It probably won't be a problem to have it sorted by then. Apparently much of the issues relate to the privilege structures in Windows 7, as in Windows DLL files the game requests to use for graphics and sound are refused permission by Win7 and thus crashes the game.

But on the bright side, the game is utterly brilliant, and I'm not being a fanboy either, the sheer amount of races, classes, attributes, skills, spells, different types of magic, resistances. Going by the character generation screen alone, the game is more advanced than Wizardry 7 or 8 several fold.

In addition, the music and graphical style (2D sprites) give the game a nice charm about it. A fantasy game that doesn't feel generic.

I love colourful sprite styles, one of the reasons why I love HOMM2.

Yeah, there's certainly something to be said about the color capacity of modern computers making game developers lazy. I mean Grimoire is 256 colors, yet it looks more colorful than many modern games that have access to a palette of millions of colors, which tend to look garish and brown.

Updated installer V 1.2 is available now. Here's the post from Cleve:

New version of installation package designed to give full admin privileges under Win 7 / Vista.

http://www.filedropper.com/grimoiredemov12

Remember to uninstall the previous version first.

Okay, yeah. This is working perfectly fine for me so long as I run as administrator (v1.1 I mean).

I like it. It could do with a manual, as I have NO idea what a lot of the symbols for the battle options mean (such as the armor or the bloody yin yang) and am afraid to try them out after accidentally throwing two of my guys' weapons at an enemy and not being able to recover them.

Battles are also a bit long, taking me somewhere between 5 and 10 minutes to beat a single, nondescript fish that you'd think would go down much easier.

And when you turn, something odd happens where the graphics that were in front of you are still in front of you, only angled differently before they finally disappear.

The world is feeling pretty alive so far, compared to other CRPGs, seeing as after I killed the fish, I wandered around and found a chest behind a bush that it even went so far as to describe its physical state in detail and then some fairy showed up and apparently my entire party was enamored with it as it told me to go buy from some store.

But overall, I like it and the little quirks I'm having to learn and all aren't bothering me as much as they normally would (though I'm still waiting to find out that the party I built was a horrible idea).

@johnki the yin yang icon (Use Power) is to order the selected character to use his/her special power. Some races have them. You can click on the character portrait to see if they have special powers.

I needed this. Thanks.

My pleasure. Hope it works well for you.

Ahhhh. Thanks.

I also noticed that if I tell it to send the bonus points to attributes that I have to distribute them myself...?

Yeah

Just completed the demo with the pre-made characters. It's a lot of fun so far, and from what I could tell, professions, races, skills and spells are quite well-balanced. I also like the map designs and puzzles. The visuals and layout of the UI are nice, but in terms of functionality, the interface could use some touching up - for example, you can't see the name of an item in your inventory in combat, and there should be a faster way to scroll through the inventory, or at least a means of filtering out the item you're looking for. (Edit: looks like you can avoid mashing the mouse by selecting the scrolling arrow icon and holding Enter down, as a workaround)

Do your party members have the skill to use the weapons allocated? I think it also helps if you assay items that are not IDed before using them in combat.

Btw regarding the text in battles, you can click on the text box to fast forward the text.

Well, I decided to give the v1.2 a shot, and it's now crashing even more often. Any time I try to change anything in the configuration menu (even the music volume) it crashes.

I want to like this game, and pay to support it, but is it too large of a project for just one person?

From the previous v1.1 it needs hot keys. M should open the map. Esc should close out of any current window/sub menu.

Oh well, I'll keep an eye out and try v1.3 if/when he releases it.

That sounds like permissions might still be an issue. Did you try setting the exe to run as administrator?

You could also try moving the game out of Program Files to a folder you create off the root folder.

Did you remove the previous install completely? It might be worth making sure the install folder was deleted entirely, just in case the configuration files would be left behind by an uninstall routine, potentially with screwed up permissions on them.

Just some things you might check if you feel so inclined.

Last I read, Cleve is considering replacing his file IO routines with Windows API calls because unfortunately, Microsoft Windows does not adhere to ANSI C++ standards like the rest of the world.

Ok, moving it out of Program Files and running as admin fixed those crashes. What's weird is it wasn't having the same issues with v1.1.