The Worlds of Magic Thread - It's out... sorta

[Renegen]

Should I get hyped for this? Been looking for a decent modern re-interpretation of MoM but everything I read about games trying to be MoM was basically negative...

Yes. It's as close to MoM as it can possibly be without copyright infringements. The basic systems like maps, terrain, city building, world features and magic are 100% based on MoM, only we use d20 for units/combat.

That sounds pretty good, MoM was and still is the best 4x game ever. I saw the game for the first time on Steam before I even knew of its prestigious origins and thought it looked good. One problem though, the trailers are HORRIBLE, some bad european metal music while the battle maps are shown. Take a look at the Divinity Original Sin trailer, they were not afraid to mention their p&p influence and the slow paced game it was. Also the art direction is a bit too bland.

 

[hoverdog]

Should I get hyped for this? Been looking for a decent modern re-interpretation of MoM but everything I read about games trying to be MoM was basically negative...

Yes. It's as close to MoM as it can possibly be without copyright infringements. The basic systems like maps, terrain, city building, world features and magic are 100% based on MoM, only we use d20 for units/combat.

That sounds pretty good, MoM was and still is the best 4x game ever. I saw the game for the first time on Steam before I even knew of its prestigious origins and thought it looked good. One problem though, the trailers are HORRIBLE, some bad european metal music while the battle maps are shown. Take a look at the Divinity Original Sin trailer, they were not afraid to mention their p&p influence and the slow paced game it was. Also the art direction is a bit too bland.

to be perfectly honest, I don't like the trailer either.

 

[pakoito]

to be perfectly honest, I don't like the trailer either.

Call Devolver or their sister PR, please.

 

[Agesilaus]

I've played Master of Magic to death. Bought it on floppies back in the day. But AFAIR, the game already did the calculations of how much food was produced, and if there was a surplus big enough to support the armies, so you could quickly check the numbers.

For some reason, did not see this during my games. The food counter did not show a deficit, IIRC?

of course, of course you did. nobody doubts that you played MoM to death. You just didn't know that the food production is displayed on the city screen, that's all. there, there.

 

[mastroego]

hoverdog:

I'm tempted to buy the early access, but how much of a problem is performance, REALLY?
I have 4 Gigs RAM, and a pretty basic GP card (Radeon HD 5640 if I'm not mistaken, and I might be).
Games of this kind didn't use to require uber-powerful rigs...

 

[hoverdog]

hoverdog:

I'm tempted to buy the early access, but how much of a problem is performance, REALLY?
I have 4 Gigs RAM, and a pretty basic GP card (Radeon HD 5640 if I'm not mistaken, and I might be).
Games of this kind didn't use to require uber-powerful rigs...

My workplace computer also had 4GB RAM and Radeon HD4600 ( ) and it plays smoothly on lower (not even the lowest) settings, so it shouldn't be a problem.

 

[mastroego]

ok, thanks, I think I'll get it even though a work weekend looms upon me...
But please do optimize though!!!!!

 

[Azira]

I've played Master of Magic to death. Bought it on floppies back in the day. But AFAIR, the game already did the calculations of how much food was produced, and if there was a surplus big enough to support the armies, so you could quickly check the numbers.

For some reason, did not see this during my games. The food counter did not show a deficit, IIRC?

of course, of course you did. nobody doubts that you played MoM to death. You just didn't know that the food production is displayed on the city screen, that's all. there, there.

Hey dipshit, here's what I meant:
City screen of my most recent MoM game

Notice that they only calculate what food is needed to sustain the populace? No shits are given about the standing army..


Map/strategic view

Here though, they've tallied all food surplus together, subtracted the cost for standing armies, and feed us the result, nice and simple. We're in the plus, no hassle.



Then from WoM:
City view

Again, we're only really concerned with the city pop. We need to go to the strategic view..

Here:

And there it is. It says if there's a deficit, and there's a tooltip warning that armies might defect if they don't get fed.
Not sure if I saw this before or it was recently added, as I was focusing on other things in the game. But nice to see it's there now.

Still feel the need to be condescending?

 

[hoverdog]

And there it is. It says if there's a deficit, and there's a tooltip warning that armies might defect if they don't get fed.
Not sure if I saw this before or it was recently added, as I was focusing on other things in the game. But nice to see it's there now.

I'm sure it's been there for a while now.

 

[Azira]

I'm just not paying enough attention then. Will rectify this.

