Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

[namad]

Quote:
If you want an idea to die, keep it to yourself.

You were the one asking the question why I'm not adding these to the mod. So I went out of my way to answer that. And now you're saying not to? Whatever, I guess I'm done replying then.

That was a general statement about ideas.

If you're going to ignore a thread packed with good ideas, be my guest. Get offended as much as you wish. That's a novel design concept.

Are you honestly saying that another direct damage spell is a more interesting replacement for Recall Hero ?

Actually yes, I do. Heroic Shout is not just another direct damage spell. It's a game mechanic that makes heroes better and multi-figure units riskier to use.

You've reinvented Fireball. Also, Flame Strike, Immolation, Wall of Fire, Firestorm...

I see you're trying to balance undead units by making them heal on their own. That can work but is... boring. Sure you can balance stuff by making it more similar (Warcraft I, II had near-perfect balance!!) but you're making it less distinctive in the process. The other way is to further explore the cannon fodder niche. You could go as far as to make created undead upkeep-free. They don't heal, they have no upkeep - fair game.

You're acting like a jerk and a child. 1) That thread is 6 years old 2) most of those ideas are impossible or make no sense 3) they're not particularly balanced or fun and don't really mesh with the other design goals of this mod, and of course they don't, you wrote them years before this mod existed.

The biggest flaw really is that you cannot add anything at all to the game, period, ever, you can only replace things that already exist with other things. This means your ideas have to be better than the ones already in the game.

I do agree with you though that direct damage is the most boring feature in the spellbook in the current mod (although much more diverse than in the base game), and if any one spell were to vanish maybe one of those should. However heroic shout is useful for every single build (one goal of this mod is to make heroes more useful and interesting in the early game), so the spell I'd remove if I were to remove one, would either be a realm's direct damage spell, or a realm summon. I wouldn't replace them with any of your suggestions though, but I might use a modified version inspired by one of your suggestions. Insulting someone who's done a lot of work.. is just petulant, and doesn't really open up much discussion.

This entire subforum has a dozen threads all dedicated to discussion of the mod and changes to make in it, and the mod author has taken that feedback and implemented it to the game a hundred times. So join in, in the correct place, with new writing, that you write in 2016, after having played this mod. Your ideas from six years ago show that you haven't read the discussion about the game people are currently having, and you haven't read seravy's explanations about what is and is not possible to do with the code. Personally if I am going to waste my time reading your ideas them you should have to use your time to read and catch up on the actual state of this mod.

EDIT: you've clearly never played caster of magic with a death realm wizard because you don't even know what the changes to death magic even were at all :-/
EDIT2: Also, thank you Seravy for the great game, I'm falling behind the latest update, because well, deus ex came out and I started playing that. After I finish my 40 hours though back to caster of magic!
EDIT3: Also you're right, nature summons did feel generic, that's why they were all overhauled and revamped and we all discussed it in the nature realm thread. In fact almost every single thing your thread states wasn't that good in the base game has been entirely changed for this mod!!!!! It renders almost all your points moot. Direct damage spells have been changed subtly, combat stats of most units are different already, neutral cities don't exist in the late game, every hero has been revamped already, your suggested changes don't make sense because everything you're referring to has already been changed. Learn the state of the mod currently and then write some new ideas, they'll be better ideas and might get used!

[Nelphine]

What namad said. Coding limitations are huge, and looking for balance changes need to be based on the current mod, not a wish list from something pre any of the balance work already done.

[Rannous]

What namad said again. Seravy has done an amazing amount of work (Thanks!), whining isn't overly helpful. I'd suggest actually trying what's been done up to this point and then come back and comment - I think the game is much improved.

[b0rsuk]

I was interested at first, but further reading of change list convinced me the author has bad judgement(I almost always disagree with people who have anime avatars. FACT.), plus he acts like a jerk so my time is better spent elsewhere. Lots of people, modders and game developers tell me they value my input, I'm not desperate to help with playtesting and feedback. It was fun helping kyrub, it wouldn't be fun helping Seravy. We're not a corporation, we don't have to like each other.

A recurring opinion about Caster of Magic is that "it's a different game using MoM graphics and ruleset" and "I want more games like MoM, not MoM like other games". I like Age of Wonders 3 a lot and know where to find it. I'd rather try a new board game, I found Race for the Galaxy to be awesome.

I linked the thread because people were saying they want to see more creative spell ideas in the mod. I was just sharing them and asking nothing back.

Have fun with your mod (no sarcasm).

[Seravy]

I was interested at first, but further reading of change list convinced me the author has bad judgement(I almost always disagree with people who have anime avatars. FACT.), plus he acts like a jerk so my time is better spent elsewhere.

