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[Vissavald]

Hi to all, gentlemen (and probably gentlewomen)!

I'm a 40y.o. old-school-gaming lover from Russia (yeah, think of those odious 'Russian hackers' and so on...). But despite being an old-school-gaming lover I'm not a big knower of old-school-gaming from the technical point of view. I prefer to buy some old stuff on GOG than to tinker with DOSBox or something (at least I prefered GOG while they weren't so 'mainstream-y' as now). And I have NO experience of non-PC platforms.

I was greatly ashamed when I realized recently that such a brilliant game as Bloodwych went completely under my radar, all the more so that old RPGs and dungeon crawlers are among my favorite genres.
I gave up to try to understand how the Amiga emulators do work , so I try to use DOS version of Bloodwych via DOSBox SVN Daum pack. Everything works perfect except only the saving: when I try to save, game bids me to 'insert disk" and choose any number from 0 to 9. So what in the name of Heavens I should do then?

And by the way, just out of curiosity, about Bloodwych very name. It's interesting how this name is percieved by the native English speakers. English Etymology Online gives me that
'-wych' is rather old English and now obsolete form that is used in various plant and tree names, meaning something like 'lithe' or 'flexible'. At the same time, Bloodwych should be spelled like 'Bloodwitch', if I'm not mistaken. And Bloodwitch would be a quite strange name for a fellowship of mages seeking for the Light. So what exactly Bloodwych means for an English ear?

Thanks in advance.

[Hungry Horace]

Hi there

There are no stupid questions about Bloodwych! I dont know much about running the PC version i'm afraid - i would probably be able to help you with the Amiga stuff though? Are you running PC/Mac/Linux? It also has the added benefit of being playable with a Joypad, and having the extended levels available!

I cant answer a bit of the name thing, due to a discussion my brother had with Phil Taglioni many years ago.

It is certainly intended to be pronounced 'Blood Witch' , but he didnt say anything about why.

I think we need to look at the other uses of 'Wych' in the game.... there are two that i can think of:

Wychwind - a spell which casts out many blue fireballs in every direction. The 'wind' part is therefore obvious, being like a hurricane. It is not uncommon for spells to be cast by 'Witches' (as well as Mages) , and in some respects the terms may just mean male or female versions of Wizards, or be interchangeable....

Megrim of Moonwych  - Megrim is the only playable female Wizard in the game. She is also of the 'blue' class, which is designated 'Moon'. This means she is literally a "Moon Witch"... or Moon Wizard or Moon Mage.... clearly "Moonwych" sounds better!

Being that Wychwind is also a Moon spell, and therefore most powerfully cast by Megrim, it is safe to say the spell is effectively the "Wind of the Witch [Megrim]" and that in that respect, Megrim's designation as a "Witch" is very much interchangeable with the "Mage" type of Zothen, Murlock and Zastaph, the game's other three Wizards.

...

.... i need to do some work now, so i will come back to discuss my thoughts on "Bloodwych" / Blood-Witch later

[Vissavald]

I would probably be able to help you with the Amiga stuff though? Are you running PC/Mac/Linux?

Oh, I wouldn't want to bother you so much... But if you will - I'm using PC under Win7-32bit. I tried to use WinUAE Amiga emulator but it seems far more complicated thing than I expected, with all of its 'kickstarts', 'ROMs' and other mysterious things. To be honest, I expected something as easy as drag-n-dropping game .exe file onto DOSBox shortcut

As for 'Bloodwych', well, maybe English 'witch' has not so much negative implicit connotations as its Russian counterpart (vied'ma/vied'mak as female/male) but it's still interesting why the '-wych' ending was chosen, it should have made some sense, isn't it?