Not to my knowledge,
FRUA is based on the Forgotten Realms rules, and no amount of hacking has produced any good Dragonlance designs so far.

Sorry for the late reply, I don't check this forum that often. There are a few Dragonlance(-related) designs for UA, although I can't vouch for their quality, as I've neither played the original Dragonlance games nor all of the following UA designs:

- AT2: Dark Wizardry. Chapter 1 - The Road to Gargath (wiz1.zip) by Ben Sanderfer
- DL1: Dragons of Despair (dl1.zip) by Glen Sprigg
- DLANCE1: Dragons of Despair (1_dlance.zip) by Dan Crawford
- The Royal Guard: Faithful Beyond Death (guard.zip) by Rasyc

My guess would be that AT2: Dark Wizardry comes closest to the original GoldBox experience, and you might like it, but there are some things you should know about it: 1. It's a sequel to AT1: Dark Alliance (alliance.zip) which is set in the Forgotten Realms, not Dragonlance. 2. AT2 is not a full Dragonlance design in terms of gameplay mechanics (player races, classes, opponent's special abilities etc.), but it should be true to the setting in terms of story-telling. 3. The series is unfinished, since a harddisk failure resulted in AT2 Chapter 2 getting lost before it could be finished and released. So I think the story will end with a cliffhanger at some point, and you won't see a conclusion. From what I remember, it's still a very good design of high quality that's worth playing.

(You can download all designs mentioned above at the UA File Archive from the "modules" folder of your OS - PC or Mac.)

The three last of these are more like interactive novels than traditional Gold Box games, so I wouldn't recommend them.

Hi Leroux! First of all, thanks for starting this thread and for all your helpfullness. I hope you're still checking in here because I could use a little guidance.

I'm interested in OAUA and SHUA, but I honestly don't know where to begin. Like I literally can't find links to the... well, I don't even know what it's called... the files you need in order to play the Oriental Adventures and superheroes designs.

Of course I'll read the documentation myself and try to figure it all out, but any and all advice or tips you could give me would be very much appreciated.

Thanks!

You're in luck, for some reason I got notified about your post even though you didn't quote me (which would have automatically alerted me in any case). Otherwise it might have taken a while for me to notice. :)

Anyway, the first thing you need to know is that OAUA is like a total conversion hack that seriously changes the engine, while SHUA, as far as I know, is just a regular hack. So any SHUA designs should be playable with your regular UA installation, if you install them the same way you would install other hacked designs (via UAShell). It just replaces some files in your design folder.

For OAUA on the other hand it's safer to use a separate installation of UA, because they hacked the engine itself in ways that probably makes it incompatible with other hacks and it could complicate things if you try to switch back and forth between FRUA and OAUA. Also note that OAUA needs to be installed on top of an unhacked version of UA!

I haven't tried it myself lately with the GOG version on modern OS, but the theory would be to follow my instructions for installing UA and UAShell again, just into a different folder, and then follow the of [url=http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/hacks/oasetup.zip]oasetup.zip. If there are any problems, just report them here or - if you haven't done so yet - join the community's forum and ask there, I think they are generally more knowledgeable than I am.

If you want to know which designs require an extra installation of UA & UAShell with OAUA on top, check the section Requiring OA Worldhack under Oriental Adventures here. All other designs, including those listed under Super Hero or those in the upper section of Oriental Adventures, should work fine with your regular installation, just install them the normal way, they will already include the needed (e.g. SHUA) hacks. I hope that helps!

And if you want to read up on some of the changes made in OAUA, you can check out its introduction in the web newsletter UANL #36. (Just be aware that the installation instructions in that newsletter are outdated, better follow the ones included in oasetup.zip.)

It isn't quite as it used to be; I was hoping the release on GOG would breathe some new life into the community, since the game hadn't been available for sale anymore before that, but it hasn't really changed much so far. So any new members and especially creators are definitely welcome! :)

I wonder if a campaign of FRUA evangelism would be possible and, if so, how we could effectively target people who may be interested.
Obviously, the Gold Box series in general will be viewed as archaic by people who didn't grow up with the games.
Is there a Facebook page/group?
Would such a page be able to effectively target crpg fans/retro gaming fans specifically?
Are Gold Box games accessible to a modern audience or am I just wearing a huge pair of Elton John sized nostalgia glasses?

