Important announcement!

[unicurse]

How are you enjoying the Steam forums for the game? :D

[LordKane773]

How are you enjoying the Steam forums for the game? :D

It relatively calm so far, but that could change at any moments, other then Blake's and DarkZenith's throwdown things have been calm.

[Delvonshi]

A worthy first post to congratulate you on becoming something official. The work you've done is fantastic and I've enjoyed your mod for years. I'll probably grab it on GoG when I finish my current campaign on 5.75. Don't let anyone's comments bother you (unlikely with how long you've been dealing with the mod). I say this because most of them will be the people who haven't followed the mod to this point and will have little to no knowledge of the reasoning for the various changes/balance it brings.

On a side note, I see this as a positive for Slitherine. I was unsure what they would do with MoM after acquiring it but this allays my fears.

Cheers and keep up the good work!

[carn]

Many of you are already be aware but Slitherine obtained the rights for Master of Magic last summer. You might already know that they're including the -previously unofficial- patch in the official release, but I haven't talked about Caster of Magic.
So Caster of Magic will be available for sale on Steam, GoG, and Slitherine's website starting today!
While that means you can't download it for free anymore, I hoping this money will ensure I'll be able to continue developing Caster of Magic in the future no matter what happens, and ideally, produce proper source code for it as a next step in development. As you already know, Caster of Magic was developed entirely by hacking the executable files as no one has the source code for the game anymore. While I was able to get very far using the current approach, at this time the really important missing features - enabling more than 4 enemy wizards in the game for example, or adding new content without having to remove the same amount of existing stuff - will require source code. That said, this is a plan for the future, and as long as possible I will keep patching the current Caster of Magic.
Obviously, the optional anime portraits won't be included, those remain available for download from my website separately, and of course, you need to own the game first to use it.
The Master of Magic patch is now version number 1.52 and will be part of the official release of the game, which is also available on Steam and Slitherine's website starting today, in addition to the existing GoG version. The contents are similar to the 1.51 patch but any included change originating from me or Kyrub's Insecticide that changed gameplay is removed and now available as optional patches, so you don't have to worry about that anymore. Lots of thanks to Drake158 for his help in making that possible!
https://www.slitherine.com/game/master-of-magic

Nonetheless, the usual changelog for the new version :

6.0
-Fixed bug : when fleeing from a combat with only combat summoned units remaining, the “while fleeing you lost” message contains invalid text.
-Earliest turn for rampaging monsters is now turn 32 instead of 25
-Changed rampaging monster total stack strength formula : (Turn+2*Difficulty-16)*(2+Difficulty) became (Turn+Difficulty-16)*(2+Difficulty)
-Changed strongest rampaging monster allowed formula : Turn*(Difficulty+2)+90 became  Turn*(Difficulty+2)+60
-The AI will not research Plane Shift before turn 160. (Note, it isn't usually possible but on the highest levels of difficulty, a Sage Master/Theurgist AI can get it a lot earlier than this, especially if they have low book counts)
-Expert difficulty AI population and gold bonus decreases by 10%.
-Master difficulty AI population, production and gold bonus decreases by 10%, magic power increases by 10%.
-Lunatic difficulty AI population bonus decreases by 10%, Gold and Production by 25%.
-Added “Difficulty” section with the full difficulty effect table into the document between AI and Known Bugs
-Fixed bug : AI ship to land attacks fail to recognize empty cities as valid targets, as they see it as a tile that's occupied but has no enemies ->must be friendly.
-Fixed bug : Engineers sometimes move for 0.5 to the next tile while building a road instead of 1.
-Fixed bug : Tactician increases chance of AI wizards picking Lawful as their objective.
-Cult Leader now increases the chance of AI wizards being Lawful.
-Astrologer now increases the chance of AI wizards being Lawful.
-Conjurer now increases the chance of AI wizards being Aggressive.
-Fixed bug : Exorcise item and unit ability ignores Spell Lock.
-Mystic Surge's “enemy To Def reduced by 1” effect now applies to all attack types instead of being limited to melee, thrown and missile.
-Default second guaranteed uncommon sorcery spell pick for human players changed to Water Elemental from AEther Binding. (having the only uncommon create spell, now that the realm has one, is a more useful and interesting option for new players than a raw advantage of more casting skill.)
-Default first guaranteed uncommon chaos spell pick for human players changed to Chaos Channels from Fire Storm.
-Fixed bug : on the magic screen, the displayed remaining turns for researching Spell of Mastery is wrong.
-Immolation will now deal 4 damage per turn to Web, making it disappear faster.
-Fixed bug : wizard customization can't be reset after spell selection if there was nothing to choose. (by Drake178)
-Fixes bug: small islands are often smaller than intended (By Drake178)
-Fixed bug : Nature and Sorcery nodes were considered as an incorrect amount of food when placing capitals (unfortunately, rivers are still not considered as they are generated several steps after cities are.)
-Fixed bug : when saving and reloading while a unit is being transported, it might sometimes become unable to continue moving.
-Floating Island now costs 45 mana but cannot move the turn it was summoned.
-Fixed bug : AI casts Floating Island on a tile that has enemy units
-Fixed bug : AI casts Floating Island on a tile that has 9 units already
-The AI will now cast Floating Island at these targets in this order of priority :
1. The first “Ship necessary” place on the plane opposite of their fortress that existed the previous turn.
2. The same thing on their own plane
3. The closest valid sea tile to their fortress on their home plane.
This completely replaces old targeting which was random adjacent tile next to random town the wizard owns. This makes the AI able to summon Floating Islands on planes where they have no cities yet, allowing their units stuck on small tower islands to leave, and in genereal, reduces the time they waste by not summoning it where it was needed.
-The AI will have additional chance to cast Floating Island if “1.” on the previous list exists, even if it wouldn't cast it at all otherwise as it has enough ships on their home plane. (target validity is not checked here though so it might end up being cast elsewhere if the tile was taken between the turns.)
-Fixed bug : Outpost growth calculation used (maxpop+10)*2 as the maxpop value resulting in much higher growth and less shrinking than intended.
-Increased Guardian Spirit rampaging monster value (40->55) to make them appear in smaller groups on low difficulties.
-Invisibility now costs 6 to maintain instead of 4.
-The AI is now required to cast at least 70 other spells before attempting to cast Spell of Mastery again after a failed attempt.
-When banishing wizards, spells will be found only the first time that wizard is being banished by that player. Banishing the wizard any further times will not yield spells. (If you want to get more spells out of a player, use the intended channels to do so, trade or threaten the wizard. This change should allow players to concentrate fully on their strategy instead of having to take the number of times they banish each opponsnt into considersation.)
-Carrack now looks slightly different from a Galley to make it easier to recognize.
-Fixed bug : AI sometimes sends stacks from/to the wrong plane with Plane Shift
-Orc Hordes gain 1 defense and 1 resistance.
-Minotaurs gain 1 defense.

