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Caster of Magic Release thread : latest version 6.06!

(September 24th, 2015, 08:25)Tiltowait Wrote:
(September 24th, 2015, 06:17)Hadriex Wrote: The improved Grand Vizier might be a very small thing, but it's a HUGE quality of life improvement. Seriously, one of the biggest problems I have with playing a long game is how bogged down I get in choosing new buildings for countless cities, it ends up being most of my turn every turn.

Thank you so much for that.


And... If it wouldn't be too much trouble... I really like your mod, but I also like the base game and will likely continue to receive challenge games in it. So do you think you could make a tiny patch that adds the buildings only grand vizier by itself (compatible with insecticide of course). It would be a huge favor to me.

I second this! Having a practical Grand Vizier would make larger games feasible. I quit Master of Magic for a long time because the middle and endgame bogged down in endless micromangement. Tons of cities to keep and decide what needs to be built next, garrisons to build, and the more you win the game, the more you have to deal with. You've got hero stacks, replacement stacks to fill up the hero stacks when units die, forward garrison stacks to relieve the hero stacks from sitting on cities, it's just a big mass of things going on, none of them fun.

Thank goodness I learned to play on small maps, where you build your core of 4-5 cities and be done with it. I would just raze cities, but that incurs a substantial fame penalty, plus total population is where most of your score comes from. Having 80+ fame has a large effect on your gold income, and you can't hire champions unless you've got a high fame. Razing is just a poor option.

I posted the code above, it's up to you if you want to apply it into 1.31 or 1.40n or o or any other version. Note that the Vizier will still bypass building restrictions for Builder's Halls and a few others, this only makes it not build or change unit production.

I found the scouting range code and it was indeed limited to a max of 2 for units. It simply had "If range>2 then range:=2", seriously...did Scouting III heroes even work? I never actually checked but I know they existed which is odd.
More news :
-I found the source of the healing adds to maximum health bug and probably fixed it but will need to test to see.
-I added 2 new spells to replace Plane Shift and Enchant Road (well, the second is only an upgrade, really, it now creates roads instead of enchanting them)
-I made it so that whenever a unit needs to be pushed off from a full overland map square, it'll always be the newly created/recruited unit that gets pushed off instead of the cheapest. No more pushing away your best heroes just because they are Noble and cost nothing. No more rearranging your garrison every time you make a new unit in town either.
-I've increased the scouting range of many units, a few high end ones even have working scouting IV
-Speaking of scouting, I also fixed the displayed amount, now Scouting X displayed means it has 1+X range of sight instead of just X. No scouting = unit sees 1 distance, Scouting I unit sees 2, Scouting II = unit sees 3 and so on.

I want to test the game at least for a few days before releasing this upgrade, as some of these changes (especially the spell replacing Plane Shift) needed extensive code editing.
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Current situation
-I've finished implementing most major changes I have been planning. I will release 0.5 as soon as I finish my current game without problems.
-Caster units will now have ammo and mana independently, with both being properly displayed in the combat status. (need to see if the AI can handle this, the player side is working fine)
-Caster units cannot use the slider to avoid pumping spells from spell charged items.
-The moon and conjunction events have an additional effect for each
-and all the changes mentioned in the previous post(s)
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If you don't mind my curiosity. The wizard and hero portraits.

What are their dimensions and format? (.gif, .btm, ect.)
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(September 25th, 2015, 17:02)Hadriex Wrote: If you don't mind my curiosity. The wizard and hero portraits.

What are their dimensions and format? (.gif, .btm, ect.)

Open the lbx files in the tweaker with "lbx editor" and save the image to see.

Meanwhile I figured out how item powers work and enabled merging.
I'm now working on adding new item powers to the unused slots (Mana Leak, Giant Strength, Endurance).
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0.5 is now available for download!

-New item powers and spells
-Improved scouting range for units
-Additional effects for the 5 color events
-Magical ranged attacks use ammo instead of shots
-Unit view shows effective immunities instead of starting immunities (so Weapon Immunity from Invulnerability is now shown for example)
-Fixed some bugs from previous versions, or from the original game
-Production, population can now carry over after a finished building/unit/1k pop

