ANDREW GREENBERG HAS LEFT SIR-TECH for Origin Systems, or so it has been told us by several sources. (Origin Systems publishes Ultima III and The Caverns of Callisto) Seems he has Joined Lord British (the creator of the Ultima Series) in order to work an a new game. Judging from the successes each has had separately, a collaboration ought to produce a blockbuster! (note by the editor: the above was an unsubstantiated rumor and has proven to be wrong) SIR-TECH IS BUSY working on the IBM version of the first scenario of Wizardry, which is slated to be released in late March, l984. Rumor has it that they are considering making the game available for the Commodore and Apples Macintosh, as well. It wouldnt be surprising if Sir-Tech incorporated the Window Wizardry screen routines into any or all of these now versions. THE RETURN OF WERDNA, the fourth scenario of the Wizardry series, is scheduled to be beta-tested in September or October, 1984. This means that it will be on sale by December, just in time for Santa. No word yet if it will be the long-awaited wilderness scenario, with at least some outdoor mazes an well as corridors. Dont count on it though, since Window Wizardrys Hi-Res graphics take up a lot of memory. Couple that with the Apple ][s limited disk space, and you have to realize that Sir-Tech is doing about all that can be done--that is, unless they have some more tricks up their sleeves! THIS IS JUST IDLE SPECULATION, but it seems that all the Wizardry scenarios, (and Ultima and other games, for that matter) would be easily adaptable to operation with a mouse. It just so happens that the IBM, the Apple ][ (in March, 1984) and the Macintosh have those devices available. Could it be that Sir-Tech will make future Wizardry games playable with a mouse?
e have a love-hate relationship with the Postal Service. On the one hand we are on a first name basis with the workers at the local post office-we are one of their biggest customers. On the other hand our postal carrier, normally courteous and cheerful, becomes sullen around the first of the month as he lugs great stacks of magazines to our door. Among those tottering heaps are twenty-one different computer magazines, and you know how heavy those can get! Yes, we do read them all. Since we have been in the business of helping Wizardry players become more successful, we have been especially attentive to any articles related to games in general and Wizardry in particular. Unfortunately, all but a handful have taken the form of Oh, wow, man! reviews of the latest arcade clones, and of that handful only a few articles have done more than mention Wizardry. Fantasy and adventure games are taken quite seriously by their players, and more of this type program is sold than all the spreadsheets put together. Yet month after month readers search among the myriad of articles written about obscure business and educational software for the rare article devoted to their favorite game. If any articles are found at all, readers are too often disappointed by sophomoric advice that could make a dog laugh!
WIZINEWS to the rescue! This magazine is devoted entirely to the serious fantasy and adventure game player. Every issue will be packed with the kind of articles and information that you have boon looking for. The contents of this premiere issue have been chosen specifically to fill the needs and answer the questions of Wizardry players from all over the world, and every issue will be edited with your success and enjoyment in mind. Nichols Services, the parent organization of the WIZINEWS, has built its reputation by being responsive to the needs and wishes of its customers. The WIZINEWS carries this policy a stop further by basing its entire editorial content on its readers input. We actively solicit your requests, comments, questions and any materials that you think other readers might enjoy or benefit from. Information for prospective writers is available on request, and the deadline for all materials, including letters to the Editor, is printed in the Look into the Future section. Although the WIZINEWS was established originally to cover the Wizardry games alone, it soon became apparent that our readers wanted and needed a magazine that dealt with the entire fantasy/adventure field. In response we have changed the direction of the WIZINEWS--this is the only issue that will deal solely with the Wizardry games. We intend it to cover any fantasy and/or adventure game that our readers are interested in, so you are invited to include other games in your correspondence with us. Above all, we want you to know that the WIZINEWS is your magazine. It exists because you wanted it. It will contain what you want it to contain. It will cover the games you want it to cover. Since mind-reading is not among the talents we are blessed with, you must let us know what you would like to read. With your help, the WIZINEWS can become a major force in the world of fantasy and adventure games, not only by helping players to succeed with the games currently on the market, but by actually shaping future games to be more challenging, stimulating and enjoyable!

