Might and Magic IV

Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen
Also known as: Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen Developer: New World Computing Publisher: New World Computing Platform: DOS Released in US: 1992 This game has unused code. This game has unused text. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prototype article

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article?

Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen is the fourth game in the award-winning Might and Magic series of first-person dungeon crawler role-playing games. This time around, it seems that some Skeletor wannabe came out of nowhere and decided to take over one side of the two-sided world of Xeen. As usual, it's up to a party of up to six adventurers to go out, kick some monster hide, and fix everything.

Sub-Page

Prototype Info

Leftover Might and Magic III Code

Since the World of Xeen games were made using the coding and interface from the previous game, there are a few random bits-and-bobs left over from that game which can be found through save game editing.

Note: A majority of the following also applies to the next game, as they share most of the same engine.

Unused Alignment Strings

By messing with a character's values (in this case, race and gender), one can find strings for various location names, status ailments, and even the previous games' character alignments (Good, Neutral, and Evil). In the Xeen games, Alignment goes completely unused, so the byte that was previously used to determine a character's alignment became a value which tells the game if a character is in Clouds of Xeen or Darkside of Xeen.

Hireling Party Slots

In the previous two games, the player could add two more members to their party. These extra party members, known as "Hirelings", could be found at any of the inns of the game and, like the name implies, they would stay with the party for as long as they could cover the costs of hiring them. Some of the coding for this system remains within the Xeen games and even works... to a point.

Forcing the game to add a seventh member to the party is somewhat bug-free. The seventh character's portrait displays over-and-to-the-right of the first character's while their hit point crystal is aligned to the bottom-right of their portrait.

• 

  Viewing character 7's character sheet.

• 

  Character 7 in the Quick Reference Chart.

• 

  Character 7 registered "In Party" at an Inn.

• 

  Character 7 eating a unit of food.

• 

  Character 7 as a choice in interactions.
  (Note: The gray on the interface is explained below.)

• 

  Character 7 firing a seventh arrow.
  (Note: All characters were set to Badger, for this one.)

For all intents and purposes, the game even recognizes the extra party member as being valid and functional and can do just about anything any of the other six members can. However, there are some caveats, most of which can be negated by swapping them with another party member in the character sheets:

• Pressing F7 directly from the main screen will not open the seventh character sheet. However, pressing F1 through F6 (to view any other party member), followed by F7, will.
  • Viewing the seventh character's sheet will temporarily glitch the first two portraits upon leaving the sheet. Doing anything that would affect the portraits (sleeping, getting hurt, etc.) will restore them, although the bottom-left frame of the window will still look odd.
  • The seventh character cannot be given any items, although items can be forced into their inventory should the other party members' inventories be full.
  • The seventh character can, however, hand their inventory over to anyone else.
• Despite what the interface says in that fifth screenshot, the seventh character cannot be used to make choices (such as opening doors), nor can they be targeted by friendly spells or items.
  • The seventh character also cannot be selected for shop interfaces of any sort.

Trying to add an eighth character to your roster results in something a little more spectacularly broken.

• 

  Character 8's corrupt stats.

• 

  Character 8's corrupt health condition.

For whatever reason, any character placed in the eighth slot will have their data severely corrupted with junk data. As a result, their name and personally-identifiable information will be changed to be wiped, their stats will skyrocket to the maximum possible values (including temporary values), they'll have every single Spell (inaccessible, due to not being a spell caster), Skill, and Award possible, be given a glitched inventory full of junk items, and have varying degrees of every single status ailment possible, even if it doesn't make sense.

Error drawing sprite in window: 0000 handle: 0008 frame: 0016!

Exiting the character sheets after looking at theirs crashes the game with the above error message.

Removing extra party members and resurrecting the eighth member at a temple doesn't fix their stats, nor does it make them fully-functional. Attacking with them will always crash the game and, since they don't have a class, they can never equip anything. However, it does make them the single most powerful member of your party, able to survive any attack, open any lock, smash any gates, and so on. Either way, it's abundantly clear that the designers never intended for the party to have eight members, again.

Also, like with the seventh character, the eighth is correctly registered with the Inn as being "In Party,", as well as showing up as a choice (F8) on interactions, despite being unselectable.