Wizardry The Wizardry Series Thread

[aweigh]

Codex thread about crawler maps made by hand:
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/dungeon-map-porn.108331/

Here's a pic of one of my Wizardry EMPIRE 2: Legacy of the PRINCESS maps, hehe:

oops, that is my first draft of when i first played Wiz 5, obv. of 1st floor.

 

[aweigh]

who the fuck said you need graph paper? I draw the way I feel, chaotic good :>

 

[Sigourn]

I disagree with the notion that the implementation of an auto map system, apparently of any sort (you did not specify), would somehow "break" the enjoyment of a dungeon crawler.

I didn't mean to imply that any form of automapping is bad. Only that having it from the get go is a bad thing, e.g. imagine if you started playing Proving Grounds and as you walk around the map is being mapped. Not very fun.

 

[aweigh]

as long as you can't access it as many times as you want, and the access to it is something that is at the beginning extremely useful/rare/should be conserved -> 4 floors down you'lre accessing it every 10 steps.... no, i see no problem with having the map draw itself out for you from the very game start.

i'd rather have this, specifically as an OPTION, than to have no auto mapping at all. In fact I would venture to say that AUTO MAPPING and how it is implemented in the crawler game (the degree to which the feature is intrinsically linked with most of the major mechanical facets fo the game) is not only a useful and convenient game feature but it is now also an important addition to the genre which contributes organically to the atavistic delight of managing all the resources possible available to the player (spells, hit points, potions... maps left...).

but yes, obviously i do agree if the auto map were there always and had no draw backs, and fuck it, to top it off it label over every important tile, sure, of fucking course it wouldn't be fun. playing with such a feature on would literally not playing the game at all.

so i guess yeah, we agree.

 

[Covenant]

But how is drawing a series of lines playing the game?

For me, at least, the exploration part of RPGs is about going to places I haven't been before and balancing my exploration with the difficulties of returning to safe harbour. Uncovering new areas and seeing what they contain is exciting, certainly, but the mapping - the actual physical activity itself - is of no interest to me. It's busywork. Only an absolute retard can't make a usable map with graph paper or whatever. If you're all arty and want to make a fucking production of your maps, go for it, enjoy it, but for my part picking up a pencil/switching to Excel after every battle and returning to laboriously drawing out the corridor I've been walking down is monotony and holds no appeal.

Even the Etrian Odyssey games pissed me off in that regard. It does half the work for you by filling in the square where you walk, but you still have to fill in the lines of the walls yourselves. What's the point? Is the game testing as to whether I'm so incompetent that I can't fill in the walls and doors correctly? If you want to waste my time with something that requires no thought, you may as well add in a thing where I have to tap the A button 20 times every time I rest at an inn to simulate me forcing out my morning shit.

If there's a slab in the dungeon that says 'XXXX YYYY', what difference does it make if I'm the one noting that spot and inscription down on my paper map, by hand, or whether the game itself does it automatically? I just don't see what sort of 'fun' is lost, let alone how the former is basically 'not playing the game at all'. The challenge of the gameplay is in working out how 'XXXX YYYY' applies to some sort of puzzle or problem elsewhere in the dungeon, not in transcribing it to paper.

For me, games are a series of challenges meant to test a player's skill; primarily (in RPGs at least) their sense of tactics and strategy. Studying the dungeon layout until I can do it blindfolded isn't a test, as there's no realistic way to fail. It feels too similar to childhood homework done by rote. If I had the urge or discipline to revisit that activity I'd spend it doing something more profitable.

I'm nearing the end of Bane of the Cosmic Forge now, and the River Styx would have been a hell of a lot more tedious without the automap mod. Not more difficult - I can draw a map as well as the automap can, certainly. It'd have just taken up more time without providing any more entertainment.

 

[aweigh]

since that post is too ignorant for me to muster the energy to answer it genuinely, i wanna ask something real quick:

is there any way i can ge/tuse a "sharpening filter" such as the luma-sharpen option found in ReShade program?

I loathe all the baggage ReShade comes with but I really use the sharpening filter a lot because I like using supersampling and/or down-sampling, which creates blurriness in the image. I tried googling for "luma sharpening without reshade" but... bingo, like 5 pages deep and all the links were about reshade

any help is appreciated.

now regarding the post above, i believe Mr Covenant is confused about what exactly "doing things" can "mean", i even fear he may not fully understand what "decisions" are... the only cure for him is time, unfortunately. I know of no earthly way with which one could sway a patient such as him so far gone he no longer fully understands "stuff".

he's bothered by "stuff" and "things" all the time, apparently by reading his post, but there is hope! it appears he is beginning to question "why" a "this" does not mean the same as the "that", and so on. That is the first step for the developing mind.

seriously though what the fuck are you going on about? are you saying that you don't understand the difference between things done for different and specific reasons? Ok, gotcha.