reat games, like great wine, dont just happen, but are cultivated and refined over a period of time. The superiority of the raw materials of their creation makes up only a small portion of the formula for their greatness. Combined with superior raw materials must be the skill to use them properly, the ability to continually and realistically evaluate the emerging product and the patience to allow it all to mature. Above all, the creators must possess the special ability to know the exact moment when everything is right, when all the parts come together into a sum greater than the whole. Most Wizardry players know that the series has been a bestseller since the Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlords entry into the market in July, 1981. They have seen imitators, have even played some of them, but always come back to the original. Like a great wine, one always returns to it with pleasure, knowing that no matter how many times it has been experienced in the past, there will always be something new, something unexpected, a continual freshness that separates it from its lesser rivals. These qualities did not come about by accident, but through patience and a firm belief in the integrity of the game. Wizardry was born in boredom. Andrew Greenberg and his mates at Cornell were spending the spring study week of 1978 doing what most people did--playing chess, Scrabble or endless card games. After a couple of days, he says that, I was getting tired of these same games. I was bored and complained about my boredom. A friend suggested offhand that he go put Dungeons and Dragons on a computer. Greenberg remembers saying, O.K. and going to his Apple I computer to write a game that eventually would bear only the vaguest resemblance to its ancestors. By the fall of 1979, Greenbergs game was quite popular with friends and associates. He says that It was constantly being played to all hours into the night. I ended up sleeping in the room of the person who was occupying my room to play the game. Andrew Greenberg worked part time as the guardian of an instructional computer system. Part of his job was to set up passwords and rules to keep unauthorized users out of the system, especially students who had discovered that the computer contained some challenging games. Greenberg took an instant dislike to one student who always seemed to be able to burrow around his most elaborate protection schemes to get at the game files. No wonder that his first impression of Robert Woodhead was that, He was one of those people who just seemed to live to make my life miserable. When Woodhead decided that he might want to market a game, he remembered Greenbergs campus successes and contacted him, offering him a deal I couldnt refuse. Greenberg says of the original division of labor,.I agreed to allow Woodhead to do all the coding and I would take charge of the designing--hence freeing my time up.

Thats how I found out about super-bishops. What is a super-bishop? Its a young 19 or 20 year-old 50th level bishop with over 31M hit points, who can cast the maximum number of both priest and mage spells in all levels and who is eligible to be changed into any other class compatible with his alignment. There are only two ways to obtain the services of this exalted clergyman: play Wizardry every day for the next 47 years (in which case neither you nor the bishop will be very young) or follow the method outlined in this article. What I am going to do to show you how to create a really strong party of door-kickers who will last long enough to get some high-level experience points; a party that some day you will be proud to introduce to Werdna. By now you should know that nothing in Wizardry is free. You will need gold pieces--about 106,000 of them--to complete this venture. To raise this amount of cash you will need a formatted backup disk and a duplicate scenario. Its easy to format a disk for backup use. Place your DOS 3.3 System Master disk in the disk drive. Type PR#6 and watch while the title display prints out on the screen. This procedure is called booting the disk. The title display is actually a little program in itself called the HELLO file. When the red in use light an the disk drive goes out, dont touch anything an the keyboard; just remove the System Master disk from the drive and immediately replace it with a blank disk. Now type INIT HELLO and sit back while the blank disk is initialized--it should take about 20 seconds or so. When the red light goes out, presto!, you have a formatted (or initialized) backup disk. Now you have to make a duplicate scenario disk. If you have two disk drives just follow the computers instructions. If youre smart enough to have gotten rich enough to afford two disk drives you should have no trouble with this. Those of us with only one drive must, as usual, tread a stonier path. Again boot your 3.3 System Master disk. When the title display has run, type CATALOG. When the list prints out, you will see that one of the files on the menu is called COPYA. Type RUN COPYA. The program will make four statements and you must respond to each of them. To the statements Respond by pressing: ---------------------------------------------------------ORIGINAL SLOT DEFAULT = 6 RETURN DRIVE DEFAULT = 1 RETURN DUPLICATE SLOT DEFAULT = 6 RETURN DRIVE DEFAULT = Now just follow the programs directions. You are going to have to switch the original scenario and the duplicate back and forth a few times during the procedure; the computer will tell you when. For Gods sake pay attention to what youre doing and dont insert one disk when the computer asks for the other! You are utilizing very powerful program commands in this procedure and could conceivably harm your expensive Wizardry original scenario. [Editor: Putting one of those little silver write-protect tabs over each of the square cutouts on the original disk will reduce the chance of accidentally destroying it!] Theres an initializing command in the beginning of the procedure that takes precedence over virtually everything else on a disk. I dont know what would happen if you inadvertently formatted an original Wizardry scenario but dont be the first to find out.

