Re: DosBox Pool of Radiance question

The problem is caused by running the game from the installation cd. It has a known bug
that will clone 1 character to all slots and saved games. So run the game with the start.bat
located where you installed the game to, to avoid this problem. It will not fix already
corrupted saved games, so delete those and start over.

Does running Vista 64 make a difference? I found the "Start" file you are referencing, however, when opening or attempting to "double;e-click" it to run it I receive the following error

The program or feature "\??\C:\Users\Documents\DOSBox stuff\MyGame\WIZWORX\POOLRAD\CONF.EXE" cannot start or run due to incompatibility with 64-bit versions of Windows. Please contact the software vendor to ask if a 64-bit Windows compatible version is available.

I Right-Clicked and went into Properties and then Compatibility. I tried running under each different Windows version provided, WIN 95, 2000, ME, NT, Server, XP Svc Pk2, etc...all of them, along with selecting different color options and resolution combination's. Every time I changed anything and tried to run the "Start Batch" I would receive the same error above.

Is their someway to use DOSBox to run it from the HDD?

Should I try and have it installed in my "C:\Program Files (x86)\........." area within my VISTA 64 machine? I was required to do that in order to just get DOSBox up and running. Not sure if I am reaching or connecting the wrong dots, just trying to be helpful.

I did read the Thread you provided a link for, as well as a few others regarding the same issue, as well as the source material you, and maybe others, referenced from DOSBox and the AD&D Tech support site I listed in my OP.

I also received your PM regarding the "buggy loader program". I am still unsure how or where to correct the directory structure for the save game so I can avoid mounting a Virtual A: drive.

Sorry, if I am still confused, it sounds like there are a few things going on and it's hard for me to keep track of which one is which and how to handle them individually. I know that probably sounds lame, just trying to let you know where I am at that's all.

Maybe for the first step you can give me the specifics of how to change the directory structure for the save game directory so I can avoid mounting a virtual A: Drive. That part doesn't matter to much to me since I can just mount it each time and have it "autoexec", but if it will clean things up and minimize errors or miscommunications in the future, or is just a better way to ahndle it, I would rather do that and rely on your expertise.

Then once I can confirm I have that part straightened out, maybe we can get back to figuring out the whole "Known Corruption Issue when saving in the POR game series."

Hopefully I am not asking to much or coming across demanding.

It's just when I don't understand something I try and take things slow and piece by piece so I understand exactly what is going on in the fix so it adds to my ability to help myself and others with similar issues in the future.

Thanks for replying so quickly and sending me the PM. I can tell you really do want to help me out. And I really do appreciate that.

Look forward to fixing what should be the easy part: "Save Directory" and then trying out your ideas regarding the error I am listing above about not being able to run the "Start Batch" from my HDD.

Of course I could still be doing something completely wrong, so if you need to know anything else that I am not mentioning please ask. Again, alot of this stuff is very new to me and I am trying to learn. If you like I can start over completely from scratch, that way you know exactly what is going on at each step. I am fine erasing, deleting and uninstalling everything. I remember how I did it all and I still have access to the other guides I used to begin with, or if you have your own way of doing things and you are certain you know how to get this up and running I am fine taking your specific direction on how to do things.

Thanks again for helping tempus2, you are giving me great hope that I will be able to play some games I have not played since early childhood. This really does mean a lot to me.

Thanks, Jesse

Generally you'll want to mount in DOSBox the CD/floppy and also mount the folder you put your old games in, then run the installer inside of DOSBox.

I understand the words you are using but you are saying a very lot with very little words and all this is so new to me it is hard for me to keep up right now. I am sure i is easy for most of the experts, but this is literally the first time I have ever tried anything of this magnitude, which I understand may not be very much for most of the people in this forum.

Thanks for what you wrote though, it will give me more to chew on.

Nothing to see here, move along now...

I have everything up and running perfectly now. Huge thanks to Tempus2 for all the assist in PM's and e-mail. If anyone searches POR on VISTA 64 and need help and you are not getting hooked up with anyone to help, PM me so I can pass on what I have learned.

I think this Thread is officially closed, so if a Moderator comes across this feel free to block it out for an archive to save space.

