Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[Jaesun]

I've started an ironman game of the FRUA version of PoR. I created all new characters using the first roll for each (except modifying hit points to maximum), and worked my way through about half of the slums. The FRUA version is easier to work with; the graphics are much better than the original, and some of the interface problems are cleaned up. Here's a screenshot:



My party consists of:

Human Paladin
Elf Cleric/Ranger
Dwarf Cleric/Fighter
Elf Fighter/Magic-User
Half-Elf Cleric/Magic-User
Elf Magic-User/Thief

If you played the FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds, could you import that party into Secret of the Silver Blades? I didn't see a SotSB or Pools of Darkness in the FRUA mod list. linky: http://frua.rosedragon.org/modulelist/index.php

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

If you played the FRUA version of Curse of the Azure Bonds, could you import that party into Secret of the Silver Blades? I didn't see a SotSB or Pools of Darkness in the FRUA mod list. linky: http://frua.rosedragon.org/modulelist/index.php

From what I can tell, you can't. I just tried creating a character in Secret of the Silver Blades, and compared the generated character file to the ones from FRUA. The format doesn't seem to match.

I suppose you could play through the first two using FRUA, and then generate new characters with the same statistics for SotSB. It would require some extra work (ie hacking), if you created normally prohibited race/class combinations, and to level demi-humans above their normal racial maximums. If you're familiar with with this sort of thing, it shouldn't be too difficult. The character save files are quite small, and the layout fairly simple.

 

[jaylittle]

Whats so great about the Amiga ports? Better sound?

The way to get somewhat better sound out of PoR and Curse for DOS is to run them in tandy mode within DOSBox.

 

[mondblut]

Whats so great about the Amiga ports? Better sound?

Far better graphics for early releases.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/pool-of-r ... creenshots

Sound too, I guess, but sound emulation never works good for me. Amiga, dosbox, you name it, it is always pops and clicks and broken records. I gave up with enabling sound emulation long ago.

 

[Luzur]

Apple II version is the shit:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/po ... tId,82950/

 

[jaylittle]

Ahhh the PoR screenshots do look much better. I had already looked up the SSB, PoD and Curse ones on LemonAmiga and wasn't too impressed. I should've looked up PoR as well it seems

 

[Severian Silk]

Anyone know where to download these games? HotU is down for the moment. Abandonia doesn't load for me.

 

[Luzur]

torrent? aside from the ones you mentioned i have no clue actually.

google it.

 

[mondblut]

Apple II version is the shit:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/po ... tId,82950/

LOL.

http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/po ... tId,82949/

That's some mighty orcs!

I was meaning to ask since the old days, what's up with those acidic fonts on apple ii? These green and magenta "shadows" for white and blue and orange for black. It hurts my eyes so much it makes me scream. Some 10 years ago I tried to run an emulator, saw those colors and figured it to be broken. But apparently that's working as designed. So, WHY? :shock:

 

[Luzur]

Apple II's are from like 1978-79, those graphics where the shit back then.

 

[Zomg]

Man, playing with shitty-stat characters in 1st/2nd edition makes you really dependent on magic, which makes you dependent on sneaking off to rest constantly. It hardly scales with stats at all, while melee hacking is heavily stat-driven.

 

[jaylittle]

And, wasn't AC limited to -10 anyway? At least in some GB games it definitely was.

Not in Secret of the Silver Blades or PoD. This thread inspired me to finish Secret this morning. By the end I had two characters with -12 AC. They transferred over to PoD with those stats with no issue. (+5 Shield, +5 Platemail, 18 Dex) for one (+4 Shield, +5 Platemail, 19 Dex) for other.

Directly from windows here. Apart from sound (which is nonexistant/sucky anyway), they run flawlessly without any emulation.

That's actually only true for the DOS versions of Curse and PoR. With Tandy it's a bit better though. For Secret you use the Adlib card. For PoD you can use Soundblaster and Adlib as well.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I was meaning to ask since the old days, what's up with those acidic fonts on apple ii? These green and magenta "shadows" for white and blue and orange for black. It hurts my eyes so much it makes me scream. Some 10 years ago I tried to run an emulator, saw those colors and figured it to be broken. But apparently that's working as designed. So, WHY? :shock:

It really has nothing to do with the programming or the art, and everything to do with the technology. Its not intentional by the developers, as I've done some programming on the Apple II, and the same thing happened. For some reason, the color white 'bleeds' in certain situations when displayed. You really have no control over it, or the bleed color.

