xREL.v3

DF2

oOo WARez RIng ORganization oOo

Arcatera: The Dark Brotherhood (c) WESTKA ENTERTAINMENT/UBI SOFT

Cracker....: Kaiser Soze              Release Date..: August 31st, 2000
Supplier...: Kaiser Soze              Oper. System..: Win9x
Stripper...: Kaiser Soze & HEX TEAM   Protection....: 3 CDs/SECUROM
Packager...: Kaiser Soze              Game Type.....: RPG/ADVENTURE
# of disk..: 65 x 3.81 MB             Language......: English

Req: PII 233, 32 MB RAM, 760 MB HD, DirectX 7 or
higher

oOo Release Notes oOo

Welcome to the vision of another world, welcome to ARCATERA!

What is Arcatera? Quite simply: a fantasy adventure with role-play
elements developed by Westka Entertainment from Cologne. Or rather a
genuine, classical role-play game in a medieval fantasy world? There's
never been a game like Arcatera before - so there's really no genre that
will fit 100%.

One thing's for sure: the time has long since gone when you had to click
your way through a prefabricated story-line, constantly using the same
dialogs and wading knee-deep through the blood of your enemies. In
Arcatera you can do anything - and anything can happen.

Behind Arcatera stands the gigantic world of one of Pen&Paper-Game's own,
which the makers of Arcatera developed in their youth and which they
continue to play. This goes to show how far Arcatera differs from many
other products of the kind: as far as the story, the world and the rules
are concerned, Arcatera draws on unlimited resources!

The first Arcatera game takes place in the city of Senora and the
surrounding forest of Kandt. This is a tough area! 80 different
Non-Playing-Characters (NPCs) roam around in the city. They all go about
their own business, pursuing their own goals in the world. They don't
stand around waiting to pounce on you. Instead they live their own lives
into which you happen to drift, just as you drift into the adventure
itself, which - by hook or by crook - you have to get through.

A game for role-play fans at last?
Not everything that makes sense in a Pen&Paper role-play game can or
should go into a video game. You won't find endless columns of numbers,
countless menus and menu items. Instead, clarity and simple, intuitive
controls are featured which contain, at the same time, enough complexity
and depth to enthral even the most experienced player for hours.

Apart from this, and taking the fighting system as an example, the rules
for role-play games have been adapted almost one-to-one. Because the
developers didn't want the player to bother about every single aspect of
the fight in every single round (which would be boring as well), the
fighting takes place in delightful real-time. Of course you always have
the option to freeze the fight at the touch of a button, and to plan your
strategy, proceeding, arming and armouring your party anew at your own
discretion. You can always stay in control of every single detail of the
action if you want.

In Arcatera there is no predefined way you have to go. You can move freely
in the city, talk to people or attack them, get imprisoned in the dungeon
for doing so, break out again and do countless other things as well. But
no matter what you do, it influences the course of the story. If you
insult an NPC, he might not be willing to help you later. If you leave
your equipment on the street, someone will take it if they can use it. If
you do absolutely nothing, the story goes on anyway and you might find
yourself in the middle of fast-moving events that you'll have to deal
with.

There is one more special feature of Arcatera: you can attack anybody, but
you don't have to fight anybody. There is always another way to deal with
a problem - usually several ways, depending on which PC you control and
what his special personal capabilities are.

To support this, you receive experience points (which help to improve your
party's position) not only for each defeated enemy, but also for clues you
have found and conclusions you have drawn.

Either way, the game ends after three weeks of in-game time - with one of
10 different possible endings.

Features:

* A fantasy adventure with RPG elements
* Choose between 4 characters: play as a fighter, a thief, a monk or a
magician
* Interact with 80 different Non-Playing-Characters (NPCs)
* No predefined way to go. You can move freely and do whatever you want
* Get experience points for each defeated enemy and also for each clue
found
* 10 different possible endings
* and much more...

Ripped:

Just like TLJ (The Longest Journey), this release is above the disk limit
(limit is 195 MB and our release is 245 MB) but look at the facts:

- The game comes on 3 CD's, which makes +/- 1,8 Gig of datas (= FULL
INSTALL)
- Our release includes ALL game data's needed to play & all SFX...and is
only 245 MB !!!
- We've worked more than 2 weeks on the game to rip it under a decent size
and I think we've made a pretty good work, especially since we had to
edit more than 20,000 files. To give u an exemple, all the backgrounds
in the game are in fact SMACKER movies and their size varies from 500 KB
to several Megs. Since most of the time, the only 'moving' elements are
candles or lights, we have 'frozen' each anim - reducing the total size
of the SMK files from 500 Megs to less than 50 Megs :)

So, what has been ripped? 140 MB of MUSIC, 165 MB of NPC's, 475 MB of
SPEECH and all MOVIES...everything else is there.
FYI, we have only removed the NPCs who are not needed to finish the game
(dogs, pigs, rats, kids running in the streets,...). All the NPCs needed
to find clues are included in our release.
We plan to release 2 addons : one for MUSIC and another with the missing
NPCs. We do not plan to release MOVIES and SPEECH, but we might change our
mind if we get a positive feedback :)

Last but not least, we have included the latest patch available for the
game (v1.2), so the game should be bug-free :)

Enjoy this great release and expect much more from WARRIOR soon...

oOo Install Notes oOo

Unzip the zips, then Unrar the rars in the dir of your choice. Go to the
dir where u have installed the game (i.e.: D:\ARCATERA) and double click
on the REG file included in the 1st zip to update your registry. If you
install the game in another directory than D:\ARCATERA, do not forget to
edit ARCATERA.REG before updating the registry (don't forget to add \\ at
the end of the path for the "CDROM_PATH" section)

Click on DARKSUN.EXE to start the game. That's it :)

For more infos, check those URL's:

http://www.arcatera.com/  --> the official web site

http://arcatera.gamesmania.de/  --> a fan page, much better than the
official web site, but it's in german :(

oOo Group News oOo

Eh wait a second? WARRIOR? Is this the same group that used to release
games and addons 2 or 3 years ago? I thought they were dead?
Well, right...at least, more or less. Let's just say we were still there
but had no more time and/or opportunities to release stuff. But here we
are again and we're here to last :)

So here we are again in 2000 with one goal in mind : bring u all the
games that weren't ripped for several reasons (mainly because of the size
limit) or were raped and unplayable...and even some that no one seems to
have anymore.

We hope u will enjoy our games...remember, warez means fun :)

oOo Founders oOo

CIAN & KAISER SOZE

oOo President oOo

KAISER SOZE

oOo Greetings oOo

Personal..: Bones, Daquiri, Deeptrap, Dogmeat, Ice007, Mastermind, Klu,
BiggerDave, Ryuji and all our friends (u know who u are...)

oOo Contact Warrior oOo

U don't need to contact us :)

ASCii header and layout updated by...................... Antibody/Defacto2
Warrior nfo last updated 12-july-2000 by...................... Kaiser Soze