Best mod for playing sacred on windows 10 in HD?

[eru777 1]

Hi everyone. I bought sacred gold from steam and was wondering how to best experience this game on windows 10. I am aware there are mods but wasn't sure which one is best.

I have searched for tutorials for either (sacred reborn HD or NL) and have found some Russian websites. I did manage to mod using sacred reborn HD but for some reason that got me to the starting menu and then nothing. After a while I couldn't even load that.

Basically, I have these questions:

1) Which mod is the best one to play this game vanilla style, just with updated resolution for windows 10? Using steam version (I also have the disk version if that helps)

2) Are there any up to date guides or tutorials on how to mod the game (in English)?

3) Do any mods change the game too drastically for a casual player that hasn't played sacred since 2003?

[Dax 481]

1.Your best bet in this case is Sacred NL pure HD. The maker of NL leaves the game as it is
with all its bugs and flaws.

2. I am not aware of any tutorials at all and if you are not a texture guy you wont come far
anyway since the code is encrypted. The makers of Reborn and the guy from NL decypered it and do
changes via hex editor. Since they use a seperate exe to fire up Sacred no harm is done the
the vanilla game. Heres the link to the tex extractor:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/h43bcppuu7t46yr/sacred_tex_extractor.zip/file

3.Reborns changes are quite drastic in comparison to the original Sacred. The game is more
challenging but gives the player far more options aswell. Also, it is not unfair. If you start
playing Reborn from scratch and grow literary up with it, you will get used to it quickly.

[eru777 1]

Many thanks. The funny thing is that a bug was why I stopped playing in 2003. I was in the desert and I didn't have a previous save file so that was that, lol.

I wish a proper reworking was available, like openMW is for Morrowind. Vanilla style, but make it easy to install and update it for modern PCs.

[Dax 481]

1 hour ago, eru777 said:

Many thanks. The funny thing is that a bug was why I stopped playing in 2003. I was in the desert and I didn't have a previous save file so that was that, lol.

I wish a proper reworking was available, like openMW is for Morrowind. Vanilla style, but make it easy to install and update it for modern PCs.

The community is facing a circling dilemma since years and is not able to break it on their own
unfortunately. The point is that possible modders show up frequently, all two, three months
or so, and leave again due to missing responses or simply the lack of fellow players who show
interest in the whole thing. Since they believe it is all futile, little, or no progress is made
at all.

The point is that there is a greater picture, which can be seen by those who keep their eyes open
a bit more.
Coding is done by OLKs and NL. So far so good. Frederiko Sassetti, find him on Youtube by
entering his name, is doing some ground retex currently. Too flashy and a bit too uncoordinated
imho, but he shows interest and is making progress. That is what counts. Ruddick can do textures and
model imports, and good old Dax, well, I cant walk across water and cant turn water into wine but, I
can do some minor wonders as well now and then.
If I piece all those things together, then I see a huge mod where all projects go into the same
direction without bumping each other out of the way. Under such circumstances, it does not look too
bad for Sacred.

Long story short: Dont leave.

Even beginners can mod the game a bit, by adding medieval, roman or greek textures to shields for
example. And it is not difficult. If you are interested, just let me know and I will send you
the necessary names so that you find them easier.   

[gogoblender 3,068]

19 hours ago, eru777 said:

Hi everyone. I bought sacred gold from steam and was wondering how to best experience this game on windows 10. I am aware there are mods but wasn't sure which one is best.

I have searched for tutorials for either (sacred reborn HD or NL) and have found some Russian websites. I did manage to mod using sacred reborn HD but for some reason that got me to the starting menu and then nothing. After a while I couldn't even load that.

Basically, I have these questions:

1) Which mod is the best one to play this game vanilla style, just with updated resolution for windows 10? Using steam version (I also have the disk version if that helps)

2) Are there any up to date guides or tutorials on how to mod the game (in English)?

3) Do any mods change the game too drastically for a casual player that hasn't played sacred since 2003?

Hi Eru777!

I wish I had more specific info re your questions, but I havent played Sacred with HD yet, but I know that the devs have a topic here at DarkMatters somewhere where they were able to actually get that wonderful HD to work... Sacred Community is strong!

