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Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor

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Revision as of 22:18, 20 October 2021 by Baronsmoki (talk | contribs) (→‎Audio: Alphabetized languages)
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor cover
Developers
Stormfront Studios
Publishers
Ubisoft
Release dates
Windows September 27, 2001
Taxonomy
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Turn-based
Perspectives Isometric
Genres RPG
Series Pool of Radiance
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor on HowLongToBeat
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor on MobyGames
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor on Wikipedia
Pool of Radiance
Subseries of Gold Box
Pool of Radiance 1988
Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor 2001

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

This page is for the 2001 sequel using 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons rules. For the original 1988 Gold Box game, see Pool of Radiance.

A known bug for the uninstaller included in the original 1.0 release deleted system files when the game was uninstalled, causing the operating system to fail. This can be fixed by using the 1.1 uninstaller patch (already included in newer releases).

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Requires disc 2 in the drive to play.
Windows
Two retail versions are available: the original 1.0 release and a re-release that has been pre-updated to version 1.2 (German release: 1.28) and also includes the 1.1 uninstaller.
This game is not available digitally.

Essential Improvements

Patches

If your original version is 1.0 (version can be checked in the main menu, bottom right), you will first need the 1.1 uninstaller patch to avoid the uninstaller deleting system files. This patch is not included with the 1.2, 1.3, or 1.4 updates. This patch is not necessary to install if you have the updated 1.2 retail re-release, as that version includes the 1.1 uninstaller.
The latest official patch is 1.4 (different files depending on language version). It includes game fixes from the 1.2 and 1.3 updates, but does not include the uninstaller from the 1.1 patch so that will need to be used separately if you have the original 1.0 release.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>/savegames/[Note 1]

Video

Game settings menu.
Game settings menu.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Only runs in 800x600. Forcing a higher resolution with third-party tools creates bad visual artifacts on the edges of maps, breaks regions that are supposed to be black etc.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Only able to change hotkeys. See Remap Hotkeys.
Mouse acceleration
Adversely affected by Windows mouse acceleration. Disable "Enhance pointer precision" under "Pointer Settings" in Windows to fix problems with mouse acceleration in-game.
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Remap Hotkeys

In-game help menu only displays the default hotkeys regardless of what you actually have them set to.
Modify keymap.txt
  1. Go to <path-to-game>
  2. Open keymap.txt.
  3. Hotkeys are presented as such:
KEY	FUNCTION

For example, the "display help menu" hotkey defaults to the following:

F1	SHOW_HELP
  1. Change KEY to desired key for the associated function.
  2. Save the changes and launch the game.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Spanish

Issues fixed

Game doesn't launch on modern system

Install the latest patch

Install patch 1.4 from here, choose the correct file for your language version. If your game version is 1.0 (can be checked on the bottom right of the main menu), then you must first run the 1.1 uninstaller patch and then the 1.4 patch.

Use compatibility mode

You can also use compatibility mode for Windows XP SP 3 on the Pool II.exe, but that should not be required if you have patch 1.4 installed.

Invisible objects and transparent characters

Use this fix if your characters appear as skeletons at the start of the tutorial, or if you can't see barrels and chests - a good way to check if you have this bug is if you play the tutorial and can't see the barrels in the room where you're supposed to interact with them.

Use dgVoodoo
  1. Download dgVoodoo 2. Ignore virus warnings that you might get, it is known to set off false positives.
  2. Unpack dgVoodoo. Copy dgVoodooCpl.exe and dgVoodoo.conf to your game folder (where the Pool II.exe is). Then do the same with D3D8.dll, D3Dlmm.dll and DDraw.dll from dgvoodoo under MS/x86, copy those 3 files to the game folder as well.
  3. Execute dgVoodooCpl.exe in the game folder. This opens the dgVoodoo menu. Here, you can set your custom settings for the game. Click on the symbol on the top right (.\) to set this location as running instance.
  4. In the dgVoodoo menu, set the following:

General tab: Appearance: "Full Screen"; Scaling Mode: "Stretched, 4:3 Aspect Ratio"
DirectX tab: Under Miscellaneous, uncheck everything
Finally, click Apply or Ok. Then you can launch the game and all objects / characters should be visible now.

