Hey gang,

Got Wiz 8 from my wife for Christmas, and we've both been playing it non-stop since then (thank you Sir-Tech for letting us take the CD out while playing it so we can each play it simultaneously on our respective 'puters).

First-time poster here, followed some of the threads from over at Vault Network, but didn't feel comfortable registering there with all the e-vertising. Hopefully this board will catch on as well.

I haven't completed the game yet, got what I guess is about 2/3rds through the game (got up to 17th level, got the CM and HoS and had enough to buy the AD (hopefully acronyms are enough of a spoiler protection ;) , and was about to have another go at slaying the big N) before I started reading posts about party makeup and those great class spotlights. Since I felt I was getting close to the end, and frankly I don't want this great game to end yet, I decided to start over with a bit more power-gaming in mind (using a single Bishop, fleshing out my samurai more, not to mention experience other personalities...it's fun having a mentally-unstable samurai ;) .

But I can get into my thoughts on party makeup and whatnot later. For my inaugural post, I wanted to relay how much my cat absolutely LOVES this game. She'll be laying in my lap while I'm playing like she always does, and occasionally she'll look up at the screen while I'm fighting a monster. Being the mighty huntress that she is (NOT - all our cats are indoor-only ;) , she'll get up on my desk to investigate the strange critter closer. Highwaymen are no big deal, but if it's a rat or a hogar or anything like that, she'll get up there and check it out. She REALLY gets interested if it's animation includes lots of movement. Wasps will do the trick, and she always likes bats as well.

But the single-most hated monsters by my cat, without a doubt, are plants like Crimson poppies and Acidvines. When a Crimson poppy gets up close and gets that head and that tail swinging back and forth in oppositte directions, my cat goes absolutely NUTS! I swear to gawd, it's like cat-nip. She'll get up on her haunches and start attacking that demon-spawn with all her might. Sometimes I get worried she'll push my monitor off the back of my desk she's pawing at it so much. Although my wife and I couldn't stop laughing for 10 minutes when we first saw this, I'm sorry to say that it has made my game unplayable at times when my cat is in the vicinity. I'm sure it's just as funny a sight watching me trying to peer around the cat and push her out of the way long enough to complete my battle orders. Sadly, I usually have to throw her out of the room until the battle's over.

So to any people out there that say that Wizardry 8's graphics don't measure up, I'd just like to give my props to the developers for making VERY realistic monsters. None of our cats have ever cared less what has happened on a computer monitor, but Wizardry 8 is the first game I can honestly say that they enjoy just as much as I do. =)

My little kitten does the same...I made a basket for her and she lays in it, mesmorized by the game.

Bizarre! My cats are jealous of the time I spending playing... maybe I just need to set them up some spectator seating!

One of my cats (Pixel) loves it too! According to her, this is the best game I ever played - her first computer game was Tetris, which I still play occasionally just for her amusement.

Sometimes, though, I don't know whether she's on my side or the monsters'. The first time she tromped across the keyboard and stepped on the backslash key ... I thought the baddies would slit me from my guggle to my zatch before I figured out what was happening!

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<font color="#99FFFF">Throg</font>
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try to get thru a battle with a kitty sitting on top of the monitor.

she flicks her tail into my eyes, and always when i am totally engrossed on getting off that killing strike!! (her tail is very fluffy so it acts very effectively as a blinder!)

however, she works from both ends. while the tail is getting me, she has one paw reached down to slap at whatever i am currently fighting!! at times, half her body is draped across the monitor, becuase, i swear, she wants to enact some keyboard commands! ::winks, smiling::

frisky little warrioress! bout as freaky as her owner. ;)

V***V

Hehe. That's strange! My cats could care less about what I'm doing on the computer. Although, having a giant, catnip-laden kitty on your side would certainly make the road to Arnika easier! :D

I have two, one (Boo) that lays in my lap and watches and another (Sweety Pie) that sits on the desk staring and occasionally swatting at a wasp.
Sweety's big beef with me on my PC though is that it cuts into "his" time, so when he's ready for me to stop playing, he'll sit right in front of the monitor and stare at ME!
:D

I am registered at the RPG vault as TheONLYMoni...junk mail is pretty scarce in my mailbox...no more than before I signed up anyway. [img]smile.gif[/img]

P.S. Welcome to Ironworks! I am sure you will enjoy this place...its kinda like The Hotel California LOL

[ 01-10-2002: Message edited by: Moni ]</p>

My cat's bed is on a woolly rug next to my PC's monitor. On the other side of the rug is a PC speaker. She's a old puss now (12) and sleeps peacefully thru the most hair raising battle noises, clangs, explosions, bangs, from whatever game I might be playing - except for one sound.

If there is any cat or cat-like sound from the game, she leaps to her feet to track down the "intruder" !!

[img]graemlins/kittynow.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/nicekitty.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/nicekitty.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/kittynow.gif[/img]

P.S. Welcome to Ironworks, Fantasm !!!

[ 01-10-2002: Message edited by: Pangur Ban ]</p>

We have a parrot (a nanday conure), Gabriel, who LOVES the music in the game. She'll sit in my lap or on my shoulder while I play and she sways majestically to the music. When the battle music starts, her eyes get really wide and she lifts her wings up and starts to sway back and forth.

She does this with TV themes, too, especially Star Trek. The Voyager theme was her favorite; she'd climb to the highest perch and start dancing. Too funny.