0.5
-When a new unit is created (summoned, recruited, built, found) it will ALWAYS be the one that gets pushed off the square in case of having 9 units there already. This will allow you to keep producing new units in cities without having to return the garrison every time when a better unit was produced, and in general, helps to keep your stacks of units the way you left them.
-Fixed possible bug in undead rising (left there when I tried to get the “raise over 9” work)
-Removed hardcoded cap of 2 on scouting range of units.
-Scouting is now displayed as the amount the unit can see on top of the base 1. So Scouting I can see 2 cells, Scouting II 3, Scouting III 4, and finally Scouting IV can see 5 cell away. Unfortunately the game does not support displaying numbers greater than IV, but any higher scouting range than 5 cells is excessive anyway. These new numbers actually match the original description of the ability better.
-Units have new scouting ranges :
1 : All other units not mentioned below.
2 (Scouting I) : all Shaman, all Dark Elves, Hell Hounds, All Giants, Doom Bats, Sprites
3 (Scouting II) : All heroes except those that have more, Trireme, Galley, all Priests, Manticores, Doom Drakes, Wolf Riders, Efreet, Great Drake, Death Knights, Djinn, Sky Drake.
4 (Scouting III) : Ranger hero, Warship, Nightmares, Nightblades, Air Ship, Pegasai, Rangers, Angels, Colossus
5 (Scouting IV) : Beastmaster, Chosen,Priestess, Paladin and Druid hero, Demon Lords, Archangels.
Note that new scouting ranges are applied when a unit is created, so you have to start a new game if you want it to work on all units in the game.
-Razing a town now correctly displays the amount of gained fame instead of still subtracting loss for the razing.
-Healing a damaged unit will no longer grant extra maximum health for it. However, spells that allow gaining maximum health by overhealing the unit (Drain Life, Syphon Life, Life Stealing), still allow doing so, but no extra health is gained unless the unit is healed above the maximum health it has.
-New spell : Healing Charge.
Heals a targeted unit in combat for 10, however, this healing can surpass the maximum health of the unit, granting extra hearts. The maximum health increment is divided evenly between figures, rounded down, so a 8 figure unit can only gain +1 health per figure if it had no more than 2 damage before the use of this spell.
-Removed spell : Plane Shift. The AI will no longer attempt to cast it.
-AI now uses the Healing spell's priority calculation for Healing Charge.
-New Spell : Conjure Road – Replaces Enchant Road.
Creates enchanted roads in a radius of 2 around the targeted map cell instead of only upgrading existing roads.
-The event “Bad Moon” now grants -2 resistance to all units in battle, on top of its original effect.
-The event “Good Moon” now reduces the cost of all unit enchantments by half, on top of its original effect.
-The event “Chaos Conjunction” now increases the power of all direct damage spells by 33%, on top of its original effect. The following spells are boosted : Fairy Dust, Ice Bolt, Psionic Spark, Psionic Blast, Fire Bolt, Lightning Bolt, Fire Ball, Warp Lightning, Doom Bolt, Heroic Shout.
Life Drain and Syphon life are not affected because they are resistance based and have no “attack strength” to boost. Note that the boost of Warp Lightning from 11 to 14 strength increases its power by a lot as it means 3 additional bolts will be done.
-The event “Nature Conjunction” now increases the defense and resistance of all non-Death fantastic creatures by 2 in combat, on top of its original effect.
-The event “Sorcery Conjunction” now makes power spent towards increasing skill 4 times more effective (including extra points gained from Aether Binding!), on top of its original effect.
-Earliest turn for Diplomatic Marriage event is now 100 instead of 150.
-Towns with equal or more fantastic units than normal units cannot rebel instead of only those that had more. (It's funny how fantastic units don't reduce unrest yet prevent rebellion in the original version of the game) By the way, towns that have any hero in them cannot rebel either.
-Stroke of Genius even no longer requires Global Enchantments to appear (was replacing Disjunction)
-Caster units cannot add power to spells with a slider during combat, only wizards can. This is to prevent the bug of offering a slider for Spell Charged items. Unfortunately there was no coding space to check for Spell Charge directly, my only option was to change the “Unit ability?” check into “Caster is not wizard?” check. There are only a few remaning pumpable combat spells anyway : Dispel and Disenchant spells.
-Caster units now use ammo to attack instead of mana. Units have the following number of shots :
Sage : 8
Healer : 8
Druid : 8
Warrior Mage : 8
Magician : 10
Wind Mage : 8
Witch : 10
Golden One : 10
Warlock : 10
Unknown : 8
Illusionist : 10
Priestess : 12
Necromancer : 8
Chaos Warrior : 8
Efreet : 8
Djinn : 8
-High Men Magicians now have Caster 20 instead of Fireball Spell. Other Magicians still have Fireball only.
-Spells and MP are displayed together on the combat screen instead of MP taking priority.
-Ammo is displayed when right clicking units, even if they have have mana.
-Golem now has 14 attack, 9 defense and costs 180.
-Treasure generation : Now has a chance of
3/15 to roll gold
3/15 to roll mana
4/15 to roll spell
3/15 to roll item
1/15 to roll prisoner
1/15 to roll special.
Chance of special is reduced from 2/15 to 1/15. While I do want these to be available at slightly lower treasure points, I don't want them to be in every difficult lair due to repeated rolling until points are all used. Chance of item went down from 5/15 to 3/15 for same reason, finding 2-3 top tier items in every difficult lair is excessive.
-Each treasure roll for Gold now contains 50-1000 gold instead of 10-200. This helps balancing out the treasure always ending up as items or specials, by spending more significant portions of points on gold. Note that each roll actually uses up treasure points equal to the gold given instead of a fixed 100 due to a previous change.
-Each treasure roll for Mana now contains 40-800 mana instead of 10-200.
-Reduced spell treasure roll cost to 150 base from 200 base. (150=common, 600 =uncommon, 1350=rare, 2400 = very rare)
-Units defeated in combat are worth 1+floor(unit cost/32) exp instead of a flat 2 exp for everything. Units not killed but raised as undead or transformed into zombies still yield the standard 2 exp each.
-Blademaster now gives +1 to hit for each 3 experience levels. (+3 at max level)
-Super Blademaster now gives +1 to hit for each 2 experience levels. (+4 at max level)
-Fixed display of Blademaster abilities to show the correct amount of gain.
-Equipping an item with the ability “Merging” will now grant “Merging” movement to the hero.
-The Merging Item power is now available for enchanting, and requires 5 Nature books and 900 mana.
-New item power : Teleportation. Costs 1200 mana, requires 5 Sorcery books, and grants Teleportation movement type as well as the Endurance buff. This power replaces the old “Endurance” power which was removed.
-Unit view will now display the unit's effective immunities instead of the base immunites. Yes, that means units with Invulnerability or Wraith form will actually display the implied Weapon Immunity.
-New item power : Inner Fire. Replaces the removed “Giant Strength.” Grants Immolation, Cold and Fire Immunity and +1 attack. Requires 3 Chaos books to enchant, costs 500.
-New item power : Divine Protection. Grants Lucky and Death Immunity. Requires 3 Life books to enchant, costs 800.
-Adjusted pre-generated items to include new powers.
-Readjusted AI disjunction priorities because there were some problems.
-AI will no longer ignore the buying option if zero production is done.
-Hammerhands now cost 220 to build. This unit is far too powerful to cost only 160.
-Ranged attacks will now always use up all movement instead of only 10.
-AI combat disenchant area priority : Having an active Call Lightning or Wrack will now only increase priority by 20 instead of 500, so now there actually is a chance the AI will do something other than wasting all their skill on one big disenchant area spell.
-Fixed Bug : Call Lightning and Fortress Lightning used 14 base strength normal attacks instead of 8 lightning. Why the HELL are these storing there data in Wall of Stone of all things? Ofc they got broken when I replaced that spell.
-Prayermaster now grants +1 resistance to all per 2 levels of experience. Super Prayermaster is 0.75 per level. (meaning max normal is +4 and max super is +6, both achieved one level below maximum)
-Fixed the unit info display for both Prayermaster abilities to display the correct amount. (lol this took 3 times longer than changing the abilities)
-Paladins have 1 more health per figure.
-Restored the 20 Lightning Breath on Sky Drakes, they aren't that powerful as I thought.
-Flying units now move for 0.5 on enchanted roads.
-Fixed bug of AI crashing if no valid targets are available for the spells that received more priority (Doom Bolt vx invisible hero for example), priority will no longer be added unless it was non-negative.
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-Razing a town now correctly displays the amount of gained fame instead of still subtracting loss for the razing.

