11 days to Grimoire release. Yay.

Yeah, but his sheep gets seasick…

I have no issues playing it in WinXP. I actually tried a FRAPS shot of the installation screen, but for some reason FRAPS didn't want to fire. That "screenie" is just a print screen.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Looks very wizardry 8'ish. yum. No wonder he let you play it DTE.

It's more difficult than Wiz8. The combat isn't quite as complex since it uses the "party as single blob" approach like M&M and old skool RPGs, but this one doesn't hold your hand. Wiz8 kinda walks you thru various parts of the game, but Grimoire drops you in the jungle with a loincloth and a knitting needle and dares you to move. Character development is pretty similar to Wiz8. My only serious complaint with the beta was the NPC conversations (if you're going to be "dropped in the jungle", you have to get better clues from the NPCs than usual), and I know Cleve has redone those at least twice since the beta test.

Originally Posted by azraelck
LOL, yep. Well, as far as I know, Corwin is the only one whose had a BETA (bound to be more, surely, but I don't know them off hand). I don't see him lying about it, so it probably does exist.

But a working, up to date copy that's been fully tested and ready for release likely does not exist. Heck, I think I first heard of Grimoire back in the Win2000 days; there's been at least 3 versions of Windows (one of which was designed to make sure nothing worked in it, so that people would be forced to upgrade their software as well as their OS) since I've heard of it (WinME does not count).

And it's all a moot point, because it will never be released.

So a few years ago now, when the Grimore forum was active, he reminisced about Scorpia. I gave him her contact info and he gave me a beta copy. It does exist and it ran on windows, but it was dated even then - it reminded me of Lands of Lore - but I just couldn't get past the graphics.

Originally Posted by dteowner
Oh ye of little faith. Here's the result of a quickstart. And no, I won't go any further because the beta crew did have an agreement with Cleve.

That's the first screen I've seen of the Windows version, dteowner. Thank you for that.

I do have to confess that I think the old 1998 beta screenshots had more appealing (to me) character portraits than the new ones. I also think it's odd that even though Cleve's redone the game a couple times since then, he's kept the original gameplay window that only filled up half the old 640x480 screen. That looks like an awful lot of "wasted" space for the surrounding UI.

In any case, I'm certainly looking forward to playing it if it's ever released.

I believe one of the changes Cleve's made since then was to redo the UI. Although it didn't bother me, a few testers had a similar complaint about the size of the first-person viewport.

We actually had a sizeable collection of Grimoire screenshots back at the Dot. I don't know if they migrated here, but I likely still have some of them on my HD!!

So it does exist? That changes things from "long running joke on us" to "long running joke".

I actually remember seeing screens way back when, and liked the looks. That's why I've followed it. It reminded me more of Wizardry 7 and Might and Magic: World of Xeen, two of my favorite games.

Originally Posted by Corwin
We actually had a sizeable collection of Grimoire screenshots back at the Dot. I don't know if they migrated here, but I likely still have some of them on my HD!!

Looks like Ironworks still has some screenshots up. And it looks like they're from the same version of the game that dteowner posted his from:

http://www.tgeweb.com/ironworks/prev…eenshots.shtml

Huh? Has this game really been in development since 1998?!

Originally Posted by JDR13
Huh? Has this game really been in development since 1998?!

Longer. The beta version that's been floating around the internet is the 1998 version. So the game's essentially been "done" since 1998. From what Cleve's posted, apparently he's recreated the engine a couple times since then, redone the scripting, etc.

Did he receive his developer training at 3D Realms?

Close, Sirtech where he worked on games like Wiz 6!!

Seems like the grimoiresystems.com website is offline now. Is that a good or a bad sign? Most likely just the beginning of the next iteration of this neverending story…

Grimoire is more like Wiz7 than Wiz8. Originally (before Wiz8 came out), Cleve described it as a retro game for fans of Wizardry, Bards Tale, Might & Magic, and such.

I've been following the game since early 1998 at which time the posted release date was Fall 1997. I played the original beta back around 1999 I think, it was a while after the testing.

As said, there have been several engine changes since then, and at least one major graphics change with a different artist.

Even back in 1997 it was retro. Anyone at all turned off by the graphics quality in any way should just write off their interest in this game. The graphics in this are more for nostalgia than eye candy. I do agree it would be nice to have the view window be larger though. Not sure what resolution his artwork is though. When most of this artwork was done, 800 and 1024 were typical resolutions on 15" & 17" monitors. An enlarged view window might look like an ugly blob on a 25" monitor. I think I'd go with smaller sharper, rather than larger blobs, if that were the choice.

Originally Posted by Corwin
It exists, but it won't play properly in Vista; crashes after a few minutes with a windoze error message and it refuses to load in any 64 bit OS. Will play fine in XP 32 bit.

Afters years of waiting I just totally lost interest in this game after reading your post…

And we're supposed to care?!!

Yes.




(character limit requirement)

Sorry, but I don't!!

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Seems like the grimoiresystems.com website is offline now. Is that a good or a bad sign? Most likely just the beginning of the next iteration of this neverending story…

Someone stole his website and replaced it with an exact duplicate.

Originally Posted by Konjad
Afters years of waiting I just totally lost interest in this game after reading your post…

It does illustrate the problem with such a slow development process. By the time the game is done the majority of the installed base has changed introducing new requirements for compatibility. Vista non-compatibility is going to cut a huge chunk of the potential market. Given the slow development history of this game the 64-bit market penetration will be much higher by then too. Still, it's not going to be targeted at high end users, so he might get some traction with the people that are still running XP, but even they will diminish over time. (Their usage of XP will diminish, not the people themselves: "you're looking kinda, well… Small today Jeff. What's up?" "Um, I'm still running XP at home…")

Sadly, I expect an "it's done! But I need to make some changes to support Vista (or 64bit) first." followed by an extended absence of communication.