Issues unresolved

Constitution bug

There is a rare bug where you permanently lose hitpoints after unequipping an item that increases Constitution (CON). The bug only happens under these circumstances:

  1. Player equips an item that brings his Constitution to an uneven number.
  2. Player then gets a permanent Constitution increase (e.g. from one of the attribute-increasing barrels) which puts his Constitution to an even number and thus increases the modifier. This will now increase most CON-aligned values (like saving throw), but NOT the max HP, because the interaction with CON-increasing items is bugged.
  3. Now if the CON-increasing item is unequipped, the game will subtract hitpoints because the CON-modifier went down. But since the HP had never gone up previously, the player is now stuck with permanently less HP.

Also, you generally get less HP on levelup if wearing CON-increasing items, so unequip them before leveling up.[1][2]

Unequip Constitution-increasing items before attribute improvement and levelup

To prevent these bugs from happening, make sure to unequip all CON-increasing items before getting a permanent Constitution improvement (like from one of the barrels) and before leveling up.

Restore hitpoints with save editor

If your character already fell victim to this bug, you can restore the values to what they should be using a savegame editor (one of the top two programs in the link). Use it to increase the HP of the character by his level (e.g. give +3 HP for a level 3 character). You only have to do this once, the bug does not "carry through" to later levelups.

Get level drained

After getting level drained, it also seems to restore the correct hitpoints when level drain wears off. More research needed on this.

Re-locked doors

Sometimes doors in the dungeon re-lock after you had previously opened them with a key, but the key is gone after use. This is a game-breaking bug that makes you unable to progress at all if it hits certain doors.[3][4][5][6] Despite what the patch notes say, this bug is still unfixed for some doors, at least for the first two ones in the first dungeon. A common scenario is that you explore a section of the first level, find Beriand's staff and return it to him - then after going back, the doors will be locked.[4][5] This makes you unable to finish the game, you have to restart and hope it doesn't happen again.

The only other thing you can do is re-adding the key by using a Hex-editor to edit the savegames. The hexcode for the two keys to the first two main doors of the dungeon is:
Key of the Living: 4A 03 00 00 3D 9E[4]
Key of the Dead: 49 03 00 00 3F A0

Use a hexeditor to re-add the keys
  1. The savegames are under <path-to-game>\Pool of Radiance\savegames. You need the .sav files, not the .sav.sta files.
  2. Prepare one of your characters by stripping him/her of all items, including equipped ones (give everything to other party members), except for one single item that is no longer important (e.g. a light healing potion - the merchant sells those and restocks each time you change areas and come back to him). Put that single item in the top left inventory slot. Save and close the game - create a new save file for this, since messing up can destroy your savegame.
  3. Use a hexeditor to open that savegame (the .sav file). Do a text search for you prepared character's name (make sure the spot is actually your character's name and not a game function that is by chance named the same - best to choose a character with an exotic / long name).
  4. In the hexcode somewhere closely after your character's name, you should find the code for the single item in his inventory. This will be surrounded by a lot of more or less empty code. Each item code consists of 12 letters in hexadecimal (see the keys above). After the item code, you have a hexadecimal '01'. Some examples:

The standard light healing potion (not the one the merchant sells) seems to always start with 06 03 01 00, followed by four more symbols for each individual potion, so overall e.g. 06 03 01 00 20 00 or 06 03 01 00 25 00.
The light healing potions that the merchant sells seem to start with 16 00 01 00, e.g. one potion might be 16 00 01 00 0C 00.
After these 12 digits, there will be a 01.

  1. If you found your item, replace it with the code for the key that you need. For the two keys to the main dungeon doors, see above. Replace the 12 digits and then save.
  2. Now when loading that file in the game, your item should have been replaced with the key you need.

When this bug happens, some (not all) loot containers also seem be refilled, so you can loot some items twice. So it seems to have reset some parts of the level, that's what might cause the doors to be closed again. However, enemies don't respawn.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play
No longer functional due to GameSpy shutting down.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows
The "real" executable is por2main.exe, not Pool II.exe (the latter just calls the former). The Windows 10 task manager shows it as "engine executable (32 bit)".

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Multiplayer GameSpy

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) Windows 95/98/ME
Processor (CPU) Pentium III 500 MHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References