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Wizardry on Apple II


stalepie

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I am unfamiliar with old computers and emulating them, so I may be doing something wrong. But when I use Applewin and start up Wizardry 1 I cannot seem to delete a character. It freezes on the "Are you sure you want to delete this character (Y/N)" part. I need to delete at least 6 characters because I want to start with a fresh party and the copy of the ROMs I have come filled with premade characters.

 

Also I was wondering if anyone could offer their opinions on what are the best versions of the early Wizardry games. I know they exist on NES, Famicom, Super Famicom and SNES, and I have the NES and Famicom games in my collection. I also have a copy of the IBM-DOS version.

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Oh, they ARE marked as read-only. However I followed this person's advice in marking them read only because it wouldn't start up the game properly without doing so (it would go to a blank screen after you pressed return at the title screen).

 

Anyway, I am playing the NES version now, which as far as I can tell is very faithful to the original in regards to stats and gameplay.

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Oh, they ARE marked as read-only. However I followed this person's advice in marking them read only because it wouldn't start up the game properly without doing so (it would go to a blank screen after you pressed return at the title screen).

OK, that's why you can't remove character's then...

 

My guess is that there is a way to use/create a character disk or something similar???

 

Been too long.. I have to try that..

 

This link should help:

http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/1/docs/bt1-command_summary_card-apple_ii.htm

 

desiv

Edited by desiv
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Oh, they ARE marked as read-only. However I followed this person's advice in marking them read only because it wouldn't start up the game properly without doing so (it would go to a blank screen after you pressed return at the title screen).

You should be able to temporarily mark the file as writeable, just for as long as it takes to delete the character. Heck, you can leave it that way for the whole time you're playing, and then just remember to mark the file read-only again before your next boot. As I recall, a separate character disk was the preferred way to go, though.

 

Also I was wondering if anyone could offer their opinions on what are the best versions of the early Wizardry games. I know they exist on NES, Famicom, Super Famicom and SNES, and I have the NES and Famicom games in my collection. I also have a copy of the IBM-DOS version.

I have a thing about playing games on the platforms for which they were originally designed. Sometimes they offer the best experience, sometimes not. But man, if you're playing the very first Wizardry game it only seems appropriate to play it on its original system, the Apple II.

Edited by Streck
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Ticking and unticking the read-only box doesn't seem to work. I think Applewin keeps in memory the version you loaded and doesn't check to see if the .dsk file on your hard drive has changed.

 

I am having trouble creating a blank disk (I think). I looked at the help files that come with Applewin and it says to load DOS 3.3 master disk image into drive 1, then click on drive 1 to make a blank disk (make up any name you want and press enter), then type a simple program, such as 10 PRINT CHR$(4);"CATALOG"

Then type INIT HELLO to initialize or format the disk. So I did all that and thought I had a blank disk for making the scenario disk in Wizardry. Well, to get to that screen you load up Wizardry and before you press "S" for start game, you go into Utilities and select Make Scenario Disk.

It says, place original master scenario side in drive 2, and a formatted diskette in drive 1. I assume by "original master scenario" they mean disk 2 of Wizardry because when I tried disk 1 it did not work (my disk files are not labeled "original master scenario" and I am unfamiliar with the way the original disks looked). So I try that and I get

 

ERROR MAKING SCENARIO

-----------------------------------

DISK ERROR

PRESS [RET]

 

Any idea what I do instead?

 

I looked at the Bard's Tale page but I didn't understand it because it said something about making a copy of the back side of Bard's Tale's boot disk. No idea how to do that..

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I looked at the Bard's Tale page but I didn't understand it because it said something about making a copy of the back side of Bard's Tale's boot disk. No idea how to do that..

 

Go here:

http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/1/files/index.html

 

DL the Apple II version. It has a character disk in the archive. I am guessing that would be it..

 

desiv

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I looked at the Bard's Tale page but I didn't understand it because it said something about making a copy of the back side of Bard's Tale's boot disk. No idea how to do that..

 

Go here:

http://bardstale.brotherhood.de/talefiles/1/files/index.html

 

DL the Apple II version. It has a character disk in the archive. I am guessing that would be it..

 

desiv

 

Why do I want to use a Bard's Tale character disk? I'm trying to play Wizardry.

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Oh man, and I had a super-long post typed up. Glad you got it working!

 

Incidentally, my preferred way to format new DOS 3.3 disks is with Copy II Plus. AppleWin has to be set to use "Authentic" disk speed when doing this, though, otherwise it errors out. You way may actually be faster though. :)

Edited by Streck
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I have a thing about playing games on the platforms for which they were originally designed. Sometimes they offer the best experience, sometimes not. But man, if you're playing the very first Wizardry game it only seems appropriate to play it on its original system, the Apple II.

 

I do the same thing. Getting a game to run is part of the fun. Even if a game has an enhanced remake, historical curiosity is a big part of the reason why I do this. So having the same experience on the same hardware is a big draw.

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My party died today and I am busy rebuilding a new one to either fetch them from the dungeons or just stick with the new one and leave them there (or bring them back in case this happens again)...

