Windwalker

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This is the first Origin game to be in VGA and only the second to support soundcards after Times Of Lore. Both of these were huge leaps forward for PC gaming but despite that I’m really not looking forward to playing this game. Its not in the same league as Knights Of Legend but the first game in the series (Moebius) was the only other game I’ve played so far I didn’t enjoy all that much. My main problems with it were the slow speed of moving around and lack of variety in gameplay. There were a lot of good gameplay elements in there so maybe the sequel will be an improvement.

The game isn’t entirely in VGA and uses 16 colour graphics some of the time. There is also no MT-32 support. I’m something of a fan of the MT-32 and on the whole it was better than the general MIDI music that came afterwards. The fact that developers could use sysex commands to reprogram it and create instruments gave it much more flexibility whereas most general MIDI soundtracks ended up using the same instruments and sounding very similar. Adlib music was certainly a big improvement from PC-speaker anyway. Hopefully it will be used for more than the intro here unlike Times Of Lore.

I’ve not done any more than start the game up so far and have a quick go at the martial arts training so I’ll hold off on the story/screenshots until I get started properly.

Day 45 & 46

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Something I’ve noticed as I play through all these games is that I’m taking more and more screenshots. I’m far too lazy to take notes and I’ve started using screenshots as an alternative way of doing this. This habit has taken new extremes with about 70 screenshots for this space rogue post. To rub this in most of these screenshots just show the conversation text from the game. They are less than exciting therefore but I could just dump them all on here and you would get an idea of the storyline (which isn’t that far off what I’m going to do). I will annotate them a bit.To start off I finished upgrading my ship with another couple of trading runs. At this point it was time to set out and actually try to complete the game.
My first mission is to take an artifact to a government official as a ‘gift’.

This is easily done.

I return to Sir Eid and he gives me some sort of stealth device. I guess this reduces attacks by pirates but its hard to say if it made a difference.





In the bar I bump into an alien trader. He offers to trade in information. I try a few keywords and when I ask about the manchi (the race who attacked my ship in the intro) he offers to give me the information in trade for something valuable. The only thing I have is the malir artifact which he accepts straight off and a get a good few pages of info + some coordinates for the homeworld which will no doubt come in handy some time.

In another system there is a huge military carrer ship which I dock at.

There isn’t that much to do here but breaking through a locked door and searching around I get hold a transmutation coil which must be useful somewhere.


Sure enough one of the remote systems has a scientist on it looking for the coil. He is working on a warp drive which would mean we didn’t need to use the malir gates to travel between systems. I can’t get the warp drive yet but he does give me a null damper which stops me taking damage in worm holes.

One of the travellers in a bar gave me some hints about nsb’s which can be used to keep people sane apparently. I go off to the base to try and get them. There is an extremely fast moving monster on this base though, which I manage to trap between a couple of bins. I find an NSB at the other side of the base and just about manage to make it back to my ship.

 This took a good few attempts I should point out, and after every death in this game you are dumped back to DOS and have to restart and reload. I’m really glad I’m using a hacked version here so I don’t have to look up the word in the manual to get past the copy protection.

One of the stations, has a man called Gut on it who I can’t get to see until I’ve commited an act of piracy (i.e. beating up another merchant). Gut is the leader of a pirate group who’s name escapes me for now. I set out to beat up a merchant but mistakenly go for a military titan craft (oops). It goes down anyway without that much trouble but it does take a lot of shots. I eventually get the idea and beat up a tanker instead. When it gets weak, it surrenders and I nick the cargo.


I get through to see Gut now, but he doesn’t have much to say.



I run into a robot who wants me to go after his girlfriend robot. I realise now writing this that I got sidetracked and never did this mission so its obviously not crucial to the game. What sidetracked me is that my rating finally went from pesky to fierce which means that the duchess will finally talk to me.






This is where the games main plot really starts. Apparently my ships last owner was trying to uncover a conspiracy to start a war with the manchi. I have to track him down. I ran into a mad guy on one of the stations earlier and guess its him.






I can’t get much sense out of him and know I want to inject the nsb. It takes a while to figure to type nsb as a conversation option but it works anyway. I say the mission codeword and he spills the beans.

While I’m out this way, I get another mission to track down someones wife who has apparently joined Vilanies cult.

I have to go to the other side of the galaxy to get to this guys wife so I stop off to see the duchess on the way but she has disappeared after an assassination attempt.







