Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Saxon1974]

The setting is far superior than the standard high fantasy bullshit that dominates rpg's.
You can get them here and here

I think that is called an opinion.

 

[ghostdog]

I think that is called an opinion.

QFT, IMHO.

 

[Raapys]

The setting is far superior than the standard high fantasy bullshit that dominates rpg's.
You can get them here and here

I think that is called an opinion.

Is that your opinion?

 

[rpgcodexusername]

I loved buck rogers for the genesis when I was a kid.
You dont have to refer to the manual to know what people are saying to you - unlike the PC version.
I was making a sci-fi RPG inspired by Buck Rogers but I decided on a different project instead. Wish I could do both.

 

[Mantiis]

Tried playing the sequel and got owned in the first battle.

I really did like the story in the first one though, the derelict ship is really good.

 

[Trash]

Both games are great. Perhaps the first one is more accesible through the (more polished) genesis port. The second one had a number of great set piece battles and quests as well and offered more rp and more character building.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Two problems.

I got all the documentation I could find for the game on the internet, namely the log book and the rule book. I am not familiar with the game's system, so I check the rule book. It goes on about which menu opens what and what each option in the menu means. But nowhere, NOWHERE, does it at all explain the game's ruleset.

All I see is that it tells I am supposed to be familiar with the Buck Rogers XXVc roleplaying system. What the hell? I am supposed to know the ruleset before even having played the game. What do they expect me to do? Go out and buy the PnP Buck Rogers rulebooks? Am I supposed to figure out on my own, what significance the different races and classes have? Absolutely ridiculous.

Perchance, is there anyway of finding out how the game's system works?

Now, I suppose I could figure it all out myself, but there is, as I said, another problem. I can't load the premade characters. Nor can I save the one I make. Is there any way of solving this technical issue?

 

[Zakhal]

All I see is that it tells I am supposed to be familiar with the Buck Rogers XXVc roleplaying system. What the hell? I am supposed to know the ruleset before even having played the game. What do they expect me to do? Go out and buy the PnP Buck Rogers rulebooks? Am I supposed to figure out on my own, what significance the different races and classes have? Absolutely ridiculous.

Now, I suppose I could figure it all out myself, but there is, as I said, another problem. I can't load the premade characters. Nor can I save the one I make. Is there any way of solving this technical issue?

Nobody in abandonia seemed to have problems with characters:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/23885 ... Cubed.html

As for the systen hmm..the game does come with rulebook (from ebay):

Contents :

Box
IBM PC HD 5 1/4" Disk
Rule Book
Log Book
IBM & Compatible Data Card
Registration Card
Tales of Magic Insert
Matrix Cubed Contest Entry
Countdown to Doomsday Order Form
Hint Offer

All I can say is that the rulebook should tell the rules - thats why its called a...rulebook. But if it doesnt I dunno. Perhaps som walkthrough might have info on items and char creation or somthing.

 

[barker_s]

I decided to check this game out and it turns out it works on my XP even without Dosbox! I'm just not hearing any sound (does it have any?).

I got all the documentation I could find for the game on the internet, namely the log book and the rule book.

Could you link me to them? I've got another exam tomorrow and don't feel like searching for them myself :wink: .

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

If you can't find the documentation for Matrix Cubed, you may try looking for the documentation for Countdown to Doomsday. Countdown is the prequel to Matrix Cubed, so I imagine the information is more or less the same.

I had the same problems you had getting the program to run in DosBox. However, there should be a file called matrix.cfg in the game's folder. In this file, there should be two lines that are path directories; change them both to the save folder for the game.

 

[Trash]

I had the same problems at first. However on gamefaqs you can find some info on the buck roger games that kinda helps. I also believe that replacementdocs had some of the stuff for Countdown to Doomsday. Both games also use the exact same system. You can even have you characters from CTD move over to MC.