Now for the gold pieces. On your original scenario disk create 20 characters at random. Use letters of the alphabet for names. At Gilgameshs have 19 of them trade their gold to character A. Delete the 19 donors. A should now have over 2000 GP. Reboot and go to U)tilities. Select B)ackup. Then select T)o. Load character A onto your formatted backup disk. Go to B)ackup. Select F)rom. Save character A onto your duplicate scenario disk. Go to C)hange Name. Change As name to B. Go to T)ransfer. Transfer character 9 back to the original scenario and trade his gold to A. A now has over 4000 GP. Delete B. Simple arithmetic tells us that if you do this five more times A will wind up with over 128,000 GP, more than enough for our purposes. Now go to the Training Grounds and create six bishops, four of them dwarves. To get a bishop you will need enough bonus points to give your character at least 12 points each of strength, 19, and piety. Then take the bishops to Gilgameshs and have A give each dwarf 29,000 GP. The other two bishops get about 13,000 GP each. Then its off to Boltacs for some equipment. At the trading post, have each dwarf bishop purchase a helm, shield +1, plate mail +1, copper gloves, and either a long sword or a staff +2. Have the other two bishops each purchase a small shield, leather +1, and a staff +2. Dont E)quip anybody yet, just let them carry the gear. Next we go to the edge of town and into the maze. Stay in camp and sew if each bishop in given the option of identifying something. Sometimes an empty-handed bishop wont be given the I)dentify option, thats why we bought all that equipment before entering the Maze. Occasionally a rookie bishop will have trouble getting the I)dentify option the first time in camp. If that happens, leave camp and take a short expedition one or two squares into the corridor (no more than that; we dont need any encounters just now). Stop and make camp again; everything should work now. Theres a beneficent bug in the Wizardry system that were going to take advantage of. Every character--bishops included--has just enough slots to carry eight items and no more. A bishop, however, can be made to identify a ninth item--one that isnt there. To be sure it will require a strong wrist and a lot of patience before SUCCESS! but its worth it. Because when the bishop finally does succeed he gets 100 million experience points! Im not exaggerating. 100 million points for identifying an item that isnt even there! When all your bishops have made the grade, bring them back to the castle and go to the Adventurers Inn to heal up. It will cost around 8,000 GP to bring a super-bishop up to near level 50. Where you stop is up to you. [Editor: If you have a lot of time, you can take each character to the Stables at the Inn. It doesnt cost anything, and it doesnt age your characters.] Once a super-bishop has 18 points in all attributes, can cast the maximum number (nine) of both priest and mage spells in all seven levels, and has around 300 hit points theres not much point in running him up any further. If youre careful to select the most expensive rooms appropriate to the number of points to be healed there should be no trouble with aging. I have yet to have a super-bishop age one year in the healing process.

