It's a small thing but it's interesting.

[@sebastiangajdzinski629]

Great to see that you still got a lot of love for Arcanum. :) It's my all-time favourite, and as a dev myself my greatest dream is to make a sequel, prequel or whatever for it. In highschool I created very basic system for tabletop rpg in Arcanum and played a few sessions with friends. Also working on Shrouded Hills as a kind of a proof of concept in Unity, but that goes terribly slow as I work on too many things at once in general. :D

[@vodchiy]

Tim, in any case, I look forward to continuing the game from you. The games you took part in are my favorite.

[@StavrosNikolaou]

You must really like teasing us Tim.. Toying around and making a better version of an already stellar game we love and telling us that we likely won't be able to play it.. 😄😂😭 Let me add my voice to those one suggesting that having access to this in some form or another would be a dream. Also, Microsoft, if you are listening, we would be happy to buy again a director's cut of this game.. just no DRM please 😊 Also +1 to making it turn based as well as every other suggestion you made except one, leave the Harm spell as is; it is funny how good it is :) Thank you for showing us this and still caring and have a wonderful day!

[@AlValentyn]

Would love this, one of my favourite games. I’d love the sound track on Vinyl as well.

[@Kurereha]

Did you have any surprises looking at the old source of it? Anything wonderful that you've forgotten about, or horrendous spaghetti which worked, but was left in due to the sake of time? Thanks for the video as always!

[@wesp5]

Hi Tim. Once you take a look at Bloodlines, maybe you could fix two bugs that are unconnected to the Source engine, but still unfixable by me: 1) Switching between Histories gives the starting XPs again which makes it very easy to cheat (you probably disabled the Histories due to that bug in the released game) and 2) There is a memory hole or something that makes entities appear when playing for several hours (most notable in the Skyeline Apartments map).

[@jsivonenVR]

You are a very very cruel human being, Tim. 🔥 We’ve waited for 22 years for this, and after all the niceties you listed, you say you can’t release this! 🔥🔥🔥 I honestly still have the OG packaging and booklets stashed away for Arcanum! 😢

[@AngelUsis]

I bought arcanum during black friday on steam, it's so far very cool, love the story, and gameplay wise it reminds me a lot of fallout 1

[@Ablimify]

You seem really excited about this and that makes me happy! I’m sure if you can get into contact with the right people, Microsoft will allow you to release it!

[@tur13l]

Dude I still remember my final battle in Arcanum, pretty epic stuff, I thought the "bad ending" was oddly written given how your interaction went with said individual, but overall I did enjoy this game quite a bit. Being able to coop multiplayer the campaign might be pretty fun but you do you sir :D

[@JaydonVRC]

"Dude is literally me if I was good at coding" - A quote from my friend, in relation to this gem of a video.

[@elvendelusion2089]

A Friend and I were just talking about this game 2 days ago and how much we loved playing this! If there was a possibility of petitioning (making this possible) I would be over the moon! Absolutely fantastic game I keep recommending to all friends ❤

[@daemir2143]

I would pay money to get a Tim Cain edition of Arcanum, any day of the week.

[@ILoveCiniminis]

These show and tell videos I would watch all day uncle Tim. Those icon faces of people that Leonard done look wonderful. If you'd play with even vampire, that would be very cool.

[@zakatalmosen5984]

I really wish MS got on this. There was never another game like Arcanum and there probably will never be. It's almost like a lightning in a bottle, where the primitive charm of old cRPGs came together with creative and almost futuristic design ideas. Also, let's be honest, nobody will ever come up with with anything cooler than the name "Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura". I'd love to know who came up with that.

[@CainOnGames]

Thanks. That subtitle was my idea. It was inspired by Judges Guild module names.

[@amlithe]

This is amazing, please never stop dreaming and please never stop loving the world. The things you create are beautiful Tim 🙂

[@Ramiobomb]

Me and my friend just bought it on Steam haha. Thanks a lot for your contribution to gaming and THE WORLD!!!!!

