Ishar trilogy

[Archaeon]

Uhu, are you Romanian by any chance?

 

[uhu]

It ruined many of my games as well. An jin/jang symbol in character data, right?

Ruined your games? What do you mean?

Right, it's a jing/jang symbol. But in Ishar 2 there are cursed places (for example the mountain island), where you can heal your charakter(s) with the special potion for that.

 

[uhu]

Uhu, are you Romanian by any chance?

No, but not far - from Hungary.

Why?

 

[uhu]

I'd rather check out the other Silmarils games like Transarctica and Storm Master instead of Ishar.
Well, they are not RPGs but are the best games that studio came up with.

I will also try Transarctica. Looks promising.
Metal Mutant seemed on the first look like a primitive action game, but now, when I saw on youtube a complete walktrough, my opinion changed well! (Altrough I didn't want to play with it.)
I respect your opinion with Ishar and other Silmarils games, but you must know, that the Ishar series were the games, which were the most succesful product, the 'big jump' for Silmarils, and they were, which brought the fame for Silmarils (that's not my opinion, that's fact).

 

[Archaeon]

I asked because you made some grammar mistakes Romanians usually do in english. I guess hungarian is closely related...

 

[black.dragon.god]

omigosh... I can't believe it!! How long has it been since the first time I played this game?
Well, I'm now playing it again and it seems like I forgot most of the spells (except some that are like... fire protection spell, physical protection spell, and healing ).
By the way guys, what was the picture of the spell that can remove inversion curse? My guys are currently inverted... and I remembered that a long time ago I wasn't afraid of getting inverted by evil magicians... (or by some cursed place)

 

[uhu]

omigosh... I can't believe it!! How long has it been since the first time I played this game?
Well, I'm now playing it again and it seems like I forgot most of the spells (except some that are like... fire protection spell, physical protection spell, and healing ).
By the way guys, what was the picture of the spell that can remove inversion curse? My guys are currently inverted... and I remembered that a long time ago I wasn't afraid of getting inverted by evil magicians... (or by some cursed place)

Hello,

nice to see an another Ishar fan! I recommend you to download the manual pdf-s: there are all spells+symbols in.
Which episode do you play? If the first, and if you see a jing-jang symbol on the character sheet, than your charakter is inverted - if he is a magic user, ignore it. If he is a warrior, than you must hire Obarmon, the only Cleric in the game, and teach him the Inversion spell. Another way is to don't let your character inverted: teach a magician for mental protection, and before your warriors will be inverted, make on them mental protections.
If you play the sacond episode, than there are cursed lands, you must there uncurse the characters with a scolar (which is the same as the cleric).

I hope, this helps.
...and I recommend to wait for my super-Ishar 1 walkthrough!
I allready wrote it, I must only draw a map, and translate the text to english.

 

[black.dragon.god]

Thanks, but I've managed to undo the stuff...
By the way, it seems like my characters were inversed and I used "inverse" spell to return them back to normal. I've tried many other healing spells but nothing worked...
I'm playing the second episode, messenger of doom, and I've got something to tell you...
A while ago, I accidentaly found a hilarious bug, that is... you can clone items (limited to food, reagents like mushrooms, potions,and arrows. You just have to use a bow, and a character without corresponding item.
For example, I wanted to clone a food while I have two people party.. For example... Zubaran and Karorn. I had Zurbaran put the bow on his hand (notice that the other hand is coloured black) and put one portion of food to the black area on the other hand. Notice that the food in his inventory will stay the same and the food that you put into the "black" area was 0. Then, you just give the 0 food to someone who didn't have any food in his inventory.. and that person will have 1 food.
That is why... I only bought food and arrows once throughout my game.. This way, you'll admit that archers can be the best class in this game!! Because their arrows are free!!

 

[uhu]

The walkthrough for Ishar 1 - Legend of the fortress:
http://wiki.amigaspirit.hu/index.php/ISHAR_Walkthrough_(english)
+ extra note: you can pull out Jarel's magic sword at Baldaron, that the overall strenght of your party is at least 62.

 

[uhu]

How about to create a remake of this trilogy?
With keeping the wonderful graphics and sound, but making a better, turn-based combat system, more story and NPC conversations and maybe a better character improvement system?

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

I'm for good remake, it is excellent idea. Ishar was one of the finest crpgs in their time. Especially on Amiga.

 

[uhu]

I'm for good remake, it is excellent idea. Ishar was one of the finest crpgs in their time. Especially on Amiga.

True, Ishar had many flaws and the combat system was really a low quality but still: it had such a great graphics and sound environment, that it made an atmosphere to not forget... I see the graphics even today one of the best from the 90's! When you play it on a large CRT TV, there are no pixels so the visuals are even better.

 

[Lilura]

I'm for good remake, it is excellent idea. Ishar was one of the finest crpgs in their time. Especially on Amiga.

Yes, the game is beautiful on the Amiga. If not played on original hardware, I suggest WinUAE with WHDLoad install.