Example: I created an evil dwarf bishop, age 19. It cost me 7999 GP to heal him up to level 47 (308 hit points) and when it was over he was still 19 years old. When I changed him to a first level ninja he turned 25. Not a bad age for a ninja with all priest and mage spells and over 300 hit points! So you see, each super-bishop can be changed into any other class compatible with his alignment. You have instant young lords, samurais, or ninjas who know all the spells and who have enough hit points to take on all the gas dragons on the fourth level. And you havent cheated! You now have the basis of a potentially strong party that should last through all three scenarios. Hints: you wont need a priest or a mage because a super-bishop does the job of both. You wont need a thief, either; a super-bishop opens chests with no trouble and identifies everything on the first try (so he wont get stuck with a cursed item). About the only thing a super-bishop cant seem to do well is fight. He still has the armor restrictions of a regular bishop and, when it comes down to chopping and slashing, class does count. Thats why we made 4 of the bishops dwarves; they will be changed to one or more of the fighting classes (no class gains strength points as quickly an a dwarf) and the other two will remain super-bishops. So give it a try. Itll be a good afternoons work but well worth it. After all, you might as well spend your time developing a party of lords and samurais as one made up of entry-level characters. Good luck! [Frank Conway teaches Anatomy at a medical school in Philadelphia. in Hamilton Square, New Jersey.] He lives
very program has bugs, and Wizardry is no exception. With 14,000 lines of code in The Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord alone, and an astronomical number of possible combination of items, alignment, class, etc., the amazing thing is that there are so few bugs! Some do nothing, some may help you and some are to be avoided like the plague! Every issue of the Wizinews will contain a new list of bugs discovered by our readers and through our own research, so send them in! As usual, youll get to see your name in print next to your contribution. Before trying your wings with ANY bug, make sure that you have made a backup of your characters, in case the results are not what you expected! Following is a list of the most (in)famous insects: PROVING GROUNDS OF THE MAD OVERLORD THE SUPER BISHOP Take your Bishop to the first scenario, make camp and have him identify #9 (thats right, just press 9 when asked which item you want to identify). It may take a few times, but when he succeeds, he will get 100,000,000 experience points. Then go to the Stables at the Adventurers Inn and run him up to about a level 240 with 1600 hit points and all the mage and priest spells! You can repeat the process, but the Bishop will have to have had one or more levels drained first. Super Bishop can be used to make other classes of characters--just change classes after finishing at the Inn. The character will be a Level 1 of whatever class you have chosen, but will keep the spells and high hit points! (First sent in by Bill Kuethe, Glen Burnie, MD) OTHER INSPECT BUGS (Warning: The Spurious General has determined that some inspect bugs may be hazardous to your characters health. Dont even think about trying them until you have made a character backup. Use of the following bugs on early versions of Wizardry may result in completely lost characters, so do be careful! All the bugs in this section were submitted by Turak the Cleric.)

Take your bishop to the first scenario, make camp, press the I)nspect option, and when asked which item to inspect, press: 1). (A period) This usually does one of the following, but has been known to be unpredictable: --Reduce age to zero (0) --Reduce Hit Points to one (1) --Make character afraid, requiring a Madi spell --Raise all attributes (strength, piety, etc.) to 31 --Make all attributes (strength, piety, etc.) lower --Give high numbers of all spells, such an 95/95/95/17/10/19/7 --Raise characters level 2) (Right parenthesis) Erases characters name, but who would want to do this? 3) : (colon) Lowers hit points to one (1), but when your character makes the next level, hit points will be restored fully and often are doubled. 4) CTRL-Z Lowers AC to one (1) on some versions of the game. KNIGHT OF DIAMONDS This scenario is relatively free of bugs. LEVEL DRAINING When an elite character (Lord, Samurai, Ninja) has a level drained, they will gain a large number of hit points (sometimes hundreds) when they finally reach their original level again. This phenomenon does not work on all versions of KOD. LEGACY OF LLYLGAMYN Most of the bugs in Legacy are not destructive, just annoying. However, there is one equipment bug that will work to your advantage should you encounter it. THE AGED MONK on Level Three often will not accept ANYTHING in payment for his goodies. See Ashnaperpl Answers for more info. LKBRETH is a crusty old codger, quarrelsome and mean. On most versions of the game he wont let your party past him at all, no matter who you are or what youre carrying. You have to wander around the five anterooms in the stairs area hoping for an encounter and a teleporting chest that will send you safely past him. Even if you get past him the first time, thatll be the last time! In addition, many people find that after going to the sixth level two or three times, he takes a disliking to you and bars the use of the stairs to your party. If LKbreth is too cantankerous, the best thing to do in to make another scenario disk with a LK. that doesnt know you and try again. THE MYSTERY ITEM is usually found on the fifth level after battles with the Priests of Fung. When you pick it up it appears an the characters item list as a ? with nothing after it. When identified it will have the # (unusable) before the blank space and Boltac will pay you millions for it. But dont sell it--it heals the character holding it just like the Ring of Healing. You can make camp several times, giving it to a different character each time. After you leave camp, the character will be completely healed after just a few steps. Some people report that no matter how many times the bearer is struck in combat, he will never die from lost hit points!

