Oct 31, 2022

Master of Magic Dev Diary #13 - Release date announced

Master of Magic - Death

So, here we are, the official date of release has been announced, and it is December 13th 2022!

For those of you who have not yet had a chance to look, here are some links to a few press previews of the game.

Twitch Video 1

Twitch Video 2

PC Gamer

Working towards the Gold.

Now that the date is settled, we are hard at work to complete the Gold version of the game, which means that we are feature and content complete (admittedly, some of the features seem to be cursed and need fixing!) and trying to finalise the game’s stability. This in turn signifies that in the weeks to come, we’ll be bug fixing like crazy, polishing till our elbows hurt and putting in those finishing touches on the AI.

What does it mean for the Beta

We will have the Beta up and running for a few more weeks, but then we do plan to close it for a bit before release, so that even our faithful Beta testers can perhaps enjoy one or two new things on release.

Q&A

As we are about to finish up the Beta and complete the game for the looming release, it seems appropriate to reflect on the journey with a big Q&A session.

Question: what units should generally be used to scout the map for races that don't have obvious scouting abilities (Draconians, etc)?

Answer: We’ve added the event that grants you the spirit early game. It does not have a lot of movement points, but it does float and we have boosted its line of sight by one too, so it makes for a decent starting scout. As for later in the game, every race/magic school has its tricks I suppose. Like the Endurance spell that increases MP, or Fly that allows for easier movement and increases LoS.

Q: Is there a plan to make finding good settler locations easier, like a map filter/lens that shows all nearby hex values instead of needing to hover over each one?

A: Yes, we do have some ideas and plans for this, but we will see if it can be done before release, or future updates.

Q: Will unrest modifiers per race be included as I feel this is hidden info currently?

We don’t currently have plans to display those, but race tension is implemented in the game and can even be modded.

Q: Loss of fame when a town is taken seems to be missing, will you implement it?

A: You do lose Fame when a city is lost, however, this information is not currently displayed. It is on a list for possible future updates.

Q: Will there be special diplomatic game changes (like no trading spells/items) or even modes such as how Civ had "raging barbarian hordes" which in this case could modify the amount of raiders spawned or whether they vanish if they lose a target.

A: There are no plans for changes to diplomacy pre-release, but we may be able to implement some improvements in future updates. However, they are unlikely to reach the scope of Civ, as an indie team, we do our best, but there are limits.

Q: Any plans for a new race/magic realm/wizards/retorts/spells? either as patches over the next few months or as a DLC/Expansion in the far future?

We can’t really discuss that yet! However, it is likely that those are the sort of things updates and DLC’s may bring...

Q: Please talk about post launch developer support and plans.

A: In terms of support, we will of course continue to provide it post-launch. As for plans, we can’t discuss specifics at this point, but we do have ideas that we want to pursue, and we do have a list of ‘medium and low’ tasks that we hope to address, at least in part, in our future updates.

Q: What was your favourite / most interesting race to work on and bring to life in the new MoM?

A: Well, I can’t really talk about it as it may or may not have something to do with the previous two questions...

Q: With the final release almost upon us, could you share what have been the biggest challenges and the most difficult decisions you had to take?

A: Faithfully recreating the spells, because they are so custom made, it has been a real challenge attempting this. And this leads directly to the other one, the AI, because all of the game’s mechanics are so irregular (in that they often have exceptions and special rules, rather than unified systems) teaching the AI to act with intelligence has been all the more complex.

And of course, just juggling expectation vs reality. So now coming up to the release it was hard to say stop to adding/modding features and just focusing on making what we have great.

Q:The game seems mostly very faithful to the original, and you took only minor (tasteful) decisions, like the hex maps or the refined events. Would you share what drove you to this path, are you happy with it?

I think it is safe to say that you, that is, the passionate fan base of the original game, have really steered us in this direction. When we were first approached to do this project, we weren’t convinced if we were going to stay as faithful. But, upon research, playing the game again, and just interacting with the fans, we decided to go all in. Are we happy we did it that way? Ask me again on December 13th!

Although, on a more personal note, I [Yuuki] actually am very happy we did it this way, as I dislike remakes and adaptations that don’t try it.

Q: Is there something you would have liked to really change from the original but didn't dare to?

A: I think the impulse to add and change versus the ‘we do not dare’ feeling was something that could be applied to many things, but I dare not speak of them.

We did at one point plan a more extensive event system, more like in our Thea games, but in the end we decided it would change MoM too much and yeah, we dared not do that.

Q: The only aspect of the game which seems really different from the original is the diplomacy. Will it remain how it is now? Or is it planned to be expanded?

A: Our original design had a more complex diplomacy system, but, given the existing complexity of the game as a whole, we were unable to commit the extra resources needed to pursue this. As such, it is unlikely we will change diplomacy for release, but we may be able to make adjustments in future updates.

