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Interview Matt Chat 262: Robert Woodhead on developing Wizardry, and leaving Wizardry

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Tags: Matt Barton; Robert J. Woodhead; Wizardry

The third and final episode of Matt Barton's interview with Robert Woodhead begins with Robert continuing with his retelling of various anecdotes from the development of the early Wizardry games. He talks about the technical challenges of developing Wizardry's window-based user interface, and about the series' then-notorious copy protection schemes (which he admits in retrospect were a waste of time, but still considers to have been an interesting challenge). At one point, Matt tries to ask him whether he doesn't regret sticking with the same codebase for all of his games, instead of remaking everything from scratch for every game the same way Richard Garriott did with Ultima, reasoning that it may have stifled the series' innovation. Sadly, Robert either misunderstands the question or chooses to avoid answering it, instead going off on a tangent about portability and localization.



In the end, Robert Woodhead remains above all an independent programmer, not a game design auteur. Matt mentions our own interview with him, where he claimed that he "wasn't proud" of Wizardry, and Robert reiterates that claim, explaining that in his view, Wizardry is not some work of genius, but just one step in the evolution of computer RPGs - a step that could have been taken by any number of people. The interview ends with him telling the story of how he passed the Wizardry torch to David Bradley and moved to Japan where he met his wife. He left the Wizardry chapter of his life behind him, and never touched any of the latter games in the series. He does admit that he would be willing to create a new computer game, if it was truly innovative and he was allowed to "do whatever he wants". That's Robert Woodhead, folks. :salute:
 

felipepepe

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FFS Matt, learn to make follow-up questions! Woodhead went to Japan to work on a prototype MMORPG back in the 80's, before even the original Neverwinter Nights. How the hell you don't ask him about that even after he mentions it?
 

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It seems to me that Andrew Greenberg, being the design guy, would have answers that are more interesting to an RPG fan. But it seems he's harder to catch for an interview.
 

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It seems to me that Andrew Greenberg, being the design guy, would have answers that are more interesting to an RPG fan. But it seems he's harder to catch for an interview.
Tell me about it... I e-mailed him and managed to get a reply and he even agreed with an interview. I sent him 5 shorts questions, without ever touching legal issues or any of that, yet he never replied again... :/
 
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He also did writing and design, not just coding.

I think the interview would go a lot better if he actually answered the questions Matt asked. He went off on a tangent for almost every question into personal or nerd stuff most people don't care about. Even the biggest programming nerd doesn't care much about technical difficulties from 30+ years ago.
 

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Typically modest brilliant developer.

Seen his code. This guy was amazing programmer and his code was lightyears ahead of the rest of mankind at the time.

Sirotek brothers did not deserve to crawl up on a high chair and kiss this guy's ass.

Attention to detail and unit testing regime for this code was out of this world.
 
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That trick to use the 1K text graphics RAM was pretty good.
According to the interview Robert Sirotek didnt mention the new windowed graphics, he probably couldn't appreciate it as he is a 'product' man.

I cant believe the C64 cable to the disc drive is THAT slow that data needs to be compressed to travel along it quickly??

Even back then cables were fast ways to send data. The ZX Spectrum could recieve an entire 48k game over a serial cable and have it running almost instantaneously.

I read some things about how when the original wizardry was developed on the Apple II, it was supposed to have used compression which back then wasn't as well known. I wonder if he read about compression in a magazine or just came up with it himself?
 

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Actually, I believe Sirotek did mention the windowed UI. When he talked about Wizardry 3, I think?
 

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Robert reiterates that (...) Wizardry is not some work of genius, but just one step in the evolution of computer RPGs - a step that could have been taken by any number of people. (...) He does admit that he would be willing to create a new computer game, if it was truly innovative and he was allowed to "do whatever he wants".
Full respect for the guy. Also for saying he would prefer to work on something interesting than be well-paid. :salute:

As for Agustín Cordes, maybe instead of blaming Kickstarter fatigue for apparent failure of his new project, he should first release the previous game he Kickstarted before asking for more money. AFAIK Scratches was not even that good of a game (although, not being a horror fan, I admit not playing it).
 

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Idea for a youtube channel : a guy interviews another guy for 20 minutes over beer, going through a beer industry specialist to another one. In the last segment of the show, he casually boots a RPG for thirty seconds and says it's great.
 

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