Pool of Radiance Special Edition

The usual disclamer: This game has been modified on my free time and is available for free. You are not allowed to include it in paid "hard drive compilations" sell or 'adapt' it in any way, shape or form! If you paid for this game you got scammed, ask the seller for a refund at once!

Here it is at last, the legendary RPG game that SSI announced was coming to the ST back in the days, then vanished... Since its followup Curse of the Azure Bonds was released on the ST, and all those Goldbox games are modular and use the same engine with a few variations, it was quite logical to modify it in order to be able to play other Goldbox games...

AI was used in the creation of this game, in particular to convert data files from the PC DAX format to the ST GLB/TLB file containers (I already converted the scripts/maps files to the ST format years ago). It was also used to add missing code (the outside map and end sequence are different between Curse of the Azure Bonds and Pool of Radiance), to clean up the code, add back missing labels, fixing jump tables accordingly (boring shit when done by hand) and to make the user interface closer to the one in Pool of Radiance. But overall 99% of the code was written by real humans when they converted COTAB to the ST back in the days...

This should be considered as a BETA version. I tested as many things as possible (in particular the added map travel and end sequence) but expect bugs and crashes...

Download hard drive version (last update: 24/10/2026).

Updates:

• 15.10.2026: NPC recruitment is now working, does not display a disk error anymore.

• 15.10.2026: DISKB folder now fits on a 820 KB floppy disk (moved the ending and world map files to DISKA folder).

• 15.10.2026: Outside map: Correct player position is restored when exiting a place back to the world map.

• 16.10.2026: Numbers can now also be typed in from the numpad.

• 16.10.2026: Added original level limitations from Pool of Radiance.

• 16.10.2026: Added the credits screen back and updated it for Pool of Radiance.

• 16.10.2026: Only one mouse click is now required to go from the title screen to the next screen insted of two.

• 16.10.2026: Inner vertical frame in the exploration window now uses the correct pattern.

• 16.10.2026: Some pictures from ALWAYS.TLB now use Pool of Radiance colours instead of the ones from Curse (scroll arrows).

• 16.10.2026: Character creation is now almost identical to the one from Pool of Radiance, with character portrait selection fully working.

• 16.10.2026: Character portraits are now displayed on character screen (characters created with the previous version of this game won't have any).

• 16.10.2026: Various ingame parameters are now identical to Pool of Radiance (TAC0, spells, availables classes, etc.).

• 16.10.2026: When visiting shops, game doesn't crash anymore when displaying what's in stock.

• 18.10.2026: Text that appeared as runes in 3 different places has been replaced with roman alphabet letters.

• 18.10.2026: In order to differenciate them, characters created by Pool of Radiance have the .POR extension instead of Curse's .GUY one.

• 18.10.2026: Fixed an original game bug that could crash the game when the mouse pointer is at pos 0,0.

• 18.10.2026: Updated version number to 1.3 (like the MS DOS version).

• 18.10.2026: Created characters start at level 1 (Pool of Radiance default) instead of 5 (Curse of the Azure Bonds default).

• 22.10.2026: Newly created characters now have the correct amount of coins.

• 22.10.2026: From the Commodore 64 version: Added Demo mode (available on main menu).

• 22.10.2026: From Secret of the Silver Blades: Added the Load game feature on the Encamp screen.

• 22.10.2026: From Secret of the Silver Blades: Added difficulty switch on the Encamp/Alter menu.

• 22.10.2026: Paladins and Rangers reactivated in character creation (from COTAB).

• 22.10.2026: From v1.3 to 1.3a Fan Update: Characters with enough experience to train have their names shown in magenta.

• 22.10.2026: Fixed game crashing under EmuTOS (Timer-A issue when playing sound effects).

• 22.10.2026: Loader correctly switches to low res even from a Falcon030-specific resolution, and back upon quitting the game.

• 24.10.2026: Text 'Typewriter' effect deactivated, so text displayed in the bottom window is displayed much faster.

• 24.10.2026: In player and shops inventory, items that cannot be equiped for currently selected character are displayed in red.

• 24.10.2026: When the demo is launched a second time, the animated monster is correctly displayed in the exploration window.

• 24.10.2026: When the intro screens are displayed after the demo ends, mouse cursor is invisible again until reaching main menu (original game bug).

• 24.10.2026: From v1.3 to 1.3a Fan Update: During character creation, all 41 heads and 20 bodies are available to choose as a character portrait, instead of the default 14 and 12. This means that characters created with previous versions of the game are NOT compatible anymore.

TODO:

• Fix some of the text background colours that still use COTAB colours (if there is any left).

• Transfert from/to Hillsfar doesn't work from hard drive (file path issue).

• Test the game by actually playing it from the beginning to the end...

Here are some miscellaneous pictures: