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Demetrios1453 Plays the Gold Box Games
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<blockquote data-quote="Demetrios1453" data-source="post: 9280279" data-attributes="member: 6801060"><p><strong>Introduction (Part 2): Gold Box Companion</strong></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349054[/ATTACH]</p><p>Gold Box Companion (GBC) is a fan made UI and editing tool for the Gold Box games (their website can be found <a href="https://gbc.zorbus.net/" target="_blank">here</a>). A version of it is packaged with the Steam version of the games. As you can see from the screenshot above, it adds an auto-mapping tool (on the right), and an additional UI screen (on top), showing the various character icons with more modern health bars, as well as listing any special statuses above the icons. Less conspicuous (because all the characters have like 10 XP at this point), but still there, is a narrow bar between the icons and the health bars showing XP advancement towards the next level. Given that 1e D&D didn't have the same XP level advancement for each class, this is <em>really</em> helpful, since otherwise you would otherwise have to be continually checking the reference material to see how close a character is to gaining a level, and, indeed, whether a character actually has enough to gain a level (later games in the series would indicate a level gain by turning the character's name magenta instead of the typical cyan here, but that's far off in the future at this point).</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349055[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>During combat, the map will change to show the characters and foes in whatever position they are in, as well as hit points and whether someone (friend or foe) is incapacitated. This is all stuff you can find in-game by highlighting characters or foes (as for Thrender here, for example), but it's a lot simpler, obviously, to have all the info visible right there. Also, the map will expand to show the entire combat, which may very well extend beyond the window in the actual game itself. It's terribly annoying to have to move the cursor all over in an attempt to hunt down a foe that fled off in some random direction while you were busy taking down the ones that remained; with the GBC map, they'll still be visible no matter how far they've fled.</p><p></p><p>Mousing over the top bar with the character icons will cause it to change as well, revealing further tools</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349057[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>Some of these are just simple quality-of-life options, while others are cheats varying from light to substantial. The first three in the bottom row are just links to the journal and manual which would have come with the game anyway (the difference between "Journal" and "Journal PDF" is that the first just takes you to a list of journal entries and nothing more, while the second takes you to a PDF of the full journal book, which included a lot more than the journal entries themselves). "Code Wheel" allows you to actually do the copy protection if you so wish (why anyone would when you don't need to is beyond me). "Switch Font" allows you to change between various fonts used in the games - since the <em>Pools of Radiance </em>font is very... baroque... and hard to read, I've already switched it out for the font used in much later games (you'll see the original font in some of the early screenshots in the next post as the game starts). "Map Docking" just moves the map to whichever side you want it. "Encamp - Fix" allows you to use the "Fix" function in PoR (where you can bulk cast and re-learn healing spells while encamped, instead of going through the menus manually to cast them one at a time and then re-learn them one at a time); this is available in every other game, so it's just a retroactive quality of life change. "Store Spells" and "Restore Spells" are similar to this - some earlier games didn't keep track of the list of spells you typically memorize, and you had to go through and click "memorize" on each of them one at a time before each rest, so this gives you the option to have a specified spell list in the earlier games.</p><p></p><p>The remaining items in the list are... well light cheats. Starting with "Auto ID", the games usually force you to go back to a store to have the storekeep ID magical items for you for, usually, 200 gp (<em>identify</em> is not an available spell in the games); toggling this on will allow you to ID an item as soon as you pick it up and put it in your inventory (but not before, when just viewing a list of the treasure just found/acquired). "Auto-Ammo", when toggled on, will give you an endless supply of ammunition so you don't have to collect unused arrows or buy bunches in stores. "Fix Drain" allows the fixing of undead level drains while resting without <em>restoration</em> spells. "Cluebook PDF" allows you access to a PDF of the cluebook for whatever game you're playing. "Level Up" (which is grayed out due to no one currently having enough XP to be able to level up) will allow the leveling of characters immediately upon gaining enough XP, instead of having to go to a training hall.