Wizardry Wizardry Chronicles for Windows (PC) - Translation Project to English COMPLETE!!! V0.983b Released!!

[Shackleton]

FINISHED!

Well, the main game anyway. I know there's another few levels post game as I've still got 50 mobs to find and around the same amount of items. Not going to spoil anything regarding bosses or story, (although don't expect any emotional engagement or citizen kane of gaming!), but finishing party is spoiled below:

Spoiler

me, lvl 31 Samurai, started as Swordsman.

Spoiler

aweigh, lvl 32 knight. Started as soldier.

Spoiler

Courtier, lvl 22 Monarch. Started as Priest and changed quite late, hence the lower level. Monarch is the priest warrior class. Unlocked late on for me.

Spoiler

Scrooge, lvl 31 Ninja. Changed from Great Thief into ninja by virtue of class changing item found on Floor 12.

Spoiler

CrookedB, lvl 31 Philosopher. Started as our Thief but switched when I levelled up Scrooge into Great Thief.

and finally,

Spoiler

Skyway, another lvl 31 Philosopher. Started as Mage and never really got quite fast enough but had the most spells.

Apologies for not hotlinking names for chars but it's quite late here and I've not found a better way of doing it apart from dragging and dropping and really cba to do it now.

Don't know if I'd say it was a 'great' game, the dungeons were a bit lacking in POI's and much to do other than kill stuff and move on, but I certainly enjoyed the level of challenge and will do the post game. Too tired to go on too much now but will update with post game stuff if it's interesting.

Cheers again for the work everyone involved, you did a great job! Liked the Codex shout out in the credits!

 

[MrRichard999]

Congratulations! I also updated the patch to make it where the text on ignoring "non-violent" enemies is easily understandable.

 

[MrRichard999]

I guess I know so far the game is playable without many bugs! :D Now to play the extended portion of it!

 

[Shackleton]

Yes, it was rock solid, never had a single crash all the way through. As you mentioned when you released the patch, there was quite a lot of times when the story text was displayed in the dungeon that it 'ran into' itself at the bottom of the speech windows and made it hard to read, but I got the gist of what was going on.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the class names were sometimes different in the spell lists than they were in the class screen. I saw Mendicant described as Monk in the spell lists, Philosopher described as Sage, Samurai described as Warrior and Monarch described as Ruler.

 

[MrRichard999]

I never saw that! I'll have to fix that too.

 

[aweigh]

MrRichard999

...KASHINAAT blade?

dude

KA SHI NA TO

which, btw, simply means "congress" or "community". In Wizardry Empire the Kashinato was the sub-Terran "congress/community" of psuedo-Leaders which were mostly comprised of the "Master Blacksmiths" which forged the Muramasa blade.

AND ALSO, BTW, AND

the "Muramasa" blades are present in Wiz 5 (perhaps earlier, but definitely in 5) as well as the Blade Cuisinart so they're two different weapons.

OH AND

Empire 2 still "Cuisinart" mis-spelled. Yes, I know you did not change the item names and are simply using the stock English-translations that came w/ Empire 2 as provided by Starfish jap devs... surprise: they fucked up.

They mispelled a lot of shit. i.e. "SWORD OF CUISNART".

PERFECTION!!!111

ALSO

Don't know if you've fixed it yet but Empire 2 last version I played few months back had FRAME RODS instead of FLAME RODS. Google? Starfish? Either way man... come on...


<3

 

[newtmonkey]

Downloaded a copy of this (no way am I paying 10,000 fucking yen for a used copy). First pleasant surprise: uses MIDI music and sounds wonderful on Sound Canvas.

Love the 2D art in this game. Such vivid colors (look how that dragon and cape stands out on the title screen).

Another crawler on the list...

 

[matogl0396]

Fantastic news, (for me at least!). Got it working through use of Dxwnd!

Still no clue why is wouldn't display normally, but if anyone else has the same problem use Dxwnd and hook up the .exe to it to get textures displayed.

Thanks 3 years later.

 

[octavius]

Just installed this and it runs fine. Had to go down town and buy some CD-Rs, since after installing the program kept complaining about no CD. Was worried those ancient relices of a bygone era was long out of production. I could probably make a virtual CD, but then I'd have to download yet another program.

Anyway I miss a manual. I guess the original game came with a paper manual only?
Very little info to find on the net; this thread may actually be the most comprehensive source in English.

I gather the game is pretty hard, so more info about the races and character classes, and the game mechanics would have been helpful.

