Classic CRPG fans, take note of this sad day. Andrew C. Greenberg, one
of the two co-developers of "Wizardry", has passed on.
I'll admit it; I never cared much for the Wizardry series. They were
too focused on the mechanical aspects of the RPG genre --the stats,
the loot, the combat-- and not enough on the bits I actually cared
for: story, world-building and characters. They often were ruthlessly
hard too; 'git-gud, scrub' games long before Dark Souls made that a
meme. I played games for entertainment, not challenge.
Were the Wizardry games actually/harder/ than "Bards Tale" or "UltimaWell Bards Tale was at least unfair (the first title) it let you choose
I"? Maybe not. Like I said, I'm not enough of an expert on those games
to really say. But my subjective experience was that they felt a lot
less forgiving.
Classic CRPG fans, take note of this sad day. Andrew C. Greenberg, one
of the two co-developers of "Wizardry", has passed on.
I'll admit it; I never cared much for the Wizardry series. They were
too focused on the mechanical aspects of the RPG genre --the stats,
the loot, the combat-- and not enough on the bits I actually cared
for: story, world-building and characters. They often were ruthlessly
hard too; 'git-gud, scrub' games long before Dark Souls made that a
meme. I played games for entertainment, not challenge.
But that the Wizardry games had a huge influence on the hobby is
undeniable, and the Wizardry games were some of the first complex
CRPGs to have any real success. They helped prove the medium was for
more than just shooting and jumping. And the Wizardry games were
complex, not only with huge (for its time) maps but multiple character classes, dozens of spells and numerous character classes which could radically change how your game played out.
How much of Wizardry was Greenberg's influence over his co-creator's,
Robert Woodhead, is unclear. Greenberg left the PC entertainment
software in the late 80s, shortly after Wizardry IV's release. But he
remains part of the heart and soul of the games; after all, the
big-bad of the series, the Mad Overlord Werdna, is Andrew spelled backwards...
It's odd I never got into the series. I am more of a tactical mechanics >combat lover in RPGs and it seems like it was right up my alley.
Perhaps it was just lack of funds when Wizardry was in it's heyday, for
now I don't have any nostalgia for it, and have mostly moved on from
turn based combat.
(Infocom was betting big on creating a relational database) and theirCornerstone had a design 10 years ahead of its time basically not really runnable on computers back then with a decent performance. To my
ongoing financial issues (because people didn't want to buy games
without pretty graphics) pretty much sealed their fate.
Am 04.09.24 um 16:30 schrieb Spalls Hurgenson:
(Infocom was betting big on creating a relational database) and theirCornerstone had a design 10 years ahead of its time basically not really runnable on computers back then with a decent performance. To my
ongoing financial issues (because people didn't want to buy games
without pretty graphics) pretty much sealed their fate.
knowledge the RDB was basically programmed in a lisp like language just
like their games running on a VM.
This worked for them for the games because they just needed to port the
VM (z-engine) to another platform and could release all their games so
far on it.
But for the database it was a hog, the db was dog slow compared to d-
base which was the standard relational db for the market they were
aiming for, it was dead from the beginning and dragged them down!
They had to sell out after the corner stone fiasco to Activison which
was their end!
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