A ROSTER CHARACTER is sometimes found just like an object, with an unidentified name such an M. (This is a strange one!) When identified, it is usually the first character on the Roster, and may or may not be in the party at the time. The only use that has been found is to sell the character to Boltac, who will give you so much gold that it cant all be recorded in the allotted space! Trouble with this bug in that finding this character changes his name to that of the character holding him. Until you change the name, you will get the FOUND character every time you attempt to call up the character FINDING him. Since the program searches for a name from the first of the list and stops when it finds it, you may change the name of the first Roster character without affecting that of the other, which is lower on the list. CAUTION: The character found is not always the first on the Roster list, so it pays to keep track of the name order of the Roster and to double-check before changing any names. [If you have a favorite bug that is not found here, or if a listed bug behaves differently in your game, let us know. We will publish it, along with your name. So if you want to be famous (sorry, no riches), send those insidious insects our way !]
ail Heroes! Every brave adventurer encounters problems, and I, Ashnaperpl the Conqueror, have made it my Quest to extend a mighty hand to you in your misery, peril and confusion! Ask and it shall be answered, cry out and you shall be heard. I will respond to every plea, although only those of consequence to the majority of the Heroes will be written in this scroll. Since my Quest has just begun, I will give heed to those questions most frequently heard in the past. But before we commence, I must tell you that Honor bids me to give you Hints before Answers, and Answers only in coded form. Deciphering the code is Pages Play: write the alphabet from A to Z, left to right. Then write it again from right to left, placing the A under the other alphabets Z and proceeding until you finish with a Z under the others A. If you see a J in the code, for example, look it up in the lower alphabet, then find its equivalent Q in the upper one, and so on. DEAR ASH: WHAT IS THE ANSWER TO THE RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX ON THE SIXTH LEVEL OF THE KNIGHT OF DIAMONDS? This is by far the most frequently asked question. It has stumped everybody from ninth graders to Ph.Ds, so dont feel bad if you dont get it right away--or at all! The clues are obscure at best, and neither I nor any of my fellow Heroes have ever figured out what relation the clues bear to the answer! If youre like most people who have written or called in desperation, you really dont want the answer, but have reached the point where insanity threatens. Rather than provide the answer, we generally give the following hints that have helped most questioners solve it on their owns 1) the answer bears little relation to the three clues found on the sixth level, 2) most people have already tried the correct answer, but not in the exact form required by the program, 3) the answer in four words long, and 4) the parts of speech of the answer are: article, noun, preposition, noun. If this still doesnt help, then here it in coded forms GSV PMRTSG LU WRZNLMWH. DEAR ASHNAPERPL: LAIR. HELP! NOW THAT IVE DISPATCHED WERDNA, I CANT GET OUT OF HIS

Now, it wouldnt be fair to you if we gave out answers like candy. Since the balance of Legacy is weighted more toward thought than action (unlike the earlier scenarios), a large part of the games challenge is figuring out things like this! It soon becomes apparent that character and item alignment are central to the game. Study all the messages that concern alignment in any way, trying to look beyond what the words say to what they meen. As you progress in the mazes, you will come upon more massages, both outright and those that have to be inferred from what the game will and will not let you do. By the time you are ready to enter the sixth level, you ought to have a pretty good idea of what all these messages and inferences are trying to tell you about what is required to finish the game. More than that we will not tell here, but you may write or call our patron, Nichols Services, and they will come to your aid.
