Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures (FRUA) or just Unlimited Adventures (UA) is the Neverwinter Nights of the 90's, a tool designed to allow players building their own Goldbox-style adventure campaigns. With it, you can easily create a 3D dungeon by setting walls and background of your choice, and then fill it with text and combat events to tell your story. Naturally, it also allows you to play the creations of other people, and since UA's release in 1993 hundreds of those have already been created by the game's community. This guide is meant to help you on your first steps to discover UA, the custom content available for it and its welcoming community.

ESSENTIAL LINKS

The community forums are located at ua.reonis.com. Join us to ask any questions that this introduction didn’t answer, to give feedback on modules or just talk about the game. We’re a friendly bunch. In addition to all things UA the forums are also home to the community of Dungeon Craft, an open source project that aims to recreate and expand on the general idea of UA without the need for DOS emulation, and IceBlink, another indie RPG toolset.

The UA archive with all the downloadable community content is located at frua.rosedragon.org/. You can also find module lists, newsletters and older FAQs archived there.

Another (curated, not exhaustive) module list can be found here. Just browse the UA file archive for the file names in brackets.

For more links and FAQs check out the UA forums.

THE DEMO CAMPAIGN

UA includes a demo campaign called "Heirs to Skull Crag". Don't mistake this for all UA has to offer, and play it at your own risk. Some people like it, but most that I know don't, and there are tons of community created campaigns that easily surpass it in quality, so don't judge UA solely based on the demo campaign.

CUSTOM ADVENTURES AND CAMPAIGNS

In UA, custom modules are usually referred to as "Designs". There are three types of designs in the UA community: Vanilla, Hacked and French Vanilla. Vanilla designs are the most basic ones, they only use the assets that came with the game, without adding any new pictures. French Vanilla designs are like Vanilla designs but they also feature some new pictures and icons which were added via the editor's Import function. Hacked designs are modded modules that can significantly alter the look and experience of the game by not only adding new pictures, but also new fonts, new frames, new intro sequences, new wallsets, new sounds and music, new races and classes etc. They've modified the game files with the help of third party tools that allow for greater customization than the editor itself. To play Vanilla and French Vanilla designs all you need is the original game and nothing more. To play Hacked designs, you need to install UAShell, a shell that backups your original files and then overwrites them with the hacked files of your chosen design, before running the game.

DISCLAIMER: The following instructions assume that you've installed the English version of Unlimited Adventures which is patched to version 1.2. GOG also offers the German version of UA, but I don't recommend to use it, as the German version is stuck at 1.0 and therefor outdated and incompatible with UAShell and most hacking tools and modules, on top of being badly translated.

General design installation
Designs are stored as folders in your main UA directory. Their name should not be longer than 8 letters, followed by ".DSN" (Example: GAMENAME.DSN). To install a design, just extract the .DSN folder contained in the zip file to your main UA directory, or if there is no .DSN folder, then create and name one (following the rules listed above) and extract the files from the zip into it. Make sure that each .DSN folder also contains a "SAVE" folder where characters and savegames are stored. If there is none, UA will miss it and prompt error messages about inserting a save disk. So if your design folder does not contain a SAVE folder after you've extracted all files to it, just create one yourself.

Running (French) Vanilla designs
After you've installed the design following the instructions above, all that is left to do is to start the game, "SELECT A DESIGN" in the main menu, choose your freshly installed module and start playing.

Running Hacked designs
In order to play Hacked designs, you need to install UAShell, which is a DOS program, so it will only work through Dosbox emulation. This may seem a bit complicated and intimidating at first, but it’s actually rather easy and totally worth the 5 minutes you need to spend on it. Hacked designs are where UA really shines, and besides, you only have to do this once, for 100+ hours of fun. If you know your way around Dosbox you can check out Nol’s installation guide for FRUA newbies instead of reading on. If you don’t, here’s a step-by-step guide for installing UAShell in Windows or Linux without prior knowledge of DOSBox or the need for third party tools (thanks to joeshell for the advice on DOSBox configs and Linux!). On OSX, check out these instructions first, then follow those for Linux (thanks to Gydion!).

1. Download uashellc.zip from the UA archive and extract its contents to your main UA directory (Windows users) or the DATA folder contained within (Linux users).

1b. OPTIONAL: Code check removal (Pt. 1): If you want to permanently remove the obsolete codeword check from your legit copy of the game, also download ckit-crk.zip and extract CKIT-CRK.COM to your main UA folder (Windows users) or the DATA folder contained within (Linux users).

