Pool of Radiance keyboard issue [solved] \ VOGONS

Pool of Radiance keyboard issue [solved]

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First post, by henryVK

Posted on 2021-11-04, 14:19

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Hello everyone,

I've been meaning to get into the Gold Box series for a while, however, I'm having a problem with the controls. Hopefully this will sound familiar to someone:

Basically, scrolling through lists, say during character creation, when I scroll past the bottom most item three cursor doesn't jump back to the start of the list but rather starts spamming gibberish into the lines below. This happens with the 1 & 7 number keys as well as Pos 1 & Home.

This happens on a Pentium 1 system running Win95. My normal keyboard is a "small" AT without cursor keys but I also tried a 102 keys AT one. Running the game in Dosbox on my modern PC it works just fine... what am I missing here? Is this a memory issue rather than keyboard mapping/configuration or something?

Any help is appreciated.

Regards

Henry

Last edited by henryVK on 2021-11-06, 12:02. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by Namrok

Posted on 2021-11-05, 03:23

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I'll experiment some perhaps tomorrow, but my gut reaction is that the game might be running too fast? What are you running this on? Even when I got this game in the late 90's on the Forgotten Realms Archives, it shipped with MOSLO to make it playable.

Win95/DOS 7.1 - P233 MMX (@2.5 x 100 FSB), Diamond Viper V330 AGP, SB16 CT2800
Win98 - K6-2+ 500, GF2 MX, SB AWE 64 CT4500, SBLive CT4780
Win98 - Pentium III 1000, GF2 GTS, SBLive CT4760
WinXP - Athlon 64 3200+, GF 7800 GS, Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 2 of 7, by henryVK

Posted on 2021-11-05, 08:53

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Namrok wrote on 2021-11-05, 03:23:

I'll experiment some perhaps tomorrow, but my gut reaction is that the game might be running too fast? What are you running this on? Even when I got this game in the late 90's on the Forgotten Realms Archives, it shipped with MOSLO to make it playable.

Ah, good call, thanks for your suggestion. Running too fast does sometimes produce odd results in games (like the sound not working). It's a Pentium 1 running at 75 MHz and now that you ask, I'm wondering if 16 Mb of RAM might not also be giving PoR a bellyache.

Reply 3 of 7, by Namrok

Posted on 2021-11-05, 14:18

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I did also see my version says 1.4 in the intro screen. What version does yours say? Where'd you get it?

Reply 4 of 7, by henryVK

Posted on 2021-11-05, 17:51

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I got what are supposedly the disk images for version 1.2 off of the internet archive, however, there is no version number showing on the title screen. Just nothing.

I can't find version 1.4 or a patch online.

Reply 5 of 7, by Namrok

Posted on 2021-11-05, 18:24

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This is fascinating, I checked the GOG version I also have, and it self reports as 1.3.

My guess is it's a bug in the software version? I wouldn't put it past SSI to forget to bounds check menus, and leave you wondering off into unchecked memory. Like you, I can't find anything that can patch up your version. Could only recommend getting the GOG versions, which run fine on real systems and have the code wheels taken out to boot, or find a copy of The Forgotten Realms Archives.

Reply 6 of 7, by henryVK

Posted on 2021-11-05, 20:38

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Thanks, it's very weird indeed. I'll try the gog version! I couldn't find it initially because it's not indexed under "Pool of Radiance" on the gog website.

Reply 7 of 7, by henryVK

Posted on 2021-11-06, 12:02

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Namrok wrote on 2021-11-05, 18:24:

I wouldn't put it past SSI to forget to bounds check menus, and leave you wondering off into unchecked memory.

Yep, that seems to have been it: version 1.3 works just fine!
Weird that this has not been reported before.

Thank you for suggesting I check out other versions. Somehow I was stuck on this being due to the keyboard thing.

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