I also pop in to see Gut. He comes up with a plan to steal back the Manchi egg but first off I want to get Omas his wife back.

Omas’s wife doesn’t want to go however.

Omas doesn’t take it so well but he does give me his psionic shield which should protect me while I get the egg.

A quick flight across the galaxy later, I land on the station. There is no visual clue to it but the guards are allegedly distracted despite all been stood around in their usual positions. However, when I try to get to the egg and Vilanie calls the guards they don’t come and I’m free to pick the lock at the back of the room and steal the egg.


Now I have the egg, Gut tells me to seek out the warp drive.


I fly off to talk to the professor and he agrees to try his warp drive out on my ship and send me to the manchi homeworld.

 

I’m warped into the Manchi system and make my way to the homeworld. I was expecting to be bombarded by hostile aliens at this point.

But this vulture at the homeworld is the only one I see and I polish him off in no time.

I just have to fly into the alien planet now and the final cutscene starts.









I enjoyed this game and got quite drawn into it, enough to want to finish it last night rather than updating this blog. It could have been a lot better, I’m aware of all the components that are missing from it which I would expect from a space trading game but this was 5 years before Privateer came out so I probably expect too much. I would have expected missions to go and destory a particular target and the like, new ships to purchase and a bigger universe to explore. Despite this I reckon I enjoyed playing this more than any other game since 2400AD. Partly, this is just because it was a bit of a change from the usual RPG’s I’ve been playing, but the storyline is well delivered also.

The last few games, I’ve played have been a lot more visually impressive and its about this point in time for me that PC gaming was just coming into its own. Soundcards were about to get widely accepted and every Origin game from this point on has soundcard support (Sierra had already been using them for a while). VGA was also about to take off and was a huge leap forward. All Origins games from hereon also have MCGA/VGA support, although Windwalker reverts back to 16 color some of the time and is kind of a transitional title.

Next: Windwalker

Day 44 – Space Rogue

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This is another game I’ve never so much as started up before, let alone completed. I’d always had the idea it was a Chris Roberts game but he wasn’t even involved. It actually by Paul Neurath who went on to found Looking Glass Studios who created Ultima Underworld (probably my favorite game of all time). Warren Spector was also involved who went on to produce some great games.

The game itself is a space sim combined with RPG. Its very much in the mould of Autoduel with driving replaced with flying. Think of a primitive version of Privateer and you won’t be far off.

The plot of the game is simple enough. You are an employee on a merchant vessel, a year into your career when you come across an abandoned scout spaceship called the Jolly Roger. While you go over to salvage the vehicle the merchant ship is blown up by a squad of evil aliens leaving you on your own with the scout ship. The game doesn’t give you a clear aim as such beyond learning why the merchant ship was destroyed.

The storyline is told in one of the games manuals but is also recovered in the games intro. There is a little animation but this is told with small static graphics as seems to be standard for Origin games around this period.

On loading the game this is what you see. The space flight is rendered in full 3D but is very primitive. Bear in mind this game was made for 8088 PC’s though.

The ship has a navigation computer which uses the usual tile graphics. I can pick a location and the ship will autopilot to it one square at a time.

I head for the nearest starbase which looks as above. The 3D really is basic here. The space station is 3 polygons! It runs smoothly enough though which is more important. I fly into the white bit in the middle to dock.

One of the games, I’ve got coming up will be Wing Commander. That came out just 1 year after this – if you ever wondered what the fuss about the graphics in that game were a quick play of Space Rogue and you’ll realise what an improvement it was.

When you dock your ship is checked for contraband and its confiscated if you have any and don’t have fake docking id.

Once on the space station, the game plays like another tileset RPG. Doors open smoothly which I’ve not seen before but theres not much new here. The stations are pretty small and easy to explore. You seem to get your standard shops to fix your ship, buy new parts, buy cargo etc.  Before I can buy anything I have to get a pilots license though.

There is a bar in each station and they all have an arcade game in them which you can play for money if you want. Its a pretty slow way to make cash so I’ve left it alone so far.

I do run into a guy who will give me a pilots license. A quick pop quiz later and I’m fully qualified. I start the game with 1500 credits. I buy a full set of cargo pods, some armor and a load of cargo then set off.

There are 8 star systems in the game, all of which I know already from the games map. Each system is 32×32. To get between systems you have to fly down these giant tubes called Malir gates which then warp you to the next system.