</p><p></p><p>When it comes to these, I don't use Auto-Ammo (mainly because ammo is cheap and plentiful in the game, and going to stores to buy it has the additional bonus of allowing you to consolidate your various cash types to simpler gold and platinum), nor Fix Drain (as the games usually give you plenty of <em>restoration</em> scrolls when you're about to go into an area heavily infested with level-draining undead). However, I do use the Auto-ID, since it's a pain to have to drag potentially exciting items back to stores just to know what they are. Using the Cluebook PDF would be cheating, but I've played these enough times that I pretty much know where everything is anyway lol. And I definitely use the "Level Up"option, especially since there are times in the games where it's either detrimental or actually impossible to get to a training hall before gaining enough XP to gain another level (which causes you to lose a lot of excess XP when you actually do level up), as well as other reasons I'll mention in later.</p><p></p><p>This is the version of GBC that comes with the game. But... if you go to the GBC website (linked above), you can find a few more bells and whistles that you can download (which I have).</p><p></p><p>First, they have an optional download that allows you to play paladins and rangers in PoR by changing fighters to those classes. As PoR is the only game that lacks these classes, and if you want to have the same party go through all four games that would include characters of either one or both of these classes (which I do), this is obviously a great quality of life option to download and install (this is one of the reasons I'll be using the "Level Up" tool as mentioned above, as such altered characters won't be able to level up using a training hall in PoR). Secondly, they have a few options available on the top bar that they've always had on their version, but weren't ported over the the Steam version, and which show up in the previously empty slots:</p><p></p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349066[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>"Explore Map" does just that - it reveals the entire map in the map window (with the cluebooks available, this is pretty meaningless). "Editor", however is much more interesting...</p><p></p><p>[ATTACH=full]349071[/ATTACH]</p><p></p><p>As you can see, this pulls up a full-on editor for the game. You can go hog-wild here - give everyone max stats of 25, give them the max possible 255 hit points (yay for early PC underflow errors!), equip them with all the cool items in the game, and so on. I will, admittedly, be using it, but very sparingly, and mainly to counteract actual bugs in the games. For example, for some unknown reason, battleaxes go from 1-handed to 2-handed in a couple of the later games such as PoD and DQoK (which makes my dwarf characters very unhappy), so I will be able to adjust that here. Also, PoR calculates multi-classed characters' hit points incorrectly, which will be corrected here as well. I'll be using it for a couple of other things which I'll mention as we get to them.</p><p></p><p>Finally, there's a version of the editor that allows music to be played ingame, and has a link to two files filed with appropriate, if simple and somewhat generic, music. This may seem minor, but it does beat nothing but silence interrupted by periodic combat sounds.</p><p></p><p>Anyway, I've probably bored you all to death with all this preliminary stuff, let's load up the game and make some characters!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Demetrios1453, post: 9280279, member: 6801060"] [B]Introduction (Part 2): Gold Box Companion[/B] [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-02-25 153724.png"]349054[/ATTACH] Gold Box Companion (GBC) is a fan made UI and editing tool for the Gold Box games (their website can be found [URL='https://gbc.zorbus.net/']here[/URL]). A version of it is packaged with the Steam version of the games. As you can see from the screenshot above, it adds an auto-mapping tool (on the right), and an additional UI screen (on top), showing the various character icons with more modern health bars, as well as listing any special statuses above the icons. Less conspicuous (because all the characters have like 10 XP at this point), but still there, is a narrow bar between the icons and the health bars showing XP advancement towards the next level. Given that 1e D&D didn't have the same XP level advancement for each class, this is [I]really[/I] helpful, since otherwise you would otherwise have to be continually checking the reference material to see how close a character is to gaining a level, and, indeed, whether a character actually has enough to gain a level (later games in the series would indicate a level gain by turning the character's name magenta instead of the typical cyan here, but that's far off in the future at this point). [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-02-25 154107.png"]349055[/ATTACH] During combat, the map will change to show the characters and foes in whatever position they are in, as well as hit points and whether someone (friend or foe) is incapacitated. This is all stuff you can find in-game by highlighting characters or foes (as for Thrender here, for example), but it's a lot simpler, obviously, to have all the info visible right there. Also, the map will expand to show the entire combat, which may very well extend beyond the window in the actual game itself. It's terribly annoying to have to move the cursor all over in an attempt to hunt down a foe that fled off in some random direction while you were busy taking down the ones that remained; with the GBC map, they'll still be visible no matter how far they've fled. Mousing over the top bar with the character icons will cause it to change as well, revealing further tools [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-03-02 175631.png"]349057[/ATTACH] Some of these are just simple quality-of-life options, while others are cheats varying from light to substantial. The first three in the bottom row are just links to the journal and manual which would have come with the game anyway (the difference between "Journal" and "Journal PDF" is that the first just takes you to a list of journal entries and