Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord: Difference between revisions
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| platforms = [[Apple II series|Apple II]], [[Commodore 64]], [[Macintosh]], [[MSX]], [[NEC PC-9801]], [[Nintendo Entertainment System|NES]], [[PC booter]], [[PC Engine]] |
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Revision as of 22:15, 31 May 2010
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (July 2008) |
| Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Sir-tech Software, Inc. |
| Publisher(s) | Sir-tech Software, Inc. |
| Designer(s) | Andrew C. Greenberg Robert Woodhead |
| Series | Wizardry series |
| Platform(s) | Apple II, Commodore 64, Macintosh, MSX, NEC PC-9801, NES, PC booter, PC Engine, Game Boy Color |
| Release | Apple II MSX-2 |
| Genre(s) | Role-playing |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord is the first game in the Wizardry series of computer role-playing games. It was developed by Andy Greenberg and Robert Woodhead, and launched at a Boston computer convention in 1980. In 1979, Robert Sirotek and Fred Norman created Sir-tech Software, Inc. to distribute the game, and it was released in 1981.[1]
This was one of the first Dungeons & Dragons-style role-playing games to be written for computer play, and the first such game to offer color graphics.[2] It was also the first true party-based role-playing computer game.[1]
The game eventually ended up as the first of a trilogy that also included Wizardry II: The Knight of Diamonds and Wizardry III: Legacy of Llylgamyn.[3] This game needs to be completed in order to create a party that could play in the remainder of the trilogy.
Gameplay
Starting in the town, the player creates a party of up to six characters from an assortment of five possible races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Hobbits), three alignments (Good, Neutral, Evil), and four basic classes (Fighter, Priest, Mage, Thief).[1] There are also four elite classes (Bishop: priest and mage spells; Samurai: fighter w/mage spells; Lord: fighter w/priest spells, and Ninja: fighter w/ thief abilities). Characters can be changed to an elite class after meeting the stat requirements. Priests typically cast healing spells, while Mages cast damage spells. Bishops, being a combination of the two, learn both sets of spells but at a reduced rate.
After equipping the characters with basic armor and weaponry, the party then descends into the dungeon below Trebor's castle. This consists of a maze of ten levels,[4] each progressively more challenging than the last.
The style of play employed in this game has come to be termed a dungeon crawl. The goal, as in most subsequent computer role-playing games, is to find treasure including ever more potent items, gain levels of experience by killing monsters, then face the evil arch-wizard Werdna on the bottom level and retrieve a powerful amulet. The goal of most levels is to find the elevator or stairs going down to the next level (without being killed in the process).
The graphics are extremely simple by today's standards; the screen is mostly full of text, with about 10% of the screen devoted to a first-person view of the dungeon maze using wireframe 3D vector graphics. By the standards of the day, however, the graphics were a step forward from the text-only games that had been far more common. When monsters are encountered, the dungeon maze disappears, replaced by a picture of one of the monsters. Combat is against from 1 to 4 groups of monsters. The game lacks an automap feature which had not been invented at the time of its release, so the player has to draw the map for each level on a piece of graph paper as he walks through the dungeon maze,[5] step by step - failing to do this often results in becoming permanently lost, as there are many locations in the maze that have a permanent "Darkness" spell upon the square (making the player walk blindly) or "Teleport" spell where the player ends up in a new location. A magic spell can be used to determine the current location of the party, and at higher levels there is a teleport spell that can be used to quickly transition between the maze levels.[5]
The game is unforgiving of mistakes or bad luck, requiring the player to start over if the party was killed in combat or accidentally teleported into solid stone. The challenge ultimately became part of the appeal, however, and the game still holds nostalgic appeal for many old-time computer gamers.[citation needed] The game can also require hundreds of hours to complete.[4]
Cheats
At the easiest level is the ability to manufacture gold. Players can create new characters, pool their gold to one of them, then delete the others and repeat the process.
Another more common way to manipulate the game is through using a hex-editor. By altering the values stored at certain locations within a file, it is possible to alter many facets of the game, including the amount of gold (to buy better items), the experience points, character level or trait, even items in their possession.