When you enter these worm holes you have to fly through each one manually. This is just going through a load of rings and not too hard as long as you go at a slowish speed. The spaceships conserve a lot of momemtum and any high speed manoevers mean you keep sliding in the old direction.

On the next space station, I run into a duchess who will give me some work but not until I’m much more experienced. I’ll return later.

I establish a standard trade route between deneb and the free traders station shown above. This nets me quite a bit of money and they are in neighboring systems so its pretty quick.

The free traders station looks pretty much like the last once I’m on it but there is nowhere to buy ship parts. There is also some sort of pirate boss here but he won’t talk to me until I destroy a merchant vessel. I’ll try that later but right now I just want to upgrade my ship and carry on trading.

I run into a wasp fighter which attacks me. The combat turns out to be very basic and easy. I just turn towards it and fire a lot. It takes a lot of hits but I have got the games worst laser. I can buy missles as well but I’m avoiding them as they cost money. For killing the ship I get a meagre 64 credits bounty. For one of these trade runs I can make as much as 1500-2000 credits in each direction so killing ships seems like a poor way to make money.

Back on the next station, I get give a mission by a student in a bar who wants to know what would happen if I insult a particular species.

I fly off the the station where I can find this species of alien. This does look quite different as its based on an asteroid.

Suprisingly the alien takes it quite well. I fly back to the student and she gives me a Malir artifact. I’ve no idea what use this is but I’m sure it will come in handy.

At the end of my first session, I’ve very nearly got all the maximum upgrades on my ship. I’m just missing an ECM and I haven’t bought any missles yet. The game looks to be pretty short, if this is anything to go on. I’ve speeded this up a lot by not buying anything except the best equipment so I don’t waste my money. I’ll finish upgrading next time then go off looking for missions.

The universe of the game is also quite small really with only the 8 systems. After the likes of Elite which was truly epic on a 32K machine no less you kind of expect this sort of game to be bigger. Theres still a lot of game for a single floppy disk I guess so I shouldn’t complain. The game is enjoyable so far, the 3D spaceflight isn’t bad (once you get over the graphics) and the added RPG elements work well enough. The technology really limits the 3D though. To do a decent full-3D flightsim you really needed more power. X-Wing would be the first I can think of and that needed a 386 to run at all and a 486 to run well. Considering this runs on an 8088 its not bad at all.

Day 43

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 I’ve not had much time for gaming this week but played through the rest of Tangled Tales yesterday. In theory the quests were supposed to get harder but I’d got the hang of how they work after the first so they really didn’t take long to play through. There are things I didn’t accomplish in the game, however, so it would still have some replay value if I ever went back to it. I’m not going to attempt to include solutions to all the puzzles here as there are just too many.  On the whole they are all pretty easy and don’t take much figuring out.

I started off exploring the new world map. The first place I ran into was a farm, home to the farmer who had called me out to cure the drought. There wasn’t much to do here, but the farmers son was really keen on seeing the circus and giving him some tickets I picked up in the last world gained me a key to the barn.

In the barn was a locked up pirate, but I’d no way to free him at this stage. To free this guy you have to recruit the Bruce Lee lookalike from the local monestary who karate chops the post and he then joins your party.

The farmer told me all about the drought and of course wants me to sort it out for him. Otherwise he doesn’t offer much help.

Back outside, a man called Charles is wandering around the world map looking for his other half Veronica.  Unfortunately he doesn’t join my party or anything that helpful. I run into a collection of motley characters around the map who do join up however so I soon have a decent size party again.

With my party in place, I go back to free the pirate who asks to be taken to his ship.

Once there, we sail off and he steals all our gold and dumps us all on a desert island.

There is a tiny little dungon on the island with what appears to be a fountain of youth at one end of it. I can’t find anything to do here yet though. I search round the island and found a conch shell. Blowing this a turtle turns up and takes us all back to the beach on the main map again.

Back on the main map I run into an aged warrior who joins my party. This looks like a sure candidate for the fountain if I ever saw one.

Sure enough a walk and a blow of a conchshell later he drinks from the fountain and is back in his 20’s again.

Back on the beach again, when I walk on a certain tile Gnu Gnu (one of the odder party members) wants to build a sand castle. While hes doing this he unearths a bottle.

Opening the bottle I get sucked inside and meet a sleeping djinni. Dropping a rotten egg wakes him up for some reason and he joins the party. When we then run into the imp on a flying carpet he beats him up and I get the carpet.

Riding the carpet whisks me off to a castle in the clouds.

