[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 13: Lucky Thirteen, Unlucky Rapax

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 22, 2015

Back in 2008, I did a playthrough of Wizardry 8, a game I’d missed the first time around. At the time, it was hard to acquire (yay for getting it brought back as a digital title!), and I felt (correctly!) that I’d missed out on a classic title. I blogged my efforts, but with the Great Blog Reboot we lost those articles. Since they’ve been requested, I’m re-posting them now. I hope that with the game now made available again via digital distribution, this may help other people discover this overlooked “final” game in the Sir-Tech series.

This is a continuation of my experiences delving for the first time into the now-classic computer RPG, Wizardry 8. I expected this series to go about nine or ten posts, but we’re now on post thirteen. So here we go:

Fifty-five minutes, fourteen seconds.

That’s how long this particular random patrol encounter took. I thought my complaining about the excessively long combats in Wizardry 8 might have been exaggerated. I wasn’t really sure how long these fights were taking – I was more focused on winning than keeping time. So I timed this one.

The battle was an encounter with a patrol – consisting of, as you can see, twenty-nine enemy … uh, Rapaxes. Rapaxi? I have no idea what the plural of Rapax is supposed to be. I started the stopwatch function on my watch when the battle began, paused it when I had to pick up my daughter from her play practice, and resumed it when I sat back down to finish the battle.

The battle took nearly an hour. That would be an unpardonably long boss battle. But for a run-of-the-mill fight against wandering monsters several levels below me? Ye gods! No wonder turn-based combat gets a bad rap.

I nearly lost the battle about forty minutes in. Having to replay that much of the game (since you can’t save in mid-combat) would have probably made me quit for the night. That’s happened before. Fortunately, the monsters decided to attack my water elemental at that point (or each other, succumbing to the effects of insanity I kept hitting them with) long enough for me to resurrect one dead party member and to “heal all.”

Almost worse than the loss of health was the entire party running out of stamina very quickly during the battle – and both of my primary casters having to take a quick swig of Magic Nectar to restore magic points about two-thirds of the way through the battle (just to have enough mana to cast Rest All to keep everyone from taking a nap at the same time!)

The screenshot to the right is from about that point – right after the resurrection, when I managed to fear enough rapax (I think I’ll use that for both singular and plural) to thin the crowd so I could actually stage a comeback.

So that’s my excuse for not having enough progress to report this time, and I’m sticking to it. Too many combats like this one!

So I finally found the wilderness section and Rapax Rift. That was a feat unto itself, especially when facing fire-breathing flying snakes in groups of four that are several levels higher than me. 25th level flying serpents or some such nonsense. While they may have been the same level as Nessie, they weren’t nearly as tough, though they were hard and exhausting to bring down. I could usually manage two fights in a row before needing to rest, but resting in the wilderness was nearly impossible.

Since I have three characters who can now cast spells to set and return to portals, I would have one character set a portal at my current location, and then have my other caster teleport us directly back to the tavern in Arnika – right in front of Vi Dominae, after she left us again when we approached Rapax Rift. I keep coming back and waving to her, just to prove to her that we’re still alive and let her know what a chicken she is. Then we rest up, and teleport back to our previous location. It saves on long, nasty, brutal combats that end up with us dying because we don’t have any magic left when enemies stumble across us in our sleep.

Yeah, the game can be a little brutal.

Rapax Rift is a land of deadly lava floes. Besides patrols of high-level Rapax berserkers, warlocks, initiates, priestesses, and archers, there is a temple complex and some occasional groups of “fire ants.” Which aren’t like real world fire ants at all. These fire ants are literally on fire, walk through lava, and are the size of dogs.

The other scary monster here is the Lava Lord, who is (or should I say, was) sort of an unholy enforcer-sort summoned by the priestesses to take human – or, rather, Rapax – sacrifices on behalf of some priestess / demoness / goddess named Al-Sedexus. We found several prisoners who were pretty much past usefulness, dreading the moment when they would be made the sacrifices to this Lava Lord guy.

We found another prisoner, long on information and short on spirit, who was in the process of becoming the next sacrifice. He’d had a mark placed upon him by the Staff of Ash by Al-Sedexus, which would allow the Lava Lord to eventually just burn him from the inside out. The only way to remove that mark was to use that staff to erase it. We unlocked his door, but he refused to budge without having the mark removed, as it would only hasten the inevitable. On our way out, the Lava Lord materialized from a river of lava, walked over to the prison / sacrificial area – walking right past us – roared a bit, and then returned from whence he came.

Much blundering about and re-fighting patrols led us to a spot where the supports of a cave next to a lava-puddle were weak and sagging. Knocking out a brace let the roof tumble in, which covered the lava-puddle and providing us with a step up to the other side, taking us inside a nicely-carpeted temple area. We battled rapax patrols and priestesses to the top with some teleporters. And a key.

One of the teleporters us to the central island with force-fielded area which was unlocked by a wand which looked mysteriously like a key on the end (as noted in the description!). However, unlocking the barrier field also summoned the Lava Lord, who in turn summoned a trio of fire sprites (which looked like fire elementals to me), and the whole group then began playing whack-a-mole with our heads. However, liberal use of Banish and Dehydration (I didn’t know you could dehydrate fire and lava…) saw us to a pretty easy victory. Honestly, while tough, this boss wasn’t as tough as some of the random patrols. Then we went back to the formerly-force-fielded spot, and retrieved the staff of ash and a rift key that this guy had been protecting.

Next, we took another route to a trapped lava trap. Fortunately, I saved first. While I avoided dying to the trap, I found myself well-and-truly trapped with no exit, walking around the edge of a depression which had filled with lava. I restored, found the secret mechanism to deactivate the trap (which was itself trapped!), and mad the area navigable. Proceeding forward, I ran into the high priestess, a delightful Rapax who kept us entertained by casting instant-death spells on us while her minions kept healing her (and each other) and hexing us. We killed her, and found something called a beckoning stone.

We returned to the guy who was going to be sacrificed, who took the staff to remove the mark, let us know to go north to Rapax castle, and let us know how to use the beckoning stone (I think) to summon a beast that would let us into Al-Sedexus’s lair.

That should be fun!

Design Notes:

The puzzles and fixed encounters in this area were actually pretty neat and well-designed. The non-interactive sequence when the Lava Lord first appeared was perhaps a little heavy-handed, but it served to make him seem impressive and scary. There’s a lot to like.

But really, there’s only one story here, and that is the length of combats. Now, I happen to be someone who likes a good, meaty, turn-based encounter. And I’m a fan of games with big tactical combat components, like the X-Com series, where a battle (which is the focus of the entire game) can take a couple of hours. But this is way, way too much in an RPG, and an Achilles heel to what was otherwise a pretty awesome game. It reminded me of the final fight with Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII, where he’d invoke a spell with minute-long non-interruptable cinematic every other round. Kinda cool once, kinda making you want to throw your controller through the TV screen the twentieth time.

If I find myself opening a door and finding four groups of 99 berserkers in this game, I’m going to be really, really disappointed.

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 12: Desperately Seeking Marten

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 21, 2015

I originally thought that this Wizardry 8 play-through series would only take ten to twelve posts. This is number twelve, and I’m not there yet. Wizardry 8 is proving a bigger game than I’d anticipated. Not to mention time-consuming. Combats are often taking ten minutes or longer to resolve, as I often face twenty or more opponents at a time. Since I’ve been doing a lot of running back and forth to different areas, I regularly find myself taking a twenty minutes or more crossing a zone due to fights. The camouflage spell (Shadow Tincture) doesn’t seem to help very much – if you are in tighter confines (such as many areas of the road, or the Mount Gigas water caves), there’s just no dodging half the combat.

Flush with more experience points from some travelling around and my discovery of the location of the Dark Savant’s ship, I figured I’d take a crack at the Bayjin Shallows around Nessie and another rescue operation in Bayjin. I didn’t get too far. This time, the water caves below Mount Gigas were filled with “Death Rays” – Manta-Ray looking creatures that, true to their namesake, had insta-death attacks that would sometimes land even through my magical defenses. And, since they are virtually immune to water spells and mental attacks, and fire spells don’t work underwater, my biggest area-effect attacks were largely useless against them.

Those fights sucked.

Eventually, after being clobbered in the same fight four times in a row, I gave up and teleported back to Arnika. There was, I remembered, another possible entrance to Bayjin, guarded by Rayjin, in the swamp. I have a teleport location back at Arnika, so I keep returning to the city. Most of the times I leave, I get met by a large group of Rattkin who issue me advice or dire warnings. This time, after teleporting back from the water caves, the Rattkin leader tipped his hand, and said there was a price on my head, and he would be coming to collect the next time we met.

Who put a price on my head? The only leader Rattkin I’ve found was the Don, who was still holding the Astral Dominae hostage for 100k gold. At least that was my excuse. We went to the tree, and got in a fight with the Don. It wasn’t easy. But we won, killed the Don, and retrieved the Astral Dominae. It felt a little anti-climactic after spending all of Wizardry 7 seeking after the darn thing (which I still haven’t actually finished), but I was glad to have two out of the three artifacts needed for the inevitable end-game.

We continued off to the swamp, defeated the Rayjin, and found the land-based entrance to Bayjin. Much combat ensued. Much combat. We killed some aquatic faeries and found a bunch of loot in the hills in the center of the island, and battled what appeared to be endless streams of crabs. Usually four to ten at a time. We’d kill two groups, rest, and immediately fight one or two more. We made our way into the Rayjin village, and slept inside their huts while the patrols and crabs marched in swarms outside the door. Good thing they don’t actually go INTO these huts when they are occupied.

We found some prisoners, including Glumph, the Umpani prisoner we were supposed to rescue. We also found a Helazoid woman who died while telling us she came from Wizardry 7. Glumph complained most of the time we had him – which was far too long. Many more battles ensued as we tried to retreat from the island, taking the water way back. Yes, I was going to risk more Death Rays. And Nessie. I wanted to see what else was hidden behind Nessie.

We didn’t actually kill her. We moved quickly around her, sucking up her attacks and floating on bubble-streams up to caves we hadn’t visited yet. In one, we found a really kick-butt, but cursed, battle-axe. After my warrior had spent nineteen levels with her newbie axe, she was ready for an upgrade, curse or no curse.

One cave took us to a new zone – the Sea Caves. Exploring the island area, we came across a rope and a hook, and then a sledgehammer. We threw them into our inventory and forgot about ’em, continuing to explore. Well, explore and fight. On the plus side, we could use fireballs and fire storms again, and most of the creatures were subject to mental attacks.