She doesn't really get close enough to the monitor to be really interested. She taps on the screen with her beak and tries to bite the moving cursor, but I haven't gotten further than that because she took a big bite out of my mouse pad and I don't think that's healthy for her.

Dan

That is just too funny, Fantasm! Perhaps you have Felpurrs disguised as common house cats? :D

I agree, the graphics in this game are superb; I can't get over some people dissing them. What on earth do they want, holographic images in their living rooms? Sheesh!

-Saz

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by vesselle:
try to get thru a battle with a kitty sitting on top of the monitor.

she flicks her tail into my eyes, and always when i am totally engrossed on getting off that killing strike!! (her tail is very fluffy so it acts very effectively as a blinder!)

however, she works from both ends. while the tail is getting me, she has one paw reached down to slap at whatever i am currently fighting!! at times, half her body is draped across the monitor, becuase, i swear, she wants to enact some keyboard commands! ::winks, smiling::

frisky little warrioress! bout as freaky as her owner. ;)

V***V<hr></blockquote>


I have a flat-panel monitor, but I have a shelf over it. One of my cats sits there while I play. She is a Turkish Van and has an *extremely* fluffy tail. Sometimes she gets miffed that I'm pushing it out of the way. Then she attacks attacks my hand! So I'm fighting slimes or roaches (I'm just starting out!) with my mouse hand and losing to my attack-cat with the other!

Other times she'll look over the edge of her shelf and watch, fascinated, what's on the monitor. Doesn't seem to matter if I'm fighting or not. She's absolutely enthralled by the movement on the screen. Once in awhile she'll reach down to swat at the monitor.

And when she's finally bored and wants my *complete* attention, she'll jump down and land on the keyboard. I try to push it out of the way of her landing site when I can, but the desk isn't big enough.

The other two cats are completely uninterested. But that may be because Phoebe has taken over that shelf as HERS.

Welcome to the board. My cat, Merlin, insists on sitting on my lap when I'm playing Wiz 8. He usually sleeps and makes it quite hard to do battles. Occasionally though, he wakes up and watches the screen. He loves it.

My oldest cat, Chani, loves Wizadry 8 too. She likes to sit right in front of the monitor (about 4 inches away - her vision isn't as good as it used to be). It makes it difficult to see what's happening, since she is a rather big cat, and not very transparent. :D When there is a lot of movement on the screen, she will paw at it. I also have to keep cleaning the nose prints off the screen.

One of my other cats (Duncan) isn't interested in anything on the screen - he just wants my attention. If I don't pet enough while he is on my lap, he will try to climb up and drape himself across the back of my neck. It's very hard to do anything on the computer with a 15lb cat draped across the back of your neck. :D

Wow, Kerivan!
Your cats and mine are too alike not to say anything!
Our "Sweety Pie" is severly far-sighted (but barely two years old)
and he gets all up close to the monitor when he is interested in seeing what has his attention but loses it and backs off, poor thing!
He swats at the wasps from a distance LOL.
"Boo" is 14 lbs LOL...his fav place in the world is on my lap...curled up with his head hanging over my elbow. Supporting him with one arm while he naps and playing the game with the other has been difficult at times! He'll start twitching his tail and get mad at me if I move too much...he is definitely more cat than I have lap!
I am SO thankful he has not taken to climbing up on my shoulders! We'd both fall outta the chair!

[ 01-12-2002: Message edited by: Moni ]</p>

Hey Moni, I've got a (smaller) cat exactly the same! He curls up with his head on either arm making things extremely difficult. He does it to get my complete attention. All my kittens are very interested in the movement on the screen and will watch for hours.

Greetings Gentle People;

Cats!

It seems that our cats have figured out that computers are great tools. Before computers, there were newspapers and magazines which they could walk onto and try to attract our attention, but they were usually shoved off. Now with computers, they have a captive audience, and can curl up on our laps, arms and back-of-necks with wild abandon :D

Two of our six cats desire my affection and are fond of curling up in front of the keyboard and between my arms. They know they'll get a lot of petting, interrupted intermittently by me targeting monsters and walking around. Resting their heads on my arms is another favorite, but one that eventually leads to pins and needles (these are hefty cats!)

They haven't paid that much attention to what's on the screen, though (I guess they figure that's the 'silly stuff' that's used to lure the humans). The mamacat did like the plants - their super-smooth animation and wiggling movements really set off her edge receptors. She's too dignified to bat at the screen, so she just watches them, her head swaying gently side to side...

Oh, and one more thing - she also loves to lie on top of my monitor, like many of yours do - but she's a manx and has no tail, so no trouble seeing the screen [img]smile.gif[/img]

Im sorry Sazerac, but the graphics in this game arent superb. They would have been superb 2-3 years ago, but not now. Sir-tech did a great job with an old blocky engine, but its still an old blocky engine.

just because you pump your Honda to 500 horsepower doesnt make it an Audi, or a Mercedes, or a Jag. It only makes it a 500 hp Honda.

The graphics are not superb, they are worse than half-life, a game that came out about 3 years ago. the fact that it can enthral cats isnt a deciding factor in weither or not the graphics are good, cats can be enthral'd by balls of yarn, computer games are just more complex.

This does not mean the game is bad, its one of the best games ive played in a long time, it only means that the graphics arent superb. They arent, by just about any comparison to just about any modern game. Maybe im just pampered by highly detailed games, well done graphics like Ghost Recon, but in the graphics department this one just doesnt hold up.