Enhancements

These games have stood the test of time, and the enhancements are designed to respect them and the people who made them. They smooth over the parts that a 1980s PC forced on you — a code wheel on the desk, a pad of graph paper, a printed booklet to look things up in, round after round of resting and re-memorising spells — and leave everything else alone.

They come in two kinds. Some are part of the player and work the same in every game. The rest are made for one game at a time and work inside it.

In every game

A picture like the screen it was drawn for

These games were drawn for a tube, not a flat panel, and their pixels were meant to blur a little into their neighbours. The CRT filter draws the picture through the red, green and blue stripes of a colour monitor and the dark lines between its rows, and brightens it to make up for what the mask takes away.

How to use it. Press Options on the player’s toolbar and choose off, subtle, medium or full under CRT filter, on the Display tab. It starts at medium, and the setting is kept with your copy of the game. How fine the mask is follows the size of the picture rather than the setting: a small window has no room for one, so the filter shows more the larger you play, and most in full screen. A browser that cannot draw it gets the plain picture, and the setting says so.

A keyboard made for the game

On a phone or a tablet the player paints a keyboard with only the keys the game uses: the eight directions, Y and N, Esc, Tab and Enter on one side, the letters and numbers on the other. The game’s picture is nearly square, so on a wide screen the keys sit in the space either side of it, never over it.

How to use it. On a touch screen it comes up by itself once the game is running: beside the picture when the device is on its side, below it when it is upright. Holding a key repeats it, as a real keyboard does. Press Keyboard on the player’s toolbar to show or hide it on any screen.

Play with a controller

A controller with the usual layout — a d-pad, two sticks and four buttons on its face — plays the game, on a computer, a phone or a tablet. The d-pad walks the party and moves the game’s own highlight along its menus and command bars, A takes the highlighted command and B backs out, so a whole evening of play needs no keyboard at all. When the game asks for a name, the on-screen keyboard comes up by itself and the d-pad types on it; Y puts it up or away whenever you like. With screen reader support on, the right bumper (RB) reads the whole screen and the left bumper (LB) says where the party is.

How to use it. Connect the controller and press any button on it once, so that the browser shows it to the page. Then click or press a key once for the sound: a browser starts sound only for those. A controller the browser does not recognise as a standard one is not read.

Change the buttons. Any button, trigger or stick can do any of the jobs below, or type a letter, a digit or a function key — for one hand, or an adaptive controller. In the player, open Options and the Controller tab, and press a button on the controller to find its row. The choice is kept in this browser, for every game. The list below is the standard layout.

D-pad or left stick

The arrow keys: walk, and step the menus, the command bars and the lists. Between them are the diagonals, for a diagonal step in combat. Num Lock does not change them.

Right stick, up and down

Home and End: step the selected party member, at the main menu and wherever the game lets you pick one. In combat they are the left-hand diagonals.

A, the bottom button

Enter: take the highlighted command.

B, the right button

Esc: back out, and answer No.

X, the left button

Space: take a character out of Quick and back into your hands.

View, Back or Select

Tab: show and hide the automap.

Y, the top button

Put the on-screen keyboard up or away. It comes up by itself when the game asks you to type, for a name or an answer, and goes when you are done. While it is up the d-pad moves over its keys, A presses one, B is Backspace, X is Space and Start is Enter.

RB, the right bumper

Read the whole screen to your screen reader, as Ctrl+Alt+R does, when screen reader support is on.

LB, the left bumper

Say where the party is and what is on each side, as Ctrl+Alt+W does, when screen reader support is on.

The game’s text, read aloud

The player reads the game’s text to your screen reader as it changes: the menus and lists, character creation, the party screen and the messages the game prints. The selected item and each command’s key letter are said in words, so a menu is heard with the command that is lit and the key that takes each one. Nothing it reads leaves your browser.

Exploring a town, a dungeon or the wilderness, it also says where the party is, read from the game itself rather than from the picture: the walls, openings and doors on every side as you turn and walk, a door the party goes through, a step that is blocked, and what you have explored around you, a row at a time. In the wilderness it says which way the party can go.

In a fight it says when it is one of your party’s turn and which enemy is nearest, a hit or a heal on the party, someone falling, and how many enemies are in view. While you aim, it says who or what the aim is on, how far away and in which direction, and whether you can target it. On request it says where each enemy stands from whoever is acting, by direction and range, and what is next to them.

Pictures are not read: portraits and the scenery of the 3D view.

How to use it. It is on unless you turn it off. The first time a game loads, the player asks once, and your answer is kept for this browser; to change it later, press Options on the player’s toolbar and go to Accessibility. While the game has focus your keys go to it, and holding Esc gives the keyboard back to the page. Press Ctrl+Alt+R to hear the whole screen, or the right bumper (RB) on a controller. Press Ctrl+Alt+W, or the left bumper (LB), to hear where the party is and what is on each side, or in a fight whose turn it is and where the enemies are; and Ctrl+Alt+M to hear the squares you have explored around you, five by five, one row each press, or in a fight what stands next to whoever is acting.

A second Esc

The games back out of almost everything with Esc, and Esc is also how a browser leaves full screen. Most browsers give a quick press to the game and leave full screen only when Esc is held, but some leave on any press, and an iPad keyboard has no Esc at all.

How to use it. The key below Esc, to the left of 1, is Esc too, in every game and every browser: ` on a US keyboard, ² on a French one, ^ on a German one and § on a European Mac.

Your saves, in your hands

Everything the game saves is kept in your browser beside your copy and put back the next time you play. The saves panel lets you manage it: every saved game by its slot letter and every character by name, each of which can be exported as a zip or deleted. A zip unpacks straight into a GOG or DOSBox install, so your saves are never locked in here.

How to use it. Press Saves on the player’s toolbar; the game pauses while the panel is open. Export and Delete are beside each save, and Export all puts every save and character into one zip. Import all takes that zip back, a single save’s zip, or the loose files from an install’s SAVE folder, into the slots you choose. Only what the emulator knows is a save or a character comes in; a game file is refused and named.

Backups. A browser can clear what a site keeps, so the player keeps a copy outside it if you let it. Where the browser can write to a folder on your computer (Chrome, Edge and the others built on Chromium), choose one under Backups in the saves panel, and every save the game makes is copied there as the same zip Export all makes, one a day for the last week. Any browser can download that zip instead. Until there is a recent backup, a line under the toolbar offers to make one every few days.

Made for each game

The rest are built into a particular game, and they keep a stricter set of rules.

• The game is never altered. The program on your disk runs unchanged and your game files are never modified. An enhancement works on the running machine, from outside the game.
• It looks like part of the game. Each one draws on the game’s own screen, in its own font and colours, and is reached the way the game’s own commands are — a command on its bar, a key while you explore — rather than as a window floating over it.
• It never changes the story, the rules or the challenge. Where the game already has a way to do something, the enhancement uses it: a rest is the game’s own rest, and random encounters still happen.
• It is your choice. Each has its own switch on the Enhancements tab of the player’s Options, and what you choose is kept with your copy of the game. Most are on from the start; switch off any you would rather play without.
• It is made for one version of one game. An enhancement knows exactly which release it is working with. A copy the emulator does not recognise simply runs without them, rather than with one that might misfire.

Pool of Radiance and Curse of the Azure Bonds each have a set made for it: the game’s page says what every one does and how to use it.

What is coming

Each title gets enhancements of its own as it is added, made for that game in the same way, and plays with a controller as it arrives.

None of this has a date. The changelog says when something arrives.