Wizardry Wizards & Warriors running (near) perfectly on modern OSs

[Invictus]

Thanks for the info!
I remember trying this game out but the technical issues were too much for my laptop (which ran Wizardry 8 without issues)
Now that my love for blobbers is rekindled I think I might give this another try, I bought just the disks and jewelcase dirty cheap back in the 2000s so it should be here somewhere
Too bad Bradley didnt get into the Kickstarter craze when it was feasible, would love to see what kind of game he could come up with nowadays

 

[Iznaliu]

If that's all you got, that's a pretty cheap shot. If not, I'd be curious to know what the fuck you're talking about.

It was a shitty joke. You are taking it too seriously.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Well then, I guess I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry.

 

[Baron Dupek]

It's always good day to die being slaughtered by Amazoni Mantrap.
These prestige classes would be good if not for the fact that two of them are avaliable after cleaning 3/4 of final dungeon. It's like these cases when they give you best weapon at the end of the game.

For some reason I managed to avoid Ogre Caves(?) where all your team is morphed into ogres and final part of this dungeon put you in the cage with not one but TWO Amazoni Mantraps.

 

[V_K]

For some reason I managed to avoid Ogre Caves(?)

Boogre. It's essentially an optional dungeon, as there are other ways to get into the dwarven mines.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Awesome, thanks for this, Great Deceiver. I had problems trying to run this with any other existing methods so I'll give this one a try.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I just finished the Snake Temple but there's a pretty nasty bug there that I didn't remember or didn't encounter before - when you're supposed to get the last statuette (if I remember correctly it's the snake statue), after the metal grating floors that you swim underwater and kill the poo monster in the passage, I couldn't get through. Spent an hour trying to reload and try different methods, moving backwards, trying to reach different angles, but no deal - party drowns every time and can't get through the passage. That blows. It doesn't completely break the game but that means you can't use all the statues in the library to figure out the riddle, you have to remember how to answer the spirit questions at the end of the dungeon, or check a guide.

Still, having a lot of fun. This game is as good as I remember.

 

[Lonely Vazdru]

Thanks for brofisting my post in my let's play, you can totally use the screenshot I took of the book in that very post, if you didn't already (that would explain the brofist). The answers are there.

 

[Lady_Error]

I still have the box from when it came out, but I gave up after about 20-30 hours - the story is generic and uninspired, the towns are just avi's which is huge decline, then there are some jump'n run puzzles with stacking boxes - felt out of a place in a game like that. It's still miles better than DL of course, at least you have TB combat and a pretty good character system.

Too bad Bradley didnt get into the Kickstarter craze when it was feasible, would love to see what kind of game he could come up with nowadays

I even wrote to Heuristic Park suggesting just that. Though I suppose he is too far gone and thinks DL was actually a "progress" over Wizardry 7.

 

[Grauken]

I wonder if he's doing normal software development outside of the game industry now or works on mobile games under a pseudonym, all the millions he made with DL have to be used up by now. On the other side, the few glimpses we got from him over the years pain him as a bit, hm..., I go with weird. Actually, he probably lives in a card box now creating design documents in his head for games that will never see the light of day

 

[Great Deceiver]

I still have the box from when it came out, but I gave up after about 20-30 hours - the story is generic and uninspired, the towns are just avi's which is huge decline, then there are some jump'n run puzzles with stacking boxes - felt out of a place in a game like that. It's still miles better than DL of course, at least you have TB combat and a pretty good character system.

The static towns felt like a downgrade after Wiz 6/7, especially given that Bradley himself said in interviews at the time that he wanted to move away from that model and that the more dynamic stuff in the later Wizardries was a conscious design choice. Still, it's not a tragedy and the guilds are pretty interesting (if a little tedious due to all the dialogue).

I don't remember any action-based puzzles in the game - there were some very primitive physics in place (you can move boxes and crates, etc.) but it wasn't really developed. If you can get somewhere by stacking boxes there's probably an alternative, legit path that leads to the same place.

The character system is pretty great and very flexible (even though it's a lot easier to get the prestige classes than in Wizardry), and there are many skills that make each class unique. There is a lot of enemy variety in the game and the spells are all quite useful. The story is bland, yes, but not more so than in other games, generally speaking, and there's a great deal of sidequests in the game with very little handholding. You have to pay a reasonable amount of attention to understand what's going on and what you're supposed to do. Dungeons are awesome and much better than Wizardry 8's. In fact the entire game is a lot better than Wiz 8 except for the interface/sheen. The fact that it's been so hard to run it on modern systems really hurt the game's image and I feel a lot of people haven't played it because of that.

