Gold Box Redux

[JonnieR]

I'm back after, what seems like a long hiatus. Hello to Manikus and Uatu, my erstwhile co-op partners.

I loved the Gold Box games, I thought the old UL engine took these mods as far as it could with some severe limitations. Adventure mods should first and foremost tell a story and the old engine had to rely on printed journals and tavern tales to get its message across. Considering this and the severe graphical limitations of the engine some great stories could not be told as they should have been. I can only wonder how much the Gold Box games could be improved with the DC engine.

I am in position to recreate these mods using DC, I have all the detailed information on each and every Gold Box game ever written. I was going to do this for myself, but I thought that a well re-constructed Gold Box game or two would help stimulate interest for DC.

I am not looking for an cooperative help on the mods although some sage advice from ManiKus and company regarding the inner working of DC and the odd piece of art could help from time to time. Does anyone have a favorite Gold box mod that they would like to see re-created? or, if you don't think this is good idea let me know.

[manikus]

I think this is a great idea.

And, welcome back!

I, myself, am working on Secret of the Silver Blades. I decided that doing a sequel, while still an idea I hope to carry on with, would make more sense if you could play the original in DC. I'm going to do it twice, actually. I'm doing a faithful remake, using art from the original modified to fit DC the same way all the FRUA art was. Then I plan on releasing a Special Edition, with all new art and adding the journal dialoq and information into gameplay. I think this would prove a nice segue into my sequel.

The two games that ai would love to see get the DC makeover are the Savage Frontier titles.

If you are interested in using any art from the original games for whichever you decide to do, I recommend going to the Rosedragon repository and getting the utilities by Dan Autery called Daxview and DaxVGA (I think, I know they both start with Dax).

Also, I've noticed that most regular events, such as shops, temples, etc, are really 3 or more events that follow the format, text statement, xxx, text statement (backing up one step when done) {where xxx is your regular event}.

Let me know if you need anything, I'm sure I can help.

[JonnieR]

Manikus and Group,

That's cool about the Secret of the Silver Blades. What a coincidence I was just reviewing the Savage frontier adventures (Gateway and Treasures of the Savage Frontier) and I actually had laid out a preliminary design for Yartar (where everything starts in Gateway)

I think one of the most significant pieces of art for DC was Huling's (I think is was Dan Huling) overland map of the North. If I could add the area (alas, my art abilities are nil) just south of what Dan did the two maps wouild make a great overland for the Savage Frontier series.

I have always divided the Gold box games into three different series or groups as follows:

Series 1
Pool of Radience
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Secret of the Silver Blades
Pools of Darkness

Series 2
Champions of Krynn
Death Knights of Krynn
Dark Queen of Kyrnn

Series 3
Gateway to the Savage Frontier
Treasures of the Savage Frontier
It would be cool to eventually have the whole group for DC.

Thanks for the advice I am already making up a master binder with all tutorials and notes regarding DC. When is some one going to explain the logic box to me?

[Shadow Stranger]

Good, I had a stab at decrypting the Secret of the Silver Blades files a few months ago, made some progress. See the threads on Silver Blades in this forum.
FRUA is well decrypted, the reference files are found at Rosedragon. Gold Box games generally are not decrypted at all, as far as I know. The most I can recall is copy protection codes.

[Arcalian]

I would particularly like to see Pool of Radiance and Azure Bonds, as I never finished either in "the old days".

[manikus]

The Krynn games will be hardest, as Dragonlance does some things with magic and the Knights that FRUA could not do, and since DC is emulating FRUA...
Though, we can track the phases of the moon, and I believe that I have figured out a way to give abilities/special abilities to classes in game in a Logic Block event that you would chain to a Training Hall (it could be copied and pasted to all of your Training Halls).

There are some Logic Block tutorials on my site. There will be and advanced items database tutorial coming up that utilizes scripts to make a cool item. I would say to read the tutorials, and start messing around. Looking at spells scripts also gives some good insight on how to change stuff up, too. Look in spells.txt for an easier time.

As for 'decrypting' the old games, I find that much more work than playing through in DOSBox and screen capturing every dialog. I also recommend going to a site that has all the cluebooks so you don't have to do any mapping by hand. Though, I am proud to say that I still have my Secrets journal with all the maps lovingly hand-drawn.
Here's a good site, and I believe you can pick up any of hte GB games that you don't have here as well.
http://www.icestorm9999.com/1.html

[JonnieR]

I use icestorm for my info also. I have all of the significant graphic files with all the Gateway and Treasures artwork in either pcx or lbm file format. How do I convert it over to DC?

[Shadow Stranger]

Rosedragon will be the ticket here. See the many programs available. Also the Microsoft Photo Editor can handle pcx format.
http://frua.rosedragon.org/faq/

[olivier_leroux]

Originally Posted by JonnieR Does anyone have a favorite Gold box mod that they would like to see re-created? or, if you don't think this is good idea let me know.

In two different polls over at the Unlimited Adventures forum the votes of community members revealed that "Pool of Radiance" was by far the most popular Gold Box mod while - apart from the two Buck Rogers games - the Savage Frontier series was the one with the most votes for "Gold Box games you never got to play".

Ray Dyer already did splendid remakes of "Pool of Radiance" and " Curse of the Azure Bonds" for Unlimited Adventures.

Personally, as one who hasn't played any of the original Gold Box games - but the two remakes for UA -, I'd be more likely to play something I don't know yet, like the Savage Frontier series. I can't speak for the nostalgics though.

[manikus]

Are the graphics in FRUA format? If so there are instructions in the DC help for converting them to DC.

Assuming you're going to do the 640 resolution, here are the basics in a nutsehll...
Trim away all the black and the pink borders. Small pics will be 88x88 pixels in size. Just simply resize to 176x211. Large pigx and maps are the same, resize to 608x288.
Backgrounds work just like small pics do.
Walls...read up on this one just to be sure, but I think you take the 320x200 image and size it to 640x480.
Icons are the most time consuming. You must move the two poses next to one another and cut away the rest, ending up with an image that is 24x48, 48x48, 96x48, or 96x96. Then, you just double it in size.