 

[mastroego]

Ok, bought it.

Remember, I was burned (hard) with Elemental already.
I wasn't even supposed to pre-order anything ever again (ok, this I had broken already).
Big leap of faith here. I demand results or ELSE

 

[hoverdog]

Ok, bought it.

Remember, I was burned (hard) with Elemental already.
I wasn't even supposed to pre-order anything ever again (ok, this I had broken already).
Big leap of faith here. I demand results or ELSE

 

[JudasIscariot]

Will the Linux build get this update?

http://steamcommunity.com/app/265970/discussions/0/616187839228707923/

 

[mastroego]

I started the game to see how it looks/feels.
"Unboxing" impressions:

• Needs justified text! Text in disorder is ugly. I used to argue this about Elemental too. Never got it changed. And it's still UGLY!
  
• Some fonts really are too small. My eyes!
  
• The art is nice, really nice. I love the portraits. MOAR, MOAR!!!!
• Started a game. Some of the controls are bit obscure. Yes, I am a bit vague.. how do YOU like it, uh?
  
• So many things feel "familiar", at last! A lonely tear slowly flows down my cheek

So, this was about unboxing the Alpha.
I guess I'll sign to the proper developer forum for future feedback.

But I feel we might be onto something (just a feelings, no hard proof!)
I hope more Codexers will offer support and help with the feedback! Enlist and do your job!

 

[hoverdog]

Needs justified text! Text in disorder is ugly. I used to argue this about Elemental too. Never got it changed. And it's still UGLY!

What exactly? It might be an issue with nGUI which we are using (we might change to the new Unity GUI, but that'll take a while)

• Some fonts really are too small. My eyes!

Agreed. We're going to change the disciplines and the city production fonts soon.

• The art is nice, really nice. I love the portraits. MOAR, MOAR!!!!

oh yeah, our concept artist is a pretty cool guy.

• Started a game. Some of the controls are bit obscure. Yes, I am a bit vague.. how do YOU like it, uh?

true enough. some things, like splitting armies, feel unwieldy at first. We're slowly going to smooth them out.

• So many things feel "familiar", at last! A lonely tear slowly flows down my cheek

I hope more Codexers will offer support and help with the feedback! Enlist and do your job!

INDEED!

 

[pakoito]

I'm OCD about text too, but getting a text renderer that does justification is not as trivial as Word makes it look.

EDIT: nGUI added it this year - http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=2637.30

 

[Azira]

Just had a funny bug; I'd cast waterwalking on a spearman, said spearman was on a beach square and got attacked by an AI spearman, and the game got stuck. Could still move the pointer around, but the game kept repeating that "object reference not set to an instance of an object". Battlescape loaded up without any units. Had to alt-tab and close the game.
Posted the output_log to hoverdog.

 

[rvm1975]

Just had a funny bug; I'd cast waterwalking on a spearman, said spearman was on a beach square and got attacked by an AI spearman, and the game got stuck. Could still move the pointer around, but the game kept repeating that "object reference not set to an instance of an object". Battlescape loaded up without any units. Had to alt-tab and close the game.
Posted the output_log to hoverdog.

http://steamcommunity.com/app/265970/discussions/0/616187839233163131/
known bug list, actually there are only 4 of them

-Army can walk into water and can't move back
-Army can sometimes get stuck
-Random crash can very rarely occur - we're investigating it
-Selecting a unit causes the city range to overlay the terrain

 

[Azira]

Nice to know. Thanks rvm1975

Got another bug here, slowed down the game something fierce:

I don't know what this lightmap index is, that it's whining about, as I'm not a programmer, but it didn't like reaching the limit.
Before this bug, I had about 60FPS in combat. With the bug, 3.

 

[mastroego]

What exactly? It might be an issue with nGUI which we are using (we might change to the new Unity GUI, but that'll take a while)

Well, justified text as in "all lines have the same lenght except when the paragraph ends". I'm not sure how difficult it is outside of Word, but I need it! Disorder looks cheap :/

true enough. some things, like splitting armies, feel unwieldy at first. We're slowly going to smooth them out.

I trust your word. Selecting units, understanding who's selected and who's not, understanding what they're doing... this is all really cumbersome ATM.

I was going for "manly tears" but an eagle will do!
It's just that, it hardly seems possible!