Q: A more light-hearted question: What do you guys look forward to with the release of the game? E.g. growing the community, seeing what other people create, how unique play styles would be found and weird interactions being uncovered etc.

A: Hmm, sleep, weekends, no more ‘but why did you change it? It was perfect in the og’ ...
On a serious note, we are looking forward to seeing how the modding community will re-shape the game. It's always fascinating to see how creative people get and how they do things we never thought of, or never had the time to do.

We’re also looking forward to, albeit anxiously, how the original Master of Magic community will judge the final product. More specifically, if they/you will be able to find that nostalgic magic that we tried to recreate.

Q: Will there eventually be more than two ways to win?

A: We do not have plans to expand the game in this direction at the moment. Although back in the day of initial design talks, we did indeed ponder about the possibilities. So perhaps in the future we may revisit those ideas.

Q: Will the released game have more art? I'm thinking about spell gfx, animations, background music, etc.

A: The current version of the beta is complete in terms of art, music and sfx. Minor tweaks may happen, but no major changes, or additions are planned.

Q: What about items? Treasures for some reason tend to give low-level, repetitive items. Are more predefined items going to be included?

A: The items you receive as rewards are either from the predefined list from the og, or put together randomly by the system. We have no plans to expand this for now.

Q: Performance: is the beta slower than the final release is going to be? Even on relatively fast modern hardware, I sometimes notice stuttering or slow response times. Nothing dramatic, but I imagine that lower-end machines might struggle more.

A: The development build does tend to be more resource demanding than release builds, so we hope the answer is yes, and we are working towards that goal. Additionally, we plan to invest additional time in memory management which may also positively impact the final performance.

Q: I am interested in the logic used for map creation, as the original was basically cutting the map in continents, avoiding inland sea as the AI could not deal with it originally.

A: Our current world generation may create inland waters, and AI is aware of the scale of the water body. It should avoid wasting resources on the "pond fleet" and plan fine with them.

Q: Did you find some "cheese" strategies that made the original game too easy? How did you address that to make it more balanced in your remake?

A: Of course we did, and we did not touch them! We always felt that the cheese factor is kind of the point of Master of Magic. You do have OP strategies and you can have loads of fun exploiting them. This is something the game shares with our previous titles, so we like it.

We have made changes to units/spells etc. but, nerfing was never the point, it was always about our ability to recreate it within our systems, so basically, sometimes we could not recreate faithfully, so we did it differently.

Q: On a completely more facetious note, what are the dev team favourite wizards or heroes?

A: I [Yuuki] play a custom Wizard almost every time now, I use Kali’s portrait the most, and I like Alchemy, Warlord, Channelling and mostly Life magic (I know, probable a terrible way to play, but I like it... them boosted paladins, love’em!) To further display my inaptitudes as a strategy player, I actually like getting B’Shan, cause he’s free :P

SirPi tells me Merlin is his favourite Wizard, although it is a love/hate relationship. Merlin is the first Wizard on the list, thus for quick tests, we tend to click on him most often... and then Brax is Szymon’s favourite hero as he loves dwarves.

A’vee singled out Jafar as her favourite Wizard, because of the mana - gold flexibility. And she likes MysticX but her reasons are Unknown… (must be the menacingly glowing eyes).

Shell, like me, likes to play custom Wizard. His BadBoy uses the Raven portrait and has Warlock +Myrran+Channeler+Alchemy and two Life books. His favourite hero is Mortu the Black Knight.

Khash did not poke his head from under the code to answer and Obi, being Khash’s padawan probably felt he should do as his master does...

Q: On a less facetious note: could you please describe more in depth how the different difficulties interact with "cheating" from the AI? Many 4x games give hidden bonuses to AI at higher difficulties, does Master of Magic do this too? Is there a difficulty level that has complex behaviour but no "hidden bonuses"? In short, could you elaborate on the various difficulty settings effects?

A: The base principle is that AI cheats tend to give it more/less resources, thus making it easier or more difficult for the AI to build up power.
The AI attacking each other is also curbed on higher difficulties, so that the more difficult the game the more the AI will focus on the Player instead of each other.
We are also considering a range of additional little cheats to make the high difficulty games more challenging, among the things that we may add is a starting hero, a settler added early game, and/or more troops to boost that early game build up.

Q: Do you plan on adding the edge scrolling before release?

A: It is a possibility, but I cannot make a promise. With the size of our team, we must prioritise and edge scrolling is, for now, deemed nice, but not essential.

Q: Localization?

A: Our publisher, Slitherine, has confirmed to us that they do plan to add some localisation, but no specific info has yet been published, so I can neither make promises or give details.

Q: Will Master of Magic have the same compile at execute style modding as Thea 2 did? Because that was fantastic.

