Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Seravy]

Thanks, found the problems. They'll be fixed in the next upload.

[Seravy]

Next version is up :

2020-07-07-b
-Fixed bug : Raiders destroy towns as if they were monsters
-Fixed bug : End of combat crashes against neutral defenders
-Research completed animation now works correctly
-Clicking the Rally button when the feature is already active now cancels it.
-fixed bug : When the AI wants to demand spells and there are none, they demand gold instead. This should have been the other way around, asking for a spell when gold is not available.
-Reduced "Break Alliance with" request modifier from -175 to -125. This should make requesting the breaking of alliances easier. "Declare War On" modifier stays at -150 or -180 if the players had a Pact.
-"Break Alliance with" and "Declare War On" will now have changed outcomes :
Demand random spell : -50 to -25 instead of -75 to -50.
Demand Gold : between -25 and 0 instead of -50 and 0.
Demand best spell : -100 to -50 (new)
Refuse : below -100 instead of -75.
Other diplomacy requests do not use the "demand best spell" outcome.
When demanding the best spell, the spell with the highest trade value for the AI is chosen. If no spells are available, the request fails with the usual "you offer wasn't good enough" result.
When demanding the best spell, if the spell chosen is worth less than 60% of the highest trade value spell the AI already knows, the request fails with the usual "you offer wasn't good enough" result.
-if the Shift key is held during a combat attack, it is forced to be a melee attack even if ranged would be available.
-Pressing the Q key during battle toggles animations on/off
-Halfling Bowmen are now available as a unit again
-Cities being razed display all rebels as population and produce nothing (including any sources, even those not affected by unrest.)
-Fixed bug : finding spells caused the AI to select research even if the found spell was not the current research being done.
-Fixed bug : finding the spell being researched did not set research already done to zero.

[ksasaki]

I'd like to join the alpha.

[Seravy]

Updated :

2020-07-08
-Fixed bug : Replacing buildings didn't work.
-Added Monument, Linking Hub buildings to add combat casting skill, Amplifying Tower is now overland skill only.
Monument costs 90 and 2 maintenance for 150 SP.
Linking Towers costs 600 and 7 maintenance for 1500 SP.
Amplifying Tower costs 600 and 12 maintenance for 7 overland skill.
Strategic combat undead raising formula uses combat casting skill.
Historian formulas use the average of combat and overland casting skill.
Supernatural units raise as undead if base casting skill (without buildings) is 200 or higher.
Fortress Lightning formulas use combat casting skill.
Fairy Ring formula uses overland casting skill.
Militarist and Expansionist wizards have added priority to build the new buildings.
Theurgist and Sage Master have reduced priority to build them. (more mana spent in combat = much slower research)
Building priority increases if the AI is at war with the human player. It decreases during Wizard's Pact and greatly decreases during Alliance. (Note, while the effect does work in strategic combat, we don't want the AI to get into a spending race with other AIs on combat spells.)
Casting Tree of Knowledge is required to build a Linking Tower.
-Outposts are now destroyed after combat if the attacker wins as in the original.
-Meteor Storm now destroys outposts as in the original.
-Call the Void now destroys outposts as in the original.
(Raise Volcano, Earthquake and Armageddon can no longer destroy outposts.)
-Fixed bug : Peace Treaty doesn't set "no treaty" status, leaves status on "War"
After forming a new Wizard's Pact, Peace Treaty, or Alliance, the AI will be unaffected by "overexpansion" and "global enchantment" type diplomatic reaction triggers. This effect lasts 12 turns, or 24 for an Alliance.
While the AI has at least 50% military inferiority (including allies on both sides) and above counter only decreases every 3rd turn.
-AI research now correctly uses the system that allows changing research without losing progress on the spell. (not that the AI actually uses that for anything yet, but jsut in case.)
-New AI global strategy flag : Seriously researching SoM. Triggered by the AI power distribution decision deciding to raise research for SoM.
-If the above flag is on, the priority of research buildings, Enlightenment and Altar of Peace spells increases drastically.
-Cartographer now shows a wizard's pact icon for units violating a wizard's pact.
-Overland main screen also shows a wizard's pact icon for units violating a wizard's pact.
-When neutrals destroy a city, the raze value of the buildings is added to the total gold loot available from that city.
-Combat wizard name font now uses the wizard's flag color as it should
-Spell of Mastery is shown on the Wizards screen even if Detect Magic isn't active.
-Chaos Channels now displays a red spell aura on units.