In one cave, we found a loose man-made stone wall. Application of the sledgehammer opened it up into a room with a door that had been sealed from the other side. There was no way in that we could find. A little bit more exploration (and fighting – did I mention fighting? There was a lot of fighting) took us to an area with a pit. Getting bold, we jumped down into the pit – and found ourselves surrounded by hostile, man-eating insects the size of small ponies. Fortunately, they were big and the cave was small. They could only attack us two at a time, and they were nicely subject to being driven insane. For the most part, we let them kill each other.

But that fight was nothing compared to the next one. We found some light coming down through a hole in the ceiling. We used the rope and hook to pull ourselves up to a room – with the back-side of the sealed door we’d seen earlier. We were in!

And we were facing an army of undead. Something like about twenty, plus some giant undead dude called the Keeper of the Crypt. Our first attempt didn’t go so well – we took out the keeper and most of the undead, but soon found half our party dead – especially when the undead siges summoned big ol’ elementals to aid the fight. We were more careful on the second attempt, pulling the undead to a corner where we were protected on two sides. We managed to silence the undead siges early on, preventing them from summoning any elementals or casting other nasty spells against us. What spells the other ghosts hit us with were often reflected back with our too cool Eye For an Eye reflection spells we now possessed. See, I’d learned something from those awful little Leaf Faeries!

The Keeper of the Crypt was almost easy to defeat at the end of that battle.

Following that, we found some slippery slopes that would drop us down pits, forcing us to retrace our steps (and fight lots of battles) to come back to the tomb area. We found some spiked boots back in the tomb, which our robot companion NPC was able to wear. They magically helped the entire party keep from slipping down into the pits, but then we found another obstacle – an uncrossable chasm that needed some other object to cross. The boots could get us safely to the edge, but not across.

This time, we voluntarily dropped down a pit, and searched around the island until we came across the remains of a wrecked ship. Spinning to make itself obvious, there was a large wooden plank there which was remarkably both sturdy enough to carry us, and could shrink down to fit in our inventory. Perfect!

Unfortunately, on our way back, we were unable to avoid a fight with some multi-armed nasties on the beach. By the time we defeated them, five other groups of nasties had converged on our position, and we found ourselves fighting 9 more of the multi-armed nasties, 8 sand crabs, 4 curare crabs, and four death beetles. That’s right, 25 monsters at once. This was a new record. The battle took over twenty minutes. And that’s WITH firing off Asphyxiation spells to insta-kill about three at a pop for the first three out of four rounds.

When it was over, we made our way back to the tomb, which had become newly repopulated with undead. Twelve re-dead monsters later, we crawled back to the chasm, dropped the plank over it, walked across, used a key we’d found to unlock a door, and entered a tomb where a ghost lay resting on a vault. The ghost stood up, and we chatted. This was the ghost of Marten, the dude who stole the Destinae Dominus years ago. He told us that the thing had driven him insane, and he was just oh so happy to pass it on to us so we could go crazy. Which he did. Plus a 400,000 XP bonus. My entire party went insane, cackling violently as they leveled up.

I gave the artifact to the bard, who was wearing the Helm of Serenity we’d gotten from Trynton. Immediately everyone regained their composure, got their clothes back on, and tried desperately to pretend nothing had happened.

All three artifacts are mine. I should go to Disneyland. But instead, I’m probably going to the Rapax Castle and then Ascension Peak. But first, I have to finally take Glumph back to General Ymir and get credit for this mission. He grumbled the whole time, but he gained about four levels in the process, so he shouldn’t complain too loudly.

Design Notes:

Finally meeting Marten, after chasing him all these weeks, felt like something of a climax. I was afraid that once I met him, I’d get a lame, “Thank you, Mario, but the Destinae Dominus is in another tomb” response, but everything came together well. I was also pleased that, once the mission was accomplished, he stuck around to talk and answer some questions. Since I’d heard “Marten this” and “Marten that” since level seven or so, and about the theft of the artifact since level one, it was great to hear the story from his perspective. There wasn’t much to add, in all honesty, but it felt better to me somehow.

The path to reach him once I got to the Sea Caves was nicely tricky, but not too difficult, involving much more than combat (though the fighting definitely took the greatest amount of time). The puzzles remain standard adventure-game fare, and I’m not complaining. They have taken the rule to heart that – most of the time – the object needed to accomplish a task in area X can be found in area X, unless it is part of a larger quest.

While they are very rare, I do like that the characters in my party occasionally make specific commentary on major events. They had to create a unique commentary for every voice “type” in the game, which is impressive.

The battles are, as I mentioned before (Editorial Note from 2015: Yes, several times before…), getting tedious. I don’t mind a decent battle taking three to five minutes, or a boss battle taking even a little longer, but these remain pretty annoying speed-bumps.

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The Great Big List of Steampunk Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 20, 2015

In spite of technical and logistic issues up the wazoo, Nick Lives of Deli Interactive and I managed to pull off the Steampunk Video Game panel at Salt City Steamfest over the weekend.

We talked about using video games for inspiration for non-digital costumes and adventures (because very few “steampunk” video games fit within the straight-up traditional Victorian London setting), a little about making your own video games (go indie!), and a lot about what kind of games were out there for people to play so they could enjoy steampunky activities beyond the weekend’s events.

Steve Yorkshire of Yorkshire Rifles provided a nice, brief interview about “Why Steampunk?” and how he used it in his game, Airship Dragoon.

And of course, we had the “trailer” video which I shared last week, which included snippets from several games.

Finally – with our presentation, we provided a two-sided sheet including a whole bunch of steampunk-like or steampunk-adjacent video games for people to check out. While all platforms are included, I’m afraid my focus on computer games acts as blinders a little bit for consoles and mobile. On top of that – with the rate of game releases these days, this list was out-of-date the day I finished it. So all of those caveats are to say that this list, as big as it is, doesn’t come close to being exhaustive or 100% correct.

But if you’ve got a hankering for some steampunk, weird west, dieselpunk, or even (!) colonialpunk (that’s a thing, I discovered this weekend), there are indie and mainstream developers out there who are making cool stuff that just might fill that hole in your life… 🙂

Note: Except for We Need to Go Deeper is (I think) already released.

Aerena: Clash of Champions (Casual / Strategy, Multiple Platforms, store.steampowered.com/ )

Airship Dragoon (Strategy, Win, www.yorkshirerifles.com/webpages/store.html )

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs ( Horror, Win, www.aamfp.com )

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (RPG, Win, http://gog.com)

Bioshock Infinite (FPS, 2K Games, multiple platforms store.steampowered.com/)

Bret Airborne (Casual / RPG, Win, http://www.machine22.com/bretairborne/)

The Chaos Engine (Shooter, Windows, http://www.thechaosenginegame.com/ )

City of Steam: Arkadia (MMORPG, Win, http://www.cityofsteam.com/)

Clockwork (Platformer, Multiple Platformers, http://www.clockwork-game.com/ )

Clockwork Empires( City Building / Horror, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

The Clockwork Man (Casual, Multiple Platforms, totaleclipsegames.com/ )

Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink (Casual, Win, store.steampowered.com/)

Cogs (Puzzle, Multiple Platforms, http://www.cogsgame.com/ )

Damnation (Action / Shooter, Multiple Platforms, store.steampowered.com/ )

Darkwatch (Shooter, PS2 & XBox – Ebay?)

Dishonored (Dieselpunk Stealth / FPS, Win,store.steampowered.com/ )

Divinity: Dragon Commander (Strategy / RPG, http://larian.com/games/dragon-commander/ )

Fabula Mortis (Mutliplayer FPS, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Fallen London (Adventure, Web, http://www.failbettergames.com/fallen-london/ )

Final Fantasy VI (RPG, Multiple platforms, Square – Ebay? )

Guns of Icarus Classic (AKA Flight of the Icarus) (FPS, Muse Games, http://musegames.com/)

Guns of Icarus Online (Multiplayer airship combat, Win, Muse Games, http://musegames.com/ )

Hunters of the Dead (Tower Defense, Win, http://www.traptics.com/site/huntersofthedead )

The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series (RPG, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Iron Grip: Warlord (Tower Defense + FPS, Dieselpunk, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Ironcast ( Casual / Strategy, Win, www.dreadbit.com )

Ironclad Tactics (Card / Tactics, Win/Mac/Linux, www.zachtronics.com/ironclad-tactics/ )

Jamestown (Pre-Steampunk shooter, Win, http://www.finalformgames.com/jamestown/ )

Lethis – Path of Progress (City-Building, http://lethispop.com/ )

Machinarium (Adventure, Multiple Platforms, http://machinarium.net/ )

The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (Platformer / Puzzle, Win/XBox 360, http://www.winterbottomgame.com/ )

Naval Warfare (Shooter, Windows, store.steampowered.com/ )

Nordenfelt (Shooter, Win, http://www.nordenfelt-thegame.com/ )

On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness series (RPG, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Pressure (Combat Racing, PC, XBox 360, PS3, store.steampowered.com/ )

Professor Layton series (Puzzle, Nintendo DS/3DS, http://professorlayton.nintendo.com/ )

Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (RTS, Win, EBay?)

Rock Boshers DX (Action / Puzzle, Multiple Platforms, http://tikipod.com/rockboshersdx/ )

Sine Mora (Dieselpunk shooter, Multiple Platforms, store.steampowered.com/)

Sir, You Are Being Hunted (Stealth, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Skyborn (RPG, Win, store.steampowered.com/)

Sunless Sea (Strategy / Horror, Win, http://www.failbettergames.com/sunless/ )

Steam and Metal (Shooter, Win / XBox 360, ( http://www.indiedb.com/games/steam-and-metal )

Steam Marines (Strategy / Roguelike, Win, http://www.steammarines.com/ )

Steamworld Dig (Platformer, Multiple platforms, http://steamworldgames.com/dig/ )

Steel & Steam (RPG, Win, store.steampowered.com/ )

Styx: Master of Shadows (Stealth, Multiple Platforms, store.steampowered.com/ )

Syberia series (Adventure, Multiple platforms, http://www.syberia.microids.com/ )

Telepath RPG: Servants of God (RPG, Multiple Platforms, http://sinisterdesign.net/products/ )

Telepath Tactics (Strategy, Win/Mac/Linux, http://sinisterdesign.net/products/ )

Teslagrad (Platformer, Multiple platforms, http://teslagrad.com/ )

Thief series (Stealth, PC, store.steampowered.com/ )

Torchlight 1 and 2 (RPG, Win/Mac/Linux, http://www.torchlight2game.com/ )

Valkyria Chronicles (Dieselpunk RPG / Strategy, Multiple Plattforms, store.steampowered.com/ )

Vessel (Platformer / Puzzle, Win, http://www.strangeloopgames.com/vessel/ )

Warmachine Tactics (Strategy, Win, http://warmachinetactics.com/)

We Need to Go Deeper (Multiplayer Action, Win/Mac/Linux, http://weneedtogodeeper.webs.com/)

Windforge (RPG / Platformer, Win, http://snowedin.ca/projects/windforge/ )

Woolfe the Red Hood Diaries ( Platformer, Win, http://woolfegame.com/ )

For the purposes of educating attendees who might not be familiar with some of the game type / genre terminology, I included some explanations on the hand-out:

Adventure – generally focused on problem solving, don’t usually require fast reflexes

FPS – First Person Shooter: A game where you play from the viewpoint of the character and emphasize ranged combat

Tower Defense: A strategy game style emphasizing building defensive structures that automatically defend against invading attackers

RPG: Role-Playing Game. A game style emphasizing storytelling and character progression (usually, but not always, over fast action)

Stealth: A game style where the focus is on hiding, evading, and avoiding detection by enemies

Casual: Games geared specifically for more “casual” players, emphasizing puzzles, matching or combining objects, and finding hidden objects in a scene.