Shame there is also nothing to find on that Buck Rogers tabletop rpg system. I loved the games and am somewhat of a collector of obscure rpg shit. If anybody knows a place, please help me out. Thanks.

 

[Crichton]

You don't need a rulebook, it's just 2nd edition D&D with stuff renamed. If you played any other gold box games, you should be fine. I've never seen the rulebook and it never bothered me, just start playing and you'll figure it out.

Notable stuff:
Ammo is tracked for each weapon. When a weapon runs out of ammo, the only way to reload it is to take it back to a store. Since you can't carry extra ammo, you have to carry extra weapons.

Martians are the best race, but they can't be medics, so I usually went with two martian warriors (fighters), two martian engineers to cover all the skills (think thieves) and two human medics (clerics).

Rocket launchers basically launch fireball, but they only carry ten rounds. (they're also only generally good for an opening barrage since it takes a turn to reload one) I generally carried two for each character, (since the medics couldn't carry two, the warriors would carry three).

Chaff grenades spread chaff everywhere with sets off all explosives that enter it. This is the only way to avoid getting rocket/grenaded to death sometimes.

Needleguns are the best weapon, but they tear through ammo. I had each character carry two needleguns, a laser rifle and a sword.

All grenade types have some use. Scramble grenades short out robots (who are pretty tough). Chaff grenades protect from AOE damage, explosive grenades are like short-range rocket substitutes. Stun grenades stun organics and I think I remember plasma grenades which were an improvement over explosive ones. I carried a shitload of all types.

Be careful when boarding enemy ships, sometimes you can get trapped on them, so always have a save at the last town. It's worth trying to board pirate ships sometimes even though pirate ships are garbage and pirates are as tough as hell because the pirates drop PHAT LEWT.

The endgame is pretty tough unless you're loaded down with rocket launchers.

You need almost all the fucking skills, either for ship combat or climb out of a pit, or repair a computer or some bullshit, so keep a list and make sure one of your characters has each of them. There's actually maybe 15%-25% that you don't need and I had a list back when I was 10 years old and playing this game, but that was long, long ago.

 

[Jasede]

These games seem totally sweet. Some of you talk about the two Buck Rogers games a little bit more, they sound amazing! How long do they take to complete? Do they have puzzles? Are they riddled with old-school "fuck you, you didn't pick up item X on day Z at planet B so you can't win the game anymore. Ever." that I so love?

 

[Crichton]

I don't remember either of them as particularly long compared to other games in the period. There aren't really unique items either, just various grades of equipment, though, as I mentioned, figuring out which ones you want is kind of counter-intuitive sometimes. There's a wide variety of enemies.

Like a lot of period games, there are plenty of choices that are only for suckers. For instance, there' s a "Pilot" class, but it's just an engineer with fewer skill points, an engineer can pilot the ship just fine if he has the skill. Martian cat-people are faster and stronger than anyone else, so there's no point in using anything else for the classes they can take. Most humanoids in the game use bolt-guns which do more base damage than needleguns but have fewer shots per turn. Sound like a wash? Well quality bonuses (+1 to +5, big surprise) and weapon spec. bonuses (+1 to +3 or +5, I can't remember) apply to every hit, making base damage pretty meaningless.

Oh yeah, it has that thing you used to see where instead of giving exposition in game, it refers to an entry in the paper "journal". So be sure you have a pdf of that, or you'll miss lots of story stuff.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Like a lot of period games, there are plenty of choices that are only for suckers. For instance, there' s a "Pilot" class, but it's just an engineer with fewer skill points, an engineer can pilot the ship just fine if he has the skill.

I don't think its quite as easy as that. In fact, technically speaking, I believe the engineer is the *weakest* class. Rogues and Rocket Jocks (the 'Pilot' class) get a bonus to all of their class skills, Warriors get weapon specialization, and Medics have skills only they may use. Engineers don't really have any class 'special bonus'.

Martian cat-people are faster and stronger than anyone else, so there's no point in using anything else for the classes they can take.