And as I dont have better game-specific info to help you with, I hope you'll at least accept my warm greets to the world's favorite Sacred Forum with a complimentary serving of our favorite food...

poutine!

 

welcome to DarkMatters!~

gogo

 

[Flix 5,116]

Earlier versions of Reborn are actually awesome. Lots of bugfixes, gameplay improvements, some balancing.  I personally stick with Sacred Reborn 3.01 which has widescreen support. This was before they started overhauling a lot of core mechanics and gameplay elements.  I'm a little salty they nerfed the blacksmith arts but otherwise this version is perfectly "vanilla-ish".

[eru777 1]

Thank you all for the replies and welcome!

[xInquisitor1961x 49]

10 hours ago, Dax said:

The community is facing a circling dilemma since years and is not able to break it on their own
unfortunately. The point is that possible modders show up frequently, all two, three months
or so, and leave again due to missing responses or simply the lack of fellow players who show
interest in the whole thing. Since they believe it is all futile, little, or no progress is made
at all.

The point is that there is a greater picture, which can be seen by those who keep their eyes open
a bit more.
Coding is done by OLKs and NL. So far so good. Frederiko Sassetti, find him on Youtube by
entering his name, is doing some ground retex currently. Too flashy and a bit too uncoordinated
imho, but he shows interest and is making progress. That is what counts. Ruddick can do textures and
model imports, and good old Dax, well, I cant walk across water and cant turn water into wine but, I
can do some minor wonders as well now and then.
If I piece all those things together, then I see a huge mod where all projects go into the same
direction without bumping each other out of the way. Under such circumstances, it does not look too
bad for Sacred.

Long story short: Dont leave.

Even beginners can mod the game a bit, by adding medieval, roman or greek textures to shields for
example. And it is not difficult. If you are interested, just let me know and I will send you
the necessary names so that you find them easier.   

Wait, there are texture mods for sacred underworld :)

How do I install them and will it mess my saves and my NL mod ? 

Edited January 13, 2022 by xInquisitor1961x

[SupremeJoker 101]

3 hours ago, Flix said:

Earlier versions of Reborn are actually awesome. Lots of bugfixes, gameplay improvements, some balancing.  I personally stick with Sacred Reborn 3.01 which has widescreen support. This was before they started overhauling a lot of core mechanics and gameplay elements.  I'm a little salty they nerfed the blacksmith arts but otherwise this version is perfectly "vanilla-ish".

For me the best version was 4.3 ,it have strong items for every class,compare to the 4.6 where mage's are very weak ,it takes 15 minutes for me with battle mage to clear a boss cave(with full endgmae gear) while with Gladiator it take me 3-4 minutes.

[Flix 5,116]

3 hours ago, xInquisitor1961x said:

Wait, there are texture mods for sacred underworld

How do I install them and will it mess my saves and my NL mod ? 

You find lots of texture mods here: http://darkmatters.org/forums/index.php?/files/category/83-sacred-mods/

The great thing is they don't interfere with save data.

[Lindor 435]

On 1/13/2022 at 10:32 AM, Dax said:

The community is facing a circling dilemma since years and is not able to break it on their own
unfortunately. The point is that possible modders show up frequently, all two, three months
or so, and leave again due to missing responses or simply the lack of fellow players who show
interest in the whole thing. Since they believe it is all futile, little, or no progress is made
at all.

The point is that there is a greater picture, which can be seen by those who keep their eyes open
a bit more.
Coding is done by OLKs and NL. So far so good. Frederiko Sassetti, find him on Youtube by
entering his name, is doing some ground retex currently. Too flashy and a bit too uncoordinated
imho, but he shows interest and is making progress. That is what counts. Ruddick can do textures and
model imports, and good old Dax, well, I cant walk across water and cant turn water into wine but, I
can do some minor wonders as well now and then.
If I piece all those things together, then I see a huge mod where all projects go into the same
direction without bumping each other out of the way. Under such circumstances, it does not look too
bad for Sacred.

Long story short: Dont leave.

Even beginners can mod the game a bit, by adding medieval, roman or greek textures to shields for
example. And it is not difficult. If you are interested, just let me know and I will send you
the necessary names so that you find them easier.   