MMORPG: Massively Multiplayer Role-Playing Game. A role-playing game emphasizing a large number of players all playing simultaneously in the same world.

Platformer: A game characterized by moving around the environment with accurate running and jumping

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 11: Swimming With the (Psi-) Sharks

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 17, 2015

I’m continuing the saga of my first-time play-through of Wizardry 8, the final game of the classic RPG series that spanned 20 years.

After all the excitement with the T’Rang, I reported back to Mount Gigas for my next orders from their mortal enemies, the Umpani. I was to report for scuba training, and then rescue (or find out what happened to) an expedition that swam through the Water Caves to Bayjin.

I lost both Sparkle and Vi. Vi was afraid of a sea monster. Man, I’m so disappointed in her. We’ve faced death in the guise of a thousand horrible monsters, and she’s scared of some critter in the water?

I went ahead and let them go. It’s too bad – we could have really used both of them. The sea caves were HELL. Mostly because of the Psi-Sharks – and the fact we were underwater.

The underwater part was annoying because our best area-effect damage-dealing spells (fireballs and firestorms) were useless. On top of that, nearly everything we encountered was immune to water-based spells, which nearly eliminated some of our OTHER top spells. When you are blowing most of your spell points for the category just doing an average of 5 points of damage to a group of monsters with 250 hit points, its just not worth it.

And then there were the psi-sharks themselves. They were also pretty much immune to mind spells. Basically, they are pretty friggin’ immune to everything down there. And we encountered tons of them. Even with Soul Shield and magic screens up, they were regularly getting powers through that would paralyze or turn our own party members against us. Since our magical effects were severely limited against them, they’d have a huge advantage against us at range, and rushing forward to attack would expose us to an extra round or two of uncontested mind-warping, party-killing effects.

I was not amused.

Once we got through the psi-sharks, the ghost pirates, and a few other monsters, we emerged in the Bayjin Shallows. This was really fun, because this was the realm of that little sea-monster. Named Nessie, after that quaint little legend from Scottland, I guess. Except the Nessie near Bayjin is a level 25 sea-dragon that is pretty much impervious to everything and can kill party members in a single round. She doesn’t move, however, so we were able to make our way around her by dodging from rock outcropping to rock outcropping. There was one section where we simply couldn’t make it behind cover in a single round, however, so we just had to suck it up and hope she didn’t hit us with anything too lethal.

We found some caves around her, with some monsters and treasures of various kinds. One of the caves went to Bayjin. There were also some skeletons and IUF ID tags that I thought might be the remains of the missing Umpani I was supposed to find (they weren’t…)

We didn’t completely explore Bayjin, mainly because we were getting our collective butts kicked. Even some of the dumb crabs here were just nasty, and made the Rayjin seem like pushovers by comparison. However, I did find a wrecked space ship with a nonfunctioning blaster pistol and a working black-box recorder.

I left Bayjin with the mission incomplete – and found the trip back to Mt. Gigas to be, if anything, worse than the trip there in the first place. Long, long, nasty, horrible battles. Mostly with Psi-sharks. Through tunnels with very little chance to avoid the suckers.

Returning, and finding the IUF ID tags were insufficient, I decided to run a few more quests and gain a few more levels to see if they’d help. Though, typically, I’ve found that most levels continue to throw harder and harder challenges at you as you level, so it’s impossible to get ahead unless you get REALLY far ahead. I can teleport back to Arnika now, but I still end up getting into a lot of fights along the road. These fights aren’t challenging anymore, just time consuming. Every once in a while I’ll manage to dodge all enemies along the road, which makes my day. I’ve tried drinking Tincture of Shadows potions to be less visible, but they make very little difference. I wonder if they’d work better against psi-sharks?

I went back to Trynton, and managed to pay a visit to the shaman again – armed with more knowledge. He decided that, like Neo, I was the chosen one (well, “we” – it’s a group effort with my party and all), and gave me the key to obtain the Helm of Serenity. Most amusingly, the key didn’t unlock the big barred door to get to the helm. Instead, it got me to the hut above the one with the helm, where I was able to drop down through a hole in the floor into the locked room with the Helm of Serenity. I was able to unlock the barred door from the inside and walk out. I guess if you are trying to defeat Ratkin thieves, you need to make the obvious route impossible like that. I liked it.

After that, I returned to the T’Rang again. I was nervous about handing over the Chaos Moliri, but after saving my game, I let them borrow it. The dude was very impressed, and gave it back to me. He then told me that they wanted to attack the Dark Savant’s ship (though he’s a secondary target to the Umpani, I guess), and needed to get the coordinates of his ship in space.

Hmmm…. I just got a black box from a ship that had been shot down by the Dark Savant’s ship, right?

Teleporting back to Arnika, and facing some new, improved models of the Savant’s androids — VERY nasty pieces of work, let me tell you — I was able to fight through to the spaceport, and inserted the black box into the reader.

Unfortunately, I was missing a scanner, so it was almost useless.

Actually, I had the scanner on me all the time. I just didn’t know it. It was a mysterious little orb that was located at the bottom of a Hogarr pen in Trynton back when I was getting the living crap kicked out of me by those tiny naked winged women. I’d forgotten all about it! Once I installed it into the computer, I was able to get the actual coordinates of “the black ship.” I returned with that information to the T’Rang, who rewarded me with lots of money and 300,000 experience points. Once upon a time, that would have been a lot. But my party is around 18th level now, and those levels are coming very, very slowly.

Now I’m supposed to locate someone named Drazic for the T’Rang, but they aren’t giving me any clues where to find him. I’ve probably MET the dude before, and just don’t remember who he is.

Design Notes:

Okay. I’m still loving Wizardry 8, but I got some real serious bones to pick with it at this point.

Number one – long, thin zones with lots of patrolling monsters. Like the water caves. And the road. And some other areas. There are monsters here EVERY time. Kill a zillion bandits, and a zillion more return on your return trip. The combats feel like just a way to stretch out the game – by a significant margin. When I’m spending an hour just “getting through” to someplace interesting, there’s a problem.

Number two – scaling encounters. I’m actually not opposed to scaling encounters in principle, but it really robs the game of a feeling of progress. When every encounter is roughly the same difficulty level, it also robs the game of a lot of its texture. It robs the player of a chance to simply “come back later” to a previously too-difficult section, because said section of the game will simply be increased to an even greater difficulty level later. Wizardry 8 isn’t quite as bad as Oblivion in this respect, but I’m still not thrilled with the approach. Psi-sharks are wicked-hard, and would be fine as major encounters. But spending forty-five minutes out of every hour fighting them gets really, really tedious.

Number three – weapons. My fighter is still equipped with her newbie battle axe. There have been all kinds of swords, spears, and bows I’ve found in the game… but not axes. Maybe I’ve just gotten unlucky, but I wanted my dwarf to wield an axe, dang it. And now she’s doing less melee damage than the little faerie with a stick! If you have a weapon skill in the game, make sure it is supported by, like, you know… actual weapons that use that skill.

And as a word of praise – Nessie. A big ol’ honkin’ uber-monster in the center of a level, taunting you. Awesome. I loved it. There was simply no way to take her on at this point, but we didn’t have to. Key point. Hopefully she will not scale up in difficulty level when we meet her again. I totally want to turn her hide into a few pairs of boots.

Filed Under: Archive, Wizardry 8 - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Biz: Five harsh truths about working in a creative industry

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 16, 2015

I’m not an expert businessperson. If I was, I’d be… well, a lot more successful than I am now, I guess. But I wanted to state a few things for the record here that might be related to my own business ethics and views, but mostly based on observation. I see some individuals and small companies (and sometimes big ones) making similar mistakes over and over again, often with some pretty epic but inevitable collapses at the very end.

These are generally “n00b mistakes” from people trying to turn their hobby and passion into something that will pay some bills… and they shoot themselves in the foot in the process. Sometimes the consequences are so harsh they leave the industry and are never to be seen or heard from again. This hurts all of us, because they brought a lot of potential.

So I thought I’d share some of these harsh truths – and the perfectly reasonable approaches to deal with them. For many, these will be common sense. But for some, especially younger folks first getting started, these may be a useful (if not entirely welcome) shot of reality.

#1 – After they’ve paid, customers owe you JACK!

Unless they’ve got an outstanding billable, the customer doesn’t owe you CRAP. Period. You are not entitled to their loyalty or their goodwill. Even if you just gave them the supreme discount of the decade, bent over backwards for them, and took a loss just to make them happy. Some people may feel obligated in return. Many won’t. And they aren’t really. So whatever you do – don’t treat them like they are!

Now, it’s possible to earn customer loyalty through all those things… by offering a good product, good service, and just general good things you do that generate goodwill. That’s awesome. And sometimes it will. And I think it’s good business sense to do exactly that. Hopefully you’ll generate enough goodwill to help you out if you stumble. I know as a customer, I’ve done that (sometimes to my detriment).

But in the end, this is something the customers and clients must give to you freely, not something you can expect or demand. And remember that it’s something that must be earned again and again.

#2 – It’s about the audience experience, not yours

If you are in a creative industry, you may bleed for your product. You may put a lot of passion, craftsmanship, blood, sweat, tears, and artistry into what you do. But in the end… it’s not about you. It’s about them. The audience. The customer doesn’t care how many late nights you had, how many stresses it put on your family, how much you spent on it. They simply want to know how much it will improve their lives, and how much that is worth to them in terms of their time and their cold, hard cash.

Yes, the pain and frustration and lost opportunities and all that part of your life may end up sitting in a bundle deal or in an Amazon sale for less than a dollar. Acknowledge. Move on. And focus on making your audience happy. Hopefully that mostly coincides with your own preferences.