Martians are below average in both Str and Con. I believe you are referring to the Desert Runner race. They receive rather significant bonuses to their physical stats (+2 Str, +2 Con, +1 Dex), which sound good on paper, but in practice, aren't that important. Strength is practically a dump stat in this game, as you'll probably be using ranged weapons 99+% of the time. Carrying capacity is mostly a non-issue, since few items weigh much and money is weightless. The Constitution bonus is good for Warriors, but any value over 16 is pretty much worthless to any other class. Neither of these have any skills associated with them.

I agree about the weapons, although with slightly different reasoning. Chaff grenades and ECM systems make the Rocket guns unreliable. Robots are resistant to Lasers. Most other weapons are comparably weaker, either through range, damage, or rate of fire. The Needle Gun really doesn't have any downsides.

I don't recall how long the games took to complete. However, combat will probably be quite a bit quicker. Both you and most of your enemies will rely solely on ranged weapons, so movement isn't terribly necessary.

 

[Zomg]

I'm pretty sure I used only warriors and medics on my playthrough.

 

[Crichton]

I don't think its quite as easy as that. In fact, technically speaking, I believe the engineer is the *weakest* class. Rogues and Rocket Jocks (the 'Pilot' class) get a bonus to all of their class skills, Warriors get weapon specialization, and Medics have skills only they may use. Engineers don't really have any class 'special bonus'.

The easiest way I could find to get all the skills I needed (repair shit for ship combat, medical crap for land combat, misc stuff like fast talk, climb and whatnot ) while keeping the two fighters was two medics and two engineers. My first playthrough had one of those pilots, but only the one piloting skill was commonly used and he couldn't take enough repair skills. So I don't deny that there's some other way of acquiring the various skills, but I never used it.

Martians are below average in both Str and Con. I believe you are referring to the Desert Runner race. They receive rather significant bonuses to their physical stats (+2 Str, +2 Con, +1 Dex), which sound good on paper, but in practice, aren't that important. Strength is practically a dump stat in this game, as you'll probably be using ranged weapons 99+% of the time. Carrying capacity is mostly a non-issue, since few items weigh much and money is weightless. The Constitution bonus is good for Warriors, but any value over 16 is pretty much worthless to any other class. Neither of these have any skills associated with them.

I couldn't disagree more about strength, there's no other way to carry all those extra weapons to avoid ammo issues on top of all that loot. The rocket launchers are particularly heavy which is why having four cat people is so helpful. The human medics couldn't pull their own weight for shit. Since non-combat stats aren't actually used for anything (they just mod skills slightly) and combat is 95% of the game, you'd be a fool to give up rocket launcher shots for them. Dex > Str > Con >>>>>> all that other junk.[/quote]

 

[Saxon1974]

Went back to play some more of the Gold Box games on the VICE C64 emulator but I didn't realize how bad the combat movement was.

The keys to move in combat are different in 3D mode, they are;

1 - north
5 - south
7 - west
3 - east

Who in the heck came up with that idea? So the key that goes west is on the far right side of the numbers keys being 7 and the one that goes east is on the far left....not sure i can play through the game this way.

I dont remember this being a problem playing these in my youth when they came out...but then again I was so excited with these games back then maybe i over-looked it.

The thing is, I dont know if I can get used to these movement keys no matter how long I play.

I guess im forced to play the DOS versions (Which I don't really like the look of them compared to the C64 versions for some reason).

 

[abstract]

can't you just remap the keys in the emulator?

 

[Saxon1974]

Im not sure how to do that. In Vice it lets you point to a key mapping file, however I have no idea how to create or alter one of those.

If I could remap keys it would make for a much better experience.

Anyone know how to make\modify a keymap file? In vice the file has an extension of .vkm

If I could just remap the keys to the num keypad or something or the arrow keys it would make the experience so much better.

 

[Saxon1974]

It appears that the CCS64 emulator will let you remap keys from the GUI, so I will give that a try when I get home.

