Eye of the beholder 2 corrupt all save slots

[Vaninna]

Hi,

When I load a saved game doors that previously was opened are shut again, monsters are back, keys are back etc., like the level is reset.

Loading another earlier save does not solve the problem! The glitch is still there and more stuff goes bad, mostly walls that has the wrong type of graphics.

It has happened before and also when I played Eob 1, and the only cure seems to be to start all over again. Format floppies, transfer adfs to them, make a new party...

Is this a known problem? Is there a fix or a way to prevent it from happening? Im thinking that it might have to do with EOB2 disk 1 which has to be write enabled. (I guess it acts as a virtual ram memory).

[dlfrsilver]

Well do you play on rela hardware or on emulator ?

If yes, which emulator ?

[Vaninna]

I play on real hardware, specs in the signature below. ---v

[Toni Wilen]

Sounds like bad disk(s) or bad crack.

[Vaninna]

Skid Row crack, but I never found any others. Maybe my drives are thrashing my floppies.

[Vaninna]

I got it working by making a new disk 1, the one that has to stay write enabled. When I switched to this new disk a few of my saves worked. It makes sense. I still get a few guru meditations and some blinking power led but it is playable. I also had a really cool glitch where time froze but I/we could still move around. Thrown stuff stayed hanging in the air, spells stuck inte air like fireballs, doors halfway closed.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

When I switched to this new disk a few of my saves worked.

Surely you're not saving to a "game disk"; create a "save disk" and use that

[Marcuz]

Can I say that regardless the flair if playing the game on the machine it was intended to, you are probably ruining it for yourself, if it gets so unstable to have glitches like the one you describe?
Maybe you would be happier playing it on emulator, unless you have already.

[Vaninna]

@DamienD Eob 2 use a dedicated save disk. But game disk 1 has to be write enabled. I think this is due to the game using it as a virtual ram memory.

@Marcuz playing it on a real Amiga is the whole point for me!

[meynaf]

If you have 512k ram expansion then the game has enough memory. So it should NOT write on disk.
The version you're using is probably damaged in some way.

Playing it on a real Amiga is the whole point but some extra testing can be done on emulators. Like installing the game on HD, which apparently you can't do on your A500

[Vaninna]

Maybe you are right, but what do you base that on? The game will not start without 1 mb ram, and it will not work with write protected game disk 1. The manual and other places explicitly says you have to keep it write enabled. But I can see that my adfs, floppies and or floppy drives are malfunctioning. I suspect that my external floppy drive is no good for writing to disk, but ok for reading.

[meynaf]

I played the game 'til the end on my A1200 and it did not write on disk unless i saved the game. So why would it have to write something when ran from floppy ? What happens if you write-protect that disk anyway ?

If it's your adfs or drives that are malfunctioning, then other software should have problems as well. Is it the case ?

[Vaninna]

guru meditation happens every now and then, software failure usually. I have recently cleaned the floppy drives so I have not tried anything else than EOBII. The hardware is probably not serviced ever, so I expect problems. Eventually I need to get it fixed.

Could you give me an advice for what version should be a good one?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

Could you give me an advice for what version should be a good one?

... Eye of the Beholder II - The Legend of Darkmoon v1.0 (1992)(SSI)(Disk 1 of 4)[cr SR][a4].adf
... Eye of the Beholder II - The Legend of Darkmoon v1.0 (1992)(SSI)(Disk 2 of 4).adf
... Eye of the Beholder II - The Legend of Darkmoon v1.0 (1992)(SSI)(Disk 3 of 4).adf
... Eye of the Beholder II - The Legend of Darkmoon v1.0 (1992)(SSI)(Disk 4 of 4).adf

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

guru meditation happens every now and then, software failure usually. I have recently cleaned the floppy drives so I have not tried anything else than EOBII. The hardware is probably not serviced ever, so I expect problems. Eventually I need to get it fixed.

EOB2 uses OS for disk access. So I guess read errors would trigger some message rather than wrong data.
I suggest you really try some other programs, here we have little clue about hardware vs software for the failure you're experiencing...

Originally Posted by Vaninna

Could you give me an advice for what version should be a good one?

Yup, already done

[Vaninna]

From amiga Hall of Light, EOB 1:

Cheatcode
Make two copies of disk 2 then make up your parties on both disks.

Play the game as usual, but when you find any secret passages or

walls, or unlock any doors, insert the other disk and continue playing for a short while. This passes all the data onto this disk. Replace the original disk and continue playing and now, if you get stuck in

the game and you have to start again, simply continue with the other disk and all the doors that were previously locked will be open.

Plus, you’ll be able to pick up the keys that you needed to unlock

them as a bonus!

...that leads me to believe that there is some information written to the disk (disk 2, not disk 1). Skid Row intro text also says something like: make sure not to write protect the disks!

I will try some other apps soon.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by Vaninna

From amiga Hall of Light, EOB 1:

Cheatcode
Make two copies of disk 2 then make up your parties on both disks.

Play the game as usual, but when you find any secret passages or

walls, or unlock any doors, insert the other disk and continue playing for a short while. This passes all the data onto this disk. Replace the original disk and continue playing and now, if you get stuck in

the game and you have to start again, simply continue with the other disk and all the doors that were previously locked will be open.

Plus, you’ll be able to pick up the keys that you needed to unlock

them as a bonus!

...that leads me to believe that there is some information written to the disk (disk 2, not disk 1). Skid Row intro text also says something like: make sure not to write protect the disks!

I will try some other apps soon.

That is a bad cheat advice! I found out playing EoB 1 back in the day, not knowing it as a cheat: I just used three copies of EoB disk 2, where the savegame file was, for safety.

What happened was what you describe in your first post: doors that I opened with keys were closed again once I went on a different level and back, and I was stuck in level 5.

The only way to beat the game was using only one disk 2, which I did fretting about the game crashing all along.

I also remember one of the copies was infected with a virus, but that's just another thing.

Don't ever use more than one savegame disk if you play any Beholder, unless you copy completely the disk every once in a while for safety backup.

[Solo Kazuki]

Completely don't understand "key problem". In both parts there is even more than enough keys. Solution for "key problem" is thief in party - you can open many doors with lockpicks. And no, You are not forced to pick one on start, you can meet thief class NPCs during gameplay.

[dlfrsilver]

I never had to write enable my own copy of EOB. Her copy possibly has a virus requesting to keep write enable on.

EOB is not a game needing write enabled.

[Marcuz]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I never had to write enable my own copy of EOB. Her copy possibly has a virus requesting to keep write enable on.

EOB is not a game needing write enabled.

Are you talking about the first one or the second one Denis?
On the first EoB, the savegame file was on disk 2; on the second one, you luckily had to format a savedisk.
I don't remember whether a there was a hacked copy of it that was to be write enabled though: it's at least 25 years since I played that on a real Amiga

Originally Posted by Solo Kazuki

Completely don't understand "key problem". In both parts there is even more than enough keys. Solution for "key problem" is thief in party - you can open many doors with lockpicks. And no, You are not forced to pick one on start, you can meet thief class NPCs during gameplay.

That glitch making you stuck is regardless the thief and lockpick mechanic: there are only a very few doors that you can open that way, and the ones you can't are the ones that block you.

Besides, it's possible that the glitch resets other content of a maze, like the quests statuses (mark of Darkmoor etc; who knows?). That would make the game unwinnable.