Might and Magic The Might and Magic Discussion Thread

[Dorateen]

And you can play other races again, like the way Might & Magic is supposed to be. The character race also draws attacks from certain enemy types, adding a gameplay element into the mix.

 

[TheGameSquid]

Now that I come to think of it, has anyone here ever had the pleasure/displeasure of having played Swords Of Xeen? Info on the 'net about it is a bit scarce, which doesn't bode too well I suppose. Is it tolerable? Is there some way to get one's filthy paws on it without searching eBay for some old anthology copy?

 

[kmonster]

Now that I come to think of it, has anyone here ever had the pleasure/displeasure of having played Swords Of Xeen? Info on the 'net about it is a bit scarce, which doesn't bode too well I suppose. Is it tolerable? Is there some way to get one's filthy paws on it without searching eBay for some old anthology copy?

I played through it, it's quite nice but not as professional as WoX. It's included in the Might and Magic® 6-pack: Limited Edition which is sold at gog.com for example.

 

[TheGameSquid]

It's included in the Might and Magic® 6-pack: Limited Edition which is sold at gog.com for example.

It is? For fuck's sake, I've owned that one for years and I had no idea it was included

 

[DaveO]

Now that I come to think of it, has anyone here ever had the pleasure/displeasure of having played Swords Of Xeen? Info on the 'net about it is a bit scarce, which doesn't bode too well I suppose. Is it tolerable? Is there some way to get one's filthy paws on it without searching eBay for some old anthology copy?

I went thru and completed Swords of Xeen. It is probably best played before MM3. I have a walkthrough on my Web page: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games2/DaveO/sox.html

 

[Outmind]

And you can play other races again, like the way Might & Magic is supposed to be. The character race also draws attacks from certain enemy types, adding a gameplay element into the mix.

Aaaah, so that's why the goblins in the barrows keep hitting my dwarven paladin. An interesting addition, yes.

 

[Luzur]

And you can play other races again, like the way Might & Magic is supposed to be. The character race also draws attacks from certain enemy types, adding a gameplay element into the mix.

Aaaah, so that's why the goblins in the barrows keep hitting my dwarven paladin. An interesting addition, yes.

thats been a feature since MM3, actually, Trolls often attack dwarves, undead often attack clerics etc etc

 

[Luzur]

Now that I come to think of it, has anyone here ever had the pleasure/displeasure of having played Swords Of Xeen? Info on the 'net about it is a bit scarce, which doesn't bode too well I suppose. Is it tolerable? Is there some way to get one's filthy paws on it without searching eBay for some old anthology copy?

I went thru and completed Swords of Xeen. It is probably best played before MM3. I have a walkthrough on my Web page: http://www.sorcerers.net/Games2/DaveO/sox.html

Well i played all the way through 3 times over the years, and although it feature all the loveable graphics from MM5, it have the feel of...i dunno, 95% finished fanmod? everything is there, and yet something is missing, so to say.

But it is playable and A-OK, but kinda hard at the start, so be prepared to die alot before getting some levels under your belt.

 

[Humppaleka]

Went back to M&M I after months of not playing it. Had to remove both quests I had because I didn't have any idea which those were. Luckily I was only in the third "main" quest it seems. Playing this is pretty exhausting because there is just no direction to go at all, you just wander around the maps and bump into quests by accident, most of the time getting slaughtered horribly by various wildlife. It's okay in the very short bursts I play it though.

 

[octavius]

Went back to M&M I after months of not playing it. Had to remove both quests I had because I didn't have any idea which those were. Luckily I was only in the third "main" quest it seems. Playing this is pretty exhausting because there is just no direction to go at all, you just wander around the maps and bump into quests by accident, most of the time getting slaughtered horribly by various wildlife. It's okay in the very short bursts I play it though.

Hint: screencap all your quests using CTRL-F5. That way you can easily look up what you are supposed to do.
And if getting slaughtered horribly in an area, try an area where you will hopefully be slaughtered less horribly.