#3 – Nothing succeeds like success

Wanna know the best way to guarantee success? Already be successful. People pay attention to the ones that have already “made it.” Whereas the people who haven’t probably need the attention more. Yeah, it’s totally unfair. It’s a “rich get richer” scenario. It’s like experience… you get it after you needed it. Sorta like that Old Spice commercial:

The thing is – there are so many failures, so much flying-by-night, so many things that are here today and gone tomorrow, that people with a little bit of experience in the world are reluctant to invest too much of themselves (or their cash) in an unproven quantity. So you have to prove yourself, again and again, that you’ve got what it takes.

The end result? You accept smaller successes and build on them. Maybe you get lucky and knock one out of the park, but otherwise, you make base hits and just build slowly on whatever level you’ve managed to hit.

#4 Luck plays a bigger role than we’d like to admit

If we’re trying anything new, then luck plays a role. Maybe a big one. It’s a multiplier between the values of 0 and 1 on everything that you do. If you don’t make something of quality that the audience wants and market it halfway decently, then there’s not much luck can do to save you. But if you hit everything perfectly, there are still no guarantees.

The trick is not to use this as an excuse. Not everything is “bad luck.”

#5 – Persistence is key, but it’s no guarantee

Given #3 and #4, it’s pretty clear that the only way to win (short of being really, REALLY lucky) is to stick with it, keep trying, keep improving, and keep adapting. But even with all that, there is no guarantee. There’s no magic tally sheet in the sky that tracks your overall progress and grants you your well-deserved reward once you cross a threshold.

But on the flip side… until you’ve quit, you’ve not failed. You have only not yet achieved success. You just keep creating opportunities for success. And what I keep finding in creative fields across the board is that once the stars all line up just right, all that back-list material suddenly finds new life. If it’s something important to you, give it an appropriate priority for your lifestyle, and stick with it. Keep building on whatever measure of success you achieve.

So there you go. These are harsh realities to some, but the bottom line is – they are realities. Reality is neither good nor bad, it just is. You can fight it, or try to adapt and maybe even turn it to your advantage.

Filed Under: Biz - Comments: 12 Comments to Read

Salt City Steamfest and Steampunk Video Games

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 15, 2015

I’m going to be at Salt City Steamfest this weekend, Friday and Saturday. I won’t be showing off Frayed Knights 2 or anything, but I will be with the Xchyler Publishing booth selling and signing books, talking to folks, and attending what panels I can. And generally having fun being all steampunk-y.

What is “Steampunk?” Well… think Victorian Science Fiction. Or what would have been contemporary horror / urban fantasy / science fiction if it had been written / told / performed in the Victorian era. Think H.G. Wells, Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, and especially Jules Verne. Those are kind of the prototypes. Steampunk is speculative fiction set in a world or era vaguely reminiscent of a revisionist or mid-to-late 1800s (or very early 1900s). Steampunk conventions are a chance for people to dress up and have fun with the concept with other people who share the interest.

I’ll be on a few panels. On Friday, it looks like I’ll be on a panel at 1:00 in the afternoon called “To Be or Not To Be Published.” I don’t know much about this one, but I assume I’ll be able to draw upon my somewhat more familiar game industry experience than my much more limited fiction and non-fiction experience.

At 4:00 on Friday, I’ll be with the Xchyler Publishing on a panel called “Write Steampunk for Fun and Profit.” I know far more about the “fun” part than the “profit” part, but there are some great folks on the panel and I know it’s going to be informative as well as fun. If you are a new or aspiring writer, this will be worth attending.

The big one for me is at 4:00 Saturday, “Steampunk Video Games,” which I’m doing with Deli Interactive’s Nick Lives. We’ll be talking about a bunch of steampunk-themed (or at least steampunk-adjacent) video games, drawing inspiration from them, and even a little bit about getting started making video games. Here’s the video for the introduction to the panel:

Our vintage dancing group (yes, I do that… long story), Clockwork and Gears Vintage Dancing, will be performing / teaching period dancing in several classes on both days. I’ll be participating when I can, along with my wife and my daughter. Seriously, if I could learn these dances, anybody can. They aren’t too hard. And it is fun (he grudgingly admitted…)

My wife will be on a couple of Victorian Horror panels, as well as performing Victorian Ghost Stories (“Tales by Gaslight”) at 10:00 PM Friday night.

Anyway, if you are in the Salt Lake area and are at all interested in steampunk, come pay us a visit! It’s at the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Salt Lake, and we’ve always had a lot of fun with it!

Filed Under: Books, Geek Life, steampunk - Comments: Comments are off for this article

[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 10: Missing Men and Mutant Frogs

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 14, 2015

This is a continuation of my series on my adventures in 2001’s Wizardry 8. I missed the game the first time around, but that hasn’t stopped me from enjoying it plenty now. (Editorial Note from 2015: It shouldn’t stop you from playing it today, either.)

After having stolen the Chaos Moliri from the Mook, I didn’t go back to the Umpani right away. Instead, I wanted to explore a bit more of the swamp. Almost immediately we were accosted by orbs and troopers of the Dark Savant, claiming they knew we’d obtained one of the artifacts and that they were going to take them from us. Seems like everybody BUT the Mook knew we’d stolen their artifact. How? I don’t know.

Just Like the Temple of Doom!
I found an entrance to the “Mine Tunnels,” a place where, once again, Sparkle didn’t want to go. I let her go her own way, and went to explore this new area.

Most of the encounters in this area were relatively easy. I found a couple more RPGs willing to join my party, including a malfunctioning Savant Trooper that we were able to repair and, I guess, reprogram. There as also a T’Rang swordsman (samurai?) who was ready to sign up if it meant killing Umpani. Considering our … uh… duplicity, I figured that might not be the best idea. I kept the robot, ignored the T’Rang.

The most exciting part of this area was a mine-tunnel puzzle. You control the switches at the entrance to the mine shaft, and then get on a mine car and go through a roller-coaster ride to see where you end up. Usually you end up in the same place you went last time, until you tweak the switches just right and find another place to go.

Kidnapped!
On our last ride, we found ourselves all the way at Marten’s Bluff again – in a secret area I hadn’t found before. While there was plenty to find and plenty to fight, there were a couple of notable encounters:

First of all, there was a statuette sitting on a table. It was kind of a Tiki-head thing, not unlike what the Trynnies use. I picked it up — because it wasn’t nailed down. That’s what I do. Instantly, we were all knocked unconscious from some kind of poisonous gas or something. When we came to, our bard was missing.

WOOPS! There was some writing on the bottom of the statue that indicated Crock might be responsible.

Shortly thereafter, we spotted a sword sitting in an alcove at the end of a hallway, ready for taking. I fell sucker to one of the oldest tricks in the book. We approached the sword, almost close enough to take it, and the floor fell out from under us, dropping us into an underground canal. We fought through a bunch of alligator-esque monsters to emerge out in the exterior moat around Marten’s Bluff. Since we had to go out to meet with Crock anyway, we just continued on our way.

When we confronted Crock, he immediately accused us of being in league with the T’Rang (and we are, as far as anybody but the Umpani and He’li are concerned). He disavowed any responsibility for the kidnapping of our party members. But he did claim that he might be able to help us FIND our missing member, but first we had to take care of a problem for him.

He said that Brekek had returned to the swamp, and he’d seen that thing kill tens of men beneath his webbed feet before. If we could kill Brekek and return with proof of his death, he’d do what he could to get us our friend back.

Attack of the Giant Mutant Frog
We explored for some time, killing lots of Flesh-Eating Slimes and various mosquito-creatures. Eventually, we wandered back into that lake we’d explored previously – now occupied by a giant mutant frog. On the first round, the frog hopped over to us and gobbled up our main fighter.

Great. Now we had TWO missing party members.

The battle was difficult, but we managed to kill the frog, and cut our warrior free. She immediately bragged that though it had been disgusting (and painful), at least SHE could take it!

We took a giant frog-leg back to Crock, who suddenly “found” our missing bard, and invited us to a frog-leg barbecue. We declined on the dinner invitation, and the bard said something about how terrible that experience had been, and then asked, “Can we do that again?”

With the whole party back, it was time to move the main plot along a bit.

Design Notes:
The quest with the missing party member was another of those really memorable quests that make an RPG. Face it – in most RPGs (including this one), the endless combats get capital-B Boring. Yeah, they shouldn’t, but they do. Lots of wandering around, lots of killing – and it all blurs together over time.

But the quests like this one really stand out, because unique and different things happen. The shake-up of party composition with the missing PC was a surprise. It was a great twist. Finding Brekek who was just “somewhere” in the swamp was not nearly as much fun. A few old-school gamers complained about Oblivion where you were always directed exactly to where your next quest would take you. Does that take the fun out of exploration? Well, yes, sometimes. But so does stumbling around the world hoping to stumble over your next quest objective, because you were (or were not) only given general instructions that you’ve already forgotten.

There’s gotta be a happy medium in there somewhere.

The mine-car puzzle gets kudos from me on several levels. While there is a lot of trial-and-error involved, the map on the wall does provide a few clues to its operation, though it is unclear where it starts and where it ends and exactly which way the switches are supposed to be changing things.

Having monsters that swallow party members can be pretty dang annoying if it happened a lot. But as a one-time event (so far), it was actually pretty amusing – particularly since my fighter really did have enough hit points to survive a few rounds of being digested. It was a surprise in combat – and as combats become grind-tastic after a while, a few surprises like this sprinkled in helps keep things interesting.

Editorial Note from 2015: I’m really disappointed with myself for not having taken more screenshots while I was playing. Count it as me being really absorbed by the game, so I kept forgetting. Anyway, I’m sorry for the lack of screenshots the last couple of posts. I make up for it in the not-too-distant future.

Filed Under: Archive, Wizardry 8 - Comments: 5 Comments to Read

[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 9: My Duplicity Has a Price

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 13, 2015

This is a continuation of my blogging of my adventures in 2001’s Wizardry 8 – what proved to be the final chapter in one of the longest-running computer RPG series. I missed it when it was new, and so I’m catching it with the more jaded eyes of a 2008 gamer. Truth be told – while the graphics may not be up to modern snuff, there’s a lot of great stuff in there!

My next assignment from the Umpani was to form an alliance with the Mook. Ah-hah! That one has been on my “to do” list since I first ran into their holographic greeter in Arnika some time ago. With paper in hand, I raced back to Arnika. And on past it. “Racing” meaning “fighting long fight after fight in terrain where there’s no place to hide.” If there’s one massive complaint I have about this game, it is these “travelling” zones with constrained geography that force you into battle after battle.

As I said, I skipped Arnika. Instead, I went to Marten’s Bluff, and met with the T’Rang. They extended an offer that I should ally with them. I agreed. My first mission was to go scout out a base or something. Without engaging the Umpani. Easy enough, as I’m currently allied with the Umpani too. Now I might say that I’m being all idealistic and trying to maintain the balance of power between the two forces. I’m not. Quite simply, I’m greedy for mission-based XP.

