Help me out here

[Baron]

Hey all, good to see active forums for such a classic. The game is so old it has no centralised mod database, no Nexus, etc. Mods are scattered throughout the realms and more convoluted to put together than 3 cosmic artifacts.

Ive spent a few days mixing and matching, but haven't settled on mods. Can anyone who has been around a while tell me what the current go is these days?

My current setup includes the fan patch, newest 1.28 build, with Wiz 8 Expanded 1.1 on top of it. Have I done that right? Is there a way to get the newer features from 1.28 with Expanded? Speed wise mostly, Wiz8fast seems to lock movement with the mod, is there a new form of that?

Anyway Id be keen on insight as there are so many opinions and some stuff in russian etc...Consider me a veteran of the vanilla version - ive never actually finished it proper, but played it a lot. If you suggest 'play vanilla with the patch' Ill take that suggestion, but the best mod that enhances the campaign Id also be keen on - so far (still in monastery) Ive been enjoying expanded but I can see the danger of slow combat and massive battles combining to become tooooo slow.

Help me out?

[Zergs]

Most people here play vanilla. There are mixed opinions about 1.28, some people use it, some don't. I use it and like it, even though it's somewhat buggy.

I haven't played Expanded but I hope to soon. The old mods like Dodd's, Flamestryke, Christian Coder, etc are still available and people sometimes play and discuss them here.

Best place to find all the modding info in one place (and get support for 1.28) is the Wiz8 Discord:

https://discord.gg/nRU2Hxaf

I believe Enmer owns the channel and he (she?) might also be one of the 1.28 devs. The Postcount forums, where townltu posts, is another place to find some Wiz8 modding discussion.

edit - increasing combat speed in 1.28 is very possible. Check out my Youtube let's play of Wiz8 to see combat speed on literal fastest possible settings that I am aware of.

[mpnorman10]

Yes, to everything Zergs said.

Part of the problem with mods for this game is that they are not needed for variety (but provide new perspectives, weapons, priorities, etc., if desired).

The thing is that if you play the same characters using the same races every time you still end up with a wide amount of varied experiences. There is a butterfly effect that makes every game you play, even if you try to repeat, widely varied.

Perhaps that is the greatest thing about this great game (a benefit that provides new experiences every time it is played). Most players play somewhat different parties, or often very different parties when replaying, but that is not necessary for widely varying experiences.

Having been around for 20+ years since the game was originally released, I can say that the motivation behind most mods for the game was a perceived defect of some sort in the vanilla game. There are no weak characters (although they can easily be created and developed weakly, usually unknowingly) and numerous different approaches to battle tactics that make for widely varying games and setting up special challenges by limiting ones party or tactics in some way. Most of the threads here are about either tactics or limited challenges.

Some weapons (Axes, Modern Weapons) and tactics (like most sets of dual weapons and class switching techniques) are arguably weak in this game, but these as well as other tactics can be used to set up unique experiences and special challenges.

Other than the lack of need of them for variety, mods for this game are like any others for any game, adding new and sometimes fun experiences as intended but often changing and losing strengths of the vanilla game and adding new bugs.

[TekWarrior]

The only mods for me that I absolutely must have are the speed up mods. You can get some pretty long battles and animations are painfully slow. This doesn't really make the game easier but less tedious.

I like 1.28 because of option to add portraits without removing the old ones.

[Horpner Sneed]

I've played with maximum wiz8fast, and I like the idea of a mod that makes the missile weapons and slowest animations go faster. For some reason that mod didn't work right for me that one try and I haven't gone back to it.

In the world of modding wiz8 the only way to get everything you want without things you don't want is to do it yourself, or just play Vanilla. I mostly play Vanilla, but the mods are a fun diversion. Some expand the game massively, some are modest improvements. Most mods make the characters much stronger through massive equipment improvements (Flamestykes early, influential mod is a fun example). Strangely, the most popular sort of mod is one that paradoxically combines increasing character power massively while at the same time attempting to make the game much harder. Dodd the Slayer's is a prime example, or the two published by Lunastralis. Biogoo has the only mod I know that attempts to change the game minimally and increasing difficulty by making the player characters somewhat weaker, and monsters modestly stronger. I think DFortae has a mod with similar goals, but I haven't played it yet.

For the last several years I play at the basic, out-of-the-box speed and I like it just fine. I truly don't get noticeably frustrated by the sometimes long delays between my moves. But, oh! I sure used to. So various speed-ups may be just what's needed for certain players.

The way monsters move one-by-one instead of in groups or together in phases is a failing of the game engine, but I'm used to it.

The battle model is miniatures-based combat (like Baldur's Gate or the Gold Box games) but where the player-controlled characters are represented by one, weird, circular, indivisible, chunky, oversized miniature. It's a compromise that allows for the 3D engine to represent miniatures-style combat without completely remodeling the game world to a sub-screen for battles. It's a synthesis of Wizardry/Bard's Tale/Might and Magic's almost completely abstract battle model and the relatively realistic model of first-person-shooters. In short, it's brilliant! To add to that, they successfully support both strict turn-based combat and a psuedo-real-time mode. And surprisingly both modes have proven popular and playable.

