colas@lemur.inria.fr (Colas Nahaboo) (04/03/91)
In article <1991Apr2.150457.27319@bellcore.bellcore.com>, quasar@bellcore.com (Laurence R. Brothers) writes: > Wizardry on the whole is a pretty nice game except for some user-interface > stupidity. What an understatement!!! Wizardry 6 is one of the crappiest piece of software I ever saw. I spent nights on Wizardy I and II on my apple II 10 years ago, but I just tried Wizardry 6 on my amiga, and was severely disapointed. PLEASE PEOPLE DON'T BUY IT -- Sir-Tech should be sued by consumer organizations for releasing such a user-despising product! - the gameplay has not improved in ten years. You still do not see monsters in advance, the graphics are essentially non-informative, and conveys little more information than the appleII line drawings. Positive points: you now see stairs from a distance... and you can save the game nearly anywhere (but not during a battle) - it is awfully mono-tasking: you can just sit there and do nothing till the "cute" monophonic sound-effect or animation ends. I actually had time to make me a coffee while 3 rats were dancing in front of me, disabling all my actions!!! At least on the apple II there were no such pauses in the game. It pauses for ages while telling "cute" messages, even with game speed to the max (delay=0). - It takes FIVE disks!!! - for storing non-compressed bitmaps, for more user-locking jerky anims... Without these stupid anims, which are the main cause for my gripes, WIz6 could well have been fitted one one disk. On the apple II it fitted on one 130K disk!!! At least disk-access is fast and OS-friendly, so that you can HD install, and use disk caches for floppy users. - the mouse interface is a total joke. For instance: - to choose a characters, it shows you all of them with their names in one window (there were alreadyu on the screen), then underneath it repeats the names only in a small window - You can ONLY click there!!! - menus have their items moving (disabled items are deleted, moving up the others), so that you cannot click fast, you must examine the menu each time! + tons and tons of utter stupidity... - the keyboard interface is a mess, what will be done when typing return is far from obvious. On the Apple II I never had a problem. - I could go on an on... Suffice to say that with the same user interface than Wiz1 on the apple II, the game would have been a LOT better. Everything they have added in 10 (TEN) years is bad design! Perhaps the plot is interesting, but it would have been better with a text-only interface... > Fortunately wizardry is not stupid enough to trap you into situations > in which you can't go back I got stuck in one the first time I played it. Why I posted this message: - I work in computer-human interface. Such things are appealing to me. - I totally loved Wizardry I on the apple II. I don't want other uninformed Wiz-lovers (like me) to give their money to these thiefs (I didn't). - It is a shame that these people could make any money out of it when companies with user respect and decent beta-test such as cinemaware go broke. - That this software could have brought a single buck to its authors is an insult to FTL (DM and CSB authors) and others... Now you can go on and flame me, I don't care -- If by this message I could prevent at least one people to buy this game, then it will have served its purpose. -- Colas Nahaboo, colas@sa.inria.fr, Bull Research, Koala Project, GWM X11 WM Phone:(33) 93.65.77.70(.66 Fax), INRIA, B.P.109 - 06561 Valbonne Cedex, FRANCE.