by Mike Nichols f the WIZINEWS is your first contact with Nichols Services, you may want to skip this part. Even if youre up to your ears in Nichols Services stuff, I wouldnt blame you if you preferred reading the phone book to glomming through this clot of words. Then why foist this stumbling attempt at autobiography upon you at all? (The script directs me to raise my chin, strike an heroic pose and stare at the horizon Because I am vowed to be a slave to your wishes! (Intoned in my best baritone bleat, with a thick Southern accent, of course.) Yes, faithful readers, I have been the subject of a great deal of curiosity (no comment) and I mean to put the matter to rest once and for all (Try six feet under, you may. I say, Go read the phone book!). This is going to be a short recounting of my stumbling descent into the $(#*&%~DUNGEONS OF WIZARDRY>*&%~$%#. You have been warned. Last chance to turn back! Too late! I told my wife the usual things when I got the itch to buy an Apple ][+ computer: household budget, record keeping, word processing--serious things. I really meant it, since the patrons of every video game emporium in this end of town would gather into a mob, laugh, jeer and point when I darkened the door of said establishments. I bought Snack Attack anyway, but the little fish just quivered in one spot, knowing he was doomed, and the ghosts cheered every time they spotted my fuzzy face on the other side of the screen.

So it was for quite a while that I practiced a glum expression in the mirror in preparation for my bouts with the Apple. until I wandered into the computer store one day, seeking the latest in machinistic masochism. While fingering the merchandise in the Business Section, I overheard a women recounting to the owner her exploits with a game called Wizardry. It took me five months to reach the sixth level, she said, and, I know a couple people who have finished it, but they are whizzes. Intrigued, and imbued with the confidence of the neophyte that I could whiz with the best of them, I sidled over to the Games Section, trying to be as invisible as possible (a real feat for someone who to six feet and 230 pounds). Black box, green dragon, shiny red lettering. !!POP!! A tiny creature in a three-piece suit hovered over my right shoulder, peeping Put it back! Games are not serious! You are a grown man! !!ZIP!! Over the other shoulder materialized a smiling wizard wearing jeans and a two shirt. Just read the back, it cant hurt, he tempted. Aargh! I felt dizzy, knees turned to jelly. will quickly transformed into cold Pablum. My arm extended to replace the box, but my hand turned it over just in time for me to read, Wizardry is not a game. Its a place, and right below that, Are you ready to step into the world of Wizardry? Aargh! again, this time from old Three-Piece on the right as he distorted and faded. My body moved toward the cash register while my brain screamed Stop! Stop! But it was too late--I was yet another victim of the Denim Wizards enchantment. No longer pure. No longer serious. I would never be the same. Up to this time I had been content to conduct an orchestra full-time and do studio, free-lance and consulting work in between. After all, my high school orchestra was well-respected, including among its accomplishments a third place trophy from a prestigious international competition held in Austria. I was Principal Violist with the local Symphony, and was in demand as a performer and teacher. I had Certified Serious Person written all over me. The first symptoms of Wizmania appeared just hours after a most bewildered Serious Person lurched from the computer store, Wizardry clutched to breast. Friends would later note that during breaks of the dress rehearsal of Madame Butterfly the S.P. did not flee the orchestra pit as was his wont, but sat transfixed before a small white paperback with a dragon on the front, foam-flecked lips moving to ovary word. At the close of the rehearsal, however, he abandoned the pit like a rat from a sinking ship, propelling his rotund bulk over the rail, through the darkened theatre and out the nigh-splintered doors in a manner that has since become a local metaphor for headlong speed. Winged Rodents from the Lower Realms could not have made it from the theatre to my computer any faster. Trembling with supernatural excitement, I created my first party, equipped them, and took them proudly into the maze, confident that Victory Was Mine. They were annihilated within sight of the stairs to the Castle. All the momentum built up since falling under the spell of Wizardry came to a sudden sickening halt in the face of my first defeat. Again I tried, and again, and again,