You can apply filters within WinUAE to simulate "no pixel" of CRT monitor. But yes, nothing beats original hardware.

 

[uhu]

About the remake. I'm a creative person with no programming knowledge. So, the game design part would be an easy task for me. Graphics and sound could be extracted from the game and reworked. Maybe the animations could be also extracted. But somebody has to program it.

Remake structure:
1., Game design - can be done (by me)
2., Graphics - can be done (easy to extract)
3., Sound - can be done (easy to extract?)
4., Animations - can be done (easy to extract)
5., Programming - *programmer needed*

Although I guess the programming part would be not a hard job as Ishar is not a very complex game.

 

[uhu]

Yes, the game is beautiful on the Amiga. If not played on original hardware, I suggest WinUAE with WHDLoad install.

There is a great Polish team, named The Company who makes WinUAE games packed and ready for run. So it is also for the Ishar trilogy (+ Crystals of Arborea)
http://thecompany.pl/game/search/I

You can apply filters within WinUAE to simulate "no pixel" of CRT monitor. But yes, nothing beats original hardware.

What filters do you set for that?

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Yeah i know The Company well as im Polish myself They did a great job making Amiga classics playable on modern PC with just one click on icon , no setup or tunning like DosBox, just click and play .

 

[Lilura]

Thanks for the link, but I have WinUAE setup with Workbench 3.1 on a hardfile with many games manually installed by me using WHDLoad. I love how fast WB installed from (original-imaged Commodore) ADFs using 800% floppy disk drive emulation. And now the games load instantly, with no cracktros (I guess that's good and bad) and custom tooltypes that let you save hi-scores and such. Amazing stuff.

I can't recall exact filter, there is a dropdown under Filter in WinUAE along with scanline setting and ratio. My father set this up and it looked just like the 1084s (?) monitor we had when we were kids.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Ishar had a pretty convincing Sword & Sorcery feel to it rather than standard High Fantasy and the art was great. The gameplay was absolute ass, though. Still, there were some fun moments to be had like robbing the bank. Wouldn't mind a remake with a less obscure character level system and improved combat.

 

[uhu]

Ishar had a pretty convincing Sword & Sorcery feel to it rather than standard High Fantasy and the art was great. The gameplay was absolute ass, though. Still, there were some fun moments to be had like robbing the bank. Wouldn't mind a remake with a less obscure character level system and improved combat.

I always wished to merge the complexity of Amberstar (what I could play on my Atari 1040 STE in that time) and the wonderful atmosphere of Ishar. Maybe it can be done now...

 

[uhu]

Combat screen:

 

[Scroo]

I tried this game a year ago or something. I wanted to like it since I really love blobbers but even after reading the manual I had no idea what I was doing. The game is confusing as hell. Maybe I will try it again with a walkthrough but that seems like cheating

 

[Elwro]

Is this the one in which you have to pay to save?

 

[Scroo]

Is this the one in which you have to pay to save?

yup

1000 gold pieces per save

 

[made]

Is this the one in which you have to pay to save?

Only in the first game, and the cost becomes negligible after a point.

 

[Sauroketh]

How about to create a remake of this trilogy?
With keeping the wonderful graphics and sound, but making a better, turn-based combat system, more story and NPC conversations and maybe a better character improvement system?

Sir Uhu,
As for me, Ishars are just fine as they are, although if they were turn-based, they would be tenfold better. Ishar was kind of MYST in RPGs for me. Where you know almost nothing, hints you get are highly laconic, and you have to guess and figure out everything yourself and, as a result, the feeling of exploration and discovery is at its maximum. There is no excess of monsters behind every corner like in King's Bounty Warriors of the North (so that fighting them you forget what you are actually after), enemies are no bombastic hoary cliches (this is a good style of most Silmarils products, their good taste!), there are no "elite decaying ravenous superzombies" for the developers would need to concoct more monster classes but had no better idea except for adding some stupid prefixes to their names, all this making Ishar an almost perfect FPV RPG. Except for real-time combat, of course. But there was a way around, - hitting ESC or entering a character's stats/inventory screen would give you a tactical pause to consider your move.

May I ask you, as an Ishar expert, a question (I know that ishar's 'specialty' is character's liking and disliking each other, voting for kicking out etc): IS THERE ANY WAY AROUND IF SOME PRECIOUS PARTY MEMBER DISAPPEARS WHILE YOU SLEEP?! I remember finding an astounding promising wizard Khalin in Elwingil, stronger than Zeloran and "diligent student", unlike him, AND... the psychiatrist says that everyone hates her, and she hates everybody, and after all spell education and stats upgrages she disappears with all (unique!) equipment at night.

I tried avoiding resting at inns and using potions of psychical regeneration in my spellcasters, but they JUST HAD NO BLOODY EFFECT !!! Maybe there is a typing error in manual and there is some TRUE recipe for that potion?!?

I would be grateful for advice.