Wiz7Item^© - An Item Viewer for Wizardry^® 7 items

Well, beta testing is over (as of 7/31/99). I will be working on this (Freeware) product (hopfully) for the next month or two. In the mean time feel free to ask questions, provide comments, inquire, whatever .... After this product is released, if there seems to be enough interest, I may possibly consider turning it into a (Shareware) Item Editor. Boy, if that doesn't sound wishy-washy, I don't know what does :)

Download the beta version (approx. 3.1 MB)

View Beta Test Results

Here are some links to a few screen shots, to give you an idea of what it looks like and what you can do with it:

Cane of Corpus

Pandora' s Wand

Plate Mail +3

Stats on the Thermal Pineapple

Searching for the best Hand protection for a Rawulf Valkyrie

Comparing Close range weapons that an Elf Monk may use to those of a Faerie Ninja

Viewing all Close range weapons that both an Elf Monk and Faerie Ninja could use

Fang!
 

And here is a little inside information on what is currently being tested, implemented and planned for its future:

Things I will be adding
    Gracefully pull the plug
    Printer Support
    Mask
    More filter options

Things I may add
    Display the "Usage" of items
    Filter By Item Name
    Display Item Picture
    Allow sorting on any field
    Develop Weapons vs. Armor and Item "Views"
    Set the window size for subsequent windows

Comments and suggestions

Here is a list of things I am planning to add to the application, but haven’t got around to yet:

• Gracefully pull the plug (when a problem is detected) – Currently, if the application is unable to find its database (that I supply), it shows a warning message. It then continues on and you are left in the application, but have no items to view. If the database is missing, I want to just terminate the application (gracefully).

• Printer Support – I currently have 2 ½ ideas for this J
• A Detailed Item Report – This would print out you everything about the currently selected item – basically a print screen
• A "Weapons" report (for lack of a better term) – This would give you all of the pertinent information about weapons (i.e. Item Name, Type, Damage Range, To Hit Bonus, Special Attacks, Spells Cast , Invoke, Modes of Attack, Primary/Secondary, ½ Hand, Depth of Attack and Regeneration – maybe more or less – it’s not set in stone yet)
• The ½ (baked) idea is to: either just let you make your own reports which would require using Access or Excel (or any other product that can read the database I supply – which is MS® Access 97 format) or a report writing package like Crystal Reports©
or
 
• Allow you to build your own report, in my application. I’m not sure I’m ready to tackle this option yet. We’ll see how the other report options go, then I’ll know more.

• Mask – This option will allow you to quickly and easily apply any filter criteria you want, without having to use the menu options. For example, if you want to know what the best Close Range Weapon is for your Female Mook Monk, you would have to select Filter by, Weapons, Close Range. Then Filter By, Gender, Female. Then Filter by … you get the picture. A lot of mouse clicks or keystrokes and trips to the menu bar. Here is how the "Mask" will work:

• You’ll press the "Mask" button on the Toolbar
• You will be presented with a blank Item View (basically the same thing you see if you look at the very first item – "Broken Item")
• Then, you can just click on the check boxes, buttons, type into the fields – whatever you want. So, in the above example, you’d click Female, click Monk, click Mook. Then to select Close Range weapons, you would need to click on Item type and Select Weapons, then click on the Item Group and select Close Range.
• Then press the "OK" button and let the application do it’s thing – you’ve got your filtered or "masked" list.
 

• More filter/sort options – For Resistance, Special Attack, Spells Cast and Regeneration.

Here is a list of things I am considering adding to the application:

• Display the "Usage" of items - (i.e. Read, Use, Invoke, Throw, Scribe, Drink, …) I’m not sure whether this should be added or not. Anyone who is ready to use this application, probably already knows the answer or doesn’t care. If and when this becomes an item editor, then I could see wanting to be able to set that information accordingly, for whatever items you choose to create. Perhaps you want to add a Pet Falcon as an item – will you invoke it, throw it, use it, …?

 
• Filter By Item Name – This option would allow you to find/list items that match a word or phrase. Say you wanted to know all the items that had the word "BONE" in their name. Choose this option and enter "bone" and voila, you’ve filtered your list of 570 items down to the 3 or 4 you are looking for (this option may be implemented as part of the "Mask" option).



• Display Item Picture – This is one of those things I don’t like – I can only make it work if you have Wiz Gold installed. The same limitations exist here, as I had with WizEdit©. I can’t count on the files to be on a users hard drive and I can’t legally re-distribute them. And this time, I’m not doing any (real) graphics.   I really don't think it adds a lot to the application (as far as appeal or usability).



• Allow sorting on any field – I’ve tried to include all of the pre-defined sort routines that I thought were useful. If you have more ideas on how you’d like to sort the list, please feel free to pass them along. If there aren’t many, I may just add those new ones. If there are a lot, I’ll probably just implement this option. It would be driven off of a pick list box (like the one you get when you press the Search Icon – in Wiz7Item)



• Develop Weapons vs. Armor and Item "Views" – This would basically just allow you to "turn off the noise". By that, I mean when you are viewing Armor or Items, you don’t need to see the whole right side of the screen (the Weapons Info area) – so I could just turn those "off". Another option would be have the Weapons info only "pop-up" when the current item is a weapon. One draw back to this whole "weapons segregation issue" is how some of the "Items" are classified. There are a few items that have "weapon-type" information. The book of Demons has a 5% chance to KO – how, I don’t know. The invisible potion reports that it does 1-2 damage. These don’t seem right, but I haven’t gone back to verify them yet.

A more meaningful example is potions. They are items, yet they are thrown and only against the first two rows of attackers. That is pertinent information that would be left out if the weapons info was turned off.

And again there is the Item Viewer vs. Editor question to consider. Maybe you want to make a Spiked Shield and be able to use it as a secondary attack. I’m not sure I can do that (or make my program so that it allows you to do that), but it is something to consider.



• Set the window size for subsequent windows – Right now, when you fire up the application, it comes up in "full screen" mode. If you press the "New Window" icon, the next window comes up as a "cascaded" or normal window. I noticed that the second, third, … windows weren’t quite large enough to display everything – I could look into that and fix it or leave it up to you, to resize the windows as you see fit (to view whatever portion of the screen might be of interest).

Wiz7Item in General
Gracefully pull the plug
Printer Support
Mask
More filter options
Display the "Usage" of items
Filter By Item Name
Display Item Picture
Allow sorting on any field
Develop Weapons vs. Armor and Item "Views"
Set the window size for subsequent windows
Wiz7Item - other stuff