control by keeping accurate records of my characters status and the statistics of the various monsters and perils they encountered. I reconsidered the best uses of the spells available to me, the Dumapic spell in particular. Almost coincidentally, I happened to read an article that mentioned that all Wizardry mazes occupied a 20 by 20 grid. Spreading my immense level three map out, it was immediately apparent where I was going wrong: I had had no idea that my party was being teleported from one side of the maze to the other! If someone had been watching at that moment, I am certain that they would have seen a light bulb glow above my bony pate, just like in the cartoons! From that point on, the logic of the games writers began to emerge. I decided that it would be wise to remap the first and second levels, making notes of what I encountered along the way. Looking over my notes led to more discoveries about the game and to further refinements in my record-keeping. By the time I had reached the fifth level the basic Wizisystem had come into being. I still had many lessons in humility to learn (something my mother always told me built character, though my mother-in-law told me that I was already character enough), and I still lost my share of good parties. But more and more, the game was going faster and easier, despite the piles of charts and notes that increasingly threatened to bury me in an avalanche of cellulose. From the time I rethought my approach to the game it took me four weeks to finish the first scenario. The Knight of Diamonds was tougher, but the Wizisystem allowed me to finish it in three weeks, including the five days it took me to figure out the Sphinxs blasted riddle! By this time I had condensed the Wizisystems piles of paper into slightly smaller piles and began lending it to friends. Encouraged by their success and my wifes gentle urging (By Gums Cricket if youre going to make a Computer Widow of me, at least earn some money with that plague-stricken lump of silicon before you disappear entirely!), I decided to put it all into a more usable form. In order to verify and add to the data I had to complete both scenarios several times again. With the help of PFS and Applewriter, the first Wizisystem manual began to emerge. After a period of hesitation, I placed an ad in Softalk, hoping to help some people and make expenses in the process. To say that I was unprepared for the response would be a gross understatement. Orders began to pour in from all over the world in such quantity that our biggest problem became keeping enough inventory to fill orders! After several bouts with unreliable suppliers, we obtained printing equipment of our own. The Wizisystem side of Nichols Services (which had been in existence for about eleven years as the umbrella name for my consulting, free-lance and other non-school activities) had grown so much by the fall that it was a full-time job just filling orders and developing new products. A major decision became unavoidable: I either had to stop advertising or take the plunge and change careers. The decision was eased by the fact that my career had reached a plateau. I had exceeded all my goals and now ones were not attainable without some very unlikely changes in the priorities of the local School District and

of almost every school system I knew of nationwide. Since I easily could continue the more enjoyable aspects of my musical life without in any way hindering the growth of Nichols Services, I dove right into a career change. Needless to say, friends, colleagues and family were shocked, and continue to be more than a little envious that Ive been so successful at having my cake and eating it too! The details of our daily business are less interesting even than the present exercise in egotism and consist in the usual frenetic juggling act of trying to do everything for everybody at the same time. One of the more pleasant aspects of our service to customers is the OBLIGATION to play games, either with the intent of updating our current products or for the purpose of developing new ones. We are in the final phases of a complete revision of the Wizisystem manual and maps for the Apple version of the games and are anxiously awaiting the release of the IBM version in early April, 1984. Also in the works is a Wizisystem-like treatment of the Ultima games, slated to be ready in early Summer, 1984. We are also evaluating several other games for similar manhandling (any suggestions?). Our most exciting project right now is the development of our own fantasy role-playing game. A great deal of effort has gone into making the game challenging to experienced players yet attractive to a potentially wider audience who has avoided the genre due to its notorious complexities and requirements for arcane knowledge! We originally had planned to write the game for the Apple ][, but we are making application for Apples Certified Developer Program with the intention of investigating the Macintosh as the target machine. It was stated above that one of the more pleasant aspects of our business is getting to play games for a living, but the BEST part is our contact by phone and mail with hundreds of great people worldwide! I count my customers as among some of the finest people I have ever had the privilege to meet, and I actually look forward to talking with them over the phone or by mail. It is our pledge to all our friends, both present and future, that we will continue offering the kind of superior products and support that you have come to expect from Nichols Services!