If there's a slab in the dungeon that says 'XXXX YYYY', what difference does it make if I'm the one noting that spot and inscription down on my paper map, by hand, or whether the game itself does it automatically?

i wonder... what could it... be.... *URUGURUGH* THINKING HARD!!1

 

[mushaden]

Actually, come to think of it, the main reason I stopped playing Wizardry 6 was because none of the levers and switches were visible. Maybe someday I'll have the patience to search next to every locked gate for a switch.

 

[Covenant]

Deciphering that patronising drivel really wasn't worth the effort. Look, if you genuinely find transcribing something from a screen to paper (or Excel, whatever) to be stimulating and exciting, I don't know what to say to you. To each their own I suppose.

If you enjoy the mindlessness of the activity or you feel it helps you get more immersed into the game, sure, that's as legitimate as any other reason to like a game. But to pretend that auto-mapping is 'not playing the game at all' is some pretty inane bullshit.

For me, my favourite part of say, Wiz 5 - aside from a few close calls in combat - was working out that

Spoiler

the description of the Loon's watch (related to the player by the thief NPC) corresponded with what buttons you had to press on the machine to reach the Loon himself. Gold, Brass, Quartz, and Silicon (for the glass - a nice extra layer of obfuscation). Not the hardest puzzle in the world, but a nice little head-scratcher for one of the easier games in the series.

If you're equating that - actual gameplay and puzzle solving - to 'Hmm, this corridor is five squares long - time to draw a five square long corridor on my map. Oh yeah, watch me draw that shit! Great job by me!', then I can recommend some other titles you might find to be a suitable challenge. Try starting with Putt-Putt Saves the Zoo.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Actually, come to think of it, the main reason I stopped playing Wizardry 6 was because none of the levers and switches were visible. Maybe someday I'll have the patience to search next to every locked gate for a switch.

Yeah, Bradley even had the gall to say "games took place more in the mind back then" when both Ultima 6 and Might and Magic 3 had visible fucking levers, not to mention different tile-sets that actually *gasp* looked like what they're described as being.

 

[octavius]

If you're equating that - actual gameplay and puzzle solving - to 'Hmm, this corridor is five squares long - time to draw a five square long corridor on my map.

That's what you have automaps for.
But for corridors with anti-magic zones, darkness, spinners, illusionary walls, one way doors and other things put there to make finding your way as hard as possible drawing your own map can be useful, and a fun challenge in itself.

 

[Covenant]

If you're equating that - actual gameplay and puzzle solving - to 'Hmm, this corridor is five squares long - time to draw a five square long corridor on my map.

That's what you have automaps for.
But for corridors with anti-magic zones, darkness, spinners, illusionary walls, one way doors and other things put there to make finding your way as hard as possible drawing your own map can be useful, and a fun challenge in itself.

A good point (with spinners and illusionary walls at least; I'd say some of the others are more tactical dangers than ones relating to cartography, and darkness is boring unless also combined with other traps providing the player with dangers if they go crashing around). It's not my preferred sort of challenge, but it does at least justify itself. Though the frequency of those kind of obstacles seems to have dropped off in more recent years, and I've seen too many games without any of that kind of thing but still with no automap.

Whichever system a developer chooses, automap or not, they should think carefully and use it to its full effect. If you're not including teleporters and spinners and similar obstacles, include an automap and save your player what would be a menial job. Equally, if you are using those kind of traps, be careful that your automap doesn't completely negate them.

I'm always bemused when I'm playing a game with an innate compass and step on a spinner, particularly when it has an obvious visual effect. It literally takes me two keypresses at most to counter your dastardly trap, game developer. How much time did you spend coding those spinners and placing them, making the visual effect for them, etc? Probably barely any time at all but still, couldn't you have better used that time by making sure that more than four spells were actually worth using?

 

[aweigh]

Lady Error, and every single other person who has posted in this thread about Wiz 6 being better than 5 (and 4/3/2/1 by definition), I want to convey to all of you something from the heart.

Wiz 6, and 7 both are infinitely more obnoxious in their desire to confuse the player in illogical ways that do not stem from emergent game play.

I can't remember the number of times some dumb switch was barely visible in a wall in Wiz 6 or Wiz 7 and no amount of detect secrets wwas gonna find that shit.