Man, playing with shitty-stat characters in 1st/2nd edition makes you really dependent on magic, which makes you dependent on sneaking off to rest constantly. It hardly scales with stats at all, while melee hacking is heavily stat-driven.

I got fairly lucky with the stat rolls of a couple of my fighters. My Paladin got an 18/87 Str, and my Cleric/Ranger 18/66. Unfortunately, I didn't fair as well with Dex or Con, so they hit hard, but can't really take much. My party is pretty heavily loaded with spellcasters, and I make liberal use of the Sleep spell. Its pretty overpowered at the lower levels, but useless later.

My main problem is the sheer randomness of it all. The game thinks nothing of crushing you under a load of random encounters. I've gotten unlucky several times, where the enemies rolled well for initiative and attacks, and taken down a party member before I've gotten a chance to act. No one has died yet, but you still lose experience when knocked unconscious. A couple of characters have missed out on some decent experience rewards because of it. There's also the relatively large number of level drainers, which just blows.

So far, I've gone through the slums, Kuto's Well, Podal Plaze, the Library, and Sokal Keep. All of my characters are around level 4.

 

[mondblut]

It really has nothing to do with the programming or the art, and everything to do with the technology. Its not intentional by the developers, as I've done some programming on the Apple II, and the same thing happened. For some reason, the color white 'bleeds' in certain situations when displayed. You really have no control over it, or the bleed color.

Yeah, I've bothered to read it up on wiki. Some mighty tricky engineering was involved. Hmm, dunno, how would having 2 colors more than PC CGA justify this abhorrent color bleed for a human eye? And near-contemporary ZX Spectrum had 8 colors without any bleeding.

 

[Elwro]

Wanted to download PoR for FRUA, but the UA archive:

http://frua.rosedragon.org/modulelist/index.php

gives me error 404 on the file. Anyone has a working link?

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Try this one:
<a href='http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/modules/g/game39.zip'>FRUA PoR</a>

There seems to be a couple versions. They have similar names (game39 vs Game39), but this one should work.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

It really has nothing to do with the programming or the art, and everything to do with the technology. Its not intentional by the developers, as I've done some programming on the Apple II, and the same thing happened. For some reason, the color white 'bleeds' in certain situations when displayed. You really have no control over it, or the bleed color.

Yeah, I've bothered to read it up on wiki. Some mighty tricky engineering was involved. Hmm, dunno, how would having 2 colors more than PC CGA justify this abhorrent color bleed for a human eye? And near-contemporary ZX Spectrum had 8 colors without any bleeding.

Interesting. I just looked up the wikipedia entry for the Apple II graphics display. I haven't worked with the stuff in about 20 years (and I was about 12 at the time), so this brings back a lot of memories, and a lot of stuff I had forgotten.

 

[Elwro]

Try this one:
<a href='http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/modules/g/game39.zip'>FRUA PoR</a>

There seems to be a couple versions. They have similar names (game39 vs Game39), but this one should work.

Thanks! Unfortunately I can't find the way to run FRUA properly (I got it from Abandonia). I put the PoR scenario in POOLRAD.DSN folder and FRUA recognizes it. I can enter the module and create a character, but when prompted to "insert a save disk" I can do nothing. I think the culprit is the ckit.cfg file in the DISK1 folder; it seems to contain some folder names which definitely do not correspond to what I mount in DosBox but I can't see how to set this up properly. Tried reinstalling to a new dir, which would make a brand new ckit.cfg file, but I get a "can't write (-9)" error and DosBox' log says "File creation failure: [installdir]\ckit.cfg". I'm not even sure the installation would work since I have no idea how to set up three different directories as a B:\ floppy in DosBox.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

First, are you able to create a character who is a normally restricted race/class combination? As I recall, Elves and Half-Elves could be anything but Paladins, Dwarves, Gnomes and Halflings could be Clerics and Fighter/Clerics, and Gnomes could be Magic-Users.

On the FRUA module list page, there's a column that indicates whether or note a module is 'Hacked'. If its hacked, then you should use a program called UAShell in order for the hacked changes to work properly. Despite its name, FRUA has a number of restrictions, and there are a number of hacks to try and fix them. You can get the program here:
<a href='http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/uashell/'>UAShell</a>

Its down near the bottom, called 'uashellc.zip'. There's also a 'uashellc.txt' file, which is basically a readme file, if you're interested in it. Unzip the zip file into your FRUA folder. Run the UASHELL.bat file. Some stuff will run; as I understand it, its making backups of the original files so you can back out changes when you work on your own hacks.

