Do you want to play hacked FRUA designs? Have you heard of something called UAShell which allows for designs set in other campaign settings such as: Ray Dyer's Realm, Sci-Fi, Super Hero, and Oriental Adventures? Have you found the UAShell documentation to be less than 100% user friendly? If so, read on...
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****** Nol's Installation Guide for FRUA Newbies ******
****** ******
****** I assume that you have DOSBOX installed on your PC Windows machine ******
****** DOSBOX is a DOS emulator that allows you to run older games http://www.dosbox.com ******
****** Knowing how to mount a directory and then type in "UASHELL" and press Enter is essential ******
****** ******
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1) Install FRUA from your diskette, CD, or zip file.
1A) The game can be purchased from gog.com:
http://www.gog.com/game/forgotten_realms_the_archives_collection_two
2) Make sure that you are using version 1.2. If not download and install the v1.2 patch:
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/misc/fruav12.txt
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/misc/fruav12.zip
2A) If the version you have asks for a password, download this patch:
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/misc/ckit-crk.txt
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/misc/ckit-crk.zip
Extract the one file ckit-crk.com into the same folder as your FRUA installation and run it.
3) Download UAShellC from Rosedragon:
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/uashell/uashellc.zip
4) Extract the UAShellC zip file contents to your FRUA directory.
5) Run the UAShell batch file which is named "UASHELL.BAT". Ignore any warnings about your temp directory containing files. You should see a message saying "Installation of UA editor(s) successfully completed."
6) Make your choices for music and sound. When in doubt, answer no.
7) Another message says "Check files in TEMP subdirectory -- they must be deleted or moved elsewhere before you can run UA-Shell."
8) Click on the Design menu. The only available options at this point are Show, Default, and Exit. Choose Exit.
9) Open up your FRUA directory. Open up the TEMP subdirectory. You should see a file in there called "UASHELLC.TXT". Cut and paste it to a more appropriate subdirectory, such as DOCS.
10) Now, go back to your main FRUA directory and run the UAShell batch file again. You should see a message that says "Default settings restored." Click on the Designs menu. The Designs menu should now have more options available. Choose Exit for now.
11) Next, download a hacked design from the Rosedragon Magic Mirror site. Ray Dyer's conversion of "Keep on the Borderlands" might be a good one to start out with, since it's for 1st level characters:
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/modules/g/game02.txt
http://frua.rosedragon.org/pc/modules/g/game02.zip
12) Extract the hacked design into a new subdirectory called "GAME02.DSN". For example, the path to the subdirectory might be "C:\FRUA\GAME02.DSN". Make sure all the files in the zip end up in the subdirectory named "GAME02.DSN", because you don't want them cluttering up your main FRUA directory.
13) Run the UAShell batch file again. From the Design menu, choose Apply, then select GAME02.DSN, and click the "Open" button. You should get a message that says, "GAME02.DSN successfully applied."
14) Congratulations. All that is left to do now is to press F8. This will start your new hacked design.
******** Let the Adventure Begin! ********