 

I like to play without cheats and walkthroughs, although i have cheated a little (I know where Murphy's Ghost is and a couple of other things), but mostly I've been drawing my own maps and slowly, carefully making my way through it. hard game!

 

However a question: does anyone know if it was possible (or easy) to simply copy your character backups of Wizardry on Apple II to another disk in case you lose your party deep in the dungeons? I just don't want to go through with this again, and while I know that there are tricks (like resetting your machine before Wizardry automatically saves after a fight), I want to play it in the legit way, but it just occurred to me that this MAY BE the legit way that I was supposed to be doing all along! Like, duh! Of course I'm supposed to be making backups of my characters... in other words, using save states.

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However a question: does anyone know if it was possible (or easy) to simply copy your character backups of Wizardry on Apple II to another disk in case you lose your party deep in the dungeons?

 

Aren't you using an emulator (applewin)? Then can't you just take the disc images and make a copy of them (ctrl-c/ctrl-v) and there you go? Instant backup? :P

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However a question: does anyone know if it was possible (or easy) to simply copy your character backups of Wizardry on Apple II to another disk in case you lose your party deep in the dungeons?

 

Aren't you using an emulator (applewin)? Then can't you just take the disc images and make a copy of them (ctrl-c/ctrl-v) and there you go? Instant backup? :P

 

uh yeah but as I said I want to be sure that I'm not cheating - i.e., doing something that couldn't easily be done back in the early 80s on an apple 2.

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However a question: does anyone know if it was possible (or easy) to simply copy your character backups of Wizardry on Apple II to another disk in case you lose your party deep in the dungeons?

 

Aren't you using an emulator (applewin)? Then can't you just take the disc images and make a copy of them (ctrl-c/ctrl-v) and there you go? Instant backup? :P

 

uh yeah but as I said I want to be sure that I'm not cheating - i.e., doing something that couldn't easily be done back in the early 80s on an apple 2.

 

It was pretty common, back in the day, to back up character disks. There wasn't any copy protection on those, so you could easily use Copy II Plus (or any other copying program) to do it. If you'd invested enough time into the game then this was something that you'd definitely do. Trust me, you wouldn't be cheating! :)

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However a question: does anyone know if it was possible (or easy) to simply copy your character backups of Wizardry on Apple II to another disk in case you lose your party deep in the dungeons?

 

Aren't you using an emulator (applewin)? Then can't you just take the disc images and make a copy of them (ctrl-c/ctrl-v) and there you go? Instant backup? :P

 

uh yeah but as I said I want to be sure that I'm not cheating - i.e., doing something that couldn't easily be done back in the early 80s on an apple 2.

 

It was pretty common, back in the day, to back up character disks. There wasn't any copy protection on those, so you could easily use Copy II Plus (or any other copying program) to do it. If you'd invested enough time into the game then this was something that you'd definitely do. Trust me, you wouldn't be cheating! :)

 

Thanks!!!!

 

Still though... it makes me wonder why the game seems designed around the principle of not being able to easily recover your characters. For instance, there are whole features in the game related to this, like to restore your character in case of a power outage, to disband and retrieve characters later (out party), inability to revive characters in the Temple of Cant, etc. etc. PLUS there was a promise to try to retrieve characters from corrupted disks if you sent them in to Sir-Tech and included 15 dollars (i downloaded the apple 2 manual .pdf and saw this mentioned at the end). So if they went to all that trouble it makes me think the designers didn't expect players to easily be able to back up their characters and essentially "save" the game when they wanted (or at least whenever you were back in the castle).

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Exactly.. back in the Apple 2 days I constantly copied my discs for Castle Wolfenstein or Aztec to still have my "good" saves.

 

Only difference is now instead of taking many minutes it takes 1 second. :lol:

 

lol, I just clicked on your website url (from your profile) -- that's not you, right??

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lol, I just clicked on your website url (from your profile) -- that's not you, right??

 

You know I didn't even know what you were talking about until I checked it out and lo and behold, I put that in as a joke years and years ago and totally forgot about it. Well, it's staying because it's hilarious :lol:

 

And no, it isn't. :P

Edited by NE146
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lol, I just clicked on your website url (from your profile) -- that's not you, right??

 

You know I didn't even know what you were talking about until I checked it out and lo and behold, I put that in as a joke years and years ago and totally forgot about it. Well, it's staying because it's hilarious :lol:

 

And no, it isn't. :P

 

aw, man!

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So if they went to all that trouble it makes me think the designers didn't expect players to easily be able to back up their characters and essentially "save" the game when they wanted (or at least whenever you were back in the castle).

 

Yes, save scumming is cheating. But everyone did it, so it's ok.

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So if they went to all that trouble it makes me think the designers didn't expect players to easily be able to back up their characters and essentially "save" the game when they wanted (or at least whenever you were back in the castle).

 

Yes, save scumming is cheating. But everyone did it, so it's ok.

 

Actually I just noticed there is a backup option in the utilities section of the boot disk. So I guess it's not save scumming after all.

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