Gold Box SSI's Gold Box Series Thread

[elodman]

Heh, I remember buying dozens of these 50000 gp jewelry, just to get rid of tons of moneys.
Why this is a problem anyway? What octavius said, generally you don't have any money sinks in Goldboxes.

Thanx for info.

Just thinking of making more use of money (in FRUA PoR...).

Yes I remember the price of Fine Composite Long Bow, but perhaps in spite of that, too much money can be saved for the party too soon?
( seems strange, that CRPGAddict was not right in his review regarding economics...)

Being wealthy by the end of PoR would not be a problem of course, just was wondering on the good memories of Hard Times mod for Baldur's Gate. I liked its postponement of being able to afford cool stuff later.

Also, liked Bard's Tales level dependent training / temple costs.

 

[GarfunkeL]

PoR really has no economy at all. From the start, it's only worth it to carry gold and platinum - maybe silver if you're really hurting for cash. Pretty soon it's only worth carrying platinum. By the time you're ready to enter the final dungeon, you'll probably only be carrying gems and jewellery for training.

 

[elodman]

Greets maestros!

Unfortunately I cannot find Pool of Radiance, and the others in German language.
Any version (amiga, PC, C-64) would be great. Many hours of googling hasn't helped.

Do you think they exist, and know perhaps where I could get them?

Thanx very much if you know sg on this!

Bye.

 

[octavius]

Doesn't exist AFAIK. I'm pretty sure I've seen some Gold Box videos by Germans on YouTube that were all in English.

 

[Morkar Left]

Yep, only English.

 

[kmonster]

Doesn't exist AFAIK. I'm pretty sure I've seen some Gold Box videos by Germans on YouTube that were all in English.

Yep, only English.

German language versions of some GoldBox games do exist. http://www.kultboy.com/smforum/index.php/topic,1491.0.html

You can get a German amiga version of Pools of Darkness at http://www.whdownload.com/ for example.

 

[Morkar Left]

Didn't knew this. Never played at the time when they were released, only read reviews in german mags where it was stated as English.

 

[Luzur]

With Trolls, once they go down, get a character to stand where they were standing. I have found this stops them rising again (though this was in the C64 version).

works in all versions and is an old trick.

 

[Desktop Commander]

There is also a boxed copy of PoD for Amiga up on ebay:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/Pools-of-Dar...8894?pt=DE_PC_Videospiele&hash=item3374bf093e

And quite a few games from the Krynn series (DOS+Amiga):
http://www.ebay.de/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m570.l2736&_nkw=Krynn

 

[alx3apps]

Too bad the AI is so piss poor in the Gold Box games compared to the IE games or he could have been useful in battle. Instead he casts Stinking Clouds and Fireballs with no though of his allies being caught in the AoE while the magic resistant Drow laughs at the stupid human who fries his own friends.

Not sure I agree this this part. Goldbox goblins have morale and can run from you after killing some of them instead of IE's 'always-kamikadze' ones. Mage AI is not great, of course. Also, Stinking Cloud is quite useful in Hap, drows are immune to it, but ifrit doesn't - I nausea'ed and one-shoted it that way.

 

[elodman]

Thanx for the great find!

Seems I was concentrating too much on PoR and Curse.

byte!

 

[GarfunkeL]

Monsters in IE games can lose their moral roll and either go berserk or run away. I've seen it happen several times.

 

[Cynic]

I know this is heresy, but hear me out bros.

I want to replay PoR and the Krynn trilogy (I never got to play DQoK). Right now I got no time to play anything else sitting at the PC than maybe an hour or two of Fallout here and there each week. But I got heaps of time, when I'm taking a shit. Perfect time for some phone games. Right now all I do is fuck around on the Codex during that time.

Anyone got this working on any kind of smart phone? I have an iShit 3GS that I need to replace very soon, because I am sick of it and it's dying. I'm thinking maybe it is fine on Android, but what about Windows Phone? I was thinking of getting one of those next (Lumia 920 looks fucking sweet).

Anyway this might be heresy but you gotta give me mad props for trying to bring to these hipster/popamole devices. No? Well fuck you then punk!

 

[Falkner]

There are Dosbox ports for Android. You should probably get a phone with a hardware keyboard if you're serious about this. Although the lack of an Escape key might prove tricky.

 

[Gord]

This might help with finding more time for gaming with proper hardware:

 

[Wise Emperor]

Gold Box games weren't created to be played at shitter, blasphemer.

Goddamit why Ubisoft can't fucking reach some agreement with GOG. The only thing I really, really want on GOG.

 

[Nael]

There are Dosbox ports for Android. You should probably get a phone with a hardware keyboard if you're serious about this. Although the lack of an Escape key might prove tricky.

Dosbox allows up to 6 onscreen hotkeys that you can bind to anything including escape.

 

[DarKPenguiN]

-It would be awesome if someone actually ported these games and added touchscreen support. Dosbox (to me anyhow) isnt really feasible to play on my phone/tablet. Super Ninterndo RPGs work quite well (...I know.) but CRPGs of old have too complex of controls to make the experience feel intuitive, streamlined , etc.