I'd be very interested in spreading the word in whatever way I can. Hell, I'd even be willing to drop a few bucks on sponsored posts on FB.

It seems that we are currently in a golden age for indie game developing. There seems to be a significant audience for well-made games, regardless of their visual appeal.

Could this be translated to a resurgence in interest in FRUA?

I'd be happy to be involved in such an effort. It's beyond a shame that all this amazing content is collecting dust, so to speak.

I don't know, personally I don't really have high hopes anymore, I'm a bit burnt out on the enthusiasm by now. I think the problem is that of those who are still open to these old games, the big majority is more interested in the official Goldbox games, and those few who try UA are probably more players and lurkers than creators or avid forum posters (which is cool, too, just not as noticeable).

I think there was a facebook page once but it was more of a placeholder, nothing much happened there, and noone in the community knew who the creator was. Me, I don't even have a facebook account. :D EDIT: It's still online, last post one year ago. Maybe I mixed things up and it actually was maintained by someone in the community.

In my opinion UA is still quite accessible as a game, if you like pixel art, D&D and turn-based combat, at least once you've managed to install UAShell. To me it's more accessible than the official Goldbox games; I never played those back in the days and I have a hard time getting into them now, despite being so familiar with UA. UA uses the most advanced engine of them, to me the controls are more comfortable in most regards, and the better free community designs offer enhanced graphics and - if like me, you prefer that - less random combats and grinding, but stories that are fully told in-game without the need for the player to constantly check the manual for journal entries.

I think that should be the focus. Pixel art fans, d&d fans, turn-based combat fans. There's no shortage of people who fall into those categories and there's certainly a lot of overlap between the three.

I'm going to PM whoever runs that fb page and see if they respond and if they're interested in trying to expand the player base.

I'm waiting for an admin to okay my registration on the forums. Once I have an account there, I'm going to make a post about this to see if anyone has either interest in promoting the scene or a good reason why it's a hopeless idea. Haha

I just can't help but feel that there would be more interest if more people simply knew about FRUA. I'd also like to see a collection of video tutorials regarding installation of uashell and everything else people need to know about getting started. I'm fine with slogging through readmes and random forum posts, but I think more people would be interested if there were tuturials that really take you by the hand and assume you know absolutely nothing. I'm not saying such tutorials don't already exist, I'm just saying that you have to dig a little to find them and that certainly turns some people away.

I'm going to see if I can get FRUA running on my android phone in dosbox. I've been looking for an excuse to get a little Bluetooth keyboard anyway. This might be another way to get people interested. These modules hold up well against the sorry state of rpgs on mobile platforms, imo.

Just brainstorming. Maybe I'll see you on the forums!

Yeah, I guess making good youtube videos or streams and things like that might help. I don't think we're very good at this sort of thing, I guess most community members are at least in their late 30's up to their 70's or so and don't have that much spare time for UA anymore, letalone for promotion. If you or anyone else could help with that, I think it would be greatly appreciated.

It would be a pleasure! I myself am a few months from 40, but, honestly, I fool around online doing nothing productive every night anyway, so committing a little of my day to this would actually be a welcome change.

The Gold Box games were a major part of my formative years and I'd love to see new people learn what we've known for decades.

I just played the Pool of Radiance game and the Curse of the Azure Bonds adventures. I played at least Pool of Radiance in the late 1980s, so these were a nice memory to revisit. Just started Secret of the Silver Blades, but the keyboard control changes were annoying. I'm not liking "the improvements."

Haven't tried the Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures yet, but I am interested. I would like to create something. I'm using a newer Macintosh. Is there any UASHELL that works with the GOG.COM versions and on the Mac?

Anybody can give me recomendations of the best NON hacked modules he has played?
I´d like long and quality modules.
I know hacked modules are more popular and maybe my petition fits better in hacked ones but I am curious about the limits of unhacked stuff.

Greetings

Nearly all of the really, really great ones I can think of are hacked, but there actually is a very good series of unhacked modules: the Far West series by Ray Dyer (download west01-09.zip from this directory). The modules themselves are short (1-4 hours each), but it's one ongoing story and you're meant to transfer your characters from one to the next.