And people like @Lady_Error who complain about Wiz 1-5, (Without having played them), continously uphold Wiz 6 and 7 as superior to the earlier scenarios because they are less obtuse.

Sigh, my intention isn't specifically to start a an argument again about this but there's a hurricane coming over and my power's gonna go out soon and I just read this shit and remembered how HORRIBLE Bradley was about placement of switches and that type of thing and about pits and chutes:

I have one thing to say to anybody who thinks 6 and 7 were in some way an "evolutionary step" (at least for the) reason of them being less "autist mapping combat engines!".

FUCK YOU. YOU KNOW SHIT AND EVERYONE WHO HASN'T PLAYED WIZ 3, 4, AND 5... YET GOES ON THIS FORUM AND POSITS THAT WIZ 6 AND 7 ARE SOMEHOW "MORE":

YOU ARE WRONG. Wiz 6 and 7 feature infinitely more unintelligent puzzles, and much more that falls into the realm of flat-out bad 'crawler design such as pixel-hunting for no logical reason for a switch except there's literally nothing else to do but that; and you know what? All of you filthy troglodytes sitting there feeling smug about your opinions concerning the design of the first 7 Wizardry scenarios? It is as dumb as Bradley's skill in guiding a player intelligently and coherently through a maze, which is to say: very dumb.

Unless you've played Wizardry scenarios 1 thru 5, or alternatively their various japanese continuations, you have only been playing the _actual_ "combat engine simulators" and have been missing out on legitimately good RPGs/dungeon crawlers, all because you, all of you ignorant, filthy people...

...is eat shit all day, baby, aaaalllll day, that is what people like the ones I'm referring to are like whjen they're not posting: they are eating shit for breakfast, they are eating shit for lunch, and shit for dinner. They know ALL ABOUT THAT SHIT, they know the lifestyle and they fucking love it.

They fucking love eating shit because they are too dumb to fucking know any better.

 

[aweigh]

Go fucking play Wiz 4 and 5 and Wiz Gaiden 4 and Wiz Gaiden 6 and Wiz Empire 2 and and Wiz Labyrinth of Lost Souls and go fucking play Wizardry: Asterisk the remake of Wiz 1 set in feudal japan with warlord Nobunaga taking the role of Werdna as he gets into freaky shit.

Fuck, go play Wiz: Chronicle the rarest of all Wiz games released by Microsoft in 2000 for japanese PCs hoping to sell in the RPG market. They failed, but the game is GREAT

GO FUCKING PLAY GOOD WIZARDRY GAMES AND STOP EATING SHIT! GODDAMN. EVERY FUCKING DAY ALL YOU PEOPLE DO IS EAT FUCKING SHIT.

 

[octavius]

I think you need to take a break from Wizardry now.

 

[aweigh]

Can't, i'm busy translating one of the jap ones. Helly finally sent me the the majority of the game script fully translated. It is part of the reason it angers me so much: the massive ignorance displayed by the posters throughout this thread who "would never deign" to play Wiz Empire 1 (specifically, in this case) because it is a jap-clone of out-dated Wizardry scenarios and thus is little more than a combat engine simulator where every 10 steps there is some sort of unimaginably hard to navigate maze of endless pits, chutes, and blah blah blah:

What they speak of, without even kowing it because they have not played the good Wiz games, is that Wiz 6 and 7 are by far much worse than ANY other Wiz scenario, western OR japanese, in its bad dungeons and bad areas and bad puzzles that have little logic and the too-many-to-recount ways in which Wiz 6 and Wiz 7 are filled to the brim with everything the decriers of Wiz 1-5 whine about and filled to the brim and to boot in extremely much more obnoxsious and tedious implementations of so-called "puzzles" and so-called "NPCs" (wow, so many rich NPCs...)

I mean, these people don't even realize Wiz 4 and Wiz 5 both feature MORE NPCs TO TALK WITH than Wiz 6 itself! Wiz 7 has more NPCs "running around" the completely useless over-large world area than W4 and W5, but in terms of actual dialog, meaningful characterization and legitimately well designed puzzles/quests tied to them: yup, AGAIN the winners are Wiz 4 and Wiz 5.

THEY FUCKING THINK BRADLEY INVENTED NPCS IN WIZARDRY. That is the level of depravity on display here...

 

[Trash Player]

I think you need to take a break from Wizardry Codex now.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

aweigh

I'm sure all those games are good but Wizards and Warriors has a BOAT.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Aaahhh Japan...

