Caster of Magic II Bug Reports!

[Seravy]

I don't know how to play the other formats, even finding a way to play the WAV files wasn't trivial. I doubt anything else can be played without 3rd party code which I don't want to use.

[massone]

Just to be clear, by "without 3rd party code", you mean you're only using core libraries of whatever you programmed COM II in? IE, no open source (even unrestricted compiled distribution licenses)?

I believe the Win32 API includes midi playback support, and all Windows releases include midi device support.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows...-midi-file

It might be possible to play it with WMPLib as well, and setting the visibility of the controls to false so that only the game can control it programmatically.

If you're using C# .NET and are willing to use freely distributable (in compiled form) open source code, there's also https://github.com/filoe/cscore

There should be other similar free solutions for other platforms under unrestricted distribution licenses for compiled code.

[Seravy]

Just to be clear, by "without 3rd party code", you mean you're only using core libraries of whatever you programmed COM II in

Yes, pretty much. Anything that has the word "license" on it is scary and I'll have none of that. More importantly, if it's not my code, I can't fix it if it has a problem.



Playing the file isn't just the problem here btw, it's playing the file in a way that can play simultaneously with the sound effects without the two interrupting each other, as far as I remember the windows API doesn't support that or something along those lines. Anyway, I'm glad it somehow works at the moment and prefer not to mess with it and never touch it again unless absolutely necessary. Took days to find a working solution.

[namad]

Just to be clear, by "without 3rd party code", you mean you're only using core libraries of whatever you programmed COM II in

Yes, pretty much. Anything that has the word "license" on it is scary and I'll have none of that. More importantly, if it's not my code, I can't fix it if it has a problem.



Playing the file isn't just the problem here btw, it's playing the file in a way that can play simultaneously with the sound effects without the two interrupting each other, as far as I remember the windows API doesn't support that or something along those lines. Anyway, I'm glad it somehow works at the moment and prefer not to mess with it and never touch it again unless absolutely necessary. Took days to find a working solution.

The existence of mp3's implies that once the game is done you should be able to compress the download size by a large amount to make it a smaller download? That'd be a pointless step to take though in alpha?

[Seravy]

"existence of mp3s" I don't think I can play mp3s.
If you mean the data can be compressed into smaller wavs, I don't know. Maybe, but without loss of quality? I have no idea.
If you mean using zip to make it smaller, it is already zipped as you can see on the download link and it's almost the same size so not really. I'll try and see what "Ultra" compression 7z can manage.... 667 MB, well that's an improvement, better than 945 but not by much.

Ideally I would assume Steam supports resuming downloads and doesn't restart from the beginning if the connection breaks as well as skips unchanged files so this shouldn't be that much of a problem after release.

[jhsidi]

Yes, Steam handles downloads and people with really slow connections can download over a period of hours or even days.

There's some slight impact of lower purchases / downloads from people with really low-end computers if your size is large. Most people consider 1gb to be quite small these days, but for some people, bringing it down to ~650mb will make a difference.

Btw, if you want to put a testers only version on Steam already, about a week ago they released a new feature called "Steam Playtest" that looks significantly better than the older (still existing) keys system. It looks like you can probably have a closed / testing only version of the game up for a while using this: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/steamw...2167446258

[jhsidi]

I think the Historian graphs are really not proving adequate for estimating wizard power. Here's a save game I'm going to use to illustrate the point: https://ufile.io/qb0is4f9

Over the end turn, Raven attacked my city with his stack at 42x15. During the battle, he cast Wild Boars 7 times in a row then cast Resist Magic once. He has Conjurer so I think Wild Boars is either 11 or 12 cost; Resist Magic is 8, I believe. So he cast either 85 or 92 power worth of spells.

 I've got 41 power. Look at this graph... does this look even remotely like he has more than double my power? https://imgur.com/a/fQT89Fg

Well, it didn't to me. I saw him coming and thought I was ready but holy shit he has a lot of spell power. Is Historian showing a logarithmic scale? Very few people can look at a logarithmic scale without a Y axis and know what's going on.

The Astrologer panel that got the axe in this version was far easier to understand. Kinda missing it here; Spy Master is not really useful in any way I can figure out.

[Seravy]

"Spell Power" includes casting skill and the amount of spells known (weighted by rarity). Maybe you are ahead of him in research while he is ahead in casting skill? If not the it might be a bug.

I liked the astrologer as well but the sad truth is, with 14x3 = 42 bars it would be even worse and there aren't even enough pixels to have 42 rows of wizard names on the screen. And while it is easier to read, it also contains less information, you can't see how much the values were in the past at all.

[massone]

jhsidi, I took a look at the file. In the battle he cast 3 wild boar 1 web 2 psionic blast 1 resist magic = 94 skill worth.

First of all, Raven has 6 monuments, which is 900 SP, so his base is 89 casting skill = total SP 8030

You have 41 casting skill = 1722 SP.

Is the disparity possible, and if so, reasonable?

Looking at the Power Income graph, it looks like his Power was similar to your combined Power + city research for most of the game, but since your city RP is half your total that means Raven could have spent 2x as much on casting skill as you, maybe more depending on how much you spent on mana. He also has Aether binding, which alone produces 80 SP/turn at the save's turn and you only have 128 Power, of which I'm guessing at most half is going towards casting skill on average.

Basically, this means Raven has probably been investing in something like 3x-4x the SP that you have, and you also benefit from specialist reducing your research cost on all spells.

Looking at your research, you've got Night Stalker, Flight, and Wall of Darkness, which add up to 4480 RP already. As a rough estimate, the rest of your researched spells you didn't start with are probably around 3000 RP, so let's you have a total of 7480 RP.

On the Spell Power graph, Raven seems to have 20% more points than you. This suggests that he has

(8030+ RavenRP) = 1.2 * (7480+1722)
RavenRP = 3012

This does seem a bit low, but it's not impossible, if we're just looking at how the graph itself works. (Although this is just an estimate. You also have a few more "Uncommon" spells that don't cost much RP, which could be further inflating your research contribution to Spell Power).

Is it reasonable? From mid 1504, if he spent half his Power on casting skill + aether binding, that'd be around 100*24+70*24 = 4080 SP. So he would have had to invested ~3600 since turn 1. He got an early Power boost just before 1502, so if he invested around 60 SP per turn for 30 turns until mid 1504, that's only 1800.

So that means he'd have to have invested even more into casting skill. I think it's unusual for his personality to focus this much on casting skill instead of research though.

[JustOneMoreTurn]

Would it be hard to put up a version without the music?  When I started COM I the first time, I set sound to off, since I vaguely recalled having problems with sound running MOM on a previous computer.  I don't even recall what sounds and music are like for MOM.

Rural internet is like being stuck in the dark ages.  I almost never watch videos, unless I absolutely need to watch a youtube video of how to replace a timing chain or some such thing.  I don't even bother looking at most of the new games offered.  Steam does allow me to download over months, but that 3 GB /mo limit (unless I want to spend more on overcharges than the game costs) means it might take many months to download a game.  I go for long walks in the woods instead.