All in all what you say sounds to me like all the modders coming together and starting a serious company to completely redo Sacred Gold from scratch, completely with advertising and everything rather than everyone working for himself. Let me offer my personal perspective:

 

I have thought about starting to mod Sacred more than once. Closest I came to it was when I extracted the Anducar Demon model, texture and animation to import it into Sacred 2. It didn't work, the model loaded in correctly, but the texture was not applied correctly and the animation crashed the game.

It's a shame that I don't speak the programming language Sacred was coded in. I have like so many ideas. Adding Fireball to Byleths. Making special damage sets reduce enemy resistances instead of damage multiplication. Giving big Dragons ability to fly. Orla-Aisling tweaking. And many many more. But I can't even finish ONE Sacred 2 mod, let alone all the other different ideas I have for Sacred 2. And then there's also real life. Starting to mod Sacred Gold would be like open project #999999999 for me. I wish to start it, but I also know in doing so none of my mods, being it Sacred 2 or Sacred Gold, will ever come out. I'll have to think about it.

 

If I had the time to actually become a capable programmer and was part of a company working on an actual Sacred ReBorn game, then all these problems above would be solved, but new problems would arise immediately. And that is creativity. Creativity and capitalism don't go together, the fall of Ascaron showed that horrifically. All the ideas I listed above are my personal ideas and when I ever start modding Sacred Gold, then my primary motivation would be letting all my personal visions become reality. But when I work for a game studio, I wouldn't code for myself nor would I code for the game nor the customers. I'd code for money and nothing else. And that doesn't work.

So yes, all the modders coming together working on a single big mod would be amazing. But I e.g. could never imagine working together with the OLKs, their vision is simply too different from my preferences (and that's okay!). Since all the modders have different visions, that will never happen until there's some sort of system behind it and System and Creativity are excluding each other.

Nostalgia is what's keeping Sacred Gold alive and it doesn't work good. Diversity is what's keeping Sacred 2 alive and it does work amazingly. DarkMatters and the modding community is what made Sacred 2 a legend. Dimitrius, Flix, Gogo, Llama, Moonypaw, Schot, those are the heroes of Sacred 2 (alphabetically). I'd rather have 1000 different mostly compatible mods than one new game. And I really believe that this is what will keep Sacred 2 alive forever.

So that's how I see it: the key is not coming together for one single big mod, the key is diversity. My advice: Try to make your mods as compatible with other mods as possible. That way the player can choose for her/him-self. I'll do the same when I ever start modding. I simply refuse to make that decision dependend of the amount of interest/feedback from the community, and that's also the advice I'd give to any potential modder.

Games nowadays are really bad. People are going back to old games. Look at how positively surprised all the people where when they discovered there's still an AoE2 community. From T90, the Pro Players and sponsored events over Rage of Empires (german series) to Definitive Edition. The Cycle will be broken. We just need passion and creativity, then the interest will come. Naturally. At least that's what I believe. And when companies see there's interest sprouting on Sacred Gold and smell an opportunity, maybe we'll see Sacred Definitive Edition in the future, who knows.

Oh and also new "official" servers for multiplayer and completing the SacredWiki would help immensely I think What the OLKs discovered about the game mechanics needs to spread.

 

 

EDIT: That being said, being a hired dev of a game studio for working on an official Sacred ReBorn/Definitive Edition would kinda be a dream of mine despite everything I've written so far

Edited January 15, 2022 by Lindor

[stubbie 21]

Hi all..... long time no see.

I am having a resurgence of love with Sacred.

I have managed to get Sacred 2 Gold running great on my new Lenovo Legion 5i Pro laptop and Win 11.

But I am struggling with Sacred Gold.

I could not get it to work on Win 11 so I installed on my Win 10 desktop and got it to run. I also installed the PrueHD mod and am able to play it widescreen at 1920 x 1080 on 27' monitor. GTX 1660 super/ i5-9400F/16Gig RAM.

However I am getting terrible stuttering and at a guess around 30 fps in towns.

Anyone know of a fix to get the fps up to around 60fps? 

Thanks.