I'm having a similar problem to the OP, getting corrupted save games in Pool of Radiance running under DOSBox on a Vista 64-bit computer. Neither my oldest son (who's more DOSBox-savvy than I am) nor I knew how to install Gold Box games from the WizardWorks compilation CD within DOSBox, so my son copied DOSBox 0.70 from one of our other computers, and then downloaded Pool of Radiance and got it installed and running within DOSBox. We found the fix for the "insert disk 3" message on these boards and got past that problem; however, we then ran up against the "all 6 party slots reload as the last character created" bug, and I never quite understood what fixes may have been described for that problem -- or they didn't seem applicable to how we had the game installed. I've since also acquired the Gamefest Forgotten Realms compilation, and I can install Pool of Radiance via the Windows installation wizard on that -- but I got the "not compatible with 64-bit versions of Vista" message when I tried to run it sans DOSBox, and I probably input the wrong pathname on installation to run it within DOSBox.
I am not particular whether I install POR from a download, from the WizardWorks CD, or from the Gamefest CD -- I just want to get it running without the corrupt saave game bug. (Since I believe that the Tandy sound was nicer than the plain PC sound, it would be nice to have the game run with the Tandy sound, too -- but I wouldn't insist on that.)

Please stick to one of the (legal) games you got, start with a clean dosbox
installation (only the cdrom mounted and an empty directory for the
c-drive) and post the exact steps you're performing and the error or
the spot where you aren't sure how to move on.

This Thread may help in finding and locating your directory, and the spelling changes. You may also want to read the 60 seconds guide to DOSBox regarding Vista 64. The directory change, and a change to a (I think .bat or .exe) feil will be necessary and well. It gets changed in a config, text document, or something like that. It has been a while. But I got evryhting figured out eventually. You may also want to message Tempus2, he worked with me over e-mail a lot as well, giving me the support I was looking for.

Good Luck.

Thread Link

Re: DOSBox: Vista 64-Bit, Please Advise

If you are using the Wizardworks CD collection, the problem is the loader program
itself. So after you install POR, exit from the installation cd and from inside Dosbox
navigate to where POR is installed and type at the Dosbox command prompt
start "and then press enter" This will run the game from the game directory itself.
Which will prevent the character duplication problem. Along with the fix for the
"insert disk 3" bug hopefully that will get you going ok. Good luck!

OK, I've deleted/uninstalled all previous installations of POR from my hard drive, and reinstalled it (using the installer on the Gamefest CD-ROM) to C:\poolrad. I took notes on the fixes noted on this and other threads on how to change POOL.CFG to eliminate the "insert disk 3" problem, and also on how to emulate Tandy graphics & sound (since I believe that would be much closer to the great 3-voice sound I remember from playing the C64 version of this 20 years ago). I haven't yet done anything within DOSBox. I assume I next need to mount the virtual drive from which I'll be playing Pool of Radiance, and then edit POOL.CFG (for the 2 purposes mentioned above) before playing the game? Would the edited version of POOl.CFG remain intact the next time I played the game? (Or am I guessing the wrong order in which to do things?)
(My oldest son could probably answer a few of my ignorant questions, but I'd like to be able to do this by myself, too.)
It sounds like comments elsewhere on the corrupt saved game problem in POR had to do with people trying to run the game directly off the Wizardworks CD-ROM. Hopefully, since I've got the game installed on the hard drive, I won't run into that problem -- but I won't know for sure until I try playing it again.

Sounds good so far. Each time you load up the game it will ask you for settings. As long as you just hit Enter it will keep your new settings. So keeping a safe backup of your pool.cfg is a good idea. I'm not familier with the Gamefest version, so dunno if there are any bugs introduced with it or not. As long as you're starting the game from the installed game directory from inside Dosbox and not the cd then you shouldn't run into the character duplication problem. I'm not a Dosbox guru so ?'s about Dosbox I'll leave to the experts. Another post of mine has a bypass to the copy protection asked each time you load the game here, near the bottom of the posts.

more Pool of Radiance...