ow many of you Apple ][ and ][+ owners have plugged that new eighty-column card in, only to discover that booting Wizardry got you a blank screen with one puny dead cursor? Unless you want the thrill of playing the game with no display, you will have to physically remove your card, or buy a $20 switch in order to see anything! If youre as cheap as I am and/or dont want to wait two weeks for your order to arrive, then you can make a dandy switchbox for $3.08 (plus tax), a few items you probably have laying about and a hours time--less if youre not as ham-handed as I am! Before we start constructing this technological wonder, lets pause a minute to find out why we have to do it at all. The Pascal language was devised with an eighty-column display in mind and automatically looks for an eighty-column card in slot three. Not all Apple owners have an eighty-column card, so Apple Pascal 1.0 and 1.1 allows the programmer the option of writing the program for a forty column display, and it is in this mode that Wizardry, older versions of PFS and several other popular programs were written. Unfortunately, if you have an eighty-column card installed, the Pascal operating system ignores the fact that a program might have been written for forty columns and puts the display into the eighty-column mode. The results a blank screen. Many eighty-column cards include something called a soft-switch, which is supposed to detect whether software needs forty or eighty columns. Well, folks, I have heard complaints from all over the world that most soft-switches (including the one on the new Videx Ultraterm card) dont work with Wizardry and other forty-column Pascal programs, and that a switchbox is the only convenient solution. (Yes, I am aware that there are other remedies, such as putting the card into a slot other than #3, or using your ][+ for a boat anchor and buying a ][e, which is able to deal with the 40-80 problem without help. But each of those and similar solutions creates new problems, none of which can be solved with $3.08 and one hour of your time!) Figure 1 shows how most eighty-column cards are hooked up to the Apple ][ and ][+. The Apples video output is diverted to the card, and the video output of the card is then sent to the monitor. Under this setup, the card is potentially in control of all signals going to the monitor. The Wiziswitch simply allows you to choose between sending the Apples video to the card or directly to the monitor, thereby bypassing the card.

FIGURE 4: WIRING HOOKUP INSIDE BOX.

NOTE STEP NUMBERS.

Make sure that all connections are tight before soldering, that solder joints look bright when cool (dull, grainy looking connections usually are not good), that there are no solder bridges between connections and that no bare connecting wires touching each other. STEP 1--Connect all the phono jacks ground tabs together. You may do this with one wire that has been stripped of all its insulation, if you are certain that there is NO WAY that any other bare wire could contact it. Otherwise connect the tabs with short wires between each. STEP 2--Measure the distance between the connections on the phono jacks and the switch, and add about an inch (two inches if you have labeled the front of the box). Cut four wires to this length and strip each and (if you have four different colors of wires, cut one of each color, otherwise be extra careful with your connections). Solder the end of one wire to the signal tab on one of the phono jacks, making sure that neither the bare wire nor any solder contacts the ground wire soldered in Step 1 or any part of the outside casing of the jack. After the solder is cool, you may bend the wire out of the way and solder a wire to each of the remaining jacks in the same manner. Connecting the wires to the switch is the trickiest part of the whole project. The wires MUST BE connected to the switch EXACTLY as shown. Double-check all connections for correctness and for the possibility that solder might be bridging two connections, or that bare wires contact anything but their connecting post. STEP 3--Strip about 1 inch of insulation off a wire, then cut the bared wire off. Use it to connect the two posts on one end of the switch. INPUT. switch. OUTPUT. switch. STEP 4--Find the wire attached to the jack marked MONITOR VIDEO Connect and solder the free end to one of the middle posts on the STEP 5--Find the wire attached to the jack marked APPLE VIDEO Connect and solder its from end to the other middle post of the
STEP 6--Find the wire attached to the jack marked VIDEO FROM CARD. Connect and solder its from end to the end post ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE SWITCH AS THE WIRE FROM THE MONITOR VIDEO INPUT IS ATTACHED. STEP 7--Attach the remaining free wire (it should be coming from the jack marked VIDEO TO CARD) to the last post (it must attached to the same side of the switch as the APPLE VIDEO OUTPUT wire). If you havent done so already, mount the switch. Before you close the box, double check that all wires go where they should, that all solder joints are good and that no bare wire touches another. If you want to label the switch, note that in most switches the direction OPPOSITE the side where the eightycolumn cards wires are connected will allow the card to process the computers video output, and the direction OPPOSITE the end that you connected together with the bare wire will leave the card