2. Windows: Make a copy of GOG‘s „Launch Unlimited Adventures“ link in the same directory and rename it to „Launch UAShell“, then edit the target line in the properties of your new link: Find the part that says dosbox_ua_single.conf and replace it with dosbox_uashell.conf. Linux: Make a copy of the shell script start.sh in your game directory and rename it to start_uashell.sh. Open the script with an editor, find the part that say dosbox_ua_single.conf and replace it with dosbox_uashell.conf. Make a copy of your desktop link for UA, rename it to "Launch UAShell" or whatever you like and modify it to call start_uashell.sh instead of start.sh.

3. Make a copy of the file dosbox_ua_single.conf in the same directory and rename it to dosbox_uashell.conf. Open dosbox_uashell.conf with a text editor. Find the line that says „start“ and replace it with „CALL uashell“.

3b. OPTIONAL: Code check removal (Pt. 2): Insert a line above „CALL uashell“ and put „ckit-crk“ in it (it's very important that your config file runs ckit-crk.com before calling uashell or it won't work!). You can also remove GOG’s copy protection notice by deleting all lines from „@ECHO OFF“ to „pause“.

4. Save dosbox_uashell.conf with your text editor, quit and click on „Launch UAShell“. The installation should start. Ignore any warnings about files in the TEMP folder and press a key when the program asks you to. After installation UAShell will ask you about the game's sound settings, which is great, because now you can switch from the default Roland music (which sounded awful in Dosbox on my rig) to Adlib emulation. I found you get the best results if you always click NO when asked about PC speaker and Roland and YES when asked about Soundblaster and Adlib. (If you misclick, you can repeat the sound setup later by choosing EDITORS/SOUND REGISTRY from the UAShell menu.) Now UAShell will ask you to remove any files from the TEMP folder. Quit UAShell, navigate to the TEMP folder in your UA directory (or the DATA folder contained within it, for Linux users) and delete or move the readme you will find in it. Once you've done that, everything is setup to play Hacked community modules, and you're in for a treat!

4b. OPTIONAL: Code check removal (Pt. 3): Open dosbox_uashell.conf and delete the line that says „ckit-crk“, save and quit the text editor. Then delete CKIT-CRK.COM from your UA or DATA folder. You won’t need it anymore.

It is recommended that from now on, you always use UAShell to select a design, instead of clicking SELECT NEW DESIGN in the main menu. That way, you won't ever have to worry about accidentally mixing Hacked and Vanilla designs and messing up things, and everything will be cleanly separated. Just „Launch UAShell“, select DESIGNS/APPLY (or press F5) and choose the DSN folder of the design you want to play. UAShell will apply all the hacks contained within and then prompt you to press OK. Choose DESIGNS/RUN (or press F8) to start the game.

OPTIONAL: If you want DOSBox to return to UAShell when you quit UA, instead of shutting down, open START.BAT with a text editor and delete or comment out the last line that says "Exit" (e.g. "REM Exit" will make DOSBox ignore the line). And if you want to be thorough, you can also open dosbox_ua_single.conf and replace "start" by "CALL start", which will offset the change you made to START.BAT, so that DOSBox will shut down properly even if you run UA on its own, without UAShell. If you've removed the code check, while you're at it, you can also delete GOG's warning in dosbox_ua_single.conf, so that it won't be displayed even if you run UA without UAShell.

GAME SPEED

You can increase the speed of text messages in-game by pressing ENCAMP/ALT/SPEED/FASTER. Default speed is 4; if you set the speed to 0, there is no delay between displaying the text lines, all text will appear at once. It also affects combat speed, combat will be much more fluent if the combat messages are displayed quicker. Resting and memorizing spells will be significantly faster, too. There is one drawback to setting the text speed to fastest: Sometimes, a design author uses text events that don't require you to press a button when you're done reading and quickly vanish again after being displayed. Those are mostly for very short texts, like the writing on an inn sign. With the highest speed level this text will only flicker shortly and while most of the time your brain will still register it, there's a chance it might be gone too quickly for you to read. This doesn't happen that often though and mostly only with text of minor importance, so personally I find that the advantages of faster combat and quicker skipping through text messages outweigh this little drawback by far. YMMV.


QUITTING THE GAME

There is no official QUIT button in-game, so to exit a design, you need to press ENCAMP and then SAVE, after which the game will ask you to choose a letter for your savegame. You can either choose one and save your game or press Escape to cancel saving, regardless of what you do, afterwards you will be asked whether you want to exit the game. Press YES to quit.