So instead, I reached into my party inventory and produced a flag I picked up at the Umpani base’s gift shop. Well, it was a commissary, but they sold flags to tourists like me before I’d signed up. Hey, they offered, and I bought it. I figured it might come in handy, and it did.

The T’Rang boss, Z’Ant, was pleased with my speedy results, apparently (why, he hadn’t even noticed I’d gone), and gave me more XP than I normally get in two or three long, slow, annoying combats. Then he gave me a job to take care of a Rapax assassin who had been stalking the fortress somewhere. They had a trap set up for him, which I checked out. That entry way with the pit and the plexiglass walls that looked like they were supposed to come together and kill anybody in the entryway? That was actually for him. Not for me. A button dropped a decoy.

The decoy was a really horrible-looking target dummy with horns attached. Supposed to be a female, I guess. And yet somehow, that didn’t fool the Rapax assassin. Go figger.

I tried everything to improve the bait, but I couldn’t come up with something that would work. I was stymied. Only my second mission in! D’oh!

I looked at my journal, and found I still had some to-do items down in the local swamp – primarily, finding someone or something named “Croc” who knows what happened to Marten after the police raid – according to the Rattkin “gawdfather” I’d met in the Trynton.

In exploring the swamp, I discovered a group of “Rayjin” near the northern border that made those terrible leaf fairies seem like pathetic newbie-fodder giant rats by comparison. They slaughtered me – twice. Or rather, they drove my entire party insane in the first round, and made me slaughter myself. It was NOT pretty. Even with magic screens up, they just pwned me. I realized that there was this spell that I’d ignored the last couple of times I’d leveled up called “Soul Screen.” “What use is that?” I’d thought. “I want to make MORE BIG BOOMS!”

Now I understand. D’oh. Next time. Or maybe I’ll find a book for the spell and learn it before I level. Regardless – I can’t fight these guys without it.

I chose the better part of valor, and – upon reloading AGAIN – avoided them completely. I found an empty lake area with a lot of interesting items submerged in the water with no guardian monster. Strange….

Eventually, I found Crock, and discovered he was actually pretty close to the entrance to Marten’s Bluff. Well, a lot closer than where I’d been looking. He was actually human – and ran a shop in the middle of the monster-infested swamp that was apparently suffering hard times with no customers. Crock blamed the T’Rang. I have three words for Crock: “Location, Location, Location.”

Anyway, he told me something about Marten having gone to Bayjin – a place infested with Rayjin. Yeah, those guys that handed me my posterior so easily. Needless to say, I felt I wasn’t quite prepared to follow up on THAT lead.

So I checked out Crock’s shop. He had a lot of really nifty stuff! I mean, really potent magical weapons, and books of spells, and stuff like that. So much for saving up to buy the real Astral Dominae from the Rattkin Don!

He also had something called, “Eu de Rapax Perfume.”

Hmmm….

I bought the perfume, went back to Marten’s Bluff, experimented some more with the trap, and put perfume on the horned target dummy. Unbelievably, a cry of animal desire emerged from the dark recesses of the fortress, and out came the assassin. I had to do some manipulating to get him into the trap, but then I closed him in and started the diabolical trap, crushing him. Somehow, it didn’t crush his head, and I was able to return it to Z’Ant for a sizable reward.

My next mission was – surprise – an alliance offer for the Mook.

With two offers in hand, I returned to Arnika. The Dark Savant is now sending these floating orbs with ranged attacks at me from the tower, rather than just those dumb android robots (which were, at least, easy to kill). I went to the Mook, and decided to give them the Umpani letter.

They let me into the base, and offered to show me the artifact in their possession – one of the “three” – the Chaos Mollari. For visual inspection only. Unfortunately for them, it wasn’t in a locked case. When I picked it up, though, a doorway with guards opened up just out of sight. Putting it back prevented them from attacking me and my faction with the Mook plummeting.

I tried a whole bunch of solutions, including just sucking up a faction hit – but I wanted to keep them friendly in case I wanted to give them the T’Rang alliance paperwork too.

What finally worked was replacing the Chaos Mollari with the fake Astral Domina I’d gotten from the pissed-off Dark Savant. They were both globe-like objects, right? Apparently, it was good enough. The Mook’s visual accuity is apparently not much better than that of a Rapax.

By this time, I had a teleport spell, so I set an anchor point in Arnika. I keep coming back here, after all. Before heading down the road to the Umpani base, I wanted to rest up. On a whim, I stayed at the Inn. I don’t really go into a room, I just rack out next to the barkeep, He’Li. I always talk to her first, see what she has to say. This time, she had extortion on her mind.

She mentioned how the Umpani in her bar had talked about having me for an ally. And she said the T’Rang in her bar had said the same thing – that I’d been allied with THEM. The Umpani and T’Rang, being enemies, don’t talk much with each other, but if *I* wanted to make sure that little bit of information didn’t leak out, I had to pay her around 4,000 gold pieces!

YEESH! I thought she and Vi were BFFs or something like that. Apparently not. Or she’s cutting Vi in on the take. Dang RPCs. My duplicity comes at a price, apparently.

But I wasn’t done yet with being extorted. No! On leaving Arnika shortly therafter (I’d made a quick side-trip), I ran into a whole pack of Rattkin. I was immediately on my guard, even though they were highlighted green, as I figured they were still sore at me for um… you know… killing a whole bunch of them. Apparently, though, they were in a mood for talking… in their best New York Thug accent. They told me they knew what I’d done with the Mook and had stolen the Chaos Mollari, and if I didn’t want the Mook to find out about it, I had to pay them some hush money.

I agreed. Dang, how am I ever gonna be able to afford to buy the real Astral Dominae from the Don?

Design Notes:

First off, it spite of my compaining – having NPCs note that I’m playing both sides or pulling fast ones in my quests is way cool. Any time NPCs can show recognition of the player’s actions – particularly their more free-form, optional actions (not that these were – I’m convinced I’m taking the “preferred” approach) – it really helps the world come alive. This simple thing is probably a bigger deal than tons of advanced AI programming with neural networking or whatnot.

The Rapax assassin quest was kind of silly – and finding the perfume was annoying – but I think it was one of those big, memorable events in an RPG that stick with you for years. This is about a million times more interesting than a “kill six rats and bring me their tails” type of quest that is becoming all too common in some RPGs these days. A quest should be a self-contained story.

(To their credit, I felt Baldur’s Gate II, Oblivion, and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines all had plenty of very memorable, fun, and dramatic quests like this one. So it’s not unique – but it’s still, unfortunately, noteworthy.)

While the battles against the Rayjins were frustrating, I really do like having some “impossibly hard” encounters mixed in with some moderately difficult and some easy ones. Sometimes it is better to flee. It is irritating that Wizardry 8 really does stack up the difficulty to try and make every encounter a challenge, but it is not as bad as Oblivion in that respect. And Wizardry will let you get in over your head.

Filed Under: Archive, Wizardry 8 - Comments: Comments are off for this article

Not Quite 20 Years Later – A New Baldur’s Gate Expansion

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 10, 2015

Better late than never, huh?

Beamdog has announced an all-new, 25-hour expansion for Baldur’s Gate: Enhanced Edition. Entitled Baldur’s Gate: Siege of Dragonspear, it bridges the gap between Baldur’s Gate I and II.

Dang, and I think I lost my saved game from when I beat BGEE a couple of years ago. Hopefully I can roll a new party just for the purpose of this expansion.

Sadly, no, this is not Baldur’s Gate III or a standalone title. But I imagine that in terms of effort and licensing, this was a far easier win for Beamdog. The new expansion promises new (and old) companions, a new character class (shaman), new monsters, new items, and new locations (and quests).

Oh, and it’s all playable in single-player and multiplayer. I never tried multiplayer in BGEE. When the original game came out in 1996 or whatever (UPDATE: It would have been 1999. I thought multiplayer was more robust than that in ’99…), we played multiplayer one Thanksgiving holiday in a massive LAN party. It was totally cool until the game crashed. And crashed. And crashed. Hopefully it’s much more robust now. 🙂

I just gotta comment though… what a weirdly cool era we live in. Old games getting remakes or updates or new expansions (like this one). Sequels to franchises that were assumed dead a long time ago (like Bard’s Tale, Underworld Ascendant, Might & Magic X: Legacy, and Wasteland 2). Spiritual sequels to classic games and series… sometimes by members of the original team. I’ll tell ya, ten years ago I’d never have dreamed that kind of thing would become possible.

Filed Under: Game Announcements, Retro - Comments: 3 Comments to Read

Frayed Knights 2 – Appearances

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 9, 2015

Let me apologize to people right now for not being particularly agile on responses to stuff the last few weeks. The push for the Frayed Knights 2 demos has been pretty demanding of my attention. (I’ve even been missing days of playing Rocksmith… you know it’s bad!). It feels like I’m spending all my time fighting bugs right now… stuff I’d let slip through in development because I needed to get moving on something else. Now I get to go back and fix all those little cosmetic issues.

I am totally, totally envious of the guys who are making games with 8-bit graphics styles, now. Sheesh.

An ASCII roguelike… yeah, that totally sounds awesome right now.

Anyway, we’ll be demoing Frayed Knights 2: The Khan of Wrath at ToshoCON on Friday, July 31st from 5-9 PM at the Viridian Library & Events Center in South Jordan, Utah. The convention is focused on teens and anime, but they invited us to run a “game room.” A bunch of Utah Indie Game developers will be showing off their stuff there, and treating it as a way to get practice for the next big event…

Salt Lake Gaming Con!

This will be August 6th – 8th at the South Towne Expo Center. This is for all things game-related – not just video games – but the Utah Games Guild is happy to be a part of this, showing off some locally developed titles which I happen to know are pretty dang awesome. I’m not sure who all is going to be there, but besides my game, for sure I’m expecting the MMORTS SAGA (we’ll be sharing a table), and the very cool-looking bullet-hell shooter for non-bullet-hell-shooter-experts – SPECIFICALLY for the PC and Mac, Legacy of the Elder Star. If you happen to be in the area, please come visit! If not, I’ll be sure and post pictures and maybe even videos afterwards!

It’s $25 for a 3-day pass, and there’ll be gaming tournaments, cosplay events, guests, and lots and lots and lots of GAMING!!!!!

In the meantime… I’m gonna go back to publishing archived articles and figuring out why the Swamp Slime is sometimes spewing its acid-spray backwards. No, I don’t want to think about the connotations of that one.

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 8: Dances with Rhinos

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 8, 2015

I am continuing my first-time play-through blogging of Wizardry 8, the classic ending to one of the longest-running CRPG series of all time. This time I report on my adventure amongst the Umpani.

