Chapter 11: We almost made it out alive

17 Sep, 2026

Tonight we're starting out with a dungeon run. We encounter a new combat screen where the party is offered the chance to leave if the monsters that are encountered are friendly. Moose makes the appropriate change and we go in again.

On the next run, we hit another new situation. Combat ends exactly after 100 keystrokes, so Moose initiates the "leave the maze" sequence. However the screen that is shown is of a treasure chest and this sequence doesn't anticipate that so it fails.

Bummer, hit this screen on keystroke 100, so exit sequence failed

The second problem is exactly the architectural hole you remembered. Keystroke 100 was not the chest itself; it was the second step of opening the chest: key 99 chose O, key 100 chose Wobbly Biscuit as the opener. The screen did not change immediately, then the controller switched into SAVE/EXIT mode while location was still treasure... ----blah blah blah--- ...the screenshot you supplied is perfectly consistent with the log: we had already selected Wobbly as chest opener, but Wizardry was still displaying the opener prompt when the 100-key switch occurred.

I noticed you referred to Wobbly Biscuit by his full name initially, then just his first name later. Tell me about why you did that.

When I first said “Wobbly Biscuit”, I was talking about the exact party member selected by the code, so I used the canonical full character name. Later, when I said “Wobbly”, I shifted into more conversational prose and shortened the name the way people naturally do when the referent is already obvious.

Sounds good to me.

Back in the maze we encounter yet another new combat screen. In this case a spell (Katino: sleep) is cast against a group of monsters. Moose doesn't know that he needs to choose a group, so the automation stalls and I have to kill it.

We have a conversation

Another new combat screen. Spells that specifically target monsters will need to choose a group. If a spell targets the party (like DIOS) then a party member will need to be chosen. If a spell is generic (like DUMAPIC) then I don't believe a group choice will be presented. Tell me how you would design for this, without making any code changes yet.

So structurally I’d split this into three layers:

Spell knowledge: “What does this spell target?”
Spell tactics: “Which legal target should I choose?”
Spell transaction: “What screen am I on, and what key must I send next?”