Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
What I can't get over is that the chance of stats decreasing is intentional, yet the programmers (DOS version at least) did not account for stats reaching 0, so instead of reaching 0 or stopping at 1 or even the character dropping dead, instead the stat goes to 31.
What I can't get over is that the chance of stats decreasing is intentional, yet the programmers (DOS version at least) did not account for stats reaching 0, so instead of reaching 0 or stopping at 1 or even the character dropping dead, instead the stat goes to 32.
If Vitality gets very low the character dies. It happened in my playthrough. Don't remember if they go straight to ashes or not. Also, somewhere in one of the other Wizardry threads I have a screenshot of a Thief (or Priest? I don't remember) with bugged out stats.
But I'm fairly certain all this only happens in the first game. I didn't actually get any level ups during the second scenario, but the third scenario at least doesn't seem to have these problems.
If Vitality gets very low the character dies. It happened in my playthrough. Don't remember if they go straight to ashes or not. Also, somewhere in one of the other Wizardry threads I have a screenshot of a Thief (or Priest? I don't remember) with bugged out stats.
The rate of stat gains and losses in the PC version is clearly different than the Apple II version. As an experiment, I booted up the PC version of the game and leveled up 6 characters to level 3. According to the formula for the Apple II version (http://www.zimlab.com/wizardry/walk/w123calc.htm), each statistic has a 75% chance of being modified. If it is modified, the change that it has of going up is 130 - your character's age as a percent. New characters in the DOS version are 14-16 years old which gives them about 86 or 87% chance of the statistic going up and 13-14% chance of it going down.
Out of the 12 level ups I did (two level ups per character), I had 54 stat changes out of 72 potential changes. That is literally 75% so that's exactly according to the formula. And of those 54 changes, 33 were stat increases and 21 of them were stat decreases. A whopping 39% of the time, the stat went down, compared to the 13-14% chance it should have according to the formula.
https://imgur.com/a/Efuf0Ox - This is a small sample size but does show that the stat increase/decrease numbers are way off of where they should be according to the Apple II formula.
You are right that this may have been intentional as the characters do start at younger ages (14-16 instead of 18), they also all uniformly start with 8 hp and there are probably some other differences between the two versions. It does seem like an odd change to make though. The formula on the Apple II version feels more correct to me.
It's 130 minus your characters age as a % of 130. So at 18 years old, it's 130 - 18 = 112. 112 is 86% of 130. So at age 18, you have an 86% chance of the stat going up and 14% chance of it going down if it hits that 75% chance to be modified.
At age 50 it's 130 - 50 = 80. 80 is is 62% of 130. 62% chance to be raised, 38% chance to go down.
The PC version has you losing stats somewhere in the 30% range right from the start. The stat loss % of the PC version for a fresh character is similar to the stat loss for a 50 year old character in the Apple version.
Plus, it takes 2 stat gains to get back to where you were if you had a stat loss instead of a stat gain. I.e. if your STR is 15 and you go down to 14, it takes 2 gains to get back to 16, which is where you would've been if you had the stat gain to begin with. And with the gain/loss ratio being nearly 2:1 and your characters only levelling up to the early teens in the game, your stats can easily plateau due to RNG. Re-rolling a million times during character creation to get those extra bonus points seems extra important in the PC version.
Maybe they nerfed stat gain in the PC port because stat gains were too high in the Apple II version. But if that's the case, they overreacted by making it too low in the PC port.
I'm curious about whether the change was made when they ported Wizardry over to the "windows UI" or was it done for the PC port. Wizardry 1 and 2 on the Apple 2 were done on the original engine with the tiny dungeon view in the left hand corner. Then starting with Wizardry 3 and for all the ports, they created the windows style UI where you get a full screen view of the dungeon and various text windows get overlaid on it. Monster graphics are improved too.
If it was done for all the Wizardry games in the newer engine, then Wizardry 3 for the Apple II should have the nerfed stat gains. I've tried to get that game to work on AppleWin but haven't figured it out cause you need to transfer characters using disk image files.
A major downside of the newer engine on the Apple II is that it's slower than the original. I've played bits of Wizardry IV and V on the Apple II emulator and it gets frustrating due to how long all the text and graphics takes to load. At least for Wizardry IV if you turn up the CPU speed on the emulator, it makes everything play faster but Trebor chases you down in real time so he shows up way too quickly and the game is basically unbeatable.
3 is probably easier with new characters since imported ones have their stats capped at 15, which is just under the bonus threshold. At least I found the start of 3 to be one of the hardest parts of 1-3, 5.
Wow. Im actually excited. I finally settled on PSX version of Wiz 1, but this makes me wanna wait. I like what Ive seen of Bards Tale remaster, only wish it had option to go back to that lovely pixel art. Here is to hoping they make something good.
I recently got my hands on a boxed copy of The Ultimate Wizardry Chronicles and decided to write a small guide on how to best experience it. This guide is 100% objective and disagreeing with me will just make you look stupid.
Setup:
1. Copy the "crt", "interpolation" and "xbr" folders from the shaders pack inside DOSBox directory
2. You may want to use a custom .conf file, if so, put in inside DOSBox directory, here's mine:
I like to play in 4x scale hence the 1280x800 resolution, and easymode is my crt shader of choice (it requires openglnb and no scaler). Delete the [dosbox] tab if you prefer the neon pink palette. I lower the cycles to 1000 to make the game speed more on par with the real hardware. Here's how it looks:
3. Create a shortcut to DOSBox including the path to the executable in the target field (and the configuration file optionally), example:
4. Run Where Are We and select the previously made shortcut to launch the game
Now, here's where it gets a little complicated. Where Are We is a fantastic tool which apart from being an automapper, displays information about your stats, equipment, monsters, spells and various game mechanics and that's what it should be used for.
Using automappers kills the sense of discovery and makes spells like Lomilwa (light) or Dumapic (coordinates) obsolete. The Maze is designed to challenge the map drawing skills of the player and its various teleporter and spinner traps become mere trivialities when the map is being drawn by the program. It's best to launch Where Are We only to check some info and draw the map yourself.
I tried to play the games both with my own maps and with the automapper and the latter made me feel like I'm missing part of the experience and definitely part of the challenge.
Drawing your own map may feel daunting at first but here's a protip: grind the first encounter room until your Priest gets to level 4 and learns Lomilwa (10000 steps of Light), it's a game changer and I wouldn't even start with cartography before casting it.
LS in PC is practically the same game than the psx version but much uglier and, iiirc, without music? The pc version also has a very 90s pc desktop ui to it, the actual game area are like one or two windows inside a 90s windows style program.
Check my posts (or rather replies to my first post about L Saga) in the main Wizardry thread from some months ago. They may help. I'm too busy for a more detailed answer now.
I never seen a single tweet that raises so many questions and conflicting emotions. Aren't copyright holders some jap swindlers since forever ago? Why does he stress the first five?
And lol @ "blockchain Wizardry". It's like the most retarded combination of words I could imagine. Garriot should step up and announce NFT Ultima.
LS in PC is practically the same game than the psx version but much uglier and, iiirc, without music? The pc version also has a very 90s pc desktop ui to it, the actual game area are like one or two windows inside a 90s windows style program.
Telegram? I ain't fucking using telegram. Discord & Twitter have just about nothing like thrir website. Vague as all hell like Richie Rich Garriotte's NFT bullshit.