I neglected to mention in my last post about a wonderful thing that happened while leaving Trynton. I was attacked by a bunch of those horrible leaf pixies. And, with a little bit of help from a Trynnie patrol, and the use of the newly-acquired spell “Spell Screen,” I kicked their little winged butts! It felt very good…

Unfortunately, while the trip along the Arnika Road has gotten a little easier, it has become no shorter. If I don’t feel like running, I’m being engaged of groups of nearly 20 monsters at a time sometimes. Duking it out can take ten minutes. Running doesn’t take much less time. Frankly, it’s a long and annoying trip.

But I could tell I got to Umpani territory when I saw a very industrial-looking bridge with electric lights. Sounded about right. Past this, I found a fort at the base of Mount Gigas, with units of sometimes a dozen Umpani marching around it. The Umpani have changed a little since Wizardry 7, but they still resemble a humanoid rhinoceros. With military uniforms, swords, and black powder pistols. And computers and space ships, of course. Kinda steampunk.

Once inside, I found the Umpani didn’t really want to talk to anybody who wasn’t part of their military. Not too unlike the T’Rang.

Ah, well. Who wants to live forever? I signed up. I also found myself facing a cute little female Trynnie named Sparkle, who was enlisted with the Umpani as a ranger. I asked her to join up, and she agreed. She was much lower level than the rest of the party, but I figured she’d level up quickly (and she did – she quickly moved from being a liability to an asset, and gaining four levels by the time we left Mt. Gigas).

The niftiest thing about the Umpani Base – and the caves nearby – is that there are a ton of locked and trapped lockers and chests to practice my larcenous skills upon. I think I gained another four or five points of locks & traps skill just from robbing my comrades-in-arms blind.

My first task was to go through training. Great. Here we’ve been battling untold monsters and the robot-soldiers of the Dark Savant, and now we need basic training. It involved an obstacle course – with some death traps! The Umpani don’t play around! It culminated with a battle against training dummies. Who fought back in lethal (but not very difficult) combat. Again, the Umpani don’t play around. Surviving training evidently promoted us to second class rank.

Our new task? Kill a T’Rang, and bring back a body part as evidence. Oh, hey, didn’t I have an arm left over from a previous adventure? I pulled it out of my back pocket, and impressed the sergeant enough that he promoted us again, and sent us into the Mount Gigas Caves for more training.

Okay. The Mount Gigas Caves – there are some optional (I think) tunnels in those caves that I decided to explore. This was off in a section that warned that it was unexplored territory – and it was not lit by electric lights or patrolled by squads of Umpani. It was a maze of twisty passages all alike, in the lower caves. I spent about five hours exploring these caves. It wasn’t the size of these caves, so much as the frequency of combat. It was like the Arnika Road all over again. Fortunately, in the confines of the caves, it was harder for the larger monsters to surround us, which caused them to bunch up in front of us where cone-shaped spells could do all kinds of damage against them. This was good. But with the scaling difficulty level, we now encounter a lot of monsters in every combat. Monsters that take their time to attack, sometimes. However, there are so many nifty items to be found (including some much-needed spell books), it really was worthwhile.

One nice thing we discovered while searching through the caves was a teleporter which took us back out to one of those houses along the Arnika Road that I couldn’t get into when I first began the game. Finally! While that alone was kinda cool, what was cooler was the weaponry I found there. We found a really powerful bard instrument that I cannot yet play, and a musket. The musket was much more powerful than the old zip gun that the Rattkin gave us, so my fighter is now pretty potent in long-range combat.

My real goal was in the upper caves. There were some monsters in the patrolled section of the upper caves as well, which led to some nice, long combats with Umpani contributing to the fight. It is a peculiarity of turn-based combat that the more allies one has in a battle, the longer the battle actually takes in real-time … quite the opposite of how it “should” be. At least the magical energies of flame and frost can tell the difference between friend and foe, and magically ignore any friendly units in the explosive radius. It feels pretty weird to drop explosions at one’s own feat to clear out a surrounding enemy, but it works.

To get to the actual training, we had to fix a malfunctioning computer. Fortunately, it just had wires in the back that had to be plugged in to their proper location. I like the Umpani computers. On my computer, when things break, it normally means spending hundreds of dollars on a replacement card, or even worse – experiencing that horrible feeling in the pit of the stomach that says, “My last hard drive backup was made about NEVER ago… I’m so screwed!” Here, they just have wires fall out.

I guess that’s why it’s called a fantasy RPG.

I had two training tasks. The first was to beat the crap out of five monsters and to pick up the flags they were guarding.

This task was pretty straightforward and easy, until we met the Djinn at the end. This guy was like six levels above us, and did half our hit points in damage (and took a quarter of our stamina) with every hit. And made us insane. I figured we were dead meat… until my gadgeteer – the most useless member of our party – got a lucky shot with his omnigun that actually knocked the Djinn unconscious in the second round. He never woke back up – though even unconscious, it took us three more rounds to kill him. He was just that tough. My gadgeteer’s middle name must be “David,” I guess. Oh, and we got a Djinn eye from him, which is a component that the Rapax weaponsmith needed. So, cool.

But that particular training session baffled me. Can you imagine the job interview for those monsters? “Okay, this is a one week contract. You are to guard a flag in a dead-end cave. You just kill any recruits that come your way. Oh, and don’t mind all the dead bodies of your predecessors.”

The second part of the training was to use a rocket launcher they issued us. Once again, we had training dummies – down a firing range this time. Unfortunately, the rocket launcher – when it hit – did so little damage to the target dummies that they actually had to be hit by something like 100 rockets before they were actually destroyed. I’m serious – we’re talking like level 1 fireball damage here. Weak!

What it really turned into was a chance for everybody to practice their ranged attacks. The combat took forever. After the nearly useless rocket launcher had run out of its current ammunition supply, I switched it out for the cool musket we found in the house on Arnika Road. I put the combat into “continuous combat” mode, and took a snack break. I came back, fixed up a couple of characters who had run out of ammo, and then let them keep on going while I read a book. Eventually – after just under a short chapter of the book I was reading – the dummies were all shattered under the arrows, stones, bolts, and bullets of the party. At least we got our ranged skill levels up.

After all that was over, we had to report back to Lt. Balbrak for more orders. Our ordeal in the Mt. Gigas caves was – at least for now – coming to an end

Design Notes:

There was a classic (or is it “trite”) puzzle in the caves that involved a pressure plate. When the pressure plate was stepped on, it opened a secret door – which closed immediately after you stepped off (to try and go through the secret door, for example.) The solution is old, but still fun – just drop something else on the plate to hold it open. I used a leather hat. Apparently it doesn’t take MUCH weight. It’s an old puzzle, but it’s still fun. (Editorial Note from 2015: Of course, now in 2015, we’ve had a resurgence of this kind of puzzle to the point where it feels trite again…)

There’s a “leap of faith” section in the Umpani caves that I enjoyed – a cave in that reveals a long drop below with no known way to return to the current level. It led to an underground lake, a couple of combats, and plenty of loot. The exit opened a secret “trap door” back up to the caves. This is another staple of heroic fantasy RPGs.

One of the problems with the less-linear gameplay (and scaled difficulty) is that the treasure and challenges don’t match up. The rocket launcher would have been extremely handy back when we were level 5 or so. By the time we got it (around level 12), the thing was almost useless.

The maze of the Umpani caves is basically filler. Now, I can’t complain too much, because it seems to be strictly optional. But the high combat density (and combats that would take several minutes to complete) and random encounters made me feel like I was playing a Final Fantasy game.

And as I’ve stated before in this blog – once upon a time I used to hate mixing fantasy and sci-fi. But I find now that I don’t mind it as much. In fact, I’m really enjoying it.

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 7: Ratts!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 7, 2015

This is a continuation of my blogging a first-time play-through of Wizardry 8. The game may be seven years old – ancient in computer-game years – but I’m finding it to be incredibly fun and involving… a gem that I am kicking myself for overlooking in 2001. (Editorial Note from 2015: And it’s still a gem, now twice as old!).

So I’m at a place called Marten’s Bluff. As I got there, Vi commented about how she used to play there as a girl – before the T’Rang moved in. I guess she was a real butt-kicker as a little girl, to get past all those monsters along the road and in the swamp to get there. Apparently, the castle was there before the insect-like T’Rang got there, but they went ahead and moved in – mostly in the underground warrens.

My initial meeting didn’t go well. The castle entryway is blocked off by some transparent walls, and there’s an elevator that takes me down to a room with some T’Rang that insist I’m going to work for them. I just have to agree to do that. The room’s only exit is some kind of biometric lock that requires a T’Rang’s hand-print to open. They drive a hard bargain.

I searched around the castle, and found a catapult just outside the walls. At first, I got a crazy idea of using it to launch me into the castle. Dumb idea, I know. It didn’t work. However, when I got it to fire, the arm broke through the crossbeam and crashed into the top of the castle wall, forming a convenient ramp. Once inside, I found a dead T’Rang who had fallen victim to a booby-trap. His arm (with attached hand) was just LYING there, waiting to be picked up. How could I resist? There was little else in the upper castle area except a couple of encounters and forgotten items, so after unbarring the side gate (dodging the booby-trap to do so), I went back down the T’Rang elevator, and used the arm to get into the back rooms.

I met a scientist there who would talk to me once – but only if I bribed him – without me having signed up to join the T’Rang in their missions. I also found a portrait which concealed a secret door. Behind the secret door was a heck of a lot of undead, which I apparently unleashed upon the entire T’Rang base. They didn’t seem to mind much. There some storage rooms full of neat stuff, and Marten’s hideout – where I found the last page of his diary.

There was one more section where I couldn’t visit. It was guarded by a number of T’Rang who told me to leave or face the consequences. Three times I tried to violate their orders, and three times I got my butt soundly handed to me.

So I decided to knock it off – for now – and see what the Umpani had to offer. I’d heard they were past the northern wilderness – where I’d acquired the diamond – so I set off that way.

While en route, much happened.

First of all, I was paid a visit by the Dark Savant. He was torqued off about the Astral Dominae (the artifact from the LAST game) being a fake. At least he said he was the Dark Savant. It was dark and raining, so I couldn’t tell too well. At first he seemed ready to wipe me out (many things in the swamp were quite capable of that, thankyouverymuch) – but then realized he had the wrong folks. Such a nice guy, the Dark Savant, admitting to a mistake like that. He basically said, “Oh, sorry, didn’t mean to do that” and teleported away, leaving the fake artifact on the ground. Cool. No clue what I’ll do with it yet.

Then – I found myself hanging out with the Trynnies again. They are an okay bunch. So okay, in fact, that I decided to go ahead and try and solve their rat problem. They have a problem with giant rats in the trees. No big deal. Isn’t that like a standard 1st level quest for all fantasy RPGs?

