Surprisingly, I searched these forums for information and posts on ASE, or "The All-Seeing Eye" and none showed up! But perhaps I used the wrong search terms, I suppose.

Anyway, I had been playing the 1.9 Amiga AGA version of EoBI, through WHDLoad, which is very nice and has an automapper patched in seamlessly and transparently--hit the TAB key and the automap opens full screen, complete with legends--hit it again and you are returned to the game, full screen. Wonderful.

But on playing the DOS VGA version of the game, which is the one that GOG sells, with the Coolsoft Virtual MidiSynth installed into Win10x64, build 14352, I have to give the nod to the DOS version *but* only if the below-linked software is used with DOS version:

http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jhirvonen/ase


Both the AGA Amiga version and the VGA DOS version are done in 256 colors and the graphics are pretty much identical--but what sets off the main difference between the two versions is the *sound*. Selecting the Adlib option in the DOS configuration simply produces superior sound effects to the Amiga version through WHDLoad 17.1, imo. At least, through my earphones. There is not a *lot* of difference--but there seem to be more sound effects with the DOS version of the game.

The All-Seeing Eye (ASE) is a truly inspired automapper--offering far more than the Amiga automapper, including a character editor for EoB I & II!

The only caveat in using the DOS version (1.7 is the GOG version I think) & ASE instead of the Amiga 1.9 version with its built-in automapper is that I have to run the game in windowed mode under DOS--and the window has to be a good bit smaller than your total monitor area so that there's room for the ASE automapper screen to be displayed simultaneously. I finally settled on a Window of 1400 x1050 (on my 1920x1200 monitor), as large as I could go while leaving enough room for the automapper window--which I run to the right of the game window. The mouse has to leave the game in order to allow the player to peruse the automap window (which has a lot of neat functionality), so you might want to turn off the "mouse autolock" feature from DOSbox (I use the 64-bit version of DOSbox SVN-Daum) so that a single mouse-wheel click (middle button) frees the mouse to leave the game and seamlessly allows mouse-navigation and selection of all of the elements on the automapping screen. ALT-Enter (twice) puts the mouse back into the game window.

I had a couple of questions that maybe someone who is more conversant with ASE than I am might be able to help me with:

(1) Is there a way to use ASE similar to how the Amiga version automap works--which allows running the game in full screen mode and hitting a key to switch to a full-screen automap, and then back again? My 1400x1050 window is OK for playing, but it's not anywhere near full-screen.

(2) Any other tips or tricks for getting the most out of ASE would be greatly appreciated!

ASE is a great utility--but my inability to go full screen with ASE & the game is not quite the elegant solution patched into the Amiga AGA 1.9 version of the game...!

It's not ready yet, but here's a sneak preview of Grid Cartographer 4. For this new version I've created a custom dosbox that can send image data to it which allows the integration of game and mapping together in either split screen or a maximized view (toggled with alt+enter).

http://i.imgur.com/DIS5EQR.gif

Look out for more news ... 'when it's done'

Terrific! Looks very nice! Looking forward to it! Let us know when it's done, and thanks for the info...;) Looks like just what the doctor ordered.

It's really amazing how much more *fun* a nice automapper makes playing these games! I remember when the Bard's Tale games shipped in the '80's...I was much more energetic back then...;)... and the idea of creating my own maps to play the game was appealing and actually a lot of fun. But today? Heh! Not interested! I've done all the map-making I want to do, I'm afraid--much nicer when the game includes that feature these days.

i just downloaded ASE and it works incredible good, many thanks to the dev that shared it. i had just spent a good half hour going round in a literal circle in the sewer not realizing there were hidden ports on the ground. saved my sanity

Call me a strange madman but the only reason I couldn't play infamous EotB3 was lack of automap. Neither All Seeing Eye nor Grid Cartographer seems to work. No way in seven hells I will do that manually, just no.

Yeah I tried :( - EotB3 uses a different engine than 1 & 2 and the player info keeps jumping around in memory making it very difficult to pin down automatically. It's probably not impossible to solve but I think you'd need to spend lots of time and effort, someone feel free to show me how!

Hello,

Are you able to use ASE with the GOG version of EoB1&2? If so, you wouldn't happen to know how to get it to work on the Mac, would you?

As for your question, I think that would be a great thing to have it full screen and just hit tab to show a map. Beat this game back in the day and didn't use any maps.

ASE works with the (DOS) GOG-versions of EOB 1 & 2. For Mac, you probably need to set up a virtual machine that runs Windows.

Fullscreen mode is difficult to implement. You probably would need to use a custom DOSBox-version for that and that would make using the GOG-versions difficult. And low resolution games in fullscreen don't look that good on modern displays.

For EOB3, there's this:
http://personal.inet.fi/koti/jhirvonen/ase3/

Thanks for the info!

ASE does not seem to work.

It just says "Characters not found in memory!" Any adjustment to the values does not seem to do anything until I get a "Memory range" error.


Edit: The workaround relating to removing the mounting saves line from cloud saves seems to work.

One problem after the new bunch of cloud saves upgrades is that the automap does not seem to save between sessions. I guess that the cloud system has something to do. But no sure. The rest seems to work fine.

And I agree, a full screen system would be great, something like the Amiga AGA version (dreaming). Or the tab key switch between map and game, at full screen. Well, who knows.

Greetings

I never had unforeseen problems but then I never used Cloud.

I have now turned off cloud save, but the automap is still not saved between sessions. Does that work for any of you?

Solved that problem. In the beginning I played EotB in German, but ASE doesn't work with it. So I uninstalled EotB and installed the English version with the subfolder 'Eye of the Beholder'. But this is wrong, because GOG installs the game in Eye of the Beholder/Eye of the Beholder and then ASE searches the game in the wrong folder.

I don't mind playing in Windowed mode in order to get the ASE, but is there any way to make the Window bigger?

Thanks!