 

[Wyrmlord]

You know, being one of the more younger gamers, I used to have this silly perspective that dialogue trees made a RPG.

But when I started playing all the old stuff through DOSbox, I started to change my mind. They didn't even have dialogue trees, but there was a certain fun to them that modern games did not have.

What was great about them was the exploration. Going through those vast networks of hallways and corridors, or exploring the large outdoor worlds, there is a great feeling in finding a specific location or an object. Sometimes, in order to accomplish something, you had to find something located in the middle of a large large place. And you don't even you are supposed to be looking for it.

And while they had to some simpler things because of technological limitations, they actually did work quite well in themselves. Like PorkaMorka said:

For example, if you played TOEE the town of Homlet was just one of the most boring things ever, even though it had tons of those dialog menus mentioned above. In a gold box game you'd walk into a couple buildings, see some cool little graphics squares, read a little text, possibly hear a midi and quickly get to the adventure, rather than wasting an hour plus on horrible quests. Admittedly, Homlet is worse than most modern rpg towns, but still.

 

[Saxon1974]

You know, being one of the more younger gamers, I used to have this silly perspective that dialogue trees made a RPG.

But when I started playing all the old stuff through DOSbox, I started to change my mind. They didn't even have dialogue trees, but there was a certain fun to them that modern games did not have.

What was great about them was the exploration. Going through those vast networks of hallways and corridors, or exploring the large outdoor worlds, there is a great feeling in finding a specific location or an object. Sometimes, in order to accomplish something, you had to find something located in the middle of a large large place. And you don't even you are supposed to be looking for it.

And while they had to some simpler things because of technological limitations, they actually did work quite well in themselves. Like PorkaMorka said:

For example, if you played TOEE the town of Homlet was just one of the most boring things ever, even though it had tons of those dialog menus mentioned above. In a gold box game you'd walk into a couple buildings, see some cool little graphics squares, read a little text, possibly hear a midi and quickly get to the adventure, rather than wasting an hour plus on horrible quests. Admittedly, Homlet is worse than most modern rpg towns, but still.

Definitely agree, nice post.

 

[mondblut]

I guess im forced to play the DOS versions (Which I don't really like the look of them compared to the C64 versions for some reason).

Eh...how are C64 versions better? Wasn't it just 4 colours (or am I mixing it up with Apple II) or something? As for gameplay and interface, I bet these would be the same..

Some of the Amiga versions are graphically superior to PC. Pool of Radiance particularly has full-color graphics. Death Knights of Krynn too, but it always hanged the game in sort of Amiga version of BSOD in first combat, probably when a sound was to be played Curiously, most others like Curse of Azure Bonds or Champions of Krynn had same 16-color gfx as PC versions.

 

[Saxon1974]

I guess im forced to play the DOS versions (Which I don't really like the look of them compared to the C64 versions for some reason).

Eh...how are C64 versions better? Wasn't it just 4 colours (or am I mixing it up with Apple II) or something? As for gameplay and interface, I bet these would be the same..

Some of the Amiga versions are graphically superior to PC. Pool of Radiance particularly has full-color graphics. Death Knights of Krynn too, but it always hanged the game in sort of Amiga version of BSOD in first combat, probably when a sound was to be played Curiously, most others like Curse of Azure Bonds or Champions of Krynn had same 16-color gfx as PC versions.

It might be nostalgia for me, but I just like the rough edges look of the C64 versions including the dialog script, didn't really like the lettering change in the PC versions. I also like C64 sound better than PC sound, what little sound there is for that matter.

Im pretty sure the C64 versions have more than 4 colors. I have always liked the look of the C64's graphics for some reason, but then again its the machine I started playing RPG's on as a kid so that's probably alot of it.

Your Death Knights of Krynn would freeze when playing on the amiga? That seems to happen with GAteway on the amiga using winuae amiga emulator as well.