I found some vines in the sanctuary that I was able to join together to form a big vine, and used it to repair the broken bridge to the rat infestation. My task was to take out their “breeders.” No big deal.

Much to my surprise – they were talking about Rattkin, not giant rats. Since I have something of a roguely disposition myself, I opted not to fight the breeders. Though I had to think – the Trynnies were good friends, but the Rattkin had never done anything for me. Except try to get me in trouble. Still, that wasn’t a reason to get into a war with them.

I found the “gawdfather” of the Rattkin, the “Don.” He said he could get me the real Astral Dominae. I told him to knock himself out. Apparently, he already had it, because when I came by again only a short time later, he had it. For about four times more money than I’d ever possessed. Woops.

On my way out, I found a key. Well, “found” in probably the same way the Don “found” the Astral Dominae. And – unsurprisingly – I’d found a locked door that couldn’t be unlocked by my mad lock-picking skills. So I tried the key! It worked! And I was immediately attacked by two breeder rattkin and their archer companions.

Lemme tell you, the breeders were a lot tougher than I expected. Their spears did phenominal damage. It felt weird and uncomfortable, because they looked like they were about seven months pregnant. But hey, they were the ones who attacked me, without even asking me my name.

After than fight, however, the Rattkin in the village began attacking me on sight. Except for the Don and his assistant, Milano. They were still okay with me paying them money. But fighting a bunch of rats across a bunch of rope bridges was – entertaining. Especially when the sniper-rats can insta-kill you with a single lucky shot.

I survived multiple rat attacks, and made it back to the Trynnie side of the tree. Not only were the Trynnies glad to see I’d succeeded on my “mission” (for which I still feel guilty), and rewarding me with experince points – and (for a small bribery fee) – the name of someone named Crock out in the swamp who knows how to get the OTHER artifact I’m looking for – the Destinae Dominus. Maybe he knows where Marten stashed it when he made his escape from Marten’s Bluff when the HLL caught up with him.

There’s a lot going on, and I feel like I’m only about halfway through things (based on the map in the manual and the places I’ve not been to yet).

After a tearful goodbye, I made my way along the deadly road to the Northern Wilderness to pay a visit to the Umpani, and see if they’ll make me a better deal than the T’Rang.

Design Notes:

While they got old after a while, battles in the vertical in the tree-tops with missile weapons were kind of cool. Also, I liked that while some level of combat was inevitable with these quests, I found several ways to delay or avoid direct combat to make faster progress in the game. One of the hallmarks of a good RPG for me is a more open approach to solving quests, allowing the player to try something other than the obvious alternatives.

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Giant Robots – Let Them Fight!!!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 6, 2015

Okay, this is just a geeky fun (and a very cool marketing idea).

This Japanese company named Suidobashi Industries has has created a giant pilotable robot line called Kuratas. Sadly, on wheels, not walking, though some day we’ll get there. Anyway, it’s a million-plus-dollar robot (if you have that kind of disposable income) with lots of high-tech gadgetry and non-lethal weaponry, nice targeting system, and all kinds of warnings about how you take your life and safety into your own hands if you drive the thing. But… dang it. It’s pretty awesome:

Now this American company called MegaBots has been doing the same thing, but got beat to market by their Japanese counterparts. Their stuff is still very much anime & gaming inspired, although the U.S. version looks predictably more battle-worn to begin with. Yes, we fake battle-wear. But while the Japanese version was built for dream-fulfillment, the U.S. giant robot was built from the get-go for competition. Swapping out the high-tech system for a second crew member, it’s… well, it’s also pretty cool. On treads.

“Because we’re Americans,” the video says, “We added really… big… guns!”

And then promptly challenged their Japanese competitors to battle!

Their Japanese counterparts responded to to the challenge with confident amusement, noting the distinct lack of “cool” and saying, “Just building something huge and sticking guns on it? It’s Super-American.” but added one stipulation for their trigger-happy aggressors: The fight must include melee combat. “I want to punch them to scrap and knock them down to do it.”

Bold words when the U.S. vehicle has a 25% weight advantage.

I think Suidobashi recognizes this as a spectacular marketing opportunity regardless of who wins. And they seem pretty confident they’ll win. And… okay. Let’s be real, here. If you are creating a fantasy about a giant combat robot, who wouldn’t want to take it to the next level and actually FIGHT OTHER GIANT ROBOTS? I’ve no doubt the creators dreamed of this from the get-go.

While there is absolutely no way this giant mecha battle is going to be anywhere near as cool as we might fantasize, I nevertheless can’t wait until next summer to see this. This is gonna be cool. They should sell tickets – I’m sure that will help pay for the costs involved in putting on the event and customizing the bots (and taking care of the damage that will no doubt be done as part of the competition.) In fact, since this challenge was issued and has kinda gone viral, I expect a number of venues have been sending MegaBots proposals.

Anyway, I gotta say… this sounds pretty geeky-awesome.

And just for comparison with what we WANT it to look like: Japanese mecha fighting:

And the American variety:

And a nice little hybrid:

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 6: Old-School Goes Old-School!

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 3, 2015

Continuing my play-through of 2001’s Wizardry 8, a classic “old-school” RPG, I broke down and checked out a walkthrough for Wizardry 8 to find out what to do with the graveyard. As it turns out, the runes on the tombstones had absolutely nothing to do with the hanged-spirit looking thing in the mausoleum. The latter could be gotten rid of by a simple weapon traditionally employed against vampires and the undead.

My missing ingredient was a dagger. A simple dagger, not one of the fancy ones I currently possessed. What’s even more astounding is – it is now impossible for me to buy a simple dagger. I even went back to the monastery, to the merchant who is on the cliff above the crash site where I began my adventure, and even he didn’t have a simple dagger to sell. Poniards or a main gauche or throwing knives? No problem. But a simple dagger possessed by a 1st-level rogue? No dice.

Fortunately, some Higardi highwaymen came to my rescue. Well, not literally. They actually tried to kill me and take my stuff. I did unto others instead, and one of the bandits in the five packs that attacked me dropped a simple dagger on the ground as he died. Ka-ching!

I made my way back to the cemetery (this is no small feat – travel along the roads is always time consuming due to the frequent encounters), and went to the pillar in the corner. I jammed the dagger into the seam between blocks. It sorta-kinda pointed the way to a spot southeast of the cemetery. I went outside the cemetery walls, in the corner of the vale, and there was a little mushroom ring. Taking a deep breath and saving my game, I stepped inside.

And found myself transported into a very old-school dungeon. Mind you, this is old-school as perceived by an old-school game, which is very old-school. (Editorial Note from 2015: And now this is a retro-playthrough reprint, so we’ve got another layer of old-school!) We’re talking about a 21 x 21 grid of walls forming a dungeon level here. The walls are textured, but also bear a white outline (reminiscent of the first 4 Wizardries) so you can see the grid.

One thing that came immediately to my attention was that there was no exit. I deliberately skipped reading anything in the walk-through about the dungeon beyond what I was supposed to do to get there. I stumbled along blindly, ran into some nasty spike traps, found a whole bunch of doors that were locked with some SERIOUS lock levels, and found out that the auto-map was virtually useless.

At this point I began to wonder if I shouldn’t reload that saved game from before I entered the dungeon.

I decided to stick with it. And thus committed myself to about a four-hour ordeal that involved a LOT of reloading saved games from combats gone bad, and about six points of increase in my rogue-turned-bard’s lockpicking ability.

The first couple of hours involved me wandering about pretty aimlessly, trying to make sense of what was appearing on the automap, unlocking doors, and getting into fights. I’d find mushroom rings which would teleport me to other locations on the map. I kept finding myself revisiting old territory in the maze, and not finding anything resembling a way out. However, old-school training eventually kicked in. I knew what had to be done.

I pulled out the graph paper.

With the graph paper and pencil in hand, I started re-exploring the map, using those friendly grid-lines on the wall texture for their natural purpose. I found a couple of unexplored doors, some interesting magical items, and the final encounter with the Big Bad Boss (Baron Englund, an undead dude) and his hench-specters. He guarded the mushroom ring that was the exit back to the graveyard.

While I can’t say the Easter Egg Dungeon was any kind of wonderful game-making experience, or even a high-caliber joke. But it was really cool that somebody took the time to throw this little nod to even older-school gameplay into the world (and, I hear, there are more). And it was actually worthwhile – besides running up my lock picking ability, there were a couple of unique items to be found there (although one, I later discovered, was a cursed item you REALLY don’t want to use…), and I did level up most of my characters in my wanderings. I had fun.

After my exploration into the dungeon, I went back to Trynton, and began following Marten’s trail some more. This involved slogging through some swampland, and eventually coming to a castle called Marten’s Bluff. It looked deserted, but after going through the entry hall, I found myself blocked off by glass walls and a big machine that looked like it was supposed to make the walls come together, squishing anything left standing in the entry chamber.

“This isn’t going to end well, ” I thought. But nothing happened. There was a glowing panel on the floor. I stepped on it, expecting the walls to squish me like a bug. Instead, the panel turned out to be the floor of an elevator, which took me down to the underground section of the castle.

Apparently, this underground warren had become home to the T’Rang. I was never very fond of them back in the Wizardry 7 days. However, they were treating me as some kind of hero, telling me that they are looking over me. And, by the way, they want me to join up with them as an ally. I haven’t committed yet, because I really don’t like them. I just want to find the stolen artifact, which as far as I know is hidden down here. Past a locked door that needs a T’Rang handprint to pass through.

This could get pretty interesting.

Design Notes:

Rewarding player exploration is important in any kind of game, but even more so with roleplaying games, which are generally games ABOUT exploration. As a player, you know on a conscious level that the game world is limited to about what you can see. But it’s delightful to step off the beaten path a little ways and discover that – instead of the world ending – there’s a surprise waiting there for you. Or poking around and finding out that the designers actually thought about you doing something really weird. It’s just great fun to discover that there is more to the game – and the game’s world – than meets the eye.

Easter eggs are the extreme version of this. Even the hint that there is more to see that you aren’t seeing helps make the game world come alive.

Fighting some pretty major threats in the dungeon was challenging. I ended up repeating several fights multiple times. Black slime, some fire-breathing monsters (I forget their names), and the Baron were all pretty nasty fights. The trick I used to win these fights were to pull a “Rainbow Six.” Named for the tactic in the game series of that name, I’d stand to the side of the door – out of line-of-sight – and toss in a grenade.