Inside is a very very large giant, who locks us all up the moment I walk in the door. There isn’t much in the cell but pulling a string rings a bell and a loaf of bread comes through the door. Eating this, I find a key inside which gets me out of the cell. Searching round the castle I find a storybook and not much else.  

Back on the ground, reading the book to a Dragon who’s been blocking a dungeon makes it fall asleep and I sneak past to get a new spell.

One of my new spells in the Recall spell which makes you travel to either a thimble or feather you previously dropped. I haven’t had the thimble yet though so this time it takes me to a whole new map of a cemetary. I explore this but soon run out of things to do and have to retread old ground.

It turns out, I’d missed a room up in the giants castle. I find Veronica and take her back to Charles getting a book of poetry in the process.

Heading back to the giant and reading him the book of poetry, he starts to cry and the drought is cured.

The farmer isn’t all that thankful but its another quest done.

Eldritch gives me another stats boost and a new quest to strengthen the three portals. This requires casting a spell (which I don’t know) on each of them. I can apparently get the spell from the wizard enclave which is in a new valley.

The new valley seems fairly small with not all that much in it. There is a troll who won’t let me over her bridge.

Theres a fairly obvious Elmer Fudd type rabbit hunter wandering around. One of the puzzles in this area is to walk into three rabbit traps, setting them off and I then get given a carrot by a bunny. I do find one person who will join my party here and he gets left behind with the troll while I sneak over the bridge.

On the other side of the bridge is a cave, a quick trek through that and I’m in a new icy map with snow everywhere. Its a really tiny little map with not that much to do. There is an igloo with an eskimo inside. He lets me borrow his canoe and I paddle that out to an iceberg with a penguin on it. I give him a bow tie I bought earlier and he tells me to build a snowman north of the igloo.

I build my snowman and he comes to life and joins my party. This lets me get past some snowball throwing imps and find another party member Azersun on the other side.

For some reason Azersun talks like the giant rooster character from those old Warner Brothers cartoons. He also has the ability to take us back in time. It turns out that the Wizard enclave I’ve been looking for doesn’t exist in this time zone. I still can’t get into it though because of a twisty maze I can’t get through.

I run into Charles from the last world. It turns out he is a werewolf and wants me to lift the curse. The Indian who cursed him wants his diploma back before he will lift this curse. This is in the hands of a female leprechaun who wants a pot of gold before I can get it.

The gold is in a pyramid in the past. The present day pyramid is in ruins but going back in time and working through it like any dungeon I eventually get the gold at the end. This triggers the destruction of the pyramid with a minor homage to the Ultima 4 death sequence.

I run round returning items to all the appropriate people and Charles is cured. As luck would have it he hands me a map to the maze to get to the wizards enclave.

The enclave turns out to be a series of tests like the one above, where I have to demostrate my powers/knowledge to get into the next room. This is just a case of knowing the right spells and such – I wasn’t missing any so sailed through this. At the far end is a library with two books containing all the continous and non continuous spells. I already had them all except the energise portal one. I walk to the 3 portals in the 3 valleys, cast this new spell, then walk back to Eldritch.



I walk back to Eldritch and thats the end of the game. He raises my stats again for no obvious reason and just as its about to cut into the end animation the game crashes. This is a problem with the copy protection I think. The endgame has its own executable and the copy protection avoidance doesn’t work on it! I’m a little peeved to get all the way to the end and not see the end sequence – about the only way around this would be to set up an old PC with a 5.25 drive. I’ve got all the bits knocking around so I may do this sometime. It won’t help me with screenshots here though.

Regarding the game itself, I enjoyed it while it lasted. The puzzles are pretty silly at times and if the party members didn’t all but tell you the answers they could get frustrating. The difficulty level is very low so this was never a problem and I wouldn’t have minded if the game had been longer. If you regard this game as more of an adventure game and put it up against the Sierra games from the same year, i.e. Space Quest 3, Quest For Glory 1, etc.. then it falls well short but at least its entertaining which is a relief after Knights Of Legend.

Next: Space Rogue

Day 42

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I restarted Tangled Tales. Much like Knights of Legend there is no sound whatsoever in the game. I presume this is in the DOS version only. The graphics are bright and colourful however which makes up for the loss of a few PC speaker beeps.

There a few lines of text to introduce the story.

Then the game itself starts. The adventure game style play comes in right from the start here. You have to example all the objects in your room. Open the chest, drawers, etc and pick everything up. This gets me basic equipment which I equip in RPG style however, such as a staff, leather armour etc.