[@KeithBurgun]

Hey Tim. Love your videos, keep it up. One thought I had about real time was, I played the game exclusively in turn based, EXCEPT if it was a "pushover" popcorn fight that I knew I would win. For those, it was kind of nice to be able to hit SPACE and just "insta-resolve" the fight. So what I would do if I were you would be to keep a "low functionality" version of real time in there, specifically for this purpose.

[@domagojkersun9630]

You guys from Troika are awesome. Troika game are pure romance of RPG games. I hope you all return someday to create more awesome games. BTW...unofficial Arcanum patch makes this game playable in newer Windows. You just need to disable something, I can't remember what.

[@pitchforker3304]

Trippy, I just installed Arcanum last night! Looking forward to jumping in...

[@jeremyjohnson9609]

Hey Tim! You've briefly mentioned some of this before, but I wonder how you take criticism. Whether it's a review of your game(good or bad), comments from co-workers, employees, or bosses. Or even bad youtube comments you've read. (Although I can't imagine you receive bad comments😅). Does it effect you mentally? Do you learn from it? What do you decide to take in or disregard? How do you react in front of others as a boss/employee?

[@Krashnikov]

the video us Arcanum fans have been waiting for. I actually have a question regarding Arcanum, because while i've been a Fallout fan for much longer, i've only really played the bethesda titles, i've tried multiple times to play fallout and fallout 2 but they're too clunky and unintuitive for me, meanwhile, Arcanum on the other hand i found very intuitive, and i'm currently on my fourth playthrough, so I guess the question is what steps were taken to make sure Arcanum was more user friendly than fallout, if it was a conscious decision edit: might be worth mentioning i played Arcanum with the unofficial patch

[@Zeropointill]

I feel bad for anyone who never tried Fallout during it's heyday. Back when everything was clunky and we didn't care because we didn't know any better.

[@Krashnikov]

@@Zeropointill its true, there are a lot of things considered the norm back then that are very unintuitive nowadays, i REALLY want to play those games and i still try every now and then but particularly things with the UI just make it a hassle

[@Celadonis-the-Lore-Seeker]

I have a friend who tried Fallout 1 this year and he didn't find it too clunky, the story really appealed to him. It depends from person to person.

[@silverjohn6037]

Personally the only things I found really clunky with Fallot 1 and 2 was the single stack inventory and not being able to highlight things on the ground without mousing directly over them. A better explanation that you could use rope's would have also helped but the actual interface once you knew that it was possible was fairly easy.

[@Krashnikov]

@@silverjohn6037 i think my big issue is the little messages it gives you, the first few times i played and went down into that vault that requires the ropes i didnt see the "you look around and theres nothing here" message because it scrolls away before i see it because im focused on combat or something else

[@GypsumGeneration]

Thanks for sharing Tim! I hope to play these modern updates to your games someday.

[@NIL0S]

Oh my, I remember playing this gem way back then, tried reinstalling it on a modern machine semirecently, but the graphics were somehow messed up, this looks functional! Would love to get my hands on it to play, maybe with Steam achievements and stuff 😀😀😀

[@lutherbrown8873]

an enhanced edition would be amazing.

[@TheSoulOfLincoln]

If this appears as a Mod that requires locating the original exe (for legal reasons maybe), it could be a great benefit for the community 🙌

[@LTPottenger]

Wow, that would be something!

[@billmakesgames]

I have published a few mobile games built with Unity over last two years, this video makes me want to leave mobile completely and build on PC only. There is a consistent amount of work needed to be done to maintain my mobile game in the appstore which I did not know. Unity and Xcode changes so frequently that I sometimes have trouble opening my project from just a year ago, getting a bunch of new warnings/errors that I don't really know where to begin to look. Then here's Tim opening a 20 year old project, still able to compile and run because he knows how the entire thing is built. Me on the other hand, uses high level tool and when there's something wrong in the tool, I don't know how to fix it. I wouldn't be able to build anything quickly without those tools though.

[@oliorogue]

This would be so awesome.

