Gold Box Companion - tool for GB games

[jhirvonen]

I was planning to replay Pool of Radiance and programmed a tool to help with some of the user interface issues (mainly lack of fix-command etc.).

(I know of the FRUA remake module but somehow wanted to play the original still)

If someone dares to test it, it's available here with more info and some screenshots:
http://gbc.zorbus.net

edit: updated url

[nologgie]

I don't have time to test it right now, but it looks great!

Thanks!  :D :D :D

[GoldBoxFan]

I just played POR from end to end a couple years ago to get all the text from it. Too bad your aid didn't exist back then. I'd rather try it in NWN1 or NWN2.

[Ishad Nha]

It looks good. Here in the Hacking UA sub-forum we have decrypted a lot of the files from Gold Box games. This is the place to do research for any new programs or editors.

[Donnie Ewald]

Oh wow, this is quite nice. I look forward to giving it a go in the future. Very nice.

[GoldBoxFan]

Any chance you can get Neverwinter Nights - Online to save games? It is the 10th Gold Box Game.

[Ishad Nha]

It would need to be able to both save and load, tricky stuff.
Another approach is to run the NWN game files using another Gold Box game, like Treasures of the Savage Frontier. This assumes that the games have the same sort of Ecl functions, which I don't know if it is true.
If it worked you might need to rewrite the Ecl files to reflect the fact that TSF has one Ecl file while NWN has three or more.
There may be other complications like different offset numbering systems.

[Donnie Ewald]

Greetings jhirvonen!

I gave GBC a go today and have hit a brick wall. I'm on Windows XP and using DOSBox 0.74. I've tried it with the D-Fend Reloaded frontend and without it. Either way no characters are found. You can see my screenshot that has Champions of Krynn, GBC, and MHS, which is another memory editor open. MHS finds the character name in DOSBox memory; but, GBC doesn't. Any ideas?

[jhirvonen]

Odd that it doesn't find even the first character. I don't use D-Fend Reloaded myself but don't see how that could affect it.

If you can, test it with some other GB game?

[Donnie Ewald]

I've tried it with Pools of Darkness, Pool of Radiance and Champions of Krynn. I'll do some more tinkering this weekend and report back.

[Donnie Ewald]

It worked successfully with Dark Queen of Krynn! What is GBC coded in? Would it be possible to feed a specific memory address to it instead of it searching to begin?

[jhirvonen]

Nice that you got it working for at least one game.

GBC is written in Delphi.

If you find the name of the first character in MHS, you could put this to GBC search wizard's address range start and it should find it from there.

I've tested this with several WinXP installations, with real installs and with VMware virtual installs and now also on Win7. All had vanilla DOSBox 0.74 and I was logged in with administrator rights (not sure if this has any meaning). In these cases the characters are always found inside the default address range.

If it's working with Dark Queen it should work with the others as well. The same search routine is used for all 9 games.

[Donnie Ewald]

I don't know Delphi, can't help at all. :(  I tried GBC with Champions of Krynn again and had no luck. I found the address in MHS and copied it over to GBC and no luck there either, I even tried backing off a few bytes in case that mattered. I'm logged in as an admin and GBC works with DQK; but, not COK. Very odd.

[Ishad Nha]

DQK is different in its use of FRUA-style Glb files rather than normal Gold Box dax files. But that would not be so relevant here.
You could try it on FRUA then try Pools of Darkness.
Are you using DosBox or something else Donnie?

[Donnie Ewald]

Yep, using DosBox 0.74 just like expected. GBC reads and edits the memory directly of that process and not the files themselves. I've tried GBC with Pools of Radiance tonight after downloading the newer archive from the site with all the maps and it works with that game. It doesn't change the map when I leave town and head to the slums though.