As soon as I step outside I meet the games first NPC Jacob. All conversations show a portrait like this and I have multiple choice actions from a list in the bottom window.

I find Eldritch and he gives me my first quest which is to locate a spell component.  Eldritch’s house consists of about 5 levels with several people to meet. Stepping outside there is a small town to walk around with a couple of pubs, shops and the like all of which have people to talk to in them.

I have a quick look round the town but decide to head outside for a look at the world map. The map is very small, probably no more than about 40×40 tiles. The nearest location is a hut, I knock on the door and find a witch inside who doesn’t give me any useful information.

Just near her is a rabbit, trapped in a cage. Freeing this rabbit, it turns into a dryad who rewards me with some apple seeds, which I plant in a nearby garden. I also discover a tree with a vine attached which I climb down into my first dungeon.

There is an elf in battle with goblins in the dungeon. We kill off the goblins together and he joins my party. The battle consists of no more than clicking on attack a few times.

I have a look round the town now. There are a host of people and little quests to complete here. These include coaxing your fellow student out of his room by giving him a flyer advertising a sale at the magic shop. This gets me a chance to look round his room and learn another spell. This is in my book the sort of puzzle I’d expect to see in an adventure game. Theres numerous other similar puzzles in town. By going into the bucket shop with Alvin my elf companion I blag a free bucket. This is used in another series of minor puzzles to collect honey from a tree full of bees, which I can then use to entice three bears out of their house and sneak inside.

Inside the house I run into Goldilocks who joins my party so we can steal the 3 bears treasure. The treasure to her disappointment turns out to just be a scroll with another spell on but she stays in my party for now.

Back in town I take an apple from my newly grown trees, drop it on Sir Isaac who is hanging around in the pub and for some reason it sobers him up enough that he decides to join my party also. Now he is in my party, I can also get another bloke sleeping in the pub next door to join my party.

 

The world map has a giant boulder on it, that I’ve been unable to move up to this point. Now I have a big enough party we push it and reveal another dungeon entrance. There is a stone statue inside, which I pour my unpetrify potion on (bought from another student wizard) and it turns into Jennifer who joins the party too. 

This dungeon turns out to have some much stiffer fights in than some of the previous ones. So far my only strategies have been to cast heal or attack but I do build up a small arsenal of spells including offensive spells like energy blast by this point. My spell points don’t last long in dungeons as I have to cast light just to see anything. I can sleep to get them all back however so this isn’t a big problem. There is no food in the game so you can sleep as much as you want and never starve or the like. There is the chance of running into monsters but this hasn’t happened often while I’ve been playing.

I find a set of jail keys in the dungeon and set about freeing all the people in it. Sneezy the dwarf joins the party at this point.

In another cell I find Medusa. Fortunately I picked up a hand mirror in my room right at the start of the game. I use this and she turns straight to stone. Eventually I run into a dead end in this dungeon.

There is a pool at the northern end of the map which I swim through to find yet another dungeon. I find some diamonds in here, as well as someone who makes me promise to kill the wizard xavier (whos dungeon I was just in). I turn the diamonds into coal by dropping them into a pool in my masters basement, head back to xaviers dungeon and eventually after a series of puzzles make my way through to find Xavier himself. I can’t seem to kill him so I run away find a vial in his room and a portal which takes me back home.

The vial turns out to be the ingredient Eldritch was after and thats the first quest complete. I’ve skipped about half the puzzles in the game (and all the combat) but I hope this is a reasonable overview of the gameplay. Combat takes a very backward step to puzzle solving here. I died quite a few times in combat but I just end up back home again and its a short walk back to wherever I was with no harm done. There are a whole stack of strange puzzles, none of which are unfair as such since there are always clues given but don’t neccessarily make much sense.

All the characters in the game are quite chatty so the game has a bit of character if little real plot so far. Each quest is supposed to be harder than the last so I’ll see if the next has more depth. Xavier is still alive also, so I may go back and try to kill him later when my stats are improved.

 

Eldritch gives me another quest to cure a drought in Violet Valley. Its a quick step through a portal in the room next door…

and I’m in the valley (after a tiny little dungeon to start). My party can’t come through the portal so I’m on my own again. Aside from being able to carry over any spells I expect the quests and pretty much standalone although there are objects I haven’t found a use for in the first quest so I may be proved wrong.