[@fredrik3880]

Arcanum is pure magic! It runs like a dream on my computer with uap and my balance mod.

[@helio_shows]

Not just magic, but steam works too :P

[@fredrik3880]

@@helio_shows yeah mate

[@OMentertainment]

Just realized the Arcanum menu and the Rage of Mages menu has very similar art

[@darthnix]

I know it’s not the greatest solution but could you implement certain fixes like balancing through a mod like Josh Sawyer did with new Vegas?

[@ZiddersRooFurry]

Josh made that while he was still working on it and with the publisher's permission. Tim would only be able to release his fixes if Microsoft okayed it which is unlikely as they would need to have someone QA it to make sure it didn't fuck with people's systems. It would cost them a decent amount of money both technically and legally for an obscure 20+ year old game that didn't sell that well on release and is still considered more of a cult classic.

[@golvmopp]

I loved Arcanum despite its bugs. The only thing I remember using real time for was kicking knocked out oponenent when they were down.

[@karisalonen12]

This was one of my favourite games and I still haven't played it through. Have to rectify that!

[@pedjanedeljkovic7021]

Amazing game with amazing atmosphere!

[@Philopean12]

Give me more Arcanum please Microsoft. Let Tim make the fans happy.

[@smmmma]

Arcanum is one of my favourite games of all time. I would love to be able to play it again on a newer OS (I have never gotten a stable build to work on anything newer than xp)

[@ZacHawkins42]

Search for the 'Unofficial Arcanum Patch', it's free and fixes a lot of bugs plus restores cut content.

[@Pedone_Rosso]

This could tragically end up in an unwilling Leonardo move: carrying the Monnalisa around with him for years, painting and repainting over it, for nobody but himself to see and enjoy. Will people get to play "perfected" (i.e. debugged and rebalanced) Arcanum, through a preserving contraption, in the most famous museum of the 28th century, or will Microsoft wake up in a slightly faster manner than that? Thanks for your videos!

[@Dizintegrator]

Are you aware of Arcanum Multiverse Edition fan mod that was a go-to for many to run the game? If so, did you have dome involvement with it and what are your opinions on it?

[@billy65bob]

Hi Tim, is publicly documenting the File Formats (preferably as C structs) something you can do? I've been interested in doing an Open Source re-implementation of the game engine (mainly using SDL), ala OpenMW. I've made a small start, but I've not uploaded it anywhere, because all it can currently do is open the .DAT archives and dump the data with their proper file names. Thing is, I have almost no experience with either reverse engineering or hex editing; that I managed to figure out the DATs was pure luck...

[@trystonminsquero]

Hey Tim, love your videos and games! Almost done watching all of them. What do you think it takes to be a good game designer? Lots of universities offer courses, but how much do you think that really helps? And Why does it seem like people often switch to game design from other professions most often (especially with yourself as you switched from programming) Thanks for the great videos!

[@JacksonHatland]

Tim what with news of the Fallout show I was wondering how you feel about the concept of canon itself.

[@momchilgradinarov6428]

Microsoft, get you s**t together and give this man the time and resources to remake Arcanum as it deserves to be.

[@joshuahogan2554]

I have dreamt about a remaster or sequel to this game for decades. I just finished my degree in game dev at full sail and I would help you find bugs for free.

[@theandrew1375]

I’d reach out to MS about this, they’ve been pretty good about classic game preservation compared to most companies it seems and always need that Game Pass content. Almost all of Tim Schafer’s old games got “remastered” releases and are on Game Pass, plus all of Rare’s old stuff, Wasteland, and the Bards Tale from 2004. You know enough people there between Obsidian and inXile they could probably get it done. I’d love to see them do a console port of it, and maybe get the original Fallout on console as well at some point.

[@graymantube]

Hi Tim! This sounds really awesome! I hope you will figure out how to re-release the Arcanum with Phil) How do you think, how complicated it could be to adapt Arcanum for Macs?)

