Incline Wizardry 8 Enhancements - A Call to Arms!

[townltu]

fairies are my favourites ...

... when it comes to the question which race schould be removed from the list in favour of rapax/umpi/trang or trynnie characters


Only the duty of neutrality keeps me from playing hefty jokes with them in the 1.2 update

 

[Major_Blackhart]

What?
You mean that in order to add a new race you have to take another away?
BLASPHEMZY!!!

 

[TigerKnee]

I rather take away Gnomes myself.

 

[DraQ]

All those races are implemented and usable as RPCs, why would it be necessary to disable the base ones?

 

[I_am_Ian]

Maybe it has to do with the character creation process?

My ideal Wizardry 9 would include all those extra races including androids who would be unable to use magic and the Rinjin as well. If Brenda Brathwaite would have just Kickstarted a Wizardry 8 successor I have no doubt it would have been funded easily.

 

[DraQ]

Maybe it has to do with the character creation process?

Maybe then it would be possible to swap out races dynamically in the list, if the list itself is limited (gah, who the fuck programs like that?)?

Anyway, I consider extra races rather pointless, because it simply makes no sense to have a Trynnie or Rapax in party when you arrive on Dominus. Umpani or "thing-rang" would be somewhat more sensible, but still not entirely so.

My ideal Wizardry 9 would include all those extra races including androids who would be unable to use magic and the Rinjin as well. If Brenda Brathwaite would have just Kickstarted a Wizardry 8 successor I have no doubt it would have been funded easily.

 

[townltu]

All those races are implemented and usable as RPCs, why would it be necessary to disable the base ones?

It may have been planned to integrate the 5 races as choice for players,
the string database contains description for them along with those you get on r-click for the classic Wiz8 races,
the existing limit is probably buried in the exe, like many other things,
and the editor does not offer the option to add an additional choice on character creation.

However there is a possible workaround with a savegame editor,
the editors capability to change a characters "race byte" is probably not enough to trigger an adjustment of races modifiers and preconditions in game
but the savegame editor also allows to export a character from any saved game to the roster,
this character comes with all race specific modfiers, you can you use him with adjusted attribs/skills/profession for a new game.
Confirmed to work for saxx, myles, madras, sparkle, sexus, vi, and rfs incl his "no magic" flag, they also keep their portraits,
and you can either assign one of the standard voice sets or replace one with the RPCs specific set.

That way we could create a set of new PCs which are based on the games RPCs,
no matter whether as standalone package or as part of a mod which are based on the games RPCs.


btw you can create a character specific "spcl_item" for those premade PCs (or any other)
it has some restrictions that provide a spcl behaviour in game, technically spoken it prevents the transfer to other PCs:
Create an item with desired modifiers which is equipable, equip it with the PC in game and save, in case export the character.
Edit the item usage type from "item" to "none" in CF item editor.
The item will keep its benefits/penalties for the character as long as it is equped, once unequipped it cant be equipped again



With a minimum of interpretaion of the guardia scenario,
it would imo make sense to have any of the other races availble,
the Higardi/Helazoid as a space traveling race, its not unthinkable they had specialists from their home planet on board their ships.
Or even some blind passengers in the cargo bay, from their last visit on lv-426

 

[I_am_Ian]

What exactly are the racial bonuses of those races?

 

[DraQ]

It would make more sense to be able to have Ratkin or Gorn in the party.

 

[I_am_Ian]

I forgot about Rattkin. They would be good too. What is Gorn?

 

[DraQ]

I forgot about Rattkin. They would be good too. What is Gorn?

They were orc-like dudes in Wiz7.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

First attempt at the lizard using vanilla portrait:

The color is still a bit off, as well as level of detail and shading/light direction.

And game data confirms that this is indeed a female face. Thought it was a guy. So it turns out that one of my latest parties included a reptilian tranny.


I'm not going to replace playable races. Moar equipment planned for extended content, as vanilla areas are already rather highly saturated with useful stuff.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

So, does each race have a specific race only weapon like the mook and Rapax have the Giant Sword?

 

[Kaucukovnik]

It seems that the latest Cosmic Forge update allows changing XP group of character classes. Hooray! Gotta check this out...


Major_Blackhart: Other race-specific weapons I can recall out of my head are Cane of Corpus and that elf-only bow.
EDIT: Yeah, the "Elven Bow".

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Also the Lizard's tooth (Lizardmen only)

 

[DraQ]

First attempt at the lizard using vanilla portrait:

The color is still a bit off, as well as level of detail and shading/light direction.

Flip the head for shading?

Other than that smooth out any facial details and remove those straps and it should be good.

Better than cow crossed with a malformed embryo in any case.

And game data confirms that this is indeed a female face. Thought it was a guy. So it turns out that one of my latest parties included a reptilian tranny.

