I've recently decided to give the Arx Fatalis a shot. Purchased a PC version on GOG.com, moved the data to my MorphOS machine and ran the Arx Libertatis port. At first it worked as expected, but then I stumbled across a few quirks (bugs?) in the game.

Firstly - as we start in a goblin prison cell, there should be Kultar, a friendly NPC in the next cell. As a matter of fact he is there, but fully armoured, wielding a sword, casting some defensive spells and he's quite far from being friendly. As soon as I open his cell he rushes at killing me instantly.

Secondly - the goblins are not willing to fight me. They just stay in place and stare blankly as I land my blows on them (no other enemy acts like that, i.e. rats and spiders are as hostile as they should). Moreover, as goblins die their bodies disappear in some kind of explosion. This leads us to a dead end, as a goblin leader from the third level should have a spare lever by his body enabling me to open the passage to the next location.

Lastly - there's no way to cast a spell. The runes I find are added to my spell book, but I cannot see te book itself (no spell book marker in the game book, and the F2 key doesn't show it as well). When I try to cast the spell "by hand" the game acts like I don't have the runes needed (they appear on the screen but with a red X on them and my character says "I can't cast this spell yet").

Anyone of you played the Arx Libertatis on MorphOS? Maybe it's the game version that's causing the unexpected behaviour? It's newer than the one suggested in port readme and won't install automatically (manual file copying was needed).

I've played the game a bit, but not had the issues you've mentioned. When the game was first released I ended up with the Russian version as the default, and it took a while for this to be resolved, but I use the v1.1.2 'Rhaa Movis' version now and it basically plays as expected, though there is some graphics tearing on the initial cutscenes, but nothing that's worthy of mentioning as a problem.

Kultar appears in the adjacent cell, offering words of advice and commenting on the 'gobblers', and after he is released he is present for a while and never seems to be in armour or rushing over to kill the main character.

You seem to have a rogue version there. Which version is installed on your system?

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It's a 1.21 version (the current GOG.com version of the game).
Thanks for your reply. From what you say it seems the port is working fine, just some version conflict probably (maybe too new to work with our port, the same case as with Ion Fury?).

Arx Fatalis plays good for me too, same as NewSense (including the tearing on cutscenes :P). Think I had downloaded an iso from the web many years ago. Why don't you try archive.org? It has a very recent redump..

edit: Btw, think that Ion Fury requires shaders, doesn't it?

[ Edited by Cool_amigaN 10.08.2021 - 10:50 ]

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I'll try swapping the data with the ones from a previous version.

IMO Ion Fury really requires hardware acceleration to be playable on MorphOS. I've finished the game, but only because I used cheat codes. The occasional massive FPS drops in software mode make the game unplayable even on a beefed up PowerMac G5. I gave up trying to fight the boss robot in D.C. Meltdown.

Go figure: Power Mac G5 2,7 GHz, 640x480 window

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Strangely enough I got the game data (proven working) from another MorphOS user and on my computer the game acts just the same as before! "Weirder and weirder".

I'll give the game a shot on my PowerBook G4. Maybe my "bugs" have something to do with hardware?

I'll also try the game data from another source.

OK, I just got it. You'd never guess what caused the game to fail its scripts.
It was the system locale! As soon as I switched the language from Polish to English the game started working like expected.

Well done! However I call it a bug

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Definitely. I shall report the issue to the port author.