nothing more, while the second takes you to a PDF of the full journal book, which included a lot more than the journal entries themselves). "Code Wheel" allows you to actually do the copy protection if you so wish (why anyone would when you don't need to is beyond me). "Switch Font" allows you to change between various fonts used in the games - since the [I]Pools of Radiance [/I]font is very... baroque... and hard to read, I've already switched it out for the font used in much later games (you'll see the original font in some of the early screenshots in the next post as the game starts). "Map Docking" just moves the map to whichever side you want it. "Encamp - Fix" allows you to use the "Fix" function in PoR (where you can bulk cast and re-learn healing spells while encamped, instead of going through the menus manually to cast them one at a time and then re-learn them one at a time); this is available in every other game, so it's just a retroactive quality of life change. "Store Spells" and "Restore Spells" are similar to this - some earlier games didn't keep track of the list of spells you typically memorize, and you had to go through and click "memorize" on each of them one at a time before each rest, so this gives you the option to have a specified spell list in the earlier games. The remaining items in the list are... well light cheats. Starting with "Auto ID", the games usually force you to go back to a store to have the storekeep ID magical items for you for, usually, 200 gp ([I]identify[/I] is not an available spell in the games); toggling this on will allow you to ID an item as soon as you pick it up and put it in your inventory (but not before, when just viewing a list of the treasure just found/acquired). "Auto-Ammo", when toggled on, will give you an endless supply of ammunition so you don't have to collect unused arrows or buy bunches in stores. "Fix Drain" allows the fixing of undead level drains while resting without [I]restoration[/I] spells. "Cluebook PDF" allows you access to a PDF of the cluebook for whatever game you're playing. "Level Up" (which is grayed out due to no one currently having enough XP to be able to level up) will allow the leveling of characters immediately upon gaining enough XP, instead of having to go to a training hall. When it comes to these, I don't use Auto-Ammo (mainly because ammo is cheap and plentiful in the game, and going to stores to buy it has the additional bonus of allowing you to consolidate your various cash types to simpler gold and platinum), nor Fix Drain (as the games usually give you plenty of [I]restoration[/I] scrolls when you're about to go into an area heavily infested with level-draining undead). However, I do use the Auto-ID, since it's a pain to have to drag potentially exciting items back to stores just to know what they are. Using the Cluebook PDF would be cheating, but I've played these enough times that I pretty much know where everything is anyway lol. And I definitely use the "Level Up"option, especially since there are times in the games where it's either detrimental or actually impossible to get to a training hall before gaining enough XP to gain another level (which causes you to lose a lot of excess XP when you actually do level up), as well as other reasons I'll mention in later. This is the version of GBC that comes with the game. But... if you go to the GBC website (linked above), you can find a few more bells and whistles that you can download (which I have). First, they have an optional download that allows you to play paladins and rangers in PoR by changing fighters to those classes. As PoR is the only game that lacks these classes, and if you want to have the same party go through all four games that would include characters of either one or both of these classes (which I do), this is obviously a great quality of life option to download and install (this is one of the reasons I'll be using the "Level Up" tool as mentioned above, as such altered characters won't be able to level up using a training hall in PoR). Secondly, they have a few options available on the top bar that they've always had on their version, but weren't ported over the the Steam version, and which show up in the previously empty slots: [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-02-25 162512.png"]349066[/ATTACH] "Explore Map" does just that - it reveals the entire map in the map window (with the cluebooks available, this is pretty meaningless). "Editor", however is much more interesting... [ATTACH type="full" alt="Screenshot 2024-02-25 162719.png"]349071[/ATTACH] As you can see, this pulls up a full-on editor for the game. You can go hog-wild here - give everyone max stats of 25, give them the max possible 255 hit points (yay for early PC underflow errors!), equip them with all the cool items in the game, and so on. I will, admittedly, be using it, but very sparingly, and mainly to counteract actual bugs in the games. For example, for some unknown reason, battleaxes go from 1-handed to 2-handed in a couple of the later games such as PoD and DQoK (which makes my dwarf characters very unhappy), so I will be able to adjust that here. Also, PoR calculates multi-classed characters' hit points incorrectly, which will be corrected here as well. I'll be using it for a couple of other things which I'll mention as we get to them. Finally, there's a version of the editor that allows music to be played ingame, and has a link to two files filed with appropriate, if simple and somewhat generic, music. This may seem minor, but it does beat nothing but silence interrupted by periodic combat sounds. Anyway, I've probably bored you all to death with all this preliminary stuff, let's load up the game and make some characters! [/QUOTE]
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