Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[you know what time it is]

So i just finished wiz7, should i start wiz8 vanilla run or its better to get some mods right away (like that dodd the slayer or whatever) ?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Meh, I enjoy playing Wiz 8 unmodded.

 

[Themadcow]

Started on my 3rd run though Wiz 6 last night (last ones were some time ago) and the Mrs seemed somewhat confused as to why I was spending my 'allocated' 5 hours a week gaming time on something that looked like it could have run on a Spectrum, despite having justified my need for a $2000 gaming rig last summer.

Still as great as ever. Even spinning on the spot fighting reasonably tough random enemies is more fun than most of the RPG experiences I've had from 'this gen' RPG's.

 

[Lady_Error]

I wish more games would pick up the combat and character systems from Wizardry. We got enough Dungeon Master remakes, but so far only one Wizardry remake sort-of close to completion.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Does monk with crit strike build work in Wiz 8? I just finished the monastery plus a bit of the outside and so far he's been 100% useless. Should I replace him with smth else before it's too late. I am running a warrior + priest + mage + ranger + bard party. Thinking of building the priest tanky, mace and shield, bard for the songs and lock/traps.

crit based classes are pretty crappy. the crits don't start having a reliable impact in fights until the very late game, and while they're flashy and impressive looking once they come online, a straight warrior hurr durr bashing people does the same job slightly slower.

I actually think that Monk is the second best meele class after Rogue. But the staff build is a bit better than martial arts. Still, martial arts is p damn good as well with the number of attacks hitting ass and legs.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Goddamn right it is.
Rogue is awesome tho. Give me a rogue with Bloodlust and later the Black Sword, and I'll give you a backstabbing instant death machine.

 

[GlutenBurger]

So i just finished wiz7, should i start wiz8 vanilla run or its better to get some mods right away (like that dodd the slayer or whatever) ?

It's fun without mods, but I'd use the speed patch to accelerate the pointless tedium of spending the majority of your combat rounds with your thousandth trash mob watching each member individually move a third of the way to their attack range.

 

[Nael]

On my 100th play through of Wiz8 and I'm running into a problem I don't recall having... Anna L'am in Arnika seems to be losing all of her spellbooks. On a previous save she had all the spellbooks she is supposed to have but upon going out and leveling up and when I came back they are all gone. I have tried the trick of buying arrows from her and waiting 24 hours in game to recycle her inventory but it doesn't seem to work. All her non-equippable shop inventory seems to gradually just disappear and never comes back. Anyone else run into this?

 

[DraQ]

Black Sword

What sorcery is this?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Fang. It's ID'd as the blacksword before it's officially identified.

 

[DraQ]

Ah.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

I hate drawing maps on paper so I made a program to help me instead: Grid Cartographer. I've run it side by side with Wizardry 6 last night and it was far more fun and immersive when I didn't feel lost all the time, leaving notes for myself to come back to places later. Full disclosure: there is a paid pro version but I've tried the ensure the free edition has nearly all of the functionality you'd need.

I hope you find it useful, if there are any features I'm missing that would help then please let me know. Seeing these old games again, and the work I did fixing the audio in Wizardry 6, has securely hooked me back into this series - especially the sci-fi stuff which I really wish more 'fantasy' games like Grimrock would add.

 

[7hm]

I hate drawing maps on paper so I made a program to help me instead: Grid Cartographer. I've run it side by side with Wizardry 6 last night and it was far more fun and immersive when I didn't feel lost all the time, leaving notes for myself to come back to places later. Full disclosure: there is a paid pro version but I've tried the ensure the free edition has nearly all of the functionality you'd need.

I hope you find it useful, if there are any features I'm missing that would help then please let me know. Seeing these old games again, and the work I did fixing the audio in Wizardry 6, has securely hooked me back into this series - especially the sci-fi stuff which I really wish more 'fantasy' games like Grimrock would add.

This is great. Like, really, really great.

As a suggestion - could you allow for keyboard based control?

Selecting a square, which moves around with the arrows, and drawing the chosen line or tile with shift + direction for walls, and space to place the chosen marker.

 

[7hm]

How do you guys put up with the chinese water torture that is the popping that punctuates the start and end of every sound (Wiz 6)? Read it's an issue with ye olde
SB /Adlib /PC speaker shiz but there's no way to fix it?

