Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[ksasaki]

Guess we can just do here then:

what does "rally" do in city screen?  couldn't quite figure it out.

My swordsmen attacked a sorcery node and then retreated but then the unit survived but on top of the sorcery node

My sprites could not attack either the phantom beast or the nagas in the sorcery node, but then I turned on auto and they were able to attack.

"auto" sprites no longer just stay put after exhausting their ammo but actually try to attack, kind of annoying because I enjoyed just hitting auto after my sprites were done and just let them finish the turns out.

I think I also had the I/O error when I closed the game, can't remember the error code.

I searched through the log but could not find too much about the combat.

[MrBiscuits]

Neutral city bug, just right click on the first neutral city South West of your starting city

https://we.tl/t-0tgsUHISv7

[Seravy]

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

Absolutely not because...
Which aspect ratio?
The 16:10 that naturally comes out of 320x200 or the 4:3 it actually was displayed as on those screens? (Pixels back then were rectangles, not squares).

I actually find the 4:3 looks better and the 16:10 weird but for people with widescreen computers, the 16:10 will probably feel more natural.

what does "rally" do in city screen? couldn't quite figure it out.

All new units produced there go to the selected location.

My swordsmen attacked a sorcery node and then retreated but then the unit survived but on top of the sorcery node

Flee or retreat? It worked fine for me when I retreated using sprites. Is there a save file for this?

My sprites could not attack either the phantom beast or the nagas in the sorcery node, but then I turned on auto and they were able to attack.

will be fixed in next upload, the "shift forces melee" was forcing it when shift wasn't held instead.

"auto" sprites no longer just stay put after exhausting their ammo but actually try to attack, kind of annoying because I enjoyed just hitting auto after my sprites were done and just let them finish the turns out.

Auto isn't supposed to stall, ever, that was a bugfeature in the original. There will be a "safe retreat" feature for these cases later, or you can simply hold the D key down until the turns are used up.

[Seravy]

Neutral city bug, just right click on the first neutral city South West of your starting city

https://we.tl/t-0tgsUHISv7

Thanks, will be fixed in the next version.

[Seravy]

Do we still want a "quit to main menu" button even after the button to surrender will be added?
After the scoring screen that should put the player back into the main menu, and it gives a feeling of actually losing the game when they abandon one to restart for a better map or any other reason, discouraging that.

[MrBiscuits]

Absolutely not because...
Which aspect ratio?
The 16:10 that naturally comes out of 320x200 or the 4:3 it actually was displayed as on those screens? (Pixels back then were rectangles, not squares).

I actually find the 4:3 looks better and the 16:10 weird but for people with widescreen computers, the 16:10 will probably feel more natural.

Whichever the default aspect ratio is as the pixels are square and it looks better. Having slightly stretched pixels makes everything look a bit weird and blurry.

Any reason why you didn't increase the resolution to say 400x300 (or an equivalent with 16:9 ratio) ? You'd get a lot more of the main map visible and could have larger minimap and room for more information at the sides.

[Seravy]

That's subjective. I preferred the stretched pixels. It looked better that way. The game was originally made for monitors that had stretched pixels. Those monitors had a 320x200 resolution but a 4:3 actual screen size. That kind of hardware literally doesn't exist anymore.

We should probably add some filter like the ones in Dosbox later though I don't know what algorythm those use and which looks better.

Any reason why you didn't increase the resolution to say 400x300 (or an equivalent with 16:9 ratio) ?

Yeah well, do you have a 400x300 version of all the UI background images and every other part resized to the correct size to fit that? Because I sure don't.

[MrBiscuits]

Well if you accidentally drag the window so each pixel is no longer square, it's hard to get it back to the square pixels of the default as it doesn't "snap" to that size.

Yeah well, do you have a 400x300 version of all the UI background images and every other part resized to the correct size to fit that? Because I sure don't.

Actually I could probably do these assets when I've got time. 

Other things I've noticed:

Fleeing says you have been defeated instead of the fleeing text of the original. One of my swordsmen was lost when fleeing, but there was no message to tell the player that it was lost.

Units seem to have icons greyed out for no reason. Same save file as before, if you move the starting swordsmen South East to the first cave a couple of tiles away you can see both these bugs - swordsmen have some extra defence icons that are greyed out (more silver colour) and the Guardian spirit has an extra resistance greyed out.

The neutral city bug when you right click only seems to happen on the first turn by the way.

[Seravy]

Well if you accidentally drag the window so each pixel is no longer square, it's hard to get it back to the square pixels of the default as it doesn't "snap" to that size.

Maybe it might be a good idea to do that snapping if the ratio is close enough to 4:3 or 16:10 then.
It still stays stretched if it's not exactly 320 pixels wide though.
Maybe storing the defaults in an INI file instead of Magic.set would be better, then people can edit the resolution manually.

Actually I could probably do these assets when I've got time.

Don't, repositioning every single element displayed everywhere would take like weeks even if the background image was available.
I do wish I had more screen size for the wizards screen but that's about the only one where it's useful.

[Seravy]

Updated :

2020-07-09
-Added AI buying priorities for the new buildings.
-AI building priority : Chaneller increases the priority of combat skill buildings.
-AI building priority : Spellweaver increases the priority of Amplifying Tower
-AI building priority : Archmage slightly reduces the priority of all three skill buildings. (it's more economic to raise skill from power)
-AI building priority : Archmage slightly increases the priority of power producing buildings.
-If Difficulty is Fair or higher, the AI will build Monument as part of their mandatory build order after marketplace but before military buildings and settlers.
-When building completion is reported, the new building now appears in the city using a transparency effect.
-Huntress hero loses Web Spell (not complatible with items that have spell charges), gains +5% to hit chance instead. (We have 2 other heroes who can cast Web anyway.)
-Research selection now triggers when the end of turn button is pressed on turn 1 instead of before the player can see the map.
-Fixed bug : magic screen crashes when no spell is being researched.
-Fixed bug : Melee was forced when Shift was NOT held instead.
-Fixed bug : enemy city view is crashing due to referencing the wrong variable as city ID.
-Fixed bug : Randomly chosen book graphics depend on books selected in other realms instead of only that realm.
-Version date is now displayed in the main menu
-Debug omnivision can be toggled on/off by SHIFT-O on the overland map screen.
-Adjusted figure positions within units.
-Number of lost units while fleeing is now reported in combat results.
-Fixed Chaos Node, Nature Node and Sorcery node having swapped scouting report images.
-Added color cycling to node and treasure images.
-Fixed : Tactician defense bonus displays wrong type and amount of stat icons.
-Fixed bug : grey unit stat icons are still calculated wrong
-City screen now correctly shows unit auras on enchanted units.
-Fixed : AI doesn't have the intended reduced priority to attack combat summoned units.
-Combat summoned AI units prioritize attacking targets reachable that turn higher the same way thrown/gaze etc units do.
-Spell of Mastery casting cost is now scaled up if the larger plane in the world is above the default rate of 1.
-Earth Lore now costs 10 and reveals a 5x5 area around the target.
-Instead of the "Win the game, yes or no?" dialog, the Game screen has a green Win or a red Lose button to end the game and return to the main menu depending on whether the enemy surrender condition was satisfied. (Note that the win/lose screens are currently not implemented. The button simply quits to the main menu either way.)
-You win the game if the enemy total is less than 55% your overall total historian power in all categories instead of 50%.