 

[TheGameSquid]

Went back to M&M I after months of not playing it. Had to remove both quests I had because I didn't have any idea which those were. Luckily I was only in the third "main" quest it seems. Playing this is pretty exhausting because there is just no direction to go at all, you just wander around the maps and bump into quests by accident, most of the time getting slaughtered horribly by various wildlife. It's okay in the very short bursts I play it though.

Hint: screencap all your quests using CTRL-F5. That way you can easily look up what you are supposed to do.
And if getting slaughtered horribly in an area, try an area where you will hopefully be slaughtered less horribly.

I remember the difficulty spikes in M&M I and M&M II were the hardest part to deal with. I was never sure if I was in an area where I was not supposed to be or if it was just another random surge in difficulty. And with so many areas that are unessential to the game (which I appreciate) it was hard to figure out if I was being foolish or not. Mind you, I never played it back in the day, I'm pretty young, so I only played it a little 5 years ago or so. Probably not old enough to deal with the old-school attitude I guess.

 

[Sceptic]

Playing this is pretty exhausting because there is just no direction to go at all, you just wander around the maps and bump into quests by accident, most of the time getting slaughtered horribly by various wildlife.

People like you are the reason quest compasses were invented

Quests are given out by the lords of the castle. Nothing random about it. The locations they send you to tend to have MQ-related stuff, but then the MQ stuff is literally all over the map in this game. Figuring out what the MQ is is have the fun of this game.

 

[Luzur]

Went back to M&M I after months of not playing it. Had to remove both quests I had because I didn't have any idea which those were. Luckily I was only in the third "main" quest it seems. Playing this is pretty exhausting because there is just no direction to go at all, you just wander around the maps and bump into quests by accident, most of the time getting slaughtered horribly by various wildlife. It's okay in the very short bursts I play it though.

back in the days of C64/Amiga i could be gaming MM1-MM2 for hours, nice setup with soda and chips and a radio (early MM is kinda soundless) but nowadays its like i atleast need to have MM1 up to MM3 standards in graphics before i can sink the same period of time into it.

too bad the remake me and Wysardry where doing sizzled out and died.

 

[TheGameSquid]

Too bad the remake me and Wysardry where doing sizzled out and died.

Did you guys manage to put anything tangible together? Some basic stuff to show off were you were going with it?

 

[octavius]

too bad the remake me and Wysardry where doing sizzled out and died.

Didn't Wysardry himself die too? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

 

[Luzur]

Too bad the remake me and Wysardry where doing sizzled out and died.

Did you guys manage to put anything tangible together? Some basic stuff to show off were you were going with it?

i played the game and noted where all the stuff like torches, text, statues etc where located and put those in maps and sent to him, and Wysardry did the programming and some other guy helped him do the texturing.

too bad the remake me and Wysardry where doing sizzled out and died.

Didn't Wysardry himself die too? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

actually, i dont know, he had a forum back then which we used to talk to eachother, but if i remember correctly he had to go on a short vacation/funeral/something and never posted again, then his texture pal posted that he was going into school and couldnt do much work, then the forum closed down a year later due to not being paid.

i had the link to his site, but i lost it, but it was something like Wysardry's Realm i think.

EDIT: i found some of his posts over on TELP:

http://telp.org/mm8/tavern/anyboard/posts/12068.html

seems he was active around 2004 (2003-2004 was when we did the project) but not after that.

 

[octavius]

It's always sad when online friends disappear without a trace and you never find out what happened...

 

[Luzur]

well, not much friends as project pals, really, we just shared a common dream to remake MM1 with better textures (and sounds, i think).

 

[Darth Roxor]

Didn't Wysardry himself die too? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

You might be confusing him with Flamestryke?

 

[octavius]

Didn't Wysardry himself die too? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

You might be confusing him with Flamestryke?

Yes, I think that must be it.

 

[Abelian]

we just shared a common dream to remake MM1 with better textures (and sounds, i think).

That would have been an awesome fan project. And seeing that Jon van Caneghem was able to write it single-handedly, it would have been a realistic endeavor.

