Tell me about Inventory management!

[The Kiwi]

Either I've looked right past it in the manual, or the game save I have carried forward several iterations has been partly corrupted practically from the start. I waited to begin until the past few days; but in spite of having the 12-23 bug fix patch that was to be the final cleanup, the game starts shakily anyway.

One out of every two attempts, or maybe even more often, just trying to LOAD the game results in a freeze before it's really fully loaded. (It does seem as if rebooting the PC between gaming sessions helps some.)

If it's another game that another of my PC's is incompatible with, I think I'll give up on PC's for an entertainment platform, and get a DVD player. Those seem more or less bugproof. Whatever the load-up flakiness is, I hope it's not why I can't equip my player characters with the bows, arrows, staves, etc. the way that I expect to be doing (I have played Wiz I, IV, V, and VII).

I've tried to DRAG a bow into an empty alternate primary square - it flat out doesn't move. I've examined the manual for any description of an odd implementation of how various items end up equipped. I don't think I have seen anywhere that the procedure is ever described, only referenced, as if it's so straight forward it doesn't need any sort of description.

This makes for problems with distant enemies who have ranged attacks, and the only such that any of my characters can reply with as we move up (and that moving doesn't seem to work the way I thought it would) is with a so- called "Mystery Ray", which is powered with that Character's own energy, so he loses stamina rapidly.

Anyone had a similar problem? (I scanned literally days worth of the threads here and saw nothing along these lines. And I just found a couple of spelling errors to fix in edit mode.)


Kiwi, the Original One

!!

[ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: The Kiwi ]

[KraGorn]

Sounds like you've got some weird problems running the game

You've got it right how to equip a bow, click in the inventory (personal or group) and drag to where you want it ... you have checked the character's class allows him/her to use a bow? If the background of the item when in the inventory is red then the selected character can't use it ... thinking about it though I don't think that explains why it wouldn't move.

Apart from the perennial, un-install and re-install and re-start with a new group I can't offer any advice , maybe you're right that the save's screwed, I've not read of any similar problems. Sorry.

[Nightowl2]

With a problem like that, you may be better off going to the official tech support boards at www.wizardry8.com and asking there.

Nightowl2

[ 02-06-2002: Message edited by: Nightowl2 ]

[PGC Viking]

Hmm, I didn't think it was click and drag.

I thought it was click once on the item, click where you wanted it to go. Dragging seems to imply holding down the mouse button while you click.

If you click once on an item you pick it up. Click again to put it down. I think that might the problem, of course I could just be insane [img]smile.gif[/img]

Viking

[The Kiwi]

quote:

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Originally posted by Nightowl2:
With a problem like that, you may be better off going to the official tech support boards and asking there.

---

If you have DSL, Cable, or T-1 Connection, more power to you; they either have such slow servers (Coleco Adam, maybe?) or such huge traffic you take forever doing anything there. Shoot, Sir Tech is in (tongue firmly in cheek) such wonderful condition, they answer stuff after working hours since no salaries are being paid from 8 to 5.

Their software (Ikonware) is also creaky. Waste of time, I'm thinking; I figure it's another (Bleeped) $50 shot all to Hades!


K.

[nekoshippo]

In this occasion, I clean off old saved games. In WIZ8,saving games can be made unlimitted numbers,so saving games are too many,games speed is too low, and then item couter is freezed.

[fable]

quote:

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Originally posted by The Kiwi:
Shoot, Sir Tech is in (tongue firmly in cheek) such wonderful condition, they answer stuff after working hours since no salaries are being paid from 8 to 5.

Their software (Ikonware) is also creaky. Waste of time, I'm thinking; I figure it's another (Bleeped) $50 shot all to Hades!

---

Actually, Wizardry 8 is one of the least buggy games I've encountered in quite a few years, and I've been playing computer games since the mid 80s. As for replies to problems, if you post 'em on the boards or send 'em into Sir-Tech, I've gotten replies within 24 hours.

I strongly suspect your problems are system-related, rather than software-related. Since their Wiz 8 board is well-known for its large base of helpful players and staff (and that's *not* tongue-in-cheek), I suggest you check there. Give them a chance before you waste 'em.