I was being nice up till now but I think I had enough. You are the one acting like a jerk, first you ask why I don't use your ideas, and when I actually take my time to answer that you tell me to shut up. Believe me or not some of your ideas are interesting and would probably be fun...in another mod or game. Those I liked and considered adding, in the end, I decided not to because they were either achieving something the mod already does. For example, the spell that does more damage to units if they have more buffs on them, I seriously considered it. Then i realized we are working on a game where dispelling was way overpowered and I had to take several measures just to keep it on acceptable levels...but it's still on the top edge of balance, so adding another ability that hurts enchantments directly would not make the game better. Especially as it directly makes an existing spell worthless, Spell Lock. So the player goes out of their way to make sure the enchantments on the units are safe...and then there is a spell that goes through all that and outright kills the unit anyway. Not very good. I love the idea but it doesn't work well in the current game where mass dispelling and spell lock exists.
Anyway, I'm wasting my time on you again, I shouldn't do that. And I'm deleting a certain sentence from the post because that kind way of talking about and to other users on a forum is unacceptable. And I mean the part that goes beyond calling me a jerk.

[Careless]

i know this is probably a simply request, but please put the version number at the end of your Caster.zip file on your download page. I clicked around for a while before I realized that the same link for 2.67 was now updated for 2.68- but with no indication at all.

i am having a graphic glitch & game stopping crash on 2.67. on the overworld map, it seems as though there are white letters printed overtop the map, but i can't make them out.

screenshot linked here: http://i.imgur.com/4tBpUlm.png

music still plays. game doesn't respond.

in your casterofmagic.html file, it says to use 100.000 cpu cycles. please clarify what you mean by 100.000, there is no option for such number, and 100 would be abysmally slow. do you mean 100,000?


random question. What does ITEMMAKE.exe do? i see it loads the item creation screen, but do those get stored somewhere- or is this actually what is run during the creation/enchant item spell?

what's the difference here?

EDIT: seems as though 2.67 saves wont work with 2.68. I figured it wouldn't- but now my save is unplayable even if reverting back to 2.67 since it's crashing. i was doing so well :-/

[Seravy]

in your casterofmagic.html file, it says to use 100.000 cpu cycles. please clarify what you mean by 100.000, there is no option for such number, and 100 would be abysmally slow. do you mean 100,000?

Yes. So confusing some places use , for decimals others use .
As far as I remember, I actually had both in math class, they changed it halfway...probably should have used a space for separator?

i am having a graphic glitch & game stopping crash on 2.67. on the overworld map, it seems as though there are white letters printed overtop the map, but i can't make them out.

That's probably the DOS prompt, it looks like that when the game crashes without switching back to text mode but exiting to DOS anyway.

random question. What does ITEMMAKE.exe do? i see it loads the item creation screen, but do those get stored somewhere- or is this actually what is run during the creation/enchant item spell?

It's the item editor that comes with the original game. Those are the 250 items that can be found as predefined treasure. If none of them are valid, only then do you get a random item. So if you want to have a certain item appear in the game, you can. Enemies might find or even create it though.

seems as though 2.67 saves wont work with 2.68.

Wait seriously? I don't think I did anything that would do that. Did I by chance forget to run artfix again? Please run artfix.bat and see if that fixes the problem? If that isn't executed before release, the game crashes on loading.
One more thing that comes to my mind : Did you use any third party save game editors? If you did, that might have damaged your save file since 2.x Caster and 1.5x MoM uses an expanded save file that contains twice as many overland units than normal.

[Nelphine]

You might just not use a separator for 100000; a little unwieldy, but less room for confusion.

I personally just use cycles = max (no dynamic), although I've started seeing my impossible AI turns exceeding 15 seconds in 1413. I'm aware not everyone can do that though.

[Tiltowait]

Man, what IS it with some people? I think b0rsuk must have Asperger's or something. There are a couple of really weird people on the wiki, too. I don't know what it is about this game that attracts these people. Other old DOS games don't have this problem.

[Careless]

seems as though 2.67 saves wont work with 2.68.

Wait seriously? I don't think I did anything that would do that. Did I by chance forget to run artfix again? Please run artfix.bat and see if that fixes the problem? If that isn't executed before release, the game crashes on loading.
One more thing that comes to my mind : Did you use any third party save game editors? If you did, that might have damaged your save file since 2.x Caster and 1.5x MoM uses an expanded save file that contains twice as many overland units than normal.

In your help file it says to use 1.40 Master of Magic as a base. If I run ARTFIX.BAT it tells me the following:



Am I supposed to use 1.5x? I guess that would break my save game anyways at this point.

Also, for the cpu cycles, I think 100000 should just be use instead of a , or a . ; that would remove any confusion based on locale.

As for ITEMMAKE.exe, do I have to run that before playing a new game? Because all the items I've been getting are garbage and extremely low quality and barely any benefit to heros compared to some of the ones I've seen in ITEMMAKE.



So about that crash... is there a way to fix that? or is this a known issue? i believe you are correct in saying that it is the DOS prompt. I can type and see more white characters come up in the background. Though the music continues to play, which is odd.