I mean, with Elemental we got stuff like a Tech that you had to STUDY in order to be able to RAZE cities.
I KID YOU NOT.
Flying races and things like that were never even on the horizon.
Flying was too complex a mechanic. Invisibility could not be done. Diverse races were too taxing given the state of modern graphics and hardware (we actually received answers along these lines).

Now I see a Draconian race.
If it was Pillars of Eternity, we'd learn that they have wings that allow for brief jumps (or something) because BALANCE.
Or they'd just be cosmetic stuff.
Or maybe they'd pump a Stat (any one, since they don't mean what you'd expect anyways. Shall we say +2 to Might?) because DERP!

Now I see draconians and... those units FLY! They freakin', friggin', frakkin' FLY!!

What was lost has now been found.
Yes, the Eagle.
The Eagle is fitting.

 

[Azira]

I have a savegame that won't load. It reaches 72% and then the game simply freezes up. I can alt-tab out and kill the process, but it won't load past 72%. I've tried to simply let the computer be for more than an hour. Didn't progress.

Also, I can't seem to get the game to overwrite an old save. If I want to save the game, I have to do so in a new slot. And no, I've checked, the savegame files aren't flagged "read only".
This also means that my latest game, where I got to turn 60-something, no autosaves were made, as I had an earlier game where I went past turn 100.
In the new playthrough, the game couldn't overwrite the last autosaves, so no retracing the steps.

Known bug?

 

[Azira]

Also. Probably should start posting this stuff on the tech support forum instead of here, eh?

 

[Agesilaus]

I like the battle-screen that comes up when you hit spacebar after the battle loads up, and my fps goes up to a trillion when I switch to that mode, but it needs to be fixed so that the scenery doesn't obscure half the battlefield.

The game is playable now for the first fifty turns, but after that I find that the turns take a long time to compute. I think the issue is the hundreds of neutral spearmen scouring the land; they never attack my cities, but instead just mill around the screen achieving nothing.

I would like the build-menu to have a chart where you can see all the possible structures. That way I can plot out all the buildings I need in order to recruit certain units or achieve other ends.

I would like the surveyor to give more detail about what the various on-map resources do. It just tells me I have such and such max population, such and such food, gold, magic production, but there's no blurb that says "Because there's a blue crystal on the ground, you get x% more magic and can recruit a blue magician if your town encompasses this resource".

I still have no idea how to cast a spell. I selected the spell, used my magic points, but when I go to cast it on a unit nothing happens. I tried to cast bless on a unit on the campaign map, but when I clicked on the unit it just selected it. No amount of clicking on the unit allowed me to cast bless on it.

Also, I defeated some werewolves 8)

 

[Azira]

I would like the build-menu to have a chart where you can see all the possible structures. That way I can plot out all the buildings I need in order to recruit certain units or achieve other ends.

I would like the surveyor to give more detail about what the various on-map resources do. It just tells me I have such and such max population, such and such food, gold, magic production, but there's no blurb that says "Because there's a blue crystal on the ground, you get x% more magic and can recruit a blue magician if your town encompasses this resource".

I like and second these ideas.

 

[hoverdog]

I like the battle-screen that comes up when you hit spacebar after the battle loads up, and my fps goes up to a trillion when I switch to that mode, but it needs to be fixed so that the scenery doesn't obscure half the battlefield.

We haven't touched the isometric camera for a while. Good to know that it's resource-friendly.

The game is playable now for the first fifty turns, but after that I find that the turns take a long time to compute. I think the issue is the hundreds of neutral spearmen scouring the land; they never attack my cities, but instead just mill around the screen achieving nothing.

Yup, there should be a lot less of them in the next update.

I would like the build-menu to have a chart where you can see all the possible structures. That way I can plot out all the buildings I need in order to recruit certain units or achieve other ends.

Noted.

I would like the surveyor to give more detail about what the various on-map resources do. It just tells me I have such and such max population, such and such food, gold, magic production, but there's no blurb that says "Because there's a blue crystal on the ground, you get x% more magic and can recruit a blue magician if your town encompasses this resource".

Planned.

I still have no idea how to cast a spell. I selected the spell, used my magic points, but when I go to cast it on a unit nothing happens. I tried to cast bless on a unit on the campaign map, but when I clicked on the unit it just selected it. No amount of clicking on the unit allowed me to cast bless on it.

You probably selected an army, and you have to select a unit (the icons in the upper left corner). We are working on making it more clear.

Also, I defeated some werewolves 8)

:kwafuckyeah: