Are you guys sure?
Amoeba and Crystal are not meant to appear until very late in the game. There is a year threshold in the vanilla (someone, help me with the exact date). I had never witnessed them in my game, for instance.
(Although I have messed with the random events generator, because it had bad habits of supporting the strongest player with good events. Also it does not work properly with small universe, so I reccommend to switch it off in that case)
kyrub Wrote:Are you guys sure?
Amoeba and Crystal are not meant to appear until very late in the game. There is a year threshold in the vanilla (someone, help me with the exact date). I had never witnessed them in my game, for instance.
(Although I have messed with the random events generator, because it had bad habits of supporting the strongest player with good events. Also it does not work properly with small universe, so I reccommend to switch it off in that case)
Positive, they didn't show up at all. I play long games on huge galaxy maps. The number of events that occur at all also seems to be significantly less than before. In one game there were only two events of any kind during the whole thing.
Version 1.40M, Amoeba and Crystal didn't appeared for me either in my latest games, but the random events worked just fine (Medium Galaxy / Normal Dificulty / 4 AI's)
I have some suggestions for the patch, some of them would not be feasible but still... Keep in mind that I am an average player at best, that likes to play on normal difficulty, since its a long post i will try to put it on a spoiler tag, i believe that way we won't deviate from the more important discussion about amoeba/crystal/etc. Sorry for any errors in my English
Regarding the patch structure, I noticed that Kyrub do not want to change the game too much, for fear of modifying it instead of fixing the bugs, but the line between fixing and modifying may became blurred sometimes, something seem as an exploit may be in fact intended by the creators. For some reason I remembered a kind of patch made for another game, UFO Extender, that offers a possibility for the players to choose what they want or not, I believe that would offers the best of both worlds, the patch could have a configuration file of some kind telling it what stuff should be loaded, something like this
That way I could for example theoretically have the AI receive no bonuses (free colony ships/etc) while having my scouts retreat automatically if they didnât get there first, would have a lot of unintended consequences but still itâs an option
Regarding the interface, I am accustomed to use the +- keys of the keyboard do adjust sliders, then I have noticed that it takes 20 presses of a + key to fill a slider to the max, but using mouse, it takes 25 clicks to fill the same slider, I am not sure why it is made this way but maybe it could be the same for both? (25 clicks)
Regarding the ai, at my last game, I took an Mrrshan planet, they took it back, and I got it back again, and positioned my fleet there, thinking I was strong enough to oppose them. Only after I got better scanners that I noticed the ai randomly patrolling its planets, with most of their fleet in transit to some point, if they had concentrated their fleet they could easily pushed me out forcing me to sue for peace, I would like to see the ai concentrating the fleet more, and not sending small portions of it flying just for fun. In the same light, would be nice to see the ai suddenly realize that it can send troops from more than one planet and coordinating its arrival to the same time.
To be fair the AI did this to me once, but probably it was because they only had one planet, they send their entire fleet, and I won, making them having nothing at âfleet strengthâ status. Also because of that I believe the ai should retreat earlier from a losing battle to avoid unnecessary loses
Regarding the final war, I always remember and old dos game called âsword of the samuraiâ, at the first stages you have land and go slowing rising on power until the lord favors you to succeed him, usually the lord chooses the second most powerfull (besides him) for that position, but there were some instances that the lord would not like you and choose someone else, them yuou could challenge that decision and other lords may support you too and a battle ensues. I imagine something like this applying to the final war, were the AI that voted for you would join you in the fight against the galactic republic, or vice versa, ending the war would end in victory
At last, regarding the sound: First I think its unnecessary to the game to repeat the start of the music after an AI accepts an agreement (lets say a trade agreement) except if the AI DONâT agree with it, because in that case the music switches for an âangryâ version
Also, the most high quality music that MOO can offer (that I know of) is with Roland MT-32 / Roland LAPC-I configuration, but besides giving a better sound, this sound configuration have unintended consequences (Keep in mind that I use Dosbox 0.74, and not an real Roland Synthesizer)
First, the game takes a long delay to start the game (and also to load a saved game), in comparison the Sound Blaster starts/loads immediately
Second and more strange, the emperor clothes are always the human version at the ending, no matter the race you are, and your name is inexplicably changed to â3â. I remember this being reported I believe in Atari forums, a long time ago, I didnât found the thread anymore but found a reference of the delay issue here (7th post by Uglyhead)
Here are the exact same ending with both configurations:
The same delay occurs in Master of Magic, so it may be a problem with the engine or something, maybe it could be fixed somehow. I am only interested in this part because the sound itâs really better (at least for me) I attached two files, The Darlok Audience Theme With Roland and Soundblaster, for comparison
have to revise my message - ameba actually once showed, it was quite a late game, so I feel, that ameba/crystal trigger is now highly uncommon event and the occurence of such event is pushed much further than was before...
