DS1 & LoA Gameplay Discussion (spoiler warning)

So it's a pretty well known thing that if you edit your .dssave file, without jumping through some export and import hoops the game will just say "Yeah cool" and entirely ignore those changes. My question on this though is - From a programming perspective, *how* does it ignore the changes? Does it have some secret backup copy that it refers to in case the .dssave sitting in the Save folder doesn't match what it last saw as the saved game? Just about any other program will actually read the data it's being told to, and process it accordingly.

A little review & my two cents on the Realm of Kings map, made by Graham Shelton.

Download it here: https://www.nexusmods.com/dungeonsiege1/mods/92

I played this map up to the first town, Dromnar, and also had a look at it in Siege Editor. I loved parts of it, and hated others. Here we go:

1. What I loved

Is there a mod around to make party members drink life and mana potions automatically (once a certain threshold is reached)?

Is it possible to play the DS/LoA multiplayer map solo on a Windows 7 PC that has absolutely no network or internet connection?

I've just downgraded my ancient games machines to Windows 7 Pro without any connection whatsoever to the outside world, expecting to have less troubles than with Win10, and when I try to host a MP game (solo) it shoots me back to the main menu. This for Zonematch (which I didn't expect to work anyway), Internet, and Network. So it seems that DS detects I have no connectivity and disallows playing the MP map.

Would someone be able to venture a guess as to why a character file (i.e., [character name].dsparty) is not visible when selecting a character to play in multiplayer mode? I experienced a black screen when playing solo in Utraean Peninsula (Volcanic Caverns). I (stupidly) Alt-TABbed to see something in another app and that's when it went black. After I rebooted, I was no longer able to select my level 55 character.

I recently got hit twice with this problem on Win10, original DS & LOA unmodified in any way, OEM discs. I get the message "SmarteSECURE has trapped a windows resource error. Please re-run the application." Found one entry in this forum about this, with various suggestions, none of which worked (but have yet to try last one).

Some enemies (so far it's only been one lone enemy at a time) are untouchable and impervious to my party's attacks. Hovering the mouse pointer over them doesn't even register anything there, so I can't target them for my party to attack. My summoned creatures can "see" them, harm and defeat them (after some effort), at least at lower levels like Krug and Hak'u, but they are no match for Harpies and the like (now at level 43-ish).