For D.W. Bradley...

Why does an RPG Game that takes 4.25 minutes to load with a 450 cpu retain the status of the older Wizardry games in hit points being assigned with random numbers?
I won't settle for a warrior gaining only one hit point per level & I have spent more time quitting & reloading than I actually have playing.
I have been a fan of these games since I played the first Wizardry game on my son's Nintendo and I am seriously wondering why there is not a base minimum number to be assigned to each character in regard to their profession.
I mean I'll settle for 8 or nine when I KNOW that 12 will come up SOMEDAY but why 1 or 2 for a character that should be stronger than a wizard?
( I DO assign bonus points to appropriate areas for characters & having beat Wizardry #'s 1 thru 7 I think you know I know what I am talking about by now) ; )
Consideration of this for your next game would certainly make me a buyer!
As it is, Wizards & Warriors was a gift to me from a friend who knows that I am a Wizardry fan but after playing for only two days I have to say I am quite frustrated at having to wait so long for the game to load just to see only one hit point awarded to a character who deserves more.
Thanks for your time, I won't stop playing until I totaly lose patience with it.
Right now it has me just PO'd enough to want to kick it's tail into next week.
Moni

I found the game similarly frustrating until I realized how stupid I was being. Every time a character levels, their hp total is checked against an average for their level, so if you keep rerolling to get more, then it's even harder next time. It's self defeating. You'll get 1 hp for a few levels and then get 20-30 in one go. Just don't worry about it - take it as it comes and you'll be fine.
Look through the threads for other more detailed posts on the subject. Meanwhile, just try to play the game without fighting it. It works out just fine.

[Davros]

You beat me to it Cygoth - yes there is a formula for how it works, and cheating the system once just makes it doubly and trebly harder next time. There is truly no point - getting your 2 versus one attribute point is much more worthwhile.

4.25 minutes to load? Are you low on RAM? My game loads very fast - approx 30 seconds or so. Loading and saving are even faster. I have a 650 cpu. But regardless of processor speed, you should be loading much faster than 4.25 minutes. Tell us more about your system specs so that we can help you.

As far as hp is concerned, play fair; reload as much as you want - just bear in mind that the way the game works, eventually you will get a certain amount of hp which tends towards a high average. If you roll 1 across a few levels, eventually you will get a 12, or even a 19. My record is 25(!)

Give the game a chance - this game appeals not because of its engine, but because it is the closest we have today to Wizardry.

Load time is *entirely* in the RAM; the CPU (and vid. card) is only used for the hardcore mathematics of playing. The same goes for any program: if it loads slowly, it's not because of a slow processor (450 is hardly low end), but lack of RAM. I've got a (somewhat less than intelligent) friend with a 1 GHz machine WITH 64 MEG RAM! If he can just sit through the 5-6 minute load times, he has some speed

And tritone said it: despiRE:For D.W. Bradley...

Same issue with loading saved games - at least 5 minutes, seems longer.

I have a 350 Mhz with 64 MB ram. Not the latest greatest hardware, but all other games load fast and run without crashing constantly. I have now turned off all hardware acceleration for graphics and sound as well as turning down the resolution, but still have system lockups regularly, but with no apparent pattern. The patch didn't help at all. The system will freeze at any time in the game, moving around, fighting, selecting spells, changing game areas (loading) or just standing still. The only place it hasn't frozen is in town. Once frozen, nothing works not even CTRL-ALT-DEL. Somtimes I get the blue sceen of death, not usually. Usually the graphics freezes and the sound repeats. I even had the systm freeze while saving a game and it corrupted the saved file and then the game wouldn't start becuase one of the saved files was corrupted, even though I wasn't trying to load that saved game. I copied a known good save over the corrupted save and the game was able to load again?

It was amazing the other day when I had to exit the game and shut down my system manually - I had almost forgotten this was the normal way!

I too was getting long load. save and exit times until I upped the ram (its cheap at the moment) with a 128Meg chip giving me 192 meg the difference was amazing load, save and exit at least 10 times faster. So get more Ram

Yes! With 256Mb of RAM, I can get to the "Start Game" screen in 17 seconds! Loading takes about 10 seconds on average, and saving can be almost instantaneous.

No, don't shoot me! I'm a web designer! I have legitimate reasons for having so much RAM!

Looking at the above messages does that make my Dwarf Warrior going up a level and getting 34 hp's a record?

[Davros]

30-40 points is not uncommon for characters late in the game. If you take the example that you run a low fortitude character up to a high level (say 15) then switch him to another class. If you level him all the way to 16, and in the mean time make a few increases to strength and fortitude (say amulets of holding and ankhs). When he finally gets to 16, and out of the 1 HP limit, he will explode for a very big number. I think my best is 31, but a 50-60 wouldn't surprise me.