In this case, a fireball or similar area-effect spell. Standard pen & paper tactics. One monster might pop out to engage us, but then they’d block the door so their compatriots couldn’t come out to engage us. So we’d fight one monster at a time, except for periodic showering of area-effect spells behind them. Occasionally, the enemies wouldn’t come out the door at all – confused as to why they were taking so much damage. The combat would sometimes end, because the enemies didn’t think of themselves as “in combat” I guess. So I’d have to press the combat button to get things started again for a couple of rounds. Sometimes, after defeating half the enemies, I’d just close the door, sit, and rest.

Yeah. I’m cheap that way, aren’t I?

As a gamer who has played tactical computer wargames, pen & paper games, miniatures games, and even been known to dress up in chain mail armor with padded sticks and duke it out with a hundred other members of a local medievalist group, I appreciate the tactical possibilities presented by doorways. They are choke points that can make battles get really interesting. A tiny force can hold off an army that way. Been there, done that. It’s hard enough for human players to to resolve that tactical dilemma sometimes.

As a designer, this makes for some rich opportunities for interesting combats. As a computer programmer, I know what a pain in the butt it can be for the AI to recognize and respond correctly to these kinds of situations. Obviously, the Wizardry 8 AI wasn’t quite able to pull it off. For which I am grateful. Otherwise, I’d probably still be down in that dungeon tonight.

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[Archive] Wizardry 8, Episode 5: In Fear of Little Naked Winged Women

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 2, 2015

So now we come to part five of my play-through of the ‘classic’ mainstream CRPG, Wizardry 8 – which proved to be the final chapter of one of the oldest computer RPG series. I missed the game when it was first released seven years ago (Editorial Note from 2015: At the time…), and I’m having a blast playing it today. The graphics may have aged, but the gameplay is still solid. As a designer, I’m taking notes.

Most of my party is now around 10th level. And I’m living in mortal terror of little naked winged women. Leaf Pixies, to be exact. But not all – they apparently spawn with different spell load-outs. The ones that were stalking me for hours may have finally de-popped after I spent an entire night hiding from them, huddled in a fetal position, praying they wouldn’t discover me. I’d battled them about a dozen times, trying different techniques, and nothing worked. These things are FAST – once they spot you, they WILL run you down like the dog you are. And then they’ll open up a can of fairy whup-ass on you.

In this case, it was a group of five pixies. They’d always go first each round. On the first round, most of them would cast Eye For An Eye on themselves, which would reflect any spells you cast on them back against yourself. Maybe one or two would sit out this round of buffing and instead web the entire party, so only about two or three party members would remain free to actually act.

Round two – the last pixies without Eye for an Eye would cast it on themselves (in case you had any funny ideas about targeting individuals with spells), while the rest would pelt the entire – usually bound – party with Armormelt, Whipping Rocks, and the occasional Crush or repeat of the Web spell.

Usually, everyone would survive round two, though occasionally I’d lose my bishop or mage if they were targeted by Crush spells. Round three was the endgame. Sometimes – if enough of my party was free of the webs by then – I could finally take out a pixie. Once, I’d even taken out two! But by the end of round three, the Whipping Rocks and Crush spells would have wiped out both of my principle spellcasters, knocked one of my valkyries unconscious, and probably taken out the bard or the gadgeteer. With maybe one character left alive, conscious, and unbound, I’d close the chapter on this sorry situation and reload.

And get clobbered again.

This was all happening in Trynton. Lo and behold, I made it to Trynton. It was nothing like I expected. I thought it would be another city, and it is. But it is not just another city.

I was in a conference once with Tracy Hickman – the co-author of the Dragonlance series (amongst many others) and creator of the legendary (and notorious) Dungeons & Dragons module, “Ravenloft.” He commented on how, if you were to take the castles from most of the classic modules of the era and model them in 3D, they’d come out really “dumpy.” He found that the best way to really confuse players was to make them work with the vertical. It threw off mapping, and human brains have a tougher time dealing with 3D space (even though we live in it).

The designers of Wizardry 8 may have listened to that same lecture. Trynton is a city of tree-houses. It is highly vertical. Though the 3D graphics make it easier to deal with than text-descriptions of pen & paper D&D, it can still get a bit confusing. But even with the primitive, EverQuest-era graphics of the time, it just looks cool. While it’s also kinda cool fighting on a rope bridge allied with a half-dozen or more Trynnies, it makes moving into melee with some enemies almost impossible.

Really, the only things I don’t like about Trynton are the marauding bands of Leaf Pixies, and the lack of shops. Although Fuzzfass’s potion shop is nicely stocked. I’ve not completed all the quests here (and I’m not sure I can, yet), but I have managed to make it to the illusionary “seventh bough” and meet the legendary shaman who told me my destiny.

My destiny, apparently, is to die – repeatedly and awfully – at the hands of tiny naked women with wings.

Actually, no, that’s not what he told me. His answer was the biggest non-surprise so far: My destiny was intertwined with that of Marten, and the Destinae Dominus. I have to follow Marten’s trail. For this, I battled spiders, pixies, vampire bats, rapaxes (rapaxi?), and blinding wasps all the way up along a giant tree? Still, redundancy is better than getting lost and confused. I accepted the quest and left a tip in the jar. Not that there was any jar, but I tell ’em that to get their hopes up.

So I am now to continue doing… well, what I was doing. Except now I think I have to head into the swamp. But FIRST, I have to head back to Arnika and sell some stuff. And I have to figure out what’s up with that graveyard near Trynton. I found runes on some of the headstones, and I could press them and … uh, turn them off or whatever. But after finding about six of them, they still didn’t make the spirit running the graveyard go away. I tried asking around in Trynton to see if anybody knew about it, but they all gave me the “huh?” response. I’ll see if I have any more success in Arnika.

Design Notes:

I have always been a proponent of having adventure-game style puzzles in RPGs. Maybe that’s just because I’m old-school where the two genres were both far more vibrant and far more interconnected. Wizardry 8, like many of its predecessors, has this in spades.

There’s got to be a balance, though. In graphic adventure games, there is usually not many obstacles to moving between areas to fiddle with objects or hunt for missed clues. In a 3D game, the “hunt the pixel” problem is increased by an order of magnitude due to the third dimension, and getting between areas can be pretty tedious. And treacherous. Particularly when the game scales up the difficulty of the encounters to match your average party level, as Wizardry 8 does.

This makes backtracking pretty time-consuming. Most RPGs, including this one, compensate for this by keeping the puzzles either pretty simple or optional. Or maybe they hoped to generate additional revenue from the strategy guide back in the 90’s.

I personally prefer staying in-game for finding out how to solve puzzles, and it’d be cool if the game could offer redundant hints as to solutions or the next move. As Wizardry 8 did, back in Arnika, when both the priest and the aging HLL officer suggested your next course of action. This is hardly universal – after all, nobody in Trynton will even suggest how I should start mending the broken rope bridge. I worry it’ll involve inventory items I don’t have and don’t have a clue where to look for them.

The difficult / dangerous / time-consuming slog from area to area is a reason why I don’t enjoy the concept of specialty shops in RPGs – even though they sound cool on paper. My team is accumulating a lot of useless junk I’d like to sell, but the potion shop in town won’t buy my crap to help finance a potion to restore a drained comrade. More realistic? Sure. But when the guy is about the only shop in Trynton, and the Rapax back in Arnika is possibly a half-hour or so of unproductive running around and fighting, the convenience factor outweighs the realism.

As I also mentioned, I highly approve of the use of vertical space in the game. The treehouse city is just cool and quirky and alien. And awesome. It gives the game – and the Trynnies – some real character, and brings them to life.

Anti-magic zones are a staple of “old school” RPGs (I remember hating the anti-magic LEVEL in Ultima Underworld). The battle in an anti-magic zone in Trynton seems designed specifically to encourage the player to seize an unfair advantage against an otherwise nearly impossible combat. It doesn’t take much, but you can position yourself just outside the anti-magic zone, but force the hordes of monsters to fight just inside the zone, incapable of bringing their spells to bear.

Fighting with allied but uncontrolled NPCs in can make for some pretty epic battles. A little slow, but a lot cool. I also like the illusion that I’m not the only guy in the world capable of and willing to battle evil.

Oh, yeah – and having the nastiest, most fearsome opponents in an area be itsy-bitsy little faeries: Definitely worth some bonus points, there. Horrible, toothy, slobbering monsters are always great, but itsy-bitsy naked winged women are just all the more terrifying.

Filed Under: Archive, Wizardry 8 - Comments: Read the First Comment

[Archive] Wizardry 8, Bonus Episode: Designer Explains Arnika Road

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 1, 2015

Charles Miles, a member of the Wizardry 8 development team, takes responsibility for the much-criticized Arnika Road section of the game (which Scorpia likes to call, “The Terrible Road.”). His self-appointed title was “Monster & Item Wrangler,” and besides designing Arnika Road, he set up a lot of the data for the game. After years of working on Zoo Tycoon games, he went back to making RPGs business, working with Turbine and Dungeons & Dragons Online.

Scott MacMillan introduced us via email this week. Charles had some comments about Arnika Road, and about Wizardry 8 in general, which he has graciously allowed me to post here:

People have screamed bloody murder about the Arnika road since Wizardry 8 was originally released. This is what the Arnika road was *supposed* to teach you:

To avoid monsters by either using spells like Chameleon or by staying out of their line of sight. You could often sneak around the monsters if you were careful.

To be smart about where you rested. If you rested in the middle of the road, monsters are much more likely to wander by see you, and ambush you while you sleep. If you rested in a hard-to-see place like behind a rock or behind the house at the T-intersection it was much easier to get a full rest in.

To use the disposable items–potions, bombs, wands, etc.–we constantly gave you as loot.

None of this came across very clearly in the final game. There were hints buried in the manual, but Wizardry 8 came out just after people had gotten out of the habit of reading game manuals. Also people had become accustomed to brain-dead monsters from games like Everquest that detected you using only a basic aggro radius that worked through doors, walls, etc. That meant most players never even thought of trying an “unusual” tactic like hiding from the monsters! (We had just come off of Jagged Alliance 2 so naturally we put in line-of-sight and hearing systems for the monsters.)

Last but far from least, Wizardry 8 was one of the last North American RPGs to be unapologetically hard–we wanted surviving each level to feel like an achievement. In fact one of our concerns about Wizardry 8 was that it might be too *easy, *as crazy as that sounds today. We made Wiz 8 much easier than any of the earlier installments in the series (if you don’t believe me then try, say, Wizardry 4) and we were worried the long-time fans might object.

Anyway, I’ve always regretted that people had so much trouble with the Arnika road. If I were doing it today I’d do things differently–I might make it a bit easier and I would definitely put in a tutorial system that gave you guidance on how to survive.

It’s great to see people still playing the game, by the way. It’s making feel all nostalgic.

Filed Under: Archive, Wizardry 8 - Comments: 2 Comments to Read

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