TRANSFERRING YOUR CHARACTERS

You can transfer characters from one design to another by copying the character files from the first design's SAVE folder to the new design's SAVE folder. Character files are composed of the character's name (up to 8 letters), followed by the extension .CCH (Example: ARWEN.CCH). You should only do this with unhacked (that is Vanilla) designs, or with Hacked designs in the same series.

Before you copy the character files though, you will probably want to update them, so that the progress you made in the first design, all the levels you gained, the items you found, are stored in them. To do that, either have your party visit a training hall in-game or click PLAY THE GAME in the main menu and on the next menu screen load your last savegame in which your progress with the characters is stored. Either way, your party will now be displayed in the upper window. Select a character and click on REMOVE CHARACTER. The game will ask if you want to update the character. If you click on YES, your old character file (e.g. with the lvl 1 guy you created at start) will be overwritten with the updated stats and inventory you gained during your adventure (e.g. your lvl 5 guy with his collected loot). If you click NO, the old character file (GUY.CCH, lvl 1) will not be overwritten, and you will be asked to type in a new file name for the new character (e.g. GUY2.CCH, lvl 5). That means that you will now have two characters with the same name, two versions of the same guy (GUY lvl 1 and GUY lvl 5). Regardless of whether you choose to overwrite the weaker version of your hero or just save a stronger duplicate of him, repeat the same process for all characters you want to transfer and then you can copy them as described above. If you duplicate your party members, make sure that you're copying the right versions (that is the files with the new names, GUY1.CCH, not GUY.CCH).


If you have any more questions, don’t hesitate to ask here or on the UA forums. Cheers!

Would it be possible to post some quick links to files for the official Gold Box games that have been adapted to FRUA?

For example, I think I'd like to try Pool of Radiance with the FRUA engine, assuming there is such a thing. I'm probably not the only one.

Thank you.

Pool of Radiance
Curse of the Azure Bonds

Both require UAShell to run. More info about them and the project they are part of here.

Thanks to both you and joeshell. Some readability suggestions if I may. You seem to be using italics when referring to file names in most cases; use them for all cases. Since, italics are taken I would use bold for the commands. For example: Guides like these showcase the poor formatting options the GOG forums allow.

Followed the instructions exactly, copying and editing the shortcut and the .conf file, but when I click on Launch UAshell I get an error that critical UA-shell files are missing and it won't install.

GOG's forum software is driving me nuts. Every time I edit my post, I have to make sure to re-add empty lines between paragraphs, because they're automatically reduced to one, even if I wanted more space between the paragraphs.

You do have a point in that I wasn't very consistent in my formatting, but I'm hesitant to use bold formatting in the text as I reserved that for the headings and the text already looks like it has too much italics in it ... Not sure what to do. Maybe I could re-post this at the somewhat more user-friendly UA forums, try to work with colors over there and insert a link to it here. But at the moment I'm a bit burned out on it, already spend too much time on this that I should have spent on different things, heh. Thanks for your suggestions though!

. On which operating system? Stupid question, but did you make sure that you extracted all files from the UAShell zip archive to the relevant directory?

Just to be safe I extracted the .zip over again. Seemed to solve my problems. Thanks for the quick response!

Thanks again. That's exactly what I was looking for.

I tried downloading a not hacked design and did everything right. When it said insert disk to save characters onto. What disk are they talking about and what do I do to save the characters to?

If you haven't all ready, keep a copy of the message locally, with the correct empty lines, and work off that. Yeah, there's no particularly good solution. I suppose you could use quote tags for headings or something. Personally, I dislike having to go offsite for something like this.

Also, in step 2 the Linux instructions only have you change the desktop shortcut instead of copying it & editing the copy like the Windows instructions.

You need to make sure that there's a SAVE folder included in your .DSN folder, as explained above.Check your PMs, too!

Good advice, thanks! :)

Maybe I'll simplify the instructions at one point, reduce them to a list of simple commands without explanatory text around them, for better visibility.

I agree that linking to another site is not a good solution, but in general, the UA forums are a much better place for everything concerning UA than this Forgotten Realms Archives forum. ;)

Thanks!

I'd like to mention that, for me, this was a rather important part of the process. I had some sound problems and freezing problems with PoR in FRUA until I got the sound settings right. I think the combo that worked for me was NO to all "PC Speaker" options but YES to everything else.

Working great now! It's a lot easier to play PoR in FRUA because of the interface improvements.

I'm curious about IceBlink. I downloaded Raventhal to my Android phone, but I also went out & downloaded the PC version. Can you give me some guidance on what I need in order to run the Raventhal mod for PC? I've tried looking through the website you listed above, but I can't find anything. :-\