The noble dream : Edo

The sad reality : Japan

 

[Wayward Son]

Just stopped by to say that Wizardry V is great, probably the best Crawler I've ever played and maybe the best ever. First floor and it already felt more difficult than PGotML and felt less tedious (yes, even with mapping by hand included) than Wizardry VI. Seriously, I don't get all the hype surrounding Wizardry VI. It just feels boring to me. Wizardry V is so much better. I love it.

 

[Leitz]

It was a day like yesterday and the day before, when I met Jan-ette for the first time.

Some God or something sent me to this planet which is a ruined place full of war. He told me my contact group where the T'rang, slimey spider creatures. When I first entered their city, they told me right away not to betray them - and as of now I never did.

The Ratpeople ambushed me, I had to run. I killed two headed lions on the road. And then I saw her, struggling with some of my so called allied forces in a nearby field. Of course I didn't attack, the T'rang had just told me not to betray them. Why would I?
I guess 99 out of 100 had intervened. A blond, half naked girl on a flying thing being attacked by those slimey spider creatures. In a short - I didn't, not this day. What I learned in this castle was "don't trust the half naked women" (rather poison gas them, I guess).

And now, several weeks later, I'm in some serious shit; comes out she survived and is on my ass now, ambushing me every few steps, shooting at my men, killing many of them in the first rounds. Leaving me no chance but to hide, hide in dark places where she can't find me.


: Is it possible to get stuck because of your behaviour towards NPCs?

 

[Leitz]

Things were going downhill for me. Jan-ette had literary circled me on a save. Whenever I reloaded she appeared, giving me no chance to run away anymore; I contemplated game suicide and a restart - and then.....

I FUCKING DID IT! I killed Jan-ette...and it cost me only 3 points of Vitality.

 

[Dorateen]

I've always appreciated battle stats in computer role-playing games, especially how Wizardry tracked monster kills. Going through the old notebook where I recorded playing Crusaders of the Dark Savant, I found the end game numbers for our party:

Level 31 Rangerlord: 2,459 MKS
Level 23 Crusader: 2,219 MKS
Level 32 Grandfather-Ninja: 1,777 MKS
Level 31 Pontiff: 1,110 MKS
Level 34 Muse: 532 MKS
Level 34 Magus: 1,715 MKS

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Things were going downhill for me. Jan-ette had literary circled me on a save. Whenever I reloaded she appeared, giving me no chance to run away anymore; I contemplated game suicide and a restart - and then.....

I FUCKING DID IT! I killed Jan-ette...and it cost me only 3 points of Vitality.

I always wonder how she flies her car into a dungeon....

 

[YES!]

on

Hows it going? Did the hurricane fuck all your shit up or are you doing okay?

 

[Covenant]

Finished my Bane run. The quality takes a bit of a dip after the point of no return. Given how much schlepping was involved in that Caterpillar quest, it'd be nice if the reward was something beyond 'Meh, here's a slightly less retarded way to get out of jail I guess'. I mean, was there even a point to the Swamp area beyond that? I suppose it got me the Hammer+1.5, which is the best off-hand weapon for my Samurai that isn't a 1/500 drop, but it still seemed a wasted opportunity.

I'm perhaps judging it slightly harshly because of how annoying the Temple was. Perhaps I was underlevelled, but the whole thing of fighting a bunch of guys who still manage to kill half my party on the first turn with Death Wish despite me having cast full power Anti-magic on them got a bit tedious as I approached the sixteenth reload. Still, at least it's done.

I've imported my party to Wizardry 7, but it's seeming more old and busted than I recalled - I don't know if I'm misremembering from years ago when I last played it, but it seems so much slower in weird, arbitrary ways. Moving into a locked door, for example, stops me doing anything for the next full four seconds. Is that normal?

I ask because I'm beginning to suspect I've got a slightly borked copy. For one thing, the music doesn't work - by default it's set to 'None', yet if I change that to Soundblaster or anything else, the game exits and then refuses to work ('System Error: Unable to open Score!') until I replace the Scenario.HDR file with a backup. So who knows, maybe that's what's to blame for the other technical annoyances, like the slowness, or the fact that while Bane allowed a reasonable mixture of mouse and keyboard, Crusaders is seemingly insisting I use either one or the other near-entirely (why the hell would anyone remove the ability to use Enter to confirm a menu choice or as a quicker way to select Fight/Swing?).

I might take another crack at getting Gold to run on my PC, and thereby swap my issues for a bunch of different ones and anime portraits.

By the way, how the hell was anyone supposed to legitimately figure out to

Spoiler

say 'I love you'?