Gladly bought this on GOG; then i realized, that its windows only;
i got to make master of magic and caster of magic 5.79 work on linux;
what about 6.0?

[carn]

Gladly bought this on GOG; then i realized, that its windows only;
i got to make master of magic and caster of magic 5.79 work on linux;
what about 6.0?

Ok, i managed to resolve the problem the following way:

1. Realizing that it is also out on Steam and that Steam proton often works to run windows games on linux;
2. Spending the appropriate time to mourn that i would have to pay the about 5 bucks for the original game again and that that money will go to the pockets of that insidious person stealing my time by making this old game still worthy to play (took about 1 second;
3. Buying game + DLC on steam;
4. downloading proton 5.whatever on steam and setting it as version to be used;
5. running caster of magic;
6. reading error message "... delete language file";
7. deleting file in .steam/steam/steamapps/common/Master of Magic/Launcher/Settings/; and
8. run game again, click away error message;

still to do:
estimate in light of my hourly wages whether it is worth the effort to get the 2,5 bucks refund from gog.

[MrBiscuits]

That's good news, hopefully you'll get some money for all the hours you've put into making this mod.

The part about the source code is a little ambiguous. Do you have access to it now or will you in the future? If so that is even better news.

[Seravy]

That's good news, hopefully you'll get some money for all the hours you've put into making this mod.

The part about the source code is a little ambiguous. Do you have access to it now or will you in the future? If so that is even better news.

Neither. I'm planning to make my own. In fact I already started. It'll take some time and I'll keep updating the current CoM meanwhile, but it'll be worth it.
   

[MrBiscuits]

That's good news, hopefully you'll get some money for all the hours you've put into making this mod.

The part about the source code is a little ambiguous. Do you have access to it now or will you in the future? If so that is even better news.

Neither. I'm planning to make my own. In fact I already started. It'll take some time and I'll keep updating the current CoM meanwhile, but it'll be worth it.

Oh excellent. What are you making it in?

Will it have a larger resolution etc.?

[Seravy]

It'll be for windows, no dosbox needed, resolution will be the usual 320x200 that's what all the game's graphics are made for. Resoultion will be scalable to 2x, 3x, 4x etc the original size.

[Seravy]

Gladly bought this on GOG; then i realized, that its windows only;
i got to make master of magic and caster of magic 5.79 work on linux;
what about 6.0?

Ok, i managed to resolve the problem the following way:

1. Realizing that it is also out on Steam and that Steam proton often works to run windows games on linux;
2. Spending the appropriate time to mourn that i would have to pay the about 5 bucks for the original game again and that that money will go to the pockets of that insidious person stealing my time by making this old game still worthy to play (took about 1 second;
3. Buying game + DLC on steam;
4. downloading proton 5.whatever on steam and setting it as version to be used;
5. running caster of magic;
6. reading error message "... delete language file";
7. deleting file in .steam/steam/steamapps/common/Master of Magic/Launcher/Settings/; and
8. run game again, click away error message;

still to do:
estimate in light of my hourly wages whether it is worth the effort to get the 2,5 bucks refund from gog.

Try running the game from dosbox without using the Launcher. Double check if all the filenames are still in uppercase - Linux is case sensitive. As far as I know the game does run on Linux but the installers and launchers might not however they aren't necessary anyway. You might want to copy your game files to a folder that's easy to mount in dosbox before doing that.