About Amber Folio
Amber Folio recreates the 1980s PC that the SSI Gold Box role-playing games were made for, and runs them in your browser. You bring your own copy of a game; the original program runs on it, unchanged.
Where it stands
The current build plays a Gold Box game from start to finish on your own copy: creating a party, exploring the city, fighting, shopping, saving and loading. It works on Windows, macOS, Linux and in a browser, from the same code.
Amber Folio in the browser is still a preview. It cannot yet remember your files between visits, and it has no proper interface. Those are the next milestone, and this site is being built to provide them.
Faithful to the original
- Your game runs, not a rewrite. The program on your disk does all the work, instruction by instruction, on an emulated processor.
- Your files are never changed. Enhancements act on the running machine’s memory; the files on your disk stay as they are.
- Nothing is guessed. If the game asks for something the emulator does not provide, it stops and says so rather than inventing an answer.
- Tested against real hardware. The processor emulation is checked, bit for bit, against test data recorded from a real 8086.
Enhancements
Built-in enhancements — a code-wheel helper, an automap, an adventurer’s journal — help a modern audience enjoy these games without changing what made them great. They are on by default and each can be turned off. Enhancements has the list.
Your own copy
Neither the emulator nor this site contains any part of a game. You bring your own copy, which is read in your browser and never uploaded. Games lists every title and where to buy it.
Open source
The emulator is free software under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. Source, history and plans are at github.com/amberfolio/amberfolio (opens in a new tab). This site runs v0.6.0 (opens in a new tab), built from commit 472ec98. The website itself is separate work; the licences page has the details.