After getting some actual work done this morning, I downloaded the next game on my chronology: Wizardry II. By all accounts, it is exactly the same game as Wizardry but with a different dungeon. This is so much the case, I discovered, that you can't even create new characters in it. You have to import them from Wizardry. One site I browsed indicated that in modern parlance, Wizardry II would be called an expansion pack instead of a different game.
In any event, I can't get it to work. The game assumes I'm swapping floppy disks out of a drive or something and doesn't seem to run the export/import process in a way that's compatible with DOSBox. I've tried everything I can think of. The Internet is surprisingly of no help: I found a guy on a message board that was having the same problem, but he didn't get a solution except a suggestion to purchase The Ultimate Wizardry Archives. There aren't many copies of this left around--the cheapest price I can find is $70, which wouldn't deter me except I'm not 100% confident it would work even then.
So, a plea: have any of the readers of this blog got Wizardry II to work on a modern system? Do any of you have the The Ultimate Wizardry Archives on CD and a willingness to test and/or sell it to me?
Without Wizardry II, the next game on the list is Ultima III, followed by...sweet Jesus...Wizardry III. Weren't there any other franchises around back then?
Later Edit: Wizardry III looks like it's going to give me the same problem.
Did you try screwing around with the game files and copying your character files over into the new games directory? I'm guessing yes, but since no one else commented at all....
ReplyDeleteIf you've found a solution in a latter post sorry, I'm reading through this in order.
Thanks for the belated help, but I solved that ages ago by buying the Ultimate Wizardry Archives. Don't know what was different, but it did the trick.
ReplyDeleteif i had known you wanted The Ultimate Wizardry Archives some 4 years ago you could have bought mine, although it was just the CD and manual left of it.
ReplyDeletedidnt even get close to 70 bucks for it.
Christ, is that what I paid? I was so young and foolish back then.
ReplyDeleteLOL -- this would've broken the whole quest for me...
ReplyDeleteI'm late to the party as always but you can transfer your characters by copying your wiz1\save1.dsk into your wiz2\ folder. I think you also need to do the edge/utilities/move characters thing in wiz1 first and just spam enter through all the disk entering stuff.
ReplyDeleteBut wiz2 would just be hell without using save states so maybe its good you put this off until later, just from the many times I accidentally tp'd off the side of the map into mass permanent death alone. Not to mention all the items that flat out kill you when you use them.... not to mention again all the ridiculously hard enemies, heh.
Your story of trying to find the fix for Wizardry II instantly brought to mind the XKCD cartoon that the PC Gaming Fixes Wiki uses on its front page:
ReplyDeletehttp://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home
That's a great cartoon, and very true. I didn't know about this Wiki. It looks like it'll be a useful resource when it gets more articles.
DeleteWhich cartoon? It's no longer on the page.
DeleteMaybe you could play an emulated port of Wizardry 2 and 3. It was ported to the Game Boy for example.
ReplyDeleteah I see you solved it. never mind.
ReplyDeletethanks for a good blog.
Another solution for retro gamers may be the C64 version, since swapping disks in emulators is usually pretty quick.
ReplyDeleteThis game, like the first one, doesn't seem to be for sale anywhere, and it was mostly ported to 8 bit systems at the time.