[@StodgyAyatollah]

No Tim, I think we need to talk about harm lol. I've grown accustomed to the game as is so I'd be curious to see what cleaning up you'd do. Shame your hands are tied from even releasing an unofficial patch. Why I tend to suggest people make games as a hobby not a career these days. It's generally better for the games we get in the long run. More financially stable for the individual in today's market as well.

[@whiteegretx]

ARCANUM Director's Cut

[@realbillyb]

What significant/noticeable changes in your programming styles do you see looking at your old code versus your current work?

[@Alenthas]

arcanum is my favorite game that i never finished. i would love a more balanced arcanum so i can finally finish my gunslinger playthrough.

[@joshstivers9042]

This updated version should be on game pass pc. Just played through the original Fallout there and had a great experience.

[@FrostyChilli]

If you were to make another version of Arcanum, what would be your choice of game engine? Considering your experience with Unity when creating PoE, it would be interesting to hear your pros and cons of using this engine for an RPG like Arcanum or PoE. Let's assume a dev team size similar to PoE (unless you feel the size should be different).

[@brettgregoire418]

I would 100% buy this again if it was a mobile/desktop update. I own an original copy. MAYBE A BEAMDOG (they did the bauldurs revamps right?) release?

[@kardrasa]

Thank you Tim!

[@WolfHreda]

I think the biggest thing I'd like to see is native HD/widescreen support. I've dealt with everything else for long enough that it doesn't bug me. Don't you dare touch Harm, sir! 🤣

[@peterfiser]

Would you consider open sourcing the project? I'm sure there are a few dozen people who would be interested in making the game a better version of the original. Think of all the fan patches and fixes that could get merged if those developers were willing to do so. Microsoft has open sourced a good number of their older software in recent years and might be willing to do so with this one. Good PR, bringing it to the windows store, etc. Maybe worth a shot. I don't know, but it would be a dream.

[@AzimovTube]

WON, now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.

[@witeshade]

I feel like recently i read some announcements from Microsoft regarding gaming that strongly suggest that if they were ever going to allow some freedom with IPs that they own, now is the time. It may actually be fruitful to reach out to them and ask.

[@hannibalrex2191]

I used cheat engine to turn arcanum into realtime-with-pause and it was surprisingly fun, would be cool if that was a native option. Also fast turn based is broken, you can skip over traps and out of line of sight with it.

[@ForeverTemplar]

He can make mods like any other people. The only difference is that he'd be doing it using the source code that he owns. He's not bound contractually to any special treatment, he'd be just like any other modder. As a modder, he can release the diff patch for the current .exe. He's just being a drama queen. He also clearly wants Microsoft to pay him for essentially a mod. Good luck with that. I'd throw a few dollars his way if he simply opened a Patreon and started modding. But he wants to be the drama queen.

[@brian-nr5mo]

Let's hit up Satya! I'd love to contribute to an open source Arcanum!

[@lennyghoul]

Phil Spencer seems reasonable. I bet if you approached him about a remaster he'd be down.

[@mikaelhauk]

I think you could crowdfund this patch if Microsoft lets you use the IP. Arcanum has a cult huge cult following.

[@MarcinWanago]

Hell yeah!

[@johannes8131]

So would you get more points per level if you pay more for things? If you could get fewer skills, you could do less things in a playthrough, which would be bad. There's still far from enough points to use half the skills in the game in a single playthrough. I think a critical thing to make the system more balanced is removing the automatic +HP, +Fatigue bonus you get each level. And if you got more points per level, you could use some of your levelup points on those when desired.

[@mikeofs1304]

Tim, please, PLEASE , make the complete of siam twins quest. The best of CRPG quest ever must be finished)

[@dakedres]

Was Arcanum built with GNW or a similar abstraction layer? If so did that make this port easier?

[@dearcj1]

That's a great "start" :) After fixing obvious things, mb eventually we could pass GFX data to ML services to upscale things.. Overall game has some potential to sell after cosmetic remake.. but ideally it would be a proper remake with a new codebase that will allow contemporary coop

[@makowiec2k]

I cannot wait to see ReVamped Vampire xD