Both MoM and Thea2 share the scripting system, where a fair share of the gameplay is already exposed to scripts you can modify and which are loaded when you start the game and no tools except notepad are needed.
Both games have large databases in XML format, relatively easy to read (we hope ;) ) and both games have the event editor, with possibilities which can be extended in many aspects by scripts and database.
More modding features will likely join those above following implementations similar to what Thea 2 offers so yes, we hope you will be satisfied.

Q: How many things/what can be modded?

At the moment, the moddable areas are:

Adding/Modding Skills (but not the art atm)
Adding/Modding Traits (not the art atm)
Units (although not not 3D models, and not 2D art atm)
Resource distribution
Lair rewards
Building bonuses
New buildings (but they will not show on the map, as you can’t add the 2d art to the map, and no new icons atm)
Change/add spells (including sound effects but not art atm and not special effects)
Adding music (by adding an Ogg file to the assets)
Adding sound effects
Race tension stats can also be modded in the database
World events via the event editor
Some AI behaviours will be moddable
Treaties in Diplomacy can be adjusted in terms of values

Things we plan to add when possible:

Adding custom 2D art and icons

Things that are less likely to become available (we’re not saying they are impossible, but those would require a lot, so we can’t make any promises here):

3D models
Visual effects

Q: About the event editor, on release will it be user friendly?

A: There won’t be any changes to the event editor, but we do hope to compile some documentation for modding, and this will include some instructions for the editor.

Q: MoM's manual and strategic guide was legendary. Tell me how the remake compares?

A: There are no plans for a strategy guide. But, there is a manual in production. The new manual shares many aspects of the old one including some of the original text, when appropriate. How this will truly compare to the original can only be answered by you, the fans, once it is out!

Q: What’s next for MuHa?

A: For the foreseeable future it is still filled with magic ;) After that, who knows? We do feel a little nostalgic towards Thea, so we may yet return to the darkness in some form, some day...

Screenshot gallery:

A list of key bindings (Alas, no, we cannot change them atm) is now available in the settings.

The beams of light (yellow or red) now only show over locations you are yet to explore. Visited lairs only have a little sparkle over them now, like that keep on the left.

Units with enchantment on them now have a cool glow in the unit display on the left!

The Hydra in its final (we hope!) iteration, with three heads and three breath attacks, including one custom made for the purpose of the Hydra’s elevation

On the rival Wizard Info screen, you can now also read the bio of the heroes

One down, three to go...

Defeating your foes and banishing their Wizard essence!

The Hall of Fame, where my meagre score can be seen by all...

Oct 31, 2022

Devblog #13 - The Night of the Dead

Crime Scene Cleaner - KarKarola

Hello Cleaners!
The dead are scattered all over the place! In your cleaning endeavors, you will encounter many different situations and cases, and many of them will include at least one victim. Your job obviously is to get rid of the body and leave no evidence behind, so how exactly will you go about it?

Collect and dispose of.
The main objective is to clean up everything to the point where the police can find nothing. You will have to locate all bodies and carry them to your truck for later disposal. This may seem easy at first, but there are a few challenges that come with carrying limp bodies through tight corridors, locked doors, and maze-like gardens. There is a silver lining in all these tough, we took care of the most grueling part of the task. The bodies will automatically package themselves into bags once you put them in the back of your truck.

Bodies are heavy.
While you carry them around, your hands are full. This unfortunately means that moving around may be difficult. You movements will be slower and some interactions limited. Even simple doors may turn out to be too difficult to open. So strategize on where you are planning to go and how you will reach your car. We recommend you choose the fastest and easiest routes since you can only carry one body at a time, but we are well aware there is a challenge in taking a long way around.

Bodies are messy.
When you think you are ready, you have to factor one more element into your planned routes. Bodies will still drop blood after you pick them up. They will leave drops where you walk, so remember to go back and clean those specks of blood once more. These may be the thin line between a job well done and getting busted. Luckily blood dries relatively fast, so moments after you pick up the body, they will not leave marks behind. Unless you decide to throw them around, then you will definitely have more mess to clean.

Learn their stories.
During your time on the scene, you will have plenty of opportunities to learn about the victims. We want them to be more than just props scattered around the job site. Every victim has a story. The place of their death, their position, and even their wounds will help you understand the crime better and help with looking for evidence to clean. Finding a smashed family picture or seeing the last text message they sent to their loved one will also help you understand your own life as a cleaner. So look for clues and find small puzzle pieces which will help you see the bigger picture.

Despite this dark thought of cleaning after violent crimes, there is some comedy to the macabre of walking around with a dead body over your shoulder. After all, we want you to have fun while cleaning. There are some comical deaths coming along the way, so we’d like to know what you expect and want to see from our victims. Let us know here or through our social media. There is also a discord where we try to answer your questions.
See you here or there! Until next time!