When I click within game the "Hint Guide" or "Manual" or "Map" I get an error message that Windows 'cannot find the Wizardy "Help" file or 'Wizardry.Hlp' or some such. I was thinking maybe the anti-virus I was using when I installed the game had blocked/deleted such files for some bizarre reason but this appears to happen whether I have ANY antivirus programs installed or not.

Any ideas anyone?



EDIT: Okay just in case others are wondering about this, apparently Gog's installer does not include the aforementioned manuals/hint guide so trying to access them in game results in the problem I detailed above. Luckily I found an old "Wizardry Archives" CD I have had for about 20 years. Using that CD I installed Wizardry Gold to a different location (than the GOG installation) and viola! The manual and hint guide ('Wizhelp.hlp' and 'Wizmanual.hlp' were installed within that same folder (the default was c:\Wizgold' IIRC) and I could just copy and paste them into my GOG Wizardry Gold folder and they are now accessible.

*Bump* so that Gog and others can see this in case there is anyone besides me who prefers Wizardry Gold over Wizardry 7 Dos.

I thought you had better taste than that. :-(

Also keep in mind that Microsoft has changed the Windows help-file format a number of times (at least twice IIRC?) and recent versions of Windows no longer support the oldest formats (and being a 1990s Windows title, Wiz7 Gold is likely to have an obsolete help file format).

They're still sorta supported, you just have to download stuff from Windows Update to make them work. They aren't supported out-of-the-box because it's pretty rare for someone to need to use them. Fortunately, once you've downloaded the update, your computer can read ALL of the old help text. For example, getting the help text working for the Heroes 3 map editor also got the text working for The Incredible Machine.

To an extent I see your point. I know from reading up on the matter that Gold kind of messed up diplomacy for example. However this is one of those things where it largely depends on which game you played first. While I tried Wizardry 7 before Gold, at the time (very early 1990s IIRC) there was some things I found frustrating and quickly decided I did not want to play the game further despite my being a HUGE fan of CRPGs that allow for multiple races (and races other than f*cking elves, hobbits and dwarves) and classes. But in around 1996 or '97 IIRC I saw Wizardry Gold on the shelf at my local Software etc. for like $5 or some such and I bought it, not even realizing at the time that this was Wizardry 7 'improved' (in terms of adding voices, some graphics, hint guides etc.) so it was in effect my first version of Wizardry 7. Unlike people who first played the Dos -based Wizardry 7 I actually liked and still like the narrator's voice over as well as the NPC voices and such.

*Shrug* Yeah but as I said above Windows XP - my OS as I will have to be forced to 'upgrade' to these newer crappy Windows OSes which seem very dumbed down for cell phone users and do not allow you to stop spammy intrusive programs from booting up at startup (whereas Windows Xp you can do a simple 'msconfig' to stop such nonsense) -does not have any problem with these help files and there is no real reason for Gog's installation to not include these two help files for Windows XP users at the very least (and as others say above users of newer Windows OSes can still use these as well with some minor tweaking). Not including these files is a major thing IMO. Even if one does not need or want the 'Hint guide' being able to access the manuals should be possible.