Descent to Undermountain

Designed by Chris Avellone and the same people that would give us Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and the Fallout games, Descent to Undermountain is considered by many to be the worst Dungeons & Dragons game released, set in the Forgotten Realms in the titular Undermountain super dungeon.

Unused Stuff#

In the STUFF folder on the disc is quite a bunch of unused stuff. This folder will not install on your hard drive during game installation and includes a lot of files (121!). Most likely copies of stuff you will see or hear during the game in different formats, but also some that aren't.

Screensaver#

WEIRD.SCR

A screensaver with a Q*bert-like background and rolling balls.

Wallpapers#

Several BMP files that are most likely intended to be wallpapers. Of those, two images are never shown in-game.

DRGN8X6A.BMP

A red dragon head.

DRGN8X6A_SIGNED.BMP

Ditto, but with the artist's signature.

Sound Files#

Many sound files are located in the 'STUFF' folder, most are copies of those used in game, except these extra recordings of Kelben Blackstaff going off-script:

EXE files#

GOAWAY.EXE

Kelben's voice will insult you if you click the "Stop bothering me" button.

Image Files#

All the PCX, TGA, IFF files can be viewed using software like Paint Shop Pro. The IFF files contain screenshots of LightWave3D 5.0 software showing the making of the TSR intro.

Joke or Unused Quest?#

An image exists called 41.PCX. It's a screenshot of a quest description, but...it seems to be a joke.

Deleted Content#

According to the DTU.WRP file (which is a plain-text file), some areas of the game were deleted before the final release. Only the internal names (CLAN2, DROW4, BEHOLDR2, MADLANDS, IBBALAR2, PLAYGROUND) remain.

Developer Message#

Present at the end of CONFIG.BAT:

rem ***********************************************
rem * All done folks, we's outta here....         *
rem ***********************************************

Revisional Differences#

Only present in v1.0, while the credits roll, an interesting recording of the developer team discussing budget constraints ($8?) and the choice of what should be the credits theme is heard.

Transcript:

Shareware Version/Evaluation Copy#

Within the game's executable is evidence of an "evaluation copy". It doesn't appear this version ever leaked outside of Interplay:

This special evaluation copy
of DESCENT TO UNDERMOUNTAIN has been issued to:

%s


    NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION
Continue
EVALUATION COPY

Also in the exe file is some clue about a possible shareware version. This was, in fact, never released, much to the complaint of gamers prior to the final release date:

( level_num - NUM_SHAREWARE_LEVELS >= 0 ) && ( level_num - NUM_SHAREWARE_LEVELS < NUM_REGISTERED_LEVELS )
( level_num >= 0 ) && ( level_num < NUM_SHAREWARE_LEVELS )

Unused Features#

Multiplayer Support#

Many complaints about this game arose from the lack of multiplayer support, even though it was promised on the game's box. This feature was apparently removed late in development but you can still see the network initialization if you run DTU.BAT with the "-verbose" command.

Found within the exe file is this comment:

 ConsoleObject->type == OBJ_PLAYER Created Cooperative multiplayer object
 Player init %d is ship %d.
 --NOT ENOUGH MULTIPLAYER POSITIONS IN THIS MINE!--

By looking at the DTU*.TEX files (there are nine of them and are plain-text), you can see all the multiplayer messages at different phases of development. The tex files suggest it also had multi-language support planned.

Can't save in a multigringo Taco!

Redbook Support#

It seems that the game had Redbook support at some point in development. Present in the executable is this text:

Couldn't open DTU.SNG
songs.c
i < MAX_SONGS
%hd %u
RedBook Audio enabled.
RedBook Audio not enabled.
songnum < Songs_initialized

DTU.SNG has a map of the different tracks it would have played with their length and where it would be played:

; This table associates CD tracks with music items from the game.
; The music items are numbered from 1 to 5, followed by up to 22
;  level music entries, as indicated by the comments.
; The lines are in music item order.
; The Seconds column indicates the duration of each track.  If the
; music is to repeat, it will be restarted after Seconds seconds.
; If Seconds is too short, the music will be restarted before it
;  finishes.  If too long, there will be a gap of silence.
; You may have to add a couple of seconds to the actual song length
; to account for the delay time before the song actually starts playing.
; Otherwise, the song will stop a couple of seconds early.
; Lines starting with ; are treated as comments.
; No track number may be less than 1 or greater than the number on the CD.
;
; Track     Seconds     Comment
2       105     ; title
2       105     ; briefing
3       60      ; end level
4       230     ; end game
5       111     ; credits
6       20      ;112        ; level 01
7       158     ; level 02
8       153     ; level 03
9       111     ; level 04
10      224     ; level 05
11      270     ; level 06
12      143     ; level 07
13      196     ; level 08
14      169     ; level 09
15      125     ; level 10
16      103     ; level 11
17      93      ; level 12
2       105     ; level 13
2       105     ; level 14
6       112     ; level 15
6       112     ; level 16
6       112     ; level 17
6       112     ; level 18
6       112     ; level 19
6       112     ; level 20
6       112     ; level 21
6       112     ; level 22