Hidden Asbestos also seems to have a fix for that.

You may have heard that on Thursday GOG.com released classic RPG trilogy Wizardry 6, 7 and 8. Excellent I thought - I'll treat myself to some old school challenge that I'd not had the opportunity to try before. A few minutes later I was installing Wizardry 6 and ready to start my adventure.

Sadly I was almost immediately gripped with crippling ear-ache. It seems that DOSBox wasn't doing a great job of emulating the primitive early 90s PC speaker sounds. There was a very clear pop before and after each sound effect. It was very distracting and kind of ruined the experience of getting total party killed by gangs of rats and 'scallywags'.

Since I've worked with DOSBox before adding various patches to improve other aspects of the program I thought I'd have a go at improving things.

Fortunately it proved to be quite an easy fix. I used the built-in audio capture feature to record the output during a sound effect (An easy one was the 'ouch!' sound when you walk into a wall). Then loading the captured audio into Audacity - I was able to see the problem immediately.

Fix is on his website here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/blog/

Nice work! Buying your program shortly, both because at a quick glance it looks to be the best I've seen (the only real competition is the Dungeon Mapper program here: http://www.zerker.ca/zzone/2010/01/10/dungeon-mapper-0-1-alpha/ ) and because that Wizardry fix seems pretty cool. Seriously though, kb controls (the program I linked uses those).

Other notes after some fooling around with it:
Can you allow scrolling to larger map sizes? The default size is fine for some games, but will be an issue in others.
A cut / copy / paste feature to drag and drop selections would be very helpful, especially for games where you know the external map boundries are going to be the same across floors.
Set Empty Door Arch hotkey to 8 rather than no hotkey.

edit with more comments after I screwed around with it some more:
Can you add a "Black Space" floor tile? Might make for quicker mapping in games that use full tile walls.
More markers to add: fountains & monsters (for fixed encounters that aren't NPCs)
Can you allow "painting" of the default lines?

Sorry for being so demanding.

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Nice work! Buying your program shortly, both because at a quick glance it looks to be the best I've seen

Thanks!
I've just released update v1.0.3 with a bunch of new changes. The major ones are an option for single-click ground tile placing, a 'smart outline' block tile and a bunch of new ground marker types for Pro users. The full list of changes can be found here.

(the only real competition is the Dungeon Mapper program here: http://www.zerker.ca/zzone/2010/01/10/dungeon-mapper-0-1-alpha/ ) and because that Wizardry fix seems pretty cool. Seriously though, kb controls (the program I linked uses those).

I'll take a look at this other program and think about how to best integrate a keyboard accessible mode. It might take a little bit of work though


> Can you allow scrolling to larger map sizes? The default size is fine for some games, but will be an issue in others.

Not sure what you mean by this. The major grid line interval can be adjusted or turned off, are you suggesting more options here like 64 x 64 or ...?

> A cut / copy / paste feature to drag and drop selections would be very helpful, especially for games where you know the external map boundries are going to be the same across floors.

Yeah, that's on my list. Quite a big job to add that. I think it's probably necessary though - especially if you subtly off by a tile or so, could be annoying to redraw. As a stop-gap measure you can nudge the whole map in the Pro edition of v1.0.3.


> Set Empty Door Arch hotkey to 8 rather than no hotkey.
> More markers to add: fountains & monsters (for fixed encounters that aren't NPCs)

These are both added in v1.0.3

> Can you add a "Black Space" floor tile? Might make for quicker mapping in games that use full tile walls.

That's in v1.0.3 now too. I've added a new 'block' tile that you draw and it intelligently draws walls around the outer edge. This way you can draw Wolfenstein 3D style maps (although there's no way of doing the door tiles like you get in that game.). I also use it to fill in the solid parts of Wizardry 6 map which you can see in the first screenshot on the web site.

> Can you allow "painting" of the default lines?

Just hold shift and drag the mouse

Sorry for being so demanding.

No worries, I'm really glad for the feedback!

 

[7hm]

Not sure what you mean by this. The major grid line interval can be adjusted or turned off, are you suggesting more options here like 64 x 64 or ...?

I didn't realize you could hold RMB to move the focus. That's what I meant.

Anyway, nice work on 1.03. I'll play around with it some more and see if I think of anything else.