[The Kiwi]

quote:

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Originally posted by The Kiwi:


If you have DSL, Cable, or T-1 Connection, more power to you; they either have such slow servers (Coleco Adam, maybe?) or such huge traffic you take forever doing anything there.

K.

---

Today, this afternoon, this forum is bogged down as badly as Sir Tech's forum! But there is good news, so far. I previously was only able to move armor bits and weapons around in a single one of my six player characters' inventories. The other five inventories seemed "fixed in stone".

(A little detail on that. I had bows in the inventories of characters who couldn't use bows, and no bows in the inventories of those who could have used one. My Ninja had very little bow skill, did have a bow, but was so poor with it that I left the Mystery Ray in his hands until it sucked his stamina to almost nothing, then handed him the bow instead. The "swap" worked, but I wanted him to have his sword for close range, and the Mystery Ray for long range, but when I clicked on stuff in his inventory, made no difference what it was, it wouldn't "stick" on the mouse pointer.

(The only character whose stuff I could move around easily had no bow to hand to anyone else, so I initally didn't try passing something else from him to one of the others {and I was wondering how I'd keep the right ones equipped with arrows} then later I ignored the red border around a staff and passed it to my mage - figuring I could take the curse off with my Bishop, but forgot and handed it to him first, after which I found out the Bishop wasn't strong enough to do it yet.

(But when I restarted that particular game to go back before handing off the cursed staff, I discovered that besides the Psionic and the Mage, I now could move my Ninja's stuff around. I did get bows into both Lords' inventories finally, but those two were the last whose stuff wouldn't move when clicked on. I almost gave up on the game after quitting an extremely long fight with a never-ending stream of "Metallic" Slimes that sapped all my party's spell points, wore down their stamina, and was on the verge of killing them all. Then the very next re-start, the Lords' inventories were "unstuck".

(I still find some of the battles seem practically endless sometimes, and don't remember such long, extended fights from prior Wiz games.)

Anyway I had simply "played around" or "played past" the complication of Inventory for a time, since even though my party was imported, they weren't from any "game-completed" cycle, so they started in the monastary (the beasties so far are moderately dangerous, but for the most part not huge threats), and I COULD eventually "run" at the bad guys to get my slicer & dicer boys in among 'em (only one ranged weapon, period, but I was slow on the uptake about how often I had to click on the icon for moving, and was getting to actually move rather seldom).

It now seems that with each further step in the progression of saves further from the entry door to the dungeon, I got another character's stuff "loose", at least it began getting better after the first couple of long sessions. The party's ranged attack capabilities still seem quite weak, though, so I'm still needing to get right in the monsters' faces, just not as precipitously as previously.

Although it's not my recollection that I even HAD anything like a Trainer in 1993 (did anyone have such?), maybe I did hex-edit some of the goodies, like weapons codes, to suit myself. I'm wondering if the game save I found on the floppy was semi-corrupt one way or another and the import procedure brought in some problems. It's a fact that magnetic media lose data over time, and I didn't have the floppy in question stored in a lead-lined box! Maybe a few zero's crept in where one's belonged!


Kiwi


P.S. Yes, I may test the Sample Party to see about Inventory lockup, but only if the "fix" comes undone. Meanwhile, I will be out of town all this coming weekend, and getting ready during the rest of my free time before then, so I won't be playing it again until Monday (I wonder if I have enough room on my laptop's HDD for another copy of the game? Naah! I wouldn't have time to do anything with the laptop copy anyway!)

.

[ 02-07-2002: Message edited by: The Kiwi ]

[Parrp the Karp]

Kiwi;

There is an easy test for your corrupt data theory - just start a new game with all-new characters? I think that would work, probably...then you can play with them and see if you can equip and un-equip stuff.

Another theory I have is that the items you are trying to equip have some kind of qualification to be equiped, such as "strength 55 or greater", that sort of thing. However, I think that if a character can't use an item for whatever reason, the background of the item's icon is supposed to show red...I assume that the items you've been trying to equip have black backgrounds, right?