Tablet gaming could be far superior to playing on PC IMHO but the games are usually very shallow and shit, or run on emulaters which just do not translate to a good experience... But Man, I would love to lay in bed in a dark room and "curl" up with some old Gold Box games, maybe some M and M or Wizardry, etc, etc, etc,

I imagine this will eventually happen as more and more people get Tablets since this seems like it would be an easy port and quite profitable since these games are kind of just sitting around and collecting dust or being pirated anyhow since they arent sold new.

 

[Morkar Left]

Till you have started the game and are ready to play you will probably already be done with shitting. And how does it come that you spent more than one hour per day on the toilet anyway?

 

[Daemongar]

To answer your question: play PoR on a C64 emulator on your smartphone. You can load an emulator on any phone, really. Then install the images for PoR and go to town. For creating save disks and whatnot, you may want to do some heavy lifting from a PC, but ymmv.

Part of the charm of the Gold Box games are the interface, the simple characters and the not-such-a-bad implementation of the D&D rules. There are other things as well. A "port" to iPad or mobile devices would be shit. No, not because it couldn't work, but because there would be the temptation to upgrade the interface. Then they would upgrade the blocky char's, pathfinding, then the minimal combat areas. By the time they are done, it would suck. Trust me.

 

[Morkar Left]

As a remake with D20 ruleset it would be great.

 

[Daemongar]

Nah, I could make the obvious comparison to Pools of Radiance: Runis of Myth Drannor, but changing to the 3rd ed rule-set would ruin the whole damn game. Feats, specialized classes, simplified saves, and the ruining of the power of game changers like Gauntlets of Ogre Power. Yeah, while it could be done, it would require so much changing to the mechanics of the game that it would lose a lot of what made the game special.

Now, it would just be a 3.5 ed remake. The story would be the same, but the engine and the structure of play would be all different. Combat mechanics would be updated to reflect all that stuff, and they'd probably get rid of Buc-du-corbins and footman's flails and all that dumb stuff that made PoR unique.

Either way, there is a conversion as you speak for NWN2 here. Actually, I may give it a shot with 2 players this weekend, it does look interesting. But just like U5, when I want to play U5 I load up an emulator, when I want to play something like U5, I load up Lazarus.

 

[alx3apps]

Cynic

General stuff:
To play goldboxes on smartphone you need hardware qwerty keyboard (with arrows - not all qwerty phones have them). So iphone is not an option. Also you need quite advanced port of dosbox. I haven't tried Symbian dosbox ports for some years, may be they will work. Android has proper dosbox ports (multiple of them) so it suits well.

Personal experience:
I finished PoR and Curse, played some Secret (skipped it), finished one FRUA module, now playing PoD - all on mobile phone.

Hardware: Not a big list, I played on this phone. Something weird with its price on Amazon though, I bought it for 220$ more than a year ago. Proper android phone must be qwerty with arrows, with horizontal screen (to display 320x200) and running android 2.2+. This one should also work, but it has smaller screen. Both models are quite old. From newer ones this may suffice but it has button instead of arrows and It cannot be bought online.

Software: Last time I checked (this summer) android has the only one really working dosbox - anDosBox. Others don't work (like aDosBox) or a crippled fork of this one (DosBoxTurbo). I played with anDosBox but after some updates it added new menu screen and optional optimizations that crashes on my phone. So I requested sources of old version of anDosBox (they are GPL) and build it for myself. Changed name to DosBoxGPL and location of dosbox configuration file to not conflict with other dosboxes. I don't want to publish binaries (to not harm anDosBox authors) but if somebody want to use it - PM me, I'll send you APK (no piracy here - proper GPL usage). Also some of goldboxes (FRUA) will crash with default anDosBox settings, set "core=normal" in conf file (learn about that hard way debugging anDosBox sources).

Conrols: PoR and Curse - everything works (some operations need two buttons - not a problem with qwerty), PoD and FRUA - everything works except diagonal movement in battles (you must use touchscreen for them - not a problem, as not every battle need them).

Of course with qwerty android and dosbox you are not limited with goldboxes. I also played Ultima I, and some MM3 (it looks really great on small screen). Also tried many games, almost all 80-s games should work (e.g. U1 - U6), but 90-s games has more troubles from mouse control.

To play goldboxes on normal (not qwerty) phones you'll need quite advanced touch UI - they are unplayable with current dosboxes.

 

[mondblut]

Goddamit why Ubisoft can't fucking reach some agreement with GOG. The only thing I really, really want on GOG.

Oh. my. god.

You'll never get to play the goldbox games. Ever. You'll be sitting and crying and watching other people play them yet never have a chance yourself, for the evil overlord of Ubisoft doesn't need your measly 5 bucks, and there is absolutely no way to procure them unless he agrees to take your dirty dollars. Your dick will surely wither and fall off if you ever think for a moment about getting them any other way.

Sucks to be you.

 

[mondblut]

Anyone got this working on any kind of smart phone? I have an iShit 3GS that I need to replace very soon, because I am sick of it and it's dying. I'm thinking maybe it is fine on Android, but what about Windows Phone? I was thinking of getting one of those next (Lumia 920 looks fucking sweet).

I got Pool of Radiance working in dosbox both on WinMobile and Android. Technically.

But pressing tiny 10-pixel-high puttons with a stylus sucks, and calling up an onscreen keyboard on a 320x480 touchscreen every time you need to do something sucks even worse. So, have a phone with a reaaaally big screen. Or a hardware keyboard.