 

[Luzur]

Didn't Wysardry himself die too? Or am I confusing him with someone else?

You might be confusing him with Flamestryke?

Yes, I think that must be it.

Yep, Flamestrike died a few years ago. RIP

we just shared a common dream to remake MM1 with better textures (and sounds, i think).

That would have been an awesome fan project. And seeing that Jon van Caneghem was able to write it single-handedly, it would have been a realistic endeavor.

well it was/is kinda needed, MM1 hasnt aged that well.

 

[TheGameSquid]

You might be confusing him with Flamestryke?

Always makes me so sad when I think about it. I really loved those M&M websites of her when I was younger

That would have been an awesome fan project. And seeing that Jon van Caneghem was able to write it single-handedly, it would have been a realistic endeavor.

Creating a similar game shouldn't be too much trouble for an experienced programmer. The big problem with re-creating said game is often finding how to extract data from the data files of the original game (so as to get all maps, items, spells etc. easily in the new engine and to create a more modern data format), and finding out how every single game mechanic used to work, as some of these can be quite obscure in older cRPGs if they were not very well documented in the manual (which they never were).

I think that in the case of, say, Ultima I-III, you can expect pretty much all data and game mechanics to simply be hardcoded in a couple of crappy subroutines and overtly long switch statements. I remember reading an interview once where Richard Garriott said that he used a whole bunch of tricks while writing Akalabeth/Ultima, including copy-pasting entire pages of code at run-time because the memory limited of the Apple II didn't allow him to load all monster data in his program. So yes: all monster data was just that: hardcoded lines in the source code.

 

[Abelian]

That would have been an awesome fan project. And seeing that Jon van Caneghem was able to write it single-handedly, it would have been a realistic endeavor.

Creating a similar game shouldn't be too much trouble for an experienced programmer.

Depends on your definition of "too much trouble" and "experienced programmer". You'd be surprised (unless you work in the field) at how long even some simple tasks can take if you count debugging, testing, and commenting the code.

I estimate that it took me about 40 hours to write the MM1 savegame editor (including time spent reverse-engineering and testing edited files in MM1). And those are 40 "come home from week, do I feel like deggubing hex this evening" hours. According to wikipedia, it took JvC three years to write MM1 and he didn't need to reverse-engineer anything (on the other hand, he didn't have access to modern compilers, development environments and software libraries).

The big problem with re-creating said game is often finding how to extract data from the data files of the original game (so as to get all maps, items, spells etc. easily in the new engine and to create a more modern data format), and finding out how every single game mechanic used to work, as some of these can be quite obscure in older cRPGs if they were not very well documented in the manual (which they never were).

You hit the nail on the head. It would be much easier to write a MM1-inspired game than to figure out the data format for a true remake. Keep in mind that the data files don't contain descriptors: the programmer already knows what each field does and wasting extra text costs valuable memory and hard drive space at the time.

I'm not saying it's impossible to do; just that it would take a significant time investment that few people would appreciate in the end.

 

[TheGameSquid]

I'm not saying it's impossible to do; just that it would take a significant time investment that few people would appreciate in the end.

I totally agree with that.

I've always wondered how much value can be gotten from borrowing code from a project like Dungeon Eye (http://www.dungeoneye.net/). Sure it's a completely different engine for a different game, but I can imagine that if the engine is a good, modern implementation with some very robust modularity one could plugin in a different combat system, and change up the UI a bit. Data formats will probably be crystal clear, and expandable as well. M&M never used the deepest systems ever.

The only notable Open-Source RPG projects/engine clones I know are GemRB (Infinity Engine), Dungeon Eye (Eye Of The Beholder), xBaK (Betrayal At Krondor), coab (Curse of the Azure Bonds), but that's about it. Strange no-one ever made a more modular blobber-engine, considering how they often had very similar gameplay.

Spoiler

There's also stuff like xoreos, Iris2, the many Ultima engine remakes (xu4, Nuvie, Exult, Pentagram) and OpenXcom (if you classify that as an RPG, which I do)