petrick@dms.UUCP (Jim Petrick) (06/27/90)
From article <9433@wehi.dn.mu.oz>, by JON@wehi.dn.mu.oz (Jon Eaves): > Hi Gamers, > I have been playing 'Pool of Radiance' for the Mac for about a > week now and my current impressions. > 1) Buggy. I can get the game to crash with a System Error #2 when I do > some contortions with the Spells. > 2) Slow. A bar room brawl took over 1 1/2 hours to fight. Fair enough > there were a lot of people in the room, but crikey, why does the > movement algorithm move a piece 5 times just alternating between 2 or > 3 squares. > My big problems so far have been 1) Finding out how to get people to > learn spells. 1 Encamp 2 Magic 3 Memorize 4 Select spell(s) for the currently highlighted character. Press memorize. 5 When all selected press exit. 6 exit (again) 7 Yes (memorize these spells) (6 and 7 may be swapped, I can't recall) 8 if all characters dealt with goto step 11 9 highlight the next character. 10 goto step 3 11 rest (the rest time should be the time required to memorize all the spells) 12 rest (does the resting). This should display the counter timing down, then messages about x has memorized y spell, etc. 13 exit encamping. > ...and 2) Moving people around in the marching order. 1 encamp 2 alter 3 order 4 select the guy you want to move. (the 1 on the keypad will go to the next character), when he is highlighted, press select. 5 Now the menu should read PLACE & EXIT. Use the 1 key to move the guy around until he gets where you want him. 6 Place 7 if more characters to move, goto step 4 8 exit encamp. > > A third point has been, Going to the city Clerk for commisions. Is this > jst an information gathering exercise or were you meant to do something > at that point. I have started clearing the slums after visiting the > clerk and I would hate to think that I haven't done things in the right > order. > When a section has been completely cleared, go to the cleark and she will give you experience and money. A section is an area the size of the town of Phlan. There are about 7 or 8 town sections. They are squares of about 20x20. You have to clear all the monsters to get the commission. About the bugginess, I totally agree. Seems like they quickly and cheaply ported from the PC version without much thought as to the user interface or ease of play. The manual even says you can 'EXIT TO DOS' from one of the menus. Much frustration over poor structure of 'menus'. A sure-fire bug is to set up to learn spells, then before resting, cast a spell. That seems to crash almost every time. I've also seen the player info get screwed up (one character was -23956 years old, and could cast up to 255 second level spells). Don't try to make any character with Thief in it (mixed class included) on a Mac IIci or it immediately dies. You can play Thieves on the ci, just can't create them. The fighting is MUCH better on the faster Mac (I run on a SE at home and a IIci at work). It's bearable on the SE if the speed is set to 0 (fastest), and the sounds are turned off, only then the messages tend to go by too quickly to read. You'd think they'd have made them scrolling boxes so you could go back and read what just happened, but NNNNOOOOO, that would be to Mac-like. BTW, the support number given in the book is wrong. The company is now in Sunnyvale, CA (408 area code). I'd give it to you, but it's not handy. -- jim -- =========================================================================== -- jim petrick Atari Games Corp. petrick@dms.UUCP Milpitas, Ca {motcsd|weitek}!dms!petrick
ted@cs.utexas.edu (Ted Woodward) (06/28/90)
The last poster said don't start a thief on a ci, you can play one, just don't start one or it will crash. Well, my HUMAN thief is being treated as if he is multi-classed--he's only getting half experience. I solved this by doubling his experience, and then doubling the difference every so often... what a pain. And I know he gets only half because he got 600 from a duel, but only got 300...I keep his last correct exp total in the notepad... ARGH!!!!! -- Ted Woodward (ted@cs.utexas.edu) Greetings, Royal Ugly Dudes!
JON@wehi.dn.mu.oz (Jon Eaves) (07/02/90)
In article <141@syrian.cs.utexas.edu>, ted@cs.utexas.edu (Ted Woodward) writes: > The last poster said don't start a thief on a ci, you can play one, just don't > start one or it will crash. Well, my HUMAN thief is being treated as if he > is multi-classed--he's only getting half experience. I solved this by > doubling his experience, and then doubling the difference every so often... > what a pain. And I know he gets only half because he got 600 from a duel, > but only got 300...I keep his last correct exp total in the notepad... > > ARGH!!!!! I noticed that as well, I thought that Fingers was taking ages... -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Eaves Here am I, large as life and twice as ugly. ACSnet ( jon@wehi.dn.mu.oz ) UUCP ( uunet!munnari!wehi.dn.mu.oz!jon ) Internet ( jon%wehi.dn.mu.oz@uunet.uu.net ) --------------------------------------------------------------------------------