Yes. Wizardry 8 has been designed as a 3D-accelerated game from the ground up. We've taken special care to make the 3D effects part of the game, not just showy gimmicks. We want you to think, "Wow, those etched glass windows look fantastic," not, "Oh look, another translucency."

No, not at all. In fact, there's a special beginning just for those who haven't played the previous game. Our goal is to create a game that you'll love even if you've never played Wizardry or a role-playing game before.

System requirements are: Windows 95 OSR2, 98, or 2000; a 233 MHz processor or better; 64 MB of RAM, a 3D accelerator with 8 MB of texture memory, 4x CD drive; soundcard and mouse.

No, quite the opposite. If you're smart enough and tough enough, you can go wherever you want. You can team up with some of the factions you'll meet - and then double-cross them, if it suits your fancy.

We thought long and hard about it. In the end, we decided a multiplayer feature didn't fit into the vision we had for the game. That doesn't mean there won't be a multiplayer Wizardry someday, but it won't be Wizardry 8.

No. Creatures live and breathe in the 3D world now. You can see them and attack them from a distance. This has led to several exciting new changes in the combat system. For one thing, you can now sneak up on the monsters. For another, monsters can sneak up on you.

Your characters will come in with their skills, levels, and stats reduced to reasonable amounts. Imported parties will still be more powerful than new parties, though. Some of your items will transfer, but the exact list of those is confidential.

The comp.graphics.algorithms FAQ contains a lot of 3D graphics information that isn't specific to OpenGL. excellent general computer graphics text is Computer Graphics: Principles and Practice, Second Edition, by James Foley, et al. ISBN 0-201-12110-7. It has been mentioned that this book is out of print and that a third edition is planned for release in January 2001. However, some online book retailers still seem to have it for sale. Try amazon.com.

We use an overhead view because it's better for seeing who is in your adventuring party. Smaller graphics mean that you can see farther and more people, and Clan Lord tends to have lots of people playing together. (Why else be online?) And tiny graphics look better hand-drawn than 3D.

In creating this game, we decided that instead of focusing on creating pretty graphics, we would instead focus on creating a game which was fun to play. Also, since we do coding for this game in our spare time, we decided to try and limit the complexity of the task we were undertaking. A third reason is that none of the current development team is familiar with either of the two dominant graphics APIs: DirectX and OpenGL.

Surprisingly there is no simple way in Windows to check the 3D graphics capability of a PC. The best way we have found is to Start / Run / DXDIAG and view the Display information reported. If the Device name contains nVidia GeForce or ATI Radeon and the memory is 32MB or greater then the 3D graphics aspect should be satisfied. We have received feedback that the Intel 915 (with 128MB of shared memory) also performs satisfactory.

One reason is that it's been designed from the get-go with the new player in mind. We've gotten rid of the obscure slang and odd conventions that confuse new players, while retaining all the good stuff. You don't have to struggle with the game. All you have to do is have fun. It has the cool stuff that other games leave out (multiple party members, fantasy races, more than 40 skills, and so on).

My opinion may sound biased, but I think Wizardry 8 is an amazing game. It has a ton of details, secrets and almost endless replay value in it. Although the graphics may not be 'modern', with the first person perspective, ambient sounds, music, voices, etc... it's one of the most immersive games I've ever played. It sucks you into its world and doesn't let go. The subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle touches of humor only add to the game.

Yes. Due to the inclusion of some features supported only by 3D cards, you must have a 3D accelerator to play CotF. 1.9 may run in software mode, but we have not tested it and do not support it. CotF 2.0 will require an OpenGL compliant 3D accelerator.

No. I think this sort of hardware support would be most useful as part of a proper 3D API, which Allegro is not, and will never be. If you want to do some work on this, the MESA library (a free implementation of OpenGL) is IMHO the place to start.

You will control a party of six characters in Wizardry 8. Up to two NPCs may join you at any given time, leading to a maximum party size of eight characters.

It's next to impossible to accurately command six characters in real time. While you're helping your mage cast a complicated spell, your fighter may be bludgeoned to death by a pack of vicious varmints. To give you better control, Wizardry 8 uses a phased (not turn-based) combat system. However, for those of you who prefer a faster approach, the Wizardry 8 designers have added "Continuous Combat.

Not anymore. I started out doing that in the mid 1980's and did so for many years. At that time there really wasn't any software capable of doing what needed to be done so I always found myself writing the software and tools to support the production role. After many years I decided that I liked development a lot more than the production side and focussed on that exclusively.

I am an independant artist for hire, modeling for animation, stills, video games etc. But I have to warn you, 3D art this complex can be very expensive and typically only large commerical firms can afford it. Were I to perform all the requests that I recieved for free, I would never have any time to myself B). As much as I like creating, I'm limited by time and cost.