After school today my son explained to me that I need to edit the CONF file in Pool of Radiance (not the one in DOSBOX) to get rid of the "insert disk 3" bug. We got that done; I then rolled up a party of characters, bought equipment, memorized spells, saved in an inn, and exited to DOS -- and no "all party members saved as character 6" bug this time! 😁 It did make a difference to have the game installed to the harddrive from a CD -- those who try downloading the game from an abandonware site should be warned that their computer may still think their downloaded copy is being run off floppy disks.
I think installing POR from a CD with a Windows installer (either the Forgotten Realms Collection Silver Edition or the Gamefest compilation) may be slightly easier for DOSBox newbies like me, since one doesn't have to mount the CD within DOSBox then. However, for the 3 Dragonlance "Gold Box" games, the 1994 Wizardworks CD-ROM compilation is the only rerelease I know of. Thanks so much, guys! 😀

In regard to the "no codewheel" fix, I'm OK without it for now. GameBanshee has a downloadable PDF of the codewheel in all possible positions (it runs to 36 pages of codewheel images), which I've printed out & bound in a report cover (so I flip through pages instead of turning a codewheel). I used to have a codewheel with the Wizardworks compilation (and with my old C64 copy of POR before that), but they've long since fallen apart. The Gamefest compilation is supposed to have on-disc PDF files of the game documentation, but I haven't looked at their PDF files yet (since I had already downloaded and printed out the rule book and Adventurer's Journal from the same site where I found the codewheel PDF). The on-disc documentation will still come in handy when I get to Curse of the Azure Bonds, though (hope they include a PDF of that codewheel, too! 😉 ).

I just completed Pool of Radiance last night! 😀 I installed Curse of the Azure Bonds from the Gamefest CD-ROM (within Windows), reloaded Pool of Radiance one last time to remove my characters from their party -- then used a "click&drag" trick I'd seen on another site to move the .CHA files for each character to the CURSE\SAVE folder. I was then able to successfully add those characters "from POOL" within Curse of the Azure Bonds to form a party.
My current question, though, is: how can I enable the nice Tandy sound in this game? I'm not particular about EGA vs. Tandy graphics, but anything beyond PC speaker sound would be an improvement. When I first opened Curse of the Azure Bonds in DOSBox, I was given a choice of CGA, EGA, or Tandy graphics (I picked EGA), and no sound, PC sound, or Tandy sound (I picked Tandy). I haven't yet changed anything in DOSBox from the settings which were successful in allowing me to play Pool of Radiance (albeit with PC sounds). If I have to settle for PC sound, I suppose I could uninstall and reinstall Curse of the Azure Bonds (after moving the .CHA files for my characters back into the POOLRAD\SAVE file temporarily). If I can change something in DOSBox to enable the Tandy sound, though, I'd prefer that.

go to the startmenu -> program ->dosbox-0.73->configuration->edit configuration

Change tandy=auto to tandy=on
save the file
and try again.

Qbix, I tried your suggested edit in the DOSBox configuration file at lunchtime today. When I subsequently loaded Curse of the Azure Bonds, I got a brief "hiccup"-type noise during the title screen display (not the intro music I vaguely remember from the C64 version 20 years ago, but more sound than I'd previously gotten). I've just started having my party walk around Tilverton, so I can't comment on the combat sounds yet, but even the basic "walking steps" sound sounds slightly nicer with the Tandy. So far, then, what little I've heard of the sound isn't quite as much as I'd hoped for, but it's still an improvement over PC sound. Thanks!

I was curious about the tandy sound also, so gave Curse a try with these settings. I'm afraid what you're hearing
is all you're going to get out of the first couple of goldbox games. These early dos games were just coded for
the chirps and beeps of a pc speaker. The C-64 and Amiga had sid sound chips, sort of a small midi sound chip.
So they were able to provide far superior sound quality then a default pc at the time. That continued until
programmers started coding for the new soundcards and speakers pc's acquired later. But any gain is
appreciated, so glad you asked the question and it was answered!

I've now played through a few battles, and the combat sounds are nice with the Tandy sound, too -- different from the C64 sounds (which you can hear in some YouTube videos of the main battles from Curse), but nicer than plain PC speaker.
I've seen a YouTube video of the Pool of Radiance intro (supposedly as played on a Tandy), and there was intro music there (similar tune to the C64 version's intro music). It's possible that the YouTube poster in that case may have still owned an old Tandy computer (I didn't check the complete notes for that video on that fellow's YouTube channel). Now, if that same fellow would just post a YouTube video of the Curse of the Azure Bonds intro as played on their old Tandy (or if one of the YouTubers who apparently have kept their old C64s and Amigas going would post the Curse intro music for those versions), then I could play that in another window while loading Curse in DOSBox, and imagine just for a moment that I was back playing this for the first time 20 years ago! 😉