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Wizardry Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls - now available on PC

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aweigh

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Can somebody explain the hate for auto mapping?

Because i see no way it can influence level,class or enemy design,and i play dungeon crawlers because of those factors.

All auto mapping does is just give you a digital way to handle mapping,nothing else.Unless your auto map includes secret areas and other stuff,which is just dumb.

There is no hate for auto-mapping; 99% of all dungeon crawlers released in the last 15 years have some form of unrestricted auto-mapping system. Hell, modern 'crawlers like Stranger of Sword City even let you Auto-WALK by letting you designate a waypoint in the auto-map screen and then has you walk there automatically if you want!

What happened with Elminage: Gothic is that Starfish wanted to make it truer to classic Wizardry and to other, older (i.e. more "hard-core") dungeon crawlers which tied access to the auto-map down to either an item consumable, a spell or to a character skill/ability (like cartography).

They decided to go with tying it to magic spells (like in Wizardry 1-5), and additionally also tying it to consumable magic map items (like in Wizardry Empire 1-3, which is the Wizardry series that Starfish worked on prior to Elminage).

They knew they had to include an infinite-use map consumable though, somewhere, as people would whine about it too hard, which is why in the 3rd dungeon there is an optional side-quest for getting a stone that acts as an infinite-use map item. It has a 33% chance to break after use, but you can repair it in town or with the Repair spell from the Alchemy school.

(In the 7th dungeon in the game you can get an unbreakable map stone item, again as an optional side-quest).

Of course this did indeed prove too much for the normies and everybody whined and most people who play E: Gothic, be they western or japanese persons, play the game with a mod that makes maps infinite from the start. Starfish saw the writing on the wall and they made infinite maps a toggable option in the 3DS port of the game.

EDIT: Note that Elminage: Original has unrestricted access to the auto-map AND even has an optional Onscreen Mini-map as well through a craftable item in-game. They simply wanted E: Gothic to be a truer, more "hard-core" dungeon crawler experience that called back to the classics; restricting map access is not something inherent to the Elminage series, it was something new in E: Gothic.

Starfish's Wizardry Empire games, however, used the same kind of map access restriction: only through spells or consumable items. Wizardry Empire 2 for PC came out in 2002. In the end, I think passing by Elminage: Gothic because of this one thing is too unfortunate, it's more important that people get to experience the game, so I say go ahead and use the infinite map mod please! They made it toggable in the following port of the game to 3DS (jpn-language exclusive), so it's not even really "cheating" anymore.
 
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Shackleton

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I din't think any game has absorbed me more than Elminage Gothic with Grid Cartographer open on my tablet next to the PC, meticulously mapping every floor of every dungeon. Having an automap open in a corner of the screen is a cancer in modern blobbers imo.
 

turkishronin

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Can somebody explain the hate for auto mapping?

Because i see no way it can influence level,class or enemy design,and i play dungeon crawlers because of those factors.

All auto mapping does is just give you a digital way to handle mapping,nothing else.Unless your auto map includes secret areas and other stuff,which is just dumb.

grognards gnna grog
 

flyingjohn

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Maybe some of those things were stupid and unfun?
Actually they were quite clever ways of creating difficultly.
If you want to play unfun dungeon crawlers just play some eroge dungeon crawlers,their entire difficulty is based on rng and grinding.(minus alicesoft games)
 
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Silentstorm

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Besides, in this day and age, you can easily find maps online if you really can't be bothered to make your own maps, Elminage Gothic has maps online, the Wizardry games have maps online, a lot of games have maps online, hell, i just randomly decided to look for Vaporum maps since that game is more recent, and yep, maps for every level also saying where secrets are located, and that game has automapping.

Even the excuse of saying one doesn't want to play games without automapping doesn't work since, you know, you can just the maps on a browser/tablet/phone or just print them nowadays.
 

Matador

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The problem with mapping yourself Elminage Gothic is that the game is too big for that. I completed Wizardry 1 mapping it myself, was an amazing experience and makes sense. But when you have lots of long complicated mazes you don't have time in your life to do it.

So I agree with aweigh . Just use the mapping mod, no shame, you have a lot of things to enjoy in the game like party progression, character development and COMBAT. Even the exploration is still great with the automapping.
 

samuraigaiden

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If a game has a fixed floor size (20x20, for example), you can reliably map it out. The only scenario I'd a see a problem with mapping a game is if the floors no pattern to follow at all.

The fact Atlus has made 8 Etrian Odyssey games in 11 years and they all got localized outside Japan makes me think there is an audience for games that make you draw your own map.
 

Shackleton

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If a game has a fixed floor size (20x20, for example), you can reliably map it out. The only scenario I'd a see a problem with mapping a game is if the floors no pattern to follow at all.

The fact Atlus has made 8 Etrian Odyssey games in 11 years and they all got localized outside Japan makes me think there is an audience for games that make you draw your own map.

