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General discussionRelease: Forgotten Realms: The Archives(703 posts)(703 posts)
(703 posts)
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Posted August 21, 2015
We're casting True Resurrection on Eye of the Beholder and twelve more D&D GoldBox classics.

You are sitting in a tavern. The mighty Wizards of the Coast bestow upon you their greatest treasures: Forgotten Realms: The Archives - long lost relics of an RPG renaissance that changed the face of gaming forever. Today, one of the forgotten grails of gaming history is within your grasp, should you travel to a magical, DRM-free realm known as GOG.com

Eye of the Beholder, Pool of Radiance, Menzoberranzan - the list of groundbreaking RPG classics goes on. We set out on the quest for Forgotten Realms: The Archives a long time ago, and though it was a perilous journey - after years of searching, huge help from our friends at Hasbro and Wizards of The Coast, as well as months of technical work - we get to be freaking excited to sit here and say:
Forgotten Realms: The Archives are available now, DRM-free on GOG.com





The Archives are a set of thirteen D&D GoldBox classics packaged across three collections:
--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection One</span> features Eye of the Beholder I, II, and III. It's the three and only, the gold-standard in classic RPG dungeon crawling.

--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Two</span> features more gameplay hours and secrets than we could ever count - with Pool of Radiance, Hillsfar, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, Pools of Darkness, Secret of the Silver Blades, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, and D&D: Unlimited Adventures.

--<span class="bold">Forgotten Realms: The Archives - Collection Three</span> features near-infinite replay value and and an important chunk of RPG history with Dungeon Hack and Menzoberranzan.





We are now home to precisely 20 years of digital D&D RPG history - from Pool of Radiance (1988) to Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir (2008). You can also complete your personal collection with all the remaining D&D titles on sale at up to 80% off in our early D&D Weekend Promo! Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights - they're all here, so head straight to the promo page, or read more about it.






Stream watch:

We'll be featuring lots of D&D classics at Twitch.tv/GOGcom - follow us to not miss 'em or read on for the full Dungeon-and-Dragon-filled schedule below!

THURSDAY, August 20th:
2pm GMT / 4pm CEST / 10am EDT / 7am PDT: Pool of Radiance with Classicor
4pm GMT / 6pm CEST / 12pm EDT / 9am PDT: Eye of the Beholder II with MegapiemanPHD
6pm GMT / 8pm CEST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT: Eye of the Beholder with Outstar
10pm GMT / 12am CEST / 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT: Menzoberranzan with Classicor

FRIDAY, August 21st:
6pm GMT / 8pm CEST / 2pm EDT / 11am PDT: Curse of the Azure Bonds with Piranjade

SUNDAY, August 23rd:
10pm GMT / 12am CEST / 6pm EDT / 3pm PDT: Dungeon Hack with Classicor
Posted August 21, 2015
I'll have to buy at least the first and third collection at some point (on sale) to make up for pirating the EotBs and Dungeon Hack back in the day. Maybe have some fun with Menzoberranzan which I never did (successfully) pirate.

Collection 2 though - looks like lots of content, but I'm not sure I can get used to those interfaces. Do they require manual mapping?
Posted August 21, 2015
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graspee: Gog should really approach The Internet Archive and tell them to take down the Eye of the Beholder games which they have playable in dosbox on their site.

Internet Archive is very dodgily "archiving" "abandonware" but quite a few of the titles they have are for sale, EOTB as mentioned, plus Commander Keen series, Wizardry series, Master of Orion 1...

I don't know if it's worth it for gog to go after abandonware sites in general but The Internet Archive is a more "official" site I suppose, and since gog is now the publisher of EOTB it might be worthwhile.
AFAIK the owners of TIA usually completely ignore takeown notices for so called abandonware.
Posted August 21, 2015
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Dralel: Let's say I wanted to get somebody new in on this. What do you guys recommend they play first? Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Hack? Also which EotB games to play/avoid? Thanks!
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stryx: Dungeon Hack is just a dungeon crawler with randomly generated dungeons and without any story or non-nostile NPCs to back it up.

The games of the EOB series actually have handmade dungeons and a backstory. EOB1 is nice, but because of it's non-linearity you could easily miss almost half of it's content and would not even be aware of the fact. EOB2 improved upon nearly all of EOB1's aspects (story, graphics, level design) and is considered to be the best game of the trilogy. EOB3 was not made by Westwood but by an internal SSI dev team and it shows. Graphics are poorer, level design and overall performance of the game was worse than that of EOB2. The sound design of EOB3 is horrible.

My advice would be: Start with EOB2. If you liked it, play EOB1, import your party into EOB2 and play it again.
Thanks.
Posted August 21, 2015
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PetrusOctavianus: (...)
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DoctorPirx: Indeed. And you can have very fruitfull discussions with him about Gold Box mechanics. :)
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PetrusOctavianus: He certainly knows how to max out all stats and hit points...
Well, this should be considered acceptable cheating. The "modify" command is located in the main menu. :)
And the "import bug", where stat-boosting effects of items permanently remain even if the items themselves are removed in the transfer process, I would personally consider as some kind of reward for beating a game since there's usually no other form of material gratification. ;)
Post edited August 21, 2015 by DoctorPirx
Posted August 21, 2015
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kalirion: Collection 2 though - looks like lots of content, but I'm not sure I can get used to those interfaces. Do they require manual mapping?
They don't. The mazes are large and bare-bones, walls-only, everything in them is scripted. As such, travel is fast, and it's very easy to get a feel of the place. There are no multi-level puzzles. Also, many mazes offer terrible incomprehensible maps, which are nevertheless handy to orient oneself. You might not be able to trace passages and tell walls from empty space, but "the 1x1 room in the bracket SW of the first cross, enter through the ladder-shaped tunnel" is quite descriptive.
Posted August 21, 2015
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bloodwars: generally you run setup.exe (same directory as main game) for gold box games to set the sound card. soundblaster, 220, dma1, irq 5 or 7. in some of them adlib worked better back in the day, ymmv.
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Leroux: I see no setup.exe, but there is a "Launch Settings" shortcut that apparantly runs the setup program. I tried that before, you can set the soundcard there, but it also asks you for an installation path, and that causes path finding issues with Dosbox (see attached images).
that's odd. if the gog version is hardcoded to work with only "MT-32 and Soundblaster", i guess your best bet would be to config the dosbox config to use MUNT.
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/munt_installation_guide_roland_mt32_cm32l_emulator_for_dosbox_games/page1