They are just not very distinctive in Wizardry 8, even I couldn't tell them apart.

It seems that the latest Cosmic Forge update allows changing XP group of character classes. Hooray! Gotta check this out...


Major_Blackhart: Other race-specific weapons I can recall out of my head are Cane of Corpus and that elf-only bow.
EDIT: Yeah, the "Elven Bow".

I have always hated race specific equipment.

It's ok when it makes sense - for example faerie weapons and armour, or that big-ass sword only a mook could use, but otherwise it should be limited to a few lulzy items.
Faerie stuff does make sense from the PoV of both sense (like own set of musical instruments) and gameplay.

I would welcome seeing some more faerie compatible weapons, instruments, maybe moderate grade magical, race exclusive, "returning" arrow to help alleviate ammo issues for rangers, and maybe ability to cobble together some sort of hover-armour (as gadgeteer, gadgeteer fairy exclusive) to offset carry weight penalties.

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I think this is it...

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Close enough.

 

[I_am_Ian]

I was wondering if it was possible to randomize the location of placed items. Say you have 20 unique items you're placing in various areas. Each playthrough the item is in the same location every time. Is there any way to randomize which item shows up in each set location? Without duplicating unique items? This way players couldn't meta game and the game would feel different each time.

Items and locations could be separated into tiers so weaker items would be found in easier locations and powerful items in the tougher locations. Is it possible?

 

[Kaucukovnik]

I'd love random item distribution from different pools of items. With the limitation of 1 of each artifact-grade item per game. There is probably some way through the added lua scripting, but I'm not man enough to code it.

As I think about it - is there even a game that has such random placement of artifacts with said restriction? Either there are set locations for uber stuff (almost any RPG I can think of), or RNG spree with possible multiple artifacts (Might & Magic VI-VIII, Diablo).

 

[DraQ]

I see it working like this:

-create a number of potential drop sites for each of the artifacts
-each artifact has a corresponding global integer
-each drop site checks if this variable equals particular number, different for each dropsite, if it does, it spawns artifact
-at new game variables are initialized to random numbers within specified range

-several numbers per site may be used if you want more probability, range containing numbers not used by any of the sites may be used if you want some likelihood that the artifact will not drop at all.

 

[Black]

I don't know if this has been discussed, but is there a way to increase the draw distance?

 

[theSavant]

It would be cool if we could port the whole game to another game engine, somehow like the Morrowind Open Source projects. Of course the engine itself doesn't need to be an Open Source engine, just the source code of Wizardry could be open source.

Anyone interested in porting it to the Unity engine?

 

[Kaucukovnik]

Draw distance is adjustable per area, but the locations are not suited for it and you'd often see landscape or sea ending abruptly.


And I have never understood porting anything 1:1 to another engine. If you are going through so much work, why not make your own (strongly inspired) game? You may spend years to get to a "the game works 95% like original and now we can start adding and modifying shit" state.
There is still much space left in the Wiz8 engine. It can handle a lot higher polycount and texture resolution on current hardware. I was testing a ~200k poly map (vanilla are about 50k) and there was slight slowdown on an old ThinkPad with Radeon 9500. On desktop, no performance drop at all.
What would you want to achieve with Unity anyway? Bump maps on the low-poly objects? Fewer hardcoded brick walls? Is a total rewrite worth it? I see it as an overkill, especially in this particular case.

 

[Lukifell]

Hey,

New to RPGCodex, made an account just to join this thread.

I'm wondering if you could make some of the weaker spells a little more relevant. For example, Terror and Insanity are fairly similar so there's no reason for a Psionic to get both, really. Why not make Terror affect a cone? How about making Cure Light Condition affect the whole party or heal for a small amount (33% heal wounds)? It seems like such a waste for a support/caster to spend their precious round just removing one malady that a monster applied through an attack or AoE spell.

Other spells that might need a buff:
Itching Skin
Holy Water
Sonic Boom
Whirlwind (I think everyone agrees Priest is subpar)

Also in my opinion part of the problem with Purist vs Hybrid is that the game punishes you if you try to diversify, and nothing compares to the damage bonus and high stat point allocation that Fighter and Rogue bring.

Early game, Fighter/Rogue are better than all Hybrids, hands down. They're coming out of the gates with higher STR and DEX, boosting their melee skills, increasing their chances to hit, increasing their damage, giving them Power Strike earlier, and on top of all that -- giving them 100% bonus damage.

Middle game, Fighter/Rogue are swinging away while Hybrids are perhaps 33% as effective and fiddling around with meager spells.

Late game, sure, Hybrids start to "shine", but Fighter/Rogue are hitting for 100+ with each swing.

That's why the best all-around party is probably something like Fighter-Fighter-Fighter-Rogue-Bishop-Bishop. Have your front just line swing away with the Bishops nuking/supporting.