Up in the 'Designs' menu, select 'Apply'. This lets you select a set of hacks to use/module to have active. Select the Pools of Radiance .DSN folder. Some more stuff will run, and you should get a confirmation message. Now, there's an option to run FRUA from UASHELL (Designs->Run). However, I have speed problems while using it (its inordinately slow). So instead, I run it through DosBox. I just run the 'Start' program, and everything seems to work properly.

I'm pretty sure I got everything in there you needed. Its been a while since I downloaded the UASHELL stuff. Also, I've found that some virus scanners flag a file or two from UASHELL; however, I think the file(s) just have unfortunate names or extensions, and I haven't ever had problems with them.

As for the .cfg file, mine has some garbage, and then C:\FRUA \FRUA. On my C: drive, I have it setup as C:\games\FRUA\FRUA. When I mount in DosBox, I use 'mount c: c:\games', navigate to the FRUA\FRUA folder, and then run the program 'start'. It seems you need to set the folder name relative to how you have the drive mounted in DosBox, not how you have it set up on your drive. I also assume there's a 'SAVE' folder in your Pools of Radiance .DSN folder; I'm pretty sure one doesn't get created automatically.

 

[mondblut]

That's actually only true for the DOS versions of Curse and PoR. With Tandy it's a bit better though. For Secret you use the Adlib card. For PoD you can use Soundblaster and Adlib as well.

Those 10 sound effects and one midi tune (well, 8 in DQK and FRUA) are hardly worth an effort

 

[Severian Silk]

Which versions are best for console platforms? For instance, Countdown to Doomsday was released for the Sega Genesis. The MSDOS emulators on my PDA are *way* too slow.

[edit]
Also, is having a mouse/keyboard important for this game, or is the game pretty easy to control using only a gamepad?

 

[Carlos' Bitch1]

Console versions are missing a lot of gameplay options. If you don't mind this, then go for it.

Mouse is not all that important. Especially if you are playing the C64 version via emulator. The only versions that are better with the mouse/keyboard combo are the Amiga versions.

 

[mondblut]

I'd give a try to Sega CTD. According to Moby, it didn't have FPP altogether, only isometric mode. Must be a wholly different experience.

POR for Nintento looks beyond homosexual. Anything remotely connected to Nintendo apparently becomes such, it is like a virulent plague of homosexuality.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

I'd give a try to Sega CTD. According to Moby, it didn't have FPP altogether, only isometric mode. Must be a wholly different experience.

I'm almost positive the Sega Countdown to Doomsday still had the FPP. The main differences I remember are:

- some skills were removed
- some of the races were removed (Mercurian and Venusian, I believe)
- a few of the areas were altered; some of the optional areas may have been removed altogether

I played it quite a while ago on the Genesis, but I remember the overall experience being pretty similar.

POR for Nintento looks beyond homosexual. Anything remotely connected to Nintendo apparently becomes such, it is like a virulent plague of homosexuality.

I tried the Nintendo version of POR once. Its really not great. Unlike CtD, you can really see how the limitations of the system affected gameplay. I think you were only allowed 3 characters, there usually weren't a whole lot of enemies in combat (but then, I didn't play very long), and combat was exceedingly slow. I strongly suggest skipping it, unless you *really* want to see what its like.

Edit - Now that I've thought about it some more, I don't think CtD had FPP; normal movement was in isometric. I recall your party being represented by a rocket jock-like sprite. I'm thinking I confused it with the Genesis Dungeons and Dragons game, which had both FPP and isometric views.

 

[Luzur]

I tried the Nintendo version of POR once. Its really not great. Unlike CtD, you can really see how the limitations of the system affected gameplay. I think you were only allowed 3 characters, there usually weren't a whole lot of enemies in combat (but then, I didn't play very long), and combat was exceedingly slow. I strongly suggest skipping it, unless you *really* want to see what its like.

well on the pic on the back of my box theres 5 chars in the party and it looks really JRPG'ed with like Dragonquest lookalike sprites for the battlestages.

havent tried the NEs version out, since i already have PoR for C64, i just bought it for my NES collection.