Ingos Wrote:Version 1.40M, Amoeba and Crystal didn't appeared for me either in my latest games, but the random events worked just fine (Medium Galaxy / Normal Dificulty / 4 AI's)
I have some suggestions for the patch, some of them would not be feasible but still... Keep in mind that I am an average player at best, that likes to play on normal difficulty, since its a long post i will try to put it on a spoiler tag, i believe that way we won't deviate from the more important discussion about amoeba/crystal/etc. Sorry for any errors in my English
Regarding the patch structure, I noticed that Kyrub do not want to change the game too much, for fear of modifying it instead of fixing the bugs, but the line between fixing and modifying may became blurred sometimes, something seem as an exploit may be in fact intended by the creators. For some reason I remembered a kind of patch made for another game, UFO Extender, that offers a possibility for the players to choose what they want or not, I believe that would offers the best of both worlds, the patch could have a configuration file of some kind telling it what stuff should be loaded, something like this
That way I could for example theoretically have the AI receive no bonuses (free colony ships/etc) while having my scouts retreat automatically if they didnât get there first, would have a lot of unintended consequences but still itâs an option
Regarding the interface, I am accustomed to use the +- keys of the keyboard do adjust sliders, then I have noticed that it takes 20 presses of a + key to fill a slider to the max, but using mouse, it takes 25 clicks to fill the same slider, I am not sure why it is made this way but maybe it could be the same for both? (25 clicks)
Regarding the ai, at my last game, I took an Mrrshan planet, they took it back, and I got it back again, and positioned my fleet there, thinking I was strong enough to oppose them. Only after I got better scanners that I noticed the ai randomly patrolling its planets, with most of their fleet in transit to some point, if they had concentrated their fleet they could easily pushed me out forcing me to sue for peace, I would like to see the ai concentrating the fleet more, and not sending small portions of it flying just for fun. In the same light, would be nice to see the ai suddenly realize that it can send troops from more than one planet and coordinating its arrival to the same time.
To be fair the AI did this to me once, but probably it was because they only had one planet, they send their entire fleet, and I won, making them having nothing at âfleet strengthâ status. Also because of that I believe the ai should retreat earlier from a losing battle to avoid unnecessary loses
Regarding the final war, I always remember and old dos game called âsword of the samuraiâ, at the first stages you have land and go slowing rising on power until the lord favors you to succeed him, usually the lord chooses the second most powerfull (besides him) for that position, but there were some instances that the lord would not like you and choose someone else, them yuou could challenge that decision and other lords may support you too and a battle ensues. I imagine something like this applying to the final war, were the AI that voted for you would join you in the fight against the galactic republic, or vice versa, ending the war would end in victory
At last, regarding the sound: First I think its unnecessary to the game to repeat the start of the music after an AI accepts an agreement (lets say a trade agreement) except if the AI DONâT agree with it, because in that case the music switches for an âangryâ version
Also, the most high quality music that MOO can offer (that I know of) is with Roland MT-32 / Roland LAPC-I configuration, but besides giving a better sound, this sound configuration have unintended consequences (Keep in mind that I use Dosbox 0.74, and not an real Roland Synthesizer)
First, the game takes a long delay to start the game (and also to load a saved game), in comparison the Sound Blaster starts/loads immediately
Second and more strange, the emperor clothes are always the human version at the ending, no matter the race you are, and your name is inexplicably changed to â3â. I remember this being reported I believe in Atari forums, a long time ago, I didnât found the thread anymore but found a reference of the delay issue here (7th post by Uglyhead)
Here are the exact same ending with both configurations:
The same delay occurs in Master of Magic, so it may be a problem with the engine or something, maybe it could be fixed somehow. I am only interested in this part because the sound itâs really better (at least for me) I attached two files, The Darlok Audience Theme With Roland and Soundblaster, for comparison
Well Iâve read a lot that the Roland MT-32 / LAPC-I sounds better than Adlib / Soundblaster, but that would be a matter of personal preference. There are games that appear to sound a lot better With Roland, like Police Quest 2 or Space Quest 3, but for some games like Dune, Adlib/SB beats Roland. Iâve also read that a Real Roland MT-32 is much better than what Dosbox emulates. I liked the Roland music more in MOO, maybe I was too accustomed with Soundblaster =P
But anyway there appears to be a problem with Roland implementation on MOM/MOO, I will try to ask an guy on Youtube who has an Real MT-32 to test it with MOO, so we can know if the problem lies in Dosbox or in the code, if its in the code I hope Kyrub can fix this someday.