I think one thing that may help is a quick erase tool. Perhaps two - one for walls, and one for ground tiles.

The nudge feature is nice.

e: Bug found. When you create a new map, it seems to start off from the lowest basement floor of the previous map, rather than from G.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Also, does anyone know if there's a fan translation for Wiz 7 PSX? It looks so much prettier than DOS/Gold.

Combat screen is distracting as hell, though. My eyes are invariably drawn to Aletheides' blank stare of doom.

 

[mondblut]

Also, does anyone know if there's a fan translation for Wiz 7 PSX? It looks so much prettier than DOS/Gold.

Combat screen is distracting as hell, though. My eyes are invariably drawn to Aletheides' blank stare of doom.

And portraits. And interface. Why does any RPG touched by the japs immediately turn into filthy vile shit? Who the hell needs a separate combat screen in Wizardry? What's wrong with the monsters popping up where you actually encountered them?

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

Seriously though, kb controls (the program I linked uses those).

I've added that in the latest version (v1.0.8). Hope it's usable for you. Grab it here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

 

[LeJosh]

Welp, just bought Wizardry 6+7.

I've never played them before as they were released a year before I was even born, I've played a little of Wizardry 8 which is great.

I'll see how far I get with these, knowing me, I'll restart a trillion times trying out party compositions.

 

[7hm]

Seriously though, kb controls (the program I linked uses those).

I've added that in the latest version (v1.0.8). Hope it's usable for you. Grab it here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

Cool. CGA mode is awesome btw.

Is there a way to select default wall tiles once you've selected a different wall tile? You can use the regular mouse click to place walls, but you can't use ctrl+direction with the keyboard mode, it places whichever wall tile you have selected instead. Maybe make that a selectable option?

Also the erase walls option doesn't really work. There needs to be an easier way to just run the mouse over an area and erase walls. As it stands, you're just as likely to place the selected ground tile as do anything else.

I'm still working on finishing up MM6, which doesn't exactly benefit from a tool like this, but my next game is Dungeon Master - I'll work on getting some map images for that game for you. Saw you asking for some on the gog forum post.

 

[LeJosh]

Seriously though, kb controls (the program I linked uses those).

I've added that in the latest version (v1.0.8). Hope it's usable for you. Grab it here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

This is brilliant, I'll definitely use this for my first playthrough of Wizardry 6!

 

[Hidden Asbestos]

v1.0.9 has been released. Grab here: http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/

Cool. CGA mode is awesome btw.

heh, thanks - it's a bit of a gimmick that got out of hand. Good retro memories when I see it though

Is there a way to select default wall tiles once you've selected a different wall tile? You can use the regular mouse click to place walls, but you can't use ctrl+direction with the keyboard mode, it places whichever wall tile you have selected instead. Maybe make that a selectable option?

To place just a plain wall in keyboard mode use SHIFT+Direction. Also I found a bug in 1.0.8 that was stopping walls from being placed when the wall eraser was enabled though so that didn't help.

Also the erase walls option doesn't really work. There needs to be an easier way to just run the mouse over an area and erase walls. As it stands, you're just as likely to place the selected ground tile as do anything else.

Yeah I took another look at the eraser and I agree. So I re-wrote a lot of the code there and I think it's now a lot easier to use. You set one or both erasers and you can just brush away the walls and/or floors as you see fit now. Hope you like it.

I'm still working on finishing up MM6, which doesn't exactly benefit from a tool like this, but my next game is Dungeon Master - I'll work on getting some map images for that game for you. Saw you asking for some on the gog forum post.

That would be great thank you. I don't have that game so it'd be great if you can let me know of anything that would help with that game.

This is brilliant, I'll definitely use this for my first playthrough of Wizardry 6!

Thanks! Hope you like it

 

[mindx2]

Hidden Asbestos: maybe I'm dense but every time I place a door it's just a solid yellow line. I can't get it to place a regular door or locked door or secret door. I have the full version ($5) and I know it's probably a simple key command but...

 

[CappenVarra]

Hidden Asbestos: maybe I'm dense but every time I place a door it's just a solid yellow line. I can't get it to place a regular door or locked door or secret door. I have the full version ($5) and I know it's probably a simple key command but...

Clicking always places walls or tiles, you need Ctrl+click to place doors.

I don't use the keyboard mode so I don't know how it handles it (if that's what you need)...