Update Notes for 0.4: March of the Mad Overlord

Friends and adventurers, we sincerely hope you find this massive March of the Mad Overlord update to have been worth the wait. We've spent the first quarter of 2024 bringing many planned features and upgrades into the game; here's what you can look for when you return to the Maze…

Improved Graphics
All 10 levels of the Maze now have received a significant visual upgrade. Please take notice of the cleaner textures and improved visuals as you run for your life, desperately searching for the gorgeously rendered exit. And Levels 6-10 now use a secondary tileset!

New Music
Winifred Phillips has composed several new tracks for Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, including a refreshed version of the original theme that console players remember and love. You'll also hear pieces specific to locations in town and special cues on certain in-game activities.

Enemy Animations
Creating detailed, fluid animations for all 101 enemies has taken quite a bit of time, but after hundreds of hours of work by our artists, this feature is finally complete. All foes in the Maze are now fully animated!

Console Levels
Many console players missed the alternate layouts for levels 6, 7, and 8, so we have added these as user-selectable options.

Hide & Ambush
In the Japanese 16-bit console compilation of Wizardry, thieves and ninja could hide and ambush during combat, even when situated in the back row. This feature is now on by default, but can be toggled off in the Old-School Options menu.

Treasure Details
The Bestiary, which offers a reference guide to all the creatures your party encounters in the Maze, now also includes a guide to what types of treasure you can expect any given enemy to drop.

Save Icon
It's a small detail, but you'll now get a visual indicator of when the game is saving your progress. Keep a watchful eye for the parchment inscription icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

And More
As always, various tweaks have been applied and bug have been squashed, including fixing the issue with the Gold Key.

We've come a very long way since we launched this project in early access just six months ago. Your continued feedback remains valuable as we continue working toward version 1.0, so please do keep posting your reactions and suggestions in the forums. We appreciate it. See you next update!

The Wizardry Team at Digital Eclipse

I purchased the GOG version. As of Thu 21 Mar 03:07:00 UTC 2024, it seems that I cannot update yet. Will I be able to update if I wait for a while?

After waiting for some time and trying to update again, I was able to update to version 0.4!
Thank you!

The offline installer even got updated! (Previously, the offline installers of this game would not get updated for a while after the patch release.)

Now to find time to test out the new build, and perhaps listen to some of that new music.

This update brought achievements to the Steam release. Where are the GOG Galaxy achievements?

Just want to say that new title screen theme is amazing.

This is absolutely gorgeous, and the QOL fixes are excellent. I know it's a bit off topic, but is there any chance your team will get the opportunity to do the rest of the original trilogy?

Hello and happy Friday! We are releasing a small update to the current 0.4 version of the game to address some player feedback and introduce a new experimental feature!

(As noted below, please back up your saves before you attempt it!)

Uncursing and Identifying items now properly contribute to "Boltac's Summer Home" achievement

Fixed a lock-up from teleporter on floor 7 (Classic version)

Experimental feature to switch level set with command line argument ("-modernlevels" or "-classiclevels" - back up your saves before you try this!)

A bit of detail on that last one. We got reports of save games not working after 0.4 because we added the console versions of several dungeon levels, which differed from the Apple II version but were often requested from nostalgic console players. In the 1.0 version, "Apple or console levels?" will be a choice the player makes when starting the game. That was how it was designed and when we added the new content, it was our mistake that it made the console levels the default/only choice. So this will hopefully fix that mistake for you early adopters!

At launch, use this as a command-line parameter:
-classiclevels to activate the Apple II levels
-modernlevels to activate the console leve.

Definitely make a copy of your save to another slot before you try it, then if you're back on the correct set of levels of your choice, you should remove this parameter and launch the executable as normal. But if you have saves that need one or the other set of maps, for now, this should let you continue to play with your legacy data.

For anyone affected, please report back as to whether or not this solves the issue, and how it affects your in-game map, which might still be wonky.