And it's really odd no games have copied the EO mapping system. It's clearly a successful and popular series, but there are no similar games that keep the mapping system but improve on the terribad (imo) character development.
 

Silentstorm

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Man, i still wish Etrian Odyssey would get out of handheld systems and be ported to PC, seriously, we get ports of several other games like Mary Skelter but we don't get EO!?
 

LESS T_T

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Man, i still wish Etrian Odyssey would get out of handheld systems and be ported to PC, seriously, we get ports of several other games like Mary Skelter but we don't get EO!?

aliens.png
ATLUS
aliens.png
 
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aweigh

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And it's really odd no games have copied the EO mapping system. It's clearly a successful and popular series, but there are no similar games that keep the mapping system but improve on the terribad (imo) character development.

And the kicker is that replicating Etrian Oddysey's mapping system on PC would be stupidly easy: we have a mouse. It would essentially be just a game with a much more basic version of grid cartographer.

EDIT: And you don't even need a mouse to use a mapping tool either, as zwanzig_zwoelf shows with the mapping in DG2.

...was going to link to a video he showed of his DG2 mapping tool but apparently it's not listed on his YT channel.
 

Silentstorm

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Man, i still wish Etrian Odyssey would get out of handheld systems and be ported to PC, seriously, we get ports of several other games like Mary Skelter but we don't get EO!?

aliens.png
ATLUS
aliens.png
It's sad, but ATLUS doesn't seem to have that much interest on PC or really doesn't think there is a market, don't know how true that is though, because i am certain people would buy the Persona games, and maybe the Shin Megami Tensei ones as well, and Etrian Odyssey is popular enough that people would buy it, i sure as hell would.

But again, that isn't their style sadly, they don't seem to care that much about PC gaming at all.
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

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And it's really odd no games have copied the EO mapping system. It's clearly a successful and popular series, but there are no similar games that keep the mapping system but improve on the terribad (imo) character development.

And the kicker is that replicating Etrian Oddysey's mapping system on PC would be stupidly easy: we have a mouse. It would essentially be just a game with a much more basic version of grid cartographer.

EDIT: And you don't even need a mouse to use a mapping tool either, as zwanzig_zwoelf shows with the mapping in DG2.

...was going to link to a video he showed of his DG2 mapping tool but apparently it's not listed on his YT channel.
Here you go. It's 100% keyboard-based tho.
 

Ysaye

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And it's really odd no games have copied the EO mapping system. It's clearly a successful and popular series, but there are no similar games that keep the mapping system but improve on the terribad (imo) character development.

And the kicker is that replicating Etrian Oddysey's mapping system on PC would be stupidly easy: we have a mouse. It would essentially be just a game with a much more basic version of grid cartographer.

EDIT: And you don't even need a mouse to use a mapping tool either, as zwanzig_zwoelf shows with the mapping in DG2.

...was going to link to a video he showed of his DG2 mapping tool but apparently it's not listed on his YT channel.

I thought you didn't like using a mouse Aweigh! Zwanzig - is there a way that one can do the mapping with control keys or something?

But on a serious note yes it is weird that no one has tried to copy it; I think the problem is that people think it is going to be unfun to do their own mapping. But then with the rise of things like "slow TV", "colouring books for adults" and the like, perhaps it is only a matter of time when major western developers try to give it another go?
 

zwanzig_zwoelf

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Zwanzig - is there a way that one can do the mapping with control keys or something?
You just move the cursor with arrow keys, press space to mark/unmark the tile as floor, shift+arrows to mark/unmark edges (to place walls/doors/whatever), shift+space to place tile content (landmines, objects, etc) and shift+c to add comments. Edges and tile content can be switched using Page Up/Page Down right now, but I'm planning to tweak the process and controls to make it less time-consuming.

How else were game designers suppose to sell you hintbooks if you could just automap where everything was.
I'm surprised nobody had the balls to release a hintbook DLC these days. Making casuals pay more so they get their 'easy and accessible' experience sounds like a good business strategy for niche games.
 

lefthandblack

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They sell bundles, they offer DRM-free versions with keys to other stores and part of the money goes to charity while they get a more modern catalog than GOG, being somewhere between GOG and Steam, honestly, because of the charity part, i didn't even consider that people would hate it or consider it worse than GOG!

Then again, Humble Bundle doesn't have that many payment options.

Do they take credit cards? Also, how does their DRM-free work, do you get an installer?
 

d1r

Busin 0 Wizardry Alternative Neo fanatic
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Man, i still wish Etrian Odyssey would get out of handheld systems and be ported to PC, seriously, we get ports of several other games like Mary Skelter but we don't get EO!?

EO should get rid of that fucking awful art style first.
 
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aweigh

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I just noticed that it says that "All DLC is included!".

I hope that means that it includes the expansion-pack campaign that was never localized! It's doubtful though, the expansion campaign was sold as a seperate product, I think, though I'm not 100% sure.

EDIT: Seems like it was sold as DLC, with LoLS required for play, which means this will probably be included then!

maybebaby.png
 
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