Does Int and Pie govern how many new spells you learn?
Is the only way to detect secret doors to bump into walls?
Did anyone ever find out about the class skill? And how many weapon skills are there? I saw mention of a class specializing in 2H weapons, for example.

Help me aweigh-san, you are my only hope.

Or should I just play it blind? After all I am a veteran blobberer.

 

[octavius]

Spent some time rerolling, and it seems there are seven classes you can start as, of which the Swordman (Barbarian type?) is a Soldier prestige class.
The sex of the characters seems to make no difference.

Here's the race stat ranges and the class stat reqs.
If you have any additional info, please post.

 

[Shackleton]

Or should I just play it blind? After all I am a veteran blobberer.

I would say this. It's what I did and it was one of my most enjoyable games in the last few years. Unfortunately for you, I appear to have forgotten almost everything about it in the intervening time so doubt I'll be of any help now. Reading my old posts in this thread will be about the limit of the help I can give.

 

[octavius]

Looks like HP at start is random, and you get no AC bonus even with 20 Dex and Speed. So it's hard to determine where the stat bonuses kick in, so I'll just have to assume it's like the old original Wizardries and that you only get bonuses for 16+ stats.

So I ended up with maxing out Int and Spd for the Mage, Pie and Vit for the Priest, Dex and Lck for the Thief and Vit for the rest, and this is my party after their first successful foray into the dungeons.

Feels very much like Wiz 1 so far, only with more exotic names for the races.
Had to use Dxwnd to be able to play in a window, which makes it slower and menus not highlighting properly, but it's a minor inconvenience in order to use Grid Cartographer for mapping. Auto-mapping is so lame, and hand made maps have kind of lost their charm.

 

[octavius]

Yeah, this is definitely a worthy wizardry clone. The first floor of the first (and maybe only, judging from the bizarre story setup?) dungeon has one way doors that trap you in an unknown section of the floor and at least one teleporter that dumps you far away from the exit.

I panicked at first when this happened, but I said to myself "Calm down, octavius, you are a master blobberer, you can get your party out of this in once piece if you keep your wits about you and don't panic". Since my guys were still lvl 1 and I had already used some spells, the main priority was avoiding combat. So by avoiding entering any doors, and just following the main corridor I finally found myself on familiar ground again and sighed in relief. Quite intense for a while, especially when there's no Dumapic spell to tell your location. But at least you have a compass.

I've had no deaths yet and not reloaded once, so I'm tempted to go for Iron Man.
Not sure what happens if the whole party dies though? Can you send a new party to resurrect them?

Comparing this game with Gaiden IV, I think this one is much closer to Wiz 1, while G IV is more Japanese. WC is better balanced, while G IV has more interesting non-combat encounters. At least that's my impression so far.

But one thing puzzles me. How did the translators come up with names like "Mirelli" and "Wallback"? They don't really mean anything in English, and with the Japanese not having the letter "L" it can't be a phonetic translation either. What gives?

 

[AArmanFV]

I don't know the details of this translation but If I remember correctly there's a fan-translation of one of the japanese Wizardries that changed the "Woodhead Names" of the spells to a more "intuitive" ones, maybe with chronicles they did the same, I don't know. If someone have scans of the manual or screenshots of the original name it would be easier to know (the spells will be probably in katakana if the original game was like that).

For the "L" in japanese to english is always guessing, Wallback could have been Warubakku/Woorubakku, or whatever.

 

[octavius]

Completed the first level with no reloads and I think only one (temporary) character death.
Things got quite a bit hairier on level 2, though. Those Crooked Bees are nasty with their paralyzing attack and calls for help. I actually had to Escape from some battles, something I never do if playing normal (then I take my chances and reload if party death).
My Thief is now Ashes, and with low VIT she will probably not survive the second Resurrection attempt when I get enough gold. EDIT: She survived.

I maxed out INT for my Mage and PIE for my Priest, but still they didn't get any lvl 2 spells at lvl 3. I really need Cure Poison and Cure Paralyzise.

Looks like the first level was about on par with Wiz 1 difficulty wise, but on the second level Chronicle is harder. So I will probably have to give up Iron Man'ing unless I want to grind a lot (I don't).

Also, it looks like a Panda is the equivalent of Murphy's Ghost. Wonder what's the story behind that?

 

[octavius]

The stats are working in mysterious ways...