you could also use this spinoff of dosbox that has MUNT built-in among other features.
http://ykhwong.x-y.net/

but there are some games that SAY they use MT-32 but actually plays general midi with your soundchip's midi synth. for that you could use BASSMIDI and a Soundblaster AWE soundfont. not quite the same as FM synthesis but sounds close.
Post edited August 21, 2015 by dick1982
Posted August 21, 2015
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KainXVIII: No Ravenloft - no buy from me.
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Venita: Now, now, there's no need to be hasty. :)
I'm guessing a 4th collection with the Krynn games is coming, but I'd think that Ravenloft belongs in the 3rd collection, alongside Menzoberranzan and Dungeon Hack.

Edit: But I guess this is because Ravenloft is not Forgotten Realms (though characters have been known to travel between the different settings.)
Post edited August 21, 2015 by kalirion
Posted August 21, 2015
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graspee: Gog should really approach The Internet Archive and tell them to take down the Eye of the Beholder games which they have playable in dosbox on their site.

Internet Archive is very dodgily "archiving" "abandonware" but quite a few of the titles they have are for sale, EOTB as mentioned, plus Commander Keen series, Wizardry series, Master of Orion 1...

I don't know if it's worth it for gog to go after abandonware sites in general but The Internet Archive is a more "official" site I suppose, and since gog is now the publisher of EOTB it might be worthwhile.
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dick1982: AFAIK the owners of TIA usually completely ignore takeown notices for so called abandonware.
I think they use some sort of DMCA loophole that doesn't account for (legal) digital distribution. They have a page about it here: https://archive.org/about/dmca.php
Posted August 21, 2015
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Venita: Now, now, there's no need to be hasty. :)
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kalirion: I'm guessing a 4th collection with the Krynn games is coming, but I'd think that Ravenloft belongs in the 3rd collection, alongside Menzoberranzan and Dungeon Hack.
There are two Ravenlofts. I'd think the "ooh, shiny" and "yay mouse" factors will cause them to be bundled together, separately from everything else.
Posted August 21, 2015
What a GREAT surprise to return from summer holidays and see this! :D
Posted August 21, 2015
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dick1982:
I've found a solution for the sound problem. Any self-respecting fan of Unlimited Adventures will need to install the UAShell tool for handling hacked modules anyway; it's a DOS program, so I found the easiest way to do it is by using the D-Fend Reloaded frontend for Dosbox. And during installation UAShell asked me to configure the sound settings, which allowed me to choose Adlib music instead of Roland, and it worked! Now it finally sounds like it's supposed to sound. :)
Post edited August 21, 2015 by Leroux
Posted August 21, 2015
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BadDecissions: Thank you for your recommendation. I have a question, and it sounds like maybe you're the one to ask. Several of the modules you recommend say in their documentation that they require something called UA-Shell. I've found that program, but if I run it ask instructed, I get a message that (filepath) cannot start or run due to incompatibility with this version of Windows (Win7 64bits). Do you have any idea how to use this thing with the GOG version, if it needs to be used?
You don't need UAShell for every community module, but for most of the better ones. That issue is due to UAShell being a DOS program that needs to be run through Dosbox. I wish it was a little easier but Windows not supporting DOS anymore has complicated things a bit. I've found the easiest way to deal with this is to use D-Fend Reloaded, a Windows frontend for Dosbox emulation that allows you to quickly set up working instances of Dosbox for the DOS programs you wish to run.

I'm in the process of writing a (hopefully) helpful "UA for Dummies" post for the Forgotten Realms Archive forum that will explain how to deal with all of this. It's not quite ready yet and I wanted to wait for feedback from the UA community first, but you can already sneak a peek here. ;)

EDIT: If you decide to try and set up UAShell based on these instructions, let me know it everything worked and if they were easy to understand. They might seem a bit overwhelming at first, but actually the process only takes about 5 minutes at max and should not be hard at all for someone who's able to use Windows Explorer. And it's really worth it.
Post edited August 21, 2015 by Leroux
Posted August 21, 2015
Nice, I will get these eventually. Not particularly waiting for sales just not planning to buy anything right now. Eye of the Beholder collection though I'll probably grab fairly soon.
Posted August 21, 2015
So I keep expecting to see this on game "news".

No deal.
Posted August 21, 2015
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ShadowWulfe: So I keep expecting to see this on game "news".

No deal.
Press coverage of the releases and more press coverage of the releases.
Post edited August 21, 2015 by Grargar
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionRelease: Forgotten Realms: The Archives(703 posts)(703 posts)
(703 posts)