For all the flak it gets for being a buggy piece of shit (it's not, although there are indeed bugs that were never fixed), it's a reasonably inspired game with some good mechanics and a lot of content. It's not as good as the best Wizardries but perhaps it could have been, if iterated upon (like Wiz 6->7). Pity Activision is the one who holds the license.

As for what Bradley is doing now, who knows. I think the 'developing shitty mobile games under a pseudonym' is a pretty solid theory, though. Dung Lords rotted his brain, probably.

 

[Sacred82]

I just finished the Snake Temple but there's a pretty nasty bug there that I didn't remember or didn't encounter before - when you're supposed to get the last statuette (if I remember correctly it's the snake statue), after the metal grating floors that you swim underwater and kill the poo monster in the passage, I couldn't get through. Spent an hour trying to reload and try different methods, moving backwards, trying to reach different angles, but no deal - party drowns every time and can't get through the passage. That blows. It doesn't completely break the game but that means you can't use all the statues in the library to figure out the riddle, you have to remember how to answer the spirit questions at the end of the dungeon, or check a guide.

Still, having a lot of fun. This game is as good as I remember.

nop, that's a known problem for which there supposedly is a fix. That fix didn't work for me back in the day IIRC. I just had to reload and try it over and over again.

 

[V_K]

If you can get somewhere by stacking boxes there's probably an alternative, legit path that leads to the same place.

I think you had to do that to get over the castle wall. But calling it "run and jump puzzle" is a bit (a lot) of a stretch, there's about as much platforming involved as with similar puzzles in Ultima 7.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Hmm, bitdefender is detecting a false positive in the Directx dlls

 

[cvv]

As for what Bradley is doing now, who knows. I think the 'developing shitty mobile games under a pseudonym' is a pretty solid theory, though. Dung Lords rotted his brain, probably.

Have you played and/or finished Dung Lords? Or anyone ITT?

I bought the game not long after launch, played a bit but the bugginess was out of bounds. I put it on hold, waited for a patch, then some new version came, tired that too, too buggy again. I've pretty much given up on the game since then. Is there anyone who can post a reliable sitrep about it? I know there've been a couple of new version and some patches, is it finally worth playing?

 

[Lady_Error]

I tried DL for about 5 minutes until I saw the real-time combat. I mean, it's similar to Witcher/Skyrim but I cannot stomach that either.

 

[Grauken]

Did any of you play Bradley's Cybermage back in the day. I have fond memories, as it tried to infuse a FPS with some RPG elements and it worked nicely, and the story was quite bonkers in a ridiculous way, but I don't think how it could have aged well since it came out.

 

[Nerevar]

I'll wait for the GOG release.

 

[Grauken]

Yeah, it would fit GOG well and it's quite easy to set up in Dosbox, but I think GOG doesn't care for oldies that much anymore, too much work for too little doritos

 

[TheGameSquid]

Installed this on my Windows 10 machine a few weeks back, but surprisingly I didn't run into any real problems. I can use the D3D rendered just fine without the black spots etc, and I didn't even need to use the town .avi fix.

IT JUST WORKS

(This thread is definitely going in my favorites though, just in case. dgVoodoo2 is awesome)

 

[Iznaliu]

I wonder if he's doing normal software development outside of the game industry now or works on mobile games under a pseudonym, all the millions he made with DL have to be used up by now

Some people can get away with living low-key.

 

[Grauken]

He's depriving us of the chance to experience his personality 24/7 with all its quirks

At least we have Cleve

 

[Zandig Slaytanic]

Installed this on my Windows 10 machine a few weeks back, but surprisingly I didn't run into any real problems. I can use the D3D rendered just fine without the black spots etc, and I didn't even need to use the town .avi fix.

IT JUST WORKS

(This thread is definitely going in my favorites though, just in case. dgVoodoo2 is awesome)

Do you have the Windows 10 Creator's Update?
It used to work well on Windows 10 before that update, but after you had to make some changes in Windows settings to get it to run again.

 

[JarlFrank]

Stickied because of relevance.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Got the wrapper to work, runs very nice now.

So many memories coming back to me. Goofy NPCs yammer forever.

-Characters seem to get 1-3 stat points on level up. Anything affect this, or is it purely random?

-Do skills go up through use? It seems like they do, but I'm not sure.

-Wondering what the best paths are for abusing the class-changing and getting OP characters...