This week here at Emptyeye.com, not a lot of note really happened. I found out that my computer is still acting up, and it’s gotten to the point where it is unfortunately difficult to actually work on the album (Whose page I should really update sometime soon). In reality, though, that’s sort of low on the priority scale at the moment, what with the news that I’m moving out soon coming to the forefront. Oh yeah, and my Astyanax speedrun has seen the light of Internet, causing a brief spike of traffic here.
Today I went to a huge party for Jess and her family, where her grandfather gave me a hand-made pen carved out of wood. Pretty neat, even if it isn’t a clicky wooden flashlight like Jess got. I guess this means I’m somewhat officially part of the family now. I also played some Rock Band, which was Jess’s brother’s graduation present. Fun stuff, and I can actually do some easy drums on the easy level.
Yesterday I posted that my Wizardry experience was going more or less smoothly. I spoke too soon–several character deaths and one character alignment change (Which I eventually changed back) later, I’m on the tenth floor (A lot of the middle floors immediately send you into complete darkness, which I was not dealing with even with some of the improvements made to the SNES compilation to make the games slightly easier. one example is that the mapping spell, which previously only showed your location in the maze, actually gives you a picture of the floor you’re on to the extent that you’ve explored it) and into the “liberal use of the Reset button (Well, the emulator’s Reset function anyway)” phase. I’ll probably pop back up to the castle a time or two more before making my final attempt to beat the game, but suffice it to say that at this point, the game is so “Screw you player” hard that I have no problem with saying “Screw you game” right back at it and hitting reset when a group of Greater Demons surprise me and wipe me the heck out before I can do anything. Also, and I think my cousin would agree with me on this, I have no problem with a person saying that they “beat” a Wizardry game even if they had to make extensive use of Reset, or even Save States, to get it done (I’m generally of the opinion that save-stating through a game “doesn’t count” unless you use the save states to, for instance, avoid entering really long passwords when you come back to the game.).
Until next time…
-EE
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Not only is resetting acceptible in Wizardry, it’s encouraged. In the official strategy guide (sub-title on the cover: “Proving Grounds of the Mad Overload”) do you remember the part about “miracles”? The book refers to resetting as a miracle within the context of the Wizardry world, a wondrous occurence that is infused with divine grace.
Translation: we probably should have play-tested this game more (or “People are going to reset anyway so we might as well have fun with it”).
Congrats on your wooden pen, may it bring you the luck and prosperity my Pac-Man pen has given me. So when is the official move happening? Too bad my van isn’t still available!
Resetting is also encouraged in Bard’s Tale (doesn’t save until you quit the game from the adventurer’s guild) which works for me cause I keep storming the starter dungeon for xp (Dark Lord would sometimes crit-kill one of my characters). I wonder how many other Wiz’s have the “Trebor Sux” message or refers to it (I know its in 4 [answer to one of the passwords, according to Mr Flewin’s Wiz 1 guide on GF] and 6 (appears on a wall that gets blown up after putting stinky cheese by it)
Ironically, I started over and took your idea of 3 figs, a thief, priest and mage (bishop on reserve for id purposes) AND no neuts. Double irony, I got the ribbon without having to fight those bozos again (party perceived as friendly). Might consider no neutrals for LoL since one of the levels there doesn’t allow them if memory serves.
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I honestly don’t think it was an issue of not enough playtesting. I think they really just wanted to make the game kick-you-in-the-face hard. I imagine the PC equivalent of the Magical Reset Button would be making multiple copies of your character files so you can easily “reset” as it were.
Gah, LoL spoilers! Oh well. Maybe your memory is wrong. :D How’d you get a Thief Good? Start it off as Evil and alignment switch or what? I’ll start LoL (Again, never actually played it) once I finally finish off Werdna and the stupid Amulet back.
Question: Do you actually need the Blue Ribbon to USE the elevator? Or is the list of Essential Items in Wiz I actually just the Amulet? Because you can take the stairs down to floor 5 and pick up the Express Elevator from there..hmm.
That or periodically make a backup copy of your scenario disk. Good thief, yeah I started him evil and he switched eventually (your choice against friendly monsters can affect this sometimes in case you weren’t aware of that). The reason for no neutrals is because they can’t be a priest, bishop, lord or ninja. ATM, half and half are good/evil (right now it’s one of my figs, the priest and mage). As for the ribbon requirement, idk but I believe you DO need it.