Sorry! I got overwhelmed with enthusiasm there.

[Target]

Hope this isn't a daft question. Is 1.28 different to the standard steam install?
What does it do?

[Horpner Sneed]

1.28 fixes some bugs and provides many new features. Version 1.24 (the last patch released by the company) is perfectly playable. You might as well become familiar with the basic game before trying out 1.28. I'll be trying the latest fan patch again soon--I don't think it will become my preferred platform, but I'm wrong quite often.

EDIT: I forgot to say: Steam releases 1.24 with a few bug fixes and a nglide 3D accelerator emulation. It's not the 1.28 fan patch. The fan patch is in active development. You're advised to try older versions to avoid fake trojan and virus warnings from a nervy Windows OS.

[Target]

Sounds interesting thanks. Is there a link to it, interested to see what new features are added.

[Horpner Sneed]

Wizardry 8 Fan-Patch 1.28 (20th Anniversary)[www.postcount.net] There might be a better place to get it, but I don't know of one.

[Baron]

The above link is indeed the best place to get newest fan patch. The Russians are primary developers so a lot of the documentation is either poorly translated or in Russian, but game works fine -in english- with some great features (like speed and inventory tweaks) for me.

Applying Expanded 1.1 is compatible with the fan patch (as most other older mods are not, due to some injector system, I think) but will run an .exe that is an earlier build (3181 iirc) to the most current fan patch, assuming I've done it right. This removes the most recent QoL updates to the fan patch, but is also still quite playable.

Ive also somehow figured out speed settings, not sure what I did differently there, but everything is moving fast enough for now, it may just be the fan patch settings at maximum as I did a fresh install.

In general it seems like a good mod, clearly made by someone who cares. I also don't feel the urge to run a front line of Lizard fighters so much. I guess I'd recommend it so far but Im not even into Arnika yet, which I hear is a bastard for spawns. Ill post thoughts for anyone interested.

So Horpner mentioned 'if you want changes but not the mods do it yourself or play vanilla'. Lets say I wanted to, say, change the skills of a Lord from dual wield to sword and board. How easy is that to do? Is that Cosmic Forge? Cos look I like vanilla a lot but there are some things that always sadden me in chargen (Lord skills, uselessness of ranger, psionic a bit naff, etc)

Appreciate the feedback, btw, again very nice to see playerbases around good games, no matter the age of the title. There is a graveyard of high budget fully featured titles in the years between that noone will ever think of or play again, yet here sits wizardry 8 with people still modding it, with an active forum. Good form, good form. World is primed for a new wizardry title, too, would love to see someone go back and refresh the series, starting with a rehash on IV's? Idea of playing the bad guy. Make that first, then the next three games playing the good guys trying to take your own bad guy down. Be cool. Anyways, I digress. Cheers for help!

[Horpner Sneed]

Originally posted by Baron:

if you want changes but not the mods do it yourself or play vanilla'. Lets say I wanted to, say, change the skills of a Lord from dual wield to sword and board. How easy is that to do? Is that Cosmic Forge? Cos look I like vanilla a lot but there are some things that always sadden me in chargen (Lord skills, uselessness of ranger, psionic a bit naff, etc

I've done very little modding myself--just basic adjustments to weapon stats and recently fiddling with RPC attribute and skill points. I believe that the change to the Lord class you suggest requires the Cosmic Forge Injector (CFIjector) and some Lua programming, not simply screwing around with database entries. That Postcount forum is a good place to find out how to do what you want, or I've heard there's a Discord now.

[Baron]

There is a discord and yes postcount has some stuff, but it's all so scattered. Ill keep looking, cheers

[Horpner Sneed]

Yeah, the Cosmic Forge is great, but there's iittle centralized documentation for it. So the only way to really make progress is to dig in, and cry out for help when you get stuck.

[Baron]

Ive actually gone back to Vanilla/CC Mod. Too many crashes and too slow on progress with Expanded - shame, seemed like an okay time, but crashing halfway into a battle in that mod is a loss of 15 minutes which you definately have to at least go through again with that same battle....I appreciated some of the balancing, interesting new items and quests, but nah.

Plus CCmod provides the changes I would have probably made myself so wahey, I even got a Psionic capable of scouting which is a fun idea.

[TekWarrior]

Expanded was too buggy for me too but the massive changes and new areas really hooked me into trying many times. Not sure the author is updating but if it wasn't so buggy I would have liked to seen the new areas.

[Horpner Sneed]

The Postcount forum really helped the author clean up the bugs in Expanded. It ran pretty well for me, with only occasional crashes. It'd be a shame if it were abandoned already.