Caster of Magic II Brainstorming Megathread

[Seravy]

Sea monsters are great except...well...they don't work. Rampaging monsters attack cities. There are no cities on sea (or lairs to spawn any) and it wouldn't be a sea monster if it could enter land. For a summon spell they are useless - floating island and wind walking are better as those allow all your land troops to fight on sea anyway. Later on, any flying summoned creature is better because they can fight both on sea and land.

[mercy]

Destroyed Wizard Fortress Site Radiates Power:

If the player conquers the fortress city of a wizard - raze it or not and then builds a city on that very place, that city should have some power bonuses, as the site continues to radiate power. AKA temples built on focal points of power = Ley Lines in our world. So, some mere guideline ideas below.. If the conquered wizard was a Life wizard, then the energy radiating from his/her fortress continues to give some bonuses. Same with all the other death, chaos, etc.. wizards. Their essence they imprinted into the very fabric of reality around their fortress, their "dispersed massive energy" lives on.

Examples:

Life Wizard Fortress site:
+ Bonus to population

Death Wizard Fortress site:
+ Undead units defending there have zero upkeep.

Sorcerer Wizard Fortress site:
+ Bonus mana/power is being generated there

Nature Wizard Fortress site:
+ Fantastic creatures receive bonuses in combat

Chaos Wizard Fortress site:
+ Spell Research gets bonuses there

[Seravy]

It would be pretty hard to justify why destroyed fortresses provide a bonus while existing fortresses do not.
We want to reduce the value of conquering fortress cities not increase it anyway. (or to be more accurate, CoM I already reduced it and that's good as is.)

[Cruel100]

I've got vampires and mummies on my mind, which seem to be missing form MoM; 
Mummies would look great near pyramid ruins on the desert whereas the vampire sounds like a great hi-level monster of death with powers such as life drain, and flight. Gosh, now that I wrote it down it sounds exactly like the death knight. Well, none the less, the more, the scarier
Perhaps wizards with casting skill over 240 could be allowed to raise fallen enemy heroes as vampires?

Personally I really like the idea of vampires and mummies. It would be perfect for a Jafar or a new wizard like Skeletor (Masters of Universe) or Mumm-Ra (ThunderCats). Or perhaps, if it came to the conclusion that Death magic realm needed more power or diversity.

[Seravy]

I would like Vampires too but it's difficult to design them in a way that makes them functionally different from Wraiths in a way that both have a useful and relevant role in gameplay - they are both flying, life draining melee creatures.
Mummies might be interesting as well, or in general, a creature that can put combat unit curses on things it attacks, probably in the form of a touch attack.

We're getting too far ahead with that though - first we need to discuss if we want to redesign the spell system by adding more spells, and if yes, how and at which tier, then we need to design all the spells for all realms - we can't have one realm get more or fewer spells than another - and after that, can we have a new summoning spell, if there is room for it in the new system. All of this is for milestone 4 though, see https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...p?tid=9921

Also, regarding new creatures, I'm not an artist so while I can try making new art for creatures, it's unlikely to be any good. So we'll also need to find someone who actually makes art for the creature, after we decided we want that creature spell.
(for the same reason, new races are unlikely as they'd need art for at least 4-5 units.)

[mercy]

Rhinos, elephants:

I was watching the bears' amazing running animation and suddenly realized that the game is missing larger warm blooded lumbering hulks of nature, like rhinos and elephants. Grizzly bears, werebears, savage 2xsize mutant-bears. Like wolf = smallish monster ==> Dread Wolf = giant wolf. Same with bears. "Dread-Bears" ==> 2x sized brown bear. Something like that.
Too many lizard-oid monsters are in game and not enough warm blooded ones that have hulky-bulky grizzly or mammoth bodies.

Also there should be Solars ingame. Archangels are fine & dandy, but there should be the professional dispensers of God's Wrath upon the world and those are Archangel Gabriels, big warrior angels ==> Heavens professional killers, Heavens "BlackWater Merc" units = SOLARs. I love Solars so much, that I'll be doing that race / "monster-type" (in our upcoming game akin to 'SSI Gold Box' series.)

[mercy]

COM-II  MUSIC:

I was thinking of at least recording the amazing Gravis Ultrasound music as OGG.   Making it a ~50 track soundtrack.   Then if some fans have time - and/or are paid to do it - the Gravis soundtrack could be extended with some reverb effects and some extra.   Maybe take the midi from LBX and build an amazing Soundfont from the top-quality latest Gravis PAT files (musical instruments)  and play back = record the OGG with that one.  

Remixes:
Then building on above, if some musician has the hardware, they could do melodically the same, but remix-wise different takes on the original music. Still very much preserving the old tunes, but extending them with extra instruments or just replacing the Gravis patches with professional instrument samples and playing back the MIDIs with those orchestra-strength musical instruments.

Essentially, I was thinking about the past:  if Gravis could have remained on the soundcard-market and if they continued their soundcard-business, I was pondering about they could have expanded their originally 1MB soundcards into 32 or 64MB or 128MB soundcards, where the ROM / memory could have been filled with professional orchestral instruments.  Imagine MIDI music quality with a 128 MB ROM!  Essentially they could have improved their original patches (PAT) music instrument sound samples "ad infinitum", resulting in truly majestic sounding MIDI  ==>  which now can be done today by skillful musicians "with ease".  Any professional remixer, like for example Commodore 64-loving LUKHASH. Here is for example their remix of the absolutely awesome C64-SUPREMACY.

or here is  Tony Vazquez  remixing the fantasy soundtrack of Ultima V: Lazarus. This last one is more "MOM-style". Music of the original Ultima V on Amiga for comparison.

Of course hoping all the time that COM-II won't be forced to sink into Oblivion in demonic Lawyer-hell.  Like so many amazing remix remake sequel-projects were forced to cease & desist  [via Lawyer Devils taking over], so far in game development history.

[Seravy]

I was actually wondering if someone knows how to/can convert the data in the sound LBX files into some playable format I can use. (wav maybe?)
Recording it manually while playing the original game would be time consuming and probably causes quality loss.

Sound is for milestone III though. Also please note I'm not a musician and know absolutely nothing about the stuff.

[Seravy]

Something else, for milestone II : I was thinking combat terrain should be done better - tiles that cost extra to move on, like forests, should be easy to recognize. Basically, they should have more trees, while normal grass tiles should have little or none.
Same for mountain (cost 2 tiles should have many rocks on them, not just one or two).

Here is an example :
   

I have no idea how this willl look like with unit figures standing between the trees though.

[mercy]

Nightshade Farming:

Just like weed farmers, there should be a spell that allows a wizard to become a marijuana farmer and grow Nightshade on the land like Create Volcano.