[ksasaki]

where should we submit our questions / bugs?  do we just PM you Seravy?

[MrBiscuits]

Can we have a debug button to toggle viewing the entire map on and off? It's hard to play through a whole game when you can see everything from turn 1.
Even better would be a debug menu available in game.

Also could we have the version number on the main screen to help with bug reports?

Selecting books at the start causes books from other realms to change graphics.

It takes me a few tries to load the game, sometimes nothing happens and other times I get a windows pop up error saying "I/O error 103".

After that I get "range check error" now when I click on "new game" and have to close the game with task manager. It seemed to work yesterday, so I don't know what has changed now.

The log file has the following:

File C:\Games\CoMAlpha1\\data\GE25.png is missing!
File C:\Games\CoMAlpha1\\data\GE26.png is missing!
File C:\Games\CoMAlpha1\\data\GE27.png is missing!
File C:\Games\CoMAlpha1\\data\GE28.png is missing!
File C:\Games\CoMAlpha1\\data\GE29.png is missin

Yes it ends before completing the last line. There was nothing in the log of the previous version.

[Seravy]

Can we have a debug button to toggle viewing the entire map on and off? It's hard to play through a whole game when you can see everything from turn 1.
Even better would be a debug menu available in game.

Good idea, will do. Probably hotkeys that are only active while debug is enabled.

Also could we have the version number on the main screen to help with bug reports?

Yes, it's about time I start adding versions. For the time being I think I'll simply use the current date for that.

It takes me a few tries to load the game, sometimes nothing happens and other times I get a windows pop up error saying "I/O error 103".

Never had that happen.
Maybe you were trying to load a file from a previous version?
But that would be a "read beyond the end of file" error.
This seems to be a "file is closed" error so for some reason it failed to open it. Might be a problem with the OS?
...actually if it was running in a place where it couldn't create the log file that can happen. (like a read-only drive)

After that I get "range check error" now when I click on "new game" and have to close the game with task manager. It seemed to work yesterday, so I don't know what has changed now.

Debug was enabled. So these bugs are probably coming from the debug log file?

The GE files are ok, those global enchantment slots are unused. I left a few numbers empty for adding spells in the future.
The last line is broken because the game crashed before closing the file I guess?

[MrBiscuits]

I downloaded the game again and I can start a new game, I can send the broken version if you like.

I think possibly the I/O happened after I tried to load the game and nothing happened, then I did it again and the first one was doing something in the background.
Sometimes nothing happens for a while when I load the game and I think it failed.

Right clicking a neutral city causes an error.

You can't quit the game and start a new one, you have to quit the entire application first and reload.

You can accidentally resize the window and it's impossible to get it back to the original dimensions, so everything is stretched after.

I would like to view the map before choosing which spell to research at the start of the game - it was better doing it at the end of the turn in the original.

[Seravy]

You can accidentally resize the window and it's impossible to get it back to the original dimensions, so everything is stretched after.

Feature. It's very annoying when people have to resize the game window every time they start the game, and that's especially true for this one due to the small default resolution.
Deleting CoM.set resets all saved settings including window size to default.

I would like to view the map before choosing which spell to research at the start of the game - it was better doing it at the end of the turn in the original.

That might be difficult, the game basically triggers the research selection instantly when you are not researching and the UI is idle. This is desired behavior in all cases when the player found a spell during the game (or traded for one).
Maybe I could suppress the trigger on turn 1 and have it activate through the next turn button instead of the normal next turn functionality.

Right clicking a neutral city causes an error.

Could not reproduce this one. Did the city have anything special about it?

[MrBiscuits]

Could you keep the aspect ratio when resizing? It doesn't look good stretched. 

Perhaps the game could be in the same 16:9 ratio as most monitors these days. You could have a slightly larger map screen width ways (about 20%) and it would allow you to fit in the information menu next to the wizard option and put the quit button back in the game menu.

The research screen could be triggered when you click next turn with no spell chosen instead.