Pie and Int does not seem to increase chances of getting new spells when leveling up. My Mage with Int 18 is now lvl 5 and is still stuck with two lvl 1 spells. EDIT: same with my Priest.
My Soldier with 18 20 Vit got 3 HP when when reaching lvl 5, for a grand total of only 30.

What does work as it should is extra damage for high Str and initative for Spd.

 

[octavius]

The shit very nearly hit the fan when I entered the third level, and in the first room was teleported (how rude!) to a different part of the dungeon, and then had to run the gauntlet of five or six battles with new enemies. And then hoping to find the stair again with by Bard down, and my two frontliners with less than 10 HP combined left, and my Mage with only 3 Sleep spells left.
But I prevailed, and I still haven't had to reload, but I had to swallow my pride and do lots of running away.

On the bright side my spell casters finally learnt a lvl 2 spell, when reaching lvl 7. But not excactly the most useful spells.
My Soldier with 18 20 VIT keeps getting 3 HP when leveling up.
So all in all this game lacks that good blobbery feeling of your party getting more powerful as they level up. My Soldier still has only 1 APR, for example.

 

[octavius]

Got my first promotion, and my Thief is now a Great Thief, but all stats reverted to the base ones for the race, except Luck is at 18.
So it seems it may be an idea to go for even stats, since there doesn't seem to be any useful bonuses except extra damage for Str and initiatve for Spd (and maybe VIT for resurrection?), and you'll waste much less XP if you change class at lvl 5 than at lvl 9, for example.

But at least now the Thief is more useful in combat. Very rarely did any damage with a Short Bow, but armed with shield, Chain +1 and a Rapier she does decent damage even at lvl 1, and with much lower stats.

Still haven't found a single item worth bragging about. No useful armour, shield or bow, only a few marginally better weapons.
So overall a rather grindy and slow game where you advance very slowly, so my enthusiasm has waned a bit.

 

[Grauken]

Got my first promotion, and my Thief is now a Great Thief, but all stats reverted to the base ones for the race, except Luck is at 18.
So it seems it may be an idea to go for even stats, since there doesn't seem to be any useful bonuses except extra damage for Str and initiatve for Spd (and maybe VIT for resurrection?), and you'll waste much less XP if you change class at lvl 5 than at lvl 9, for example.

But at least now the Thief is more useful in combat. Very rarely did any damage with a Short Bow, but armed with shield, Chain +1 and a Rapier she does decent damage even at lvl 1, and with much lower stats.

Still haven't found a single item worth bragging about. No useful armour, shield or bow, only a few marginally better weapons.
So overall a rather grindy and slow game where you advance very slowly, so my enthusiasm has waned a bit.

What you are saying is the game is grinding you down

 

[octavius]

I think it grinded aweigh down so much that now he spends his time in the Shoutbox instead.

 

[Grauken]

I think it grinded aweigh down so much that now he spends his time in the Shoutbox instead.

Shoutbox is the end state for many a codexer

 

[octavius]

Finally encountered a Boss; a Poison Dragon in the most evil part of the dungeon so far (lvl 5 area with spinners, darkness and pits), and after the first breathage the party ran like frightened little sera girls (but we will be back with many scrolls).

This game is rather too tedious and grindy for me to play it Ironman or totally without the auto-map, but I've avoided party deaths so far, and only reloaded when resurrections fail.

EDIT: Hmm...I couldn't reproduce that encounter. Wonder what I missed, of anything?

 

[octavius]

This game was starting to piss me off, with every magic weapon and armour except a few +1 ones being Cursed, but down on lvl 6 things finally picked up, with the best loot being a Mage's Bane Sword for my Greater Thief making her the second best fighter after my Soldier who is now a Knight (still only 1 APR, but can now cast Mage spells).

The Archer and Bard are the weak links now, and I hope I may be able to promote them soon. The Bard's Sleep spell is getting less and less effective. And making a Wallbach Archer was not a good idea. He has max STR which is wasted on him.
And hopefully I will be able to promote my Cleric and Mage (now lvl 12) to their advanced classes too.

The Poison Dragon turned out to be a regular monster, only extra large and thus apparantly taking up a whole enemy group slot.

 

[Empary]

Do you guys have any setup for DxWnd? Dungeon isnt rendering for me, only blackness

 

[Shackleton]

Do you guys have any setup for DxWnd? Dungeon isnt rendering for me, only blackness

Just for you, I dug out my old laptop from the loft and found the old pic of my DxWnd setup. Bear in mind this was 4 years ago, but these were the only 2 tabs I changed and the rest was default. Make sure to run as admin ofc.