Well I didn't mean to imply I think Soundblaster even in MOO's case is superior all around. Just out of the Darlok example it seemed better to me. Perhaps if there had been more comparisons between the two.
The guy I mentioned earlier (He is super friendly by the way), tested MOO and MOM in a real Roland and also recorded it (if anyone is interested you can see here and here). He told me that when the delay occurs, the MIDI light flashes, indicating that the game is sending information to the MT-32 (usually in the form of custom sounds) and that this is normal for some games. Apparently this is not a bug at all.
Iovan, something I realized is that maybe the sound I hear isnât the same you hear, if I understood correctly, the stuff goes something like this:
When Dosbox emulates Roland, it uses the default Windows MIDI Synth, for this reason a real Roland sounds better than Dosbox, BUT Iâve read that the default MIDI synth of say windows 7, is worse than that of say Win XP, and I am not sure how that goes on Linux/xBSD so theoretically the sound may be different, there are ways of improving the MIDI synth of windows , for example with BASSMIDI driver and some soundfonts, like WeedsGM3 which improves a lot the sound of games that use MIDI
Anyway, Iâve recorded different samples of MOO with Roland, SoundBlaster and BassMidi, from Alkari, Bulrathi, Human, Meklar and Sakkra. they are here - http://www.sendspace.com/file/gvs9c2
Sometimes the music may sound slower or have some inconsistency (The Sakkra Bassmidi files have some), this is a problem with the recording software and not the music, but you can have a nice idea of how it sounds.
After listening to the comparisons I have no doubt that Roland has the best sounding instruments (followed by BassMidi). Roland also has a couple of the better arrangements (such as the Human audience theme). However I think that a problem arises with Roland and BassMidi on the representation of most of the music compared to SoundBlaster. I have a love and tolerance of chiptune music and there is something to be said for simplicity. The better instruments and apparently extra tracks (or at least more easily heard tracks) over power some of the feeling the music represented (at least to me).
Let me give you an example of what I mean. Take the Sakkra audience music. Roland and BassMidi both represent the instruments in use far more realistically. The problem though is the SB representation of the drums always gave the track a throaty growl quality to it. It matches the image of the Sakkras far better in my opinion. Was MoO's music designed with more precise instruments in mind? It kind of changes the feeling of tracks by how the instruments sound.
It comes down to personal preference I guess. I prefer the better instruments but I just don't think they match some of the feeling certain tracks have with the more artificial sounding instruments.
I believe you perceive the soundblaster/Adlib music to be the sound intended by the developers, and if this interpretation of mine is true I believe you are correct. I say that because after observing the game, we can notice a few details: The game works flawlessly with Adlib/SB configs, those where the most popular cards at the time, and the other configurations have some problems, suggesting that the game wasnât tested enough with those configs
I was testing the sound and off all the options available to configure the music (12), six worked without problems (No Sound, IBM Speakers, Adlib and SoundBlasters Original, Early and Pro), three could not be configured in Dosbox (Pro Audio Spectrum / Pro Audio Plus / Gold Sound Standard) and three worked with problems (Roland MT-32 / Roland LAPC-I / General MIDI)
The last three, besides the name change (In my last game I ended up being named emperor N_ UVWv_, seriously) have another problem: when losing a game in the council, the victory animation is played and the name is changed, the game may be calling the wrong animation and filling the name variable with garbage, I donât know why the music config alters this tough. Worth mentioning that Soundblaster Early and General MIDI configurations worked even with the option greyed in the configuration screen, but SB Early didnât have any problem with the ending
I wish to know if anybody around here can reproduce this error (Just change the sound config to Roland and load a savegame near the ending) so we can know that this is not an isolated case.