There is an Easter egg that can be quite helpful in winning this game. Members of the Bishop class are capable of "identifying" unknown objects in a player's inventory, but the inventory list is only 8 items long. If a Bishop attempts to identify the 9th item and is successful, he receives one hundred million experience points.[1] By then repeatedly resting at the Adventurers' Inn, the player's level (including hit points, spell-casting ability, etc.) can be raised to extreme levels. Three Bishops going through the maze after identifying #9 are all but invulnerable.
Another lesser known cheat, available on the Apple II version (and which may have been available on other platforms), also involves the Bishop. If the bishop is commanded to identify an item number, but the letter "s" is hit instead, the character below the bishop in the roster is given one hundred million experience. Identifying the letter "j" gives the character below the bishop one hundred million gold. One of the problems with these cheats, however, is that the game could only advance a characters level one level at a time; therefore, after gaining the huge experience boost, it can take a long time to level up appropriately.
According to co-author Robert Woodhead, the "identify cheats" were actually a bug. The line of code checking for a valid key from "1" to "8" read 'if (ch >= "1") or (ch <= "8")'; the "or" should have been an "and". If the identify succeeded, a bit would get flipped in an indexed data structure, and bounds-checking was disabled in the game in order to get it to fit into the 48k of memory available. Typing "9" would flip a bit in the experience-point data element, and typing other keys would have a variety of effects, including crashing the game, and even temporarily changing the current dungeon level. Woodhead recalls getting a letter from a player that listed the apparent effects of every typable key on an Apple IIe keyboard.
When the IBM PC version of the game was released, the bug was declared to be a feature, and deliberately included.
Development
Wizardry was initially coded in BASIC, but was rewritten in Pascal after BASIC proved too slow to be playable. The game was then delayed to wait for a run-time system which would allow the game to be played on any Apple computer. Ultimately the game took two and a half man-years to complete.[5]
Reception and legacy
Wizardry became an instant classic, with publications like Computer Gaming World praising it as "one of the all-time classic computer games"; complex yet playable. With no major faults, the only minor fault described in the review is the ease with which parties can initially be killed.[5] The game eventually led to a series of eight games spanning twenty years, and helped set genre standards with its intuitive layout and interface.[2]
The game was reviewed in 1982 in The Dragon #65 by Bruce Humphrey. Humphrey stated that "There is so much good about this game, it’s difficult to decide where to begin," and concluded by describing it as "not easily beaten or solved, I recommend it to anyone tired of mediocre programs and ho-hum dungeon encounters."[6]
The Macintosh version of the game, known by fans as "MacWizardry", was reviewed in 1986 in Dragon's first "The Role of Computers" column. The reviewers called MacWizardry "a delightful reintroduction of a marvelous classic."[7] In a subsequent column, the reviewers gave the Mac version of the game 4 out of 5 stars.[8]
Trivia
Werdna and Trebor are the names of the original programmers (Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert J. Woodhead) spelled backwards. Their names also appear as initials (i.e., ACG and RJW) on the map of the eighth and ninth floors.
References
- ^ a b c d Hallford, Jana (2001). Swords & Circuitry: a Designer's Guide to Computer Role Playing Games. Cengage Learning. p. 55–58. ISBN 0761532994.
- ^ a b Crigger, Lara. "Chasing D&D: A History of RPGs". 1up.com. Retrieved 2008-06-05.
- ^ DeMaria, Rusel; Wilson, Johnny L. (2003). High Score!: the Illustrated History of Electronic Games (2nd ed.). McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 156. ISBN 0072231726.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ a b McComb, Gordon. "Playing the new adult-rated computer games". Popular Science. 225 (1): 92–98. Retrieved 2009-07-01.
- ^ a b c d Marlow, Mark (May–June 1982). "Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, a Review". Computer Gaming World: 6–8.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: date format (link) - ^ Humphrey, Bruce (September 1982). "Campaigns for the Keyboard". The Dragon (65): 73–74.
- ^ Lesser, Hartley and Pattie (June 1986). "The Role of Computers". The Dragon (110): 38–43.
- ^ Lesser, Hartley and Patricia (October 1987). "The Role of Computers". Dragon (126): 82–88.
there was a bottom level called CONTRA DEXTRA (level 11). where you had to keep turning left or teleport to death. this was also a clue when dealing with the names of the creators of the game backwards. this was the finale level. Although you could always repeat the feat.