I don't understand. Do you mean razing towns no longer gives a fame penalty?
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I found few bugs in 0.5

- start new game, gold income is shown on main map like 45 but when i enter city and exit i see like 12. It is same problem when i choode trade goods in city. There is enormous fake gold income.
- barracks have no description on city scape when clicked RMB
- gold income on main map is changing when next turn is clicked. I see that value is changed into different for like 500 ms then it is changed again to normal.
- klackon race have corrupted description on start new game screen.
- when starting new game description for mana power and land size is not maching actual values
- when building new unit its sight of view is not affecting world map unless unit is moved single tile. In case of city on 1 tile island its impossible to use scouting ability becasue unit cannot move and therefore cannot refresh map tiles according to range of scouting ability.
- help for food reserve on main screen should have info that not used food is sold

Tom
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(September 26th, 2015, 19:51)Seravy Wrote: -Magical ranged attacks use ammo instead of shots
could you share how you did this? many people wanted something like this but i don't think we have the info published anywhere.
dance!
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(September 26th, 2015, 22:59)Hadriex Wrote: -Razing a town now correctly displays the amount of gained fame instead of still subtracting loss for the razing.

I don't understand. Do you mean razing towns no longer gives a fame penalty?

Yes, it hasn't been giving one since 0.1 but the displayed amount was wrong until now.

Quote:- start new game, gold income is shown on main map like 45 but when i enter city and exit i see like 12. It is same problem when i choode trade goods in city. There is enormous fake gold income.
I know, haven't had time to try to find out what's the reason for this. The calculation within the city is working fine, and the displayed gold is correct when you have no units selected before clicking end turn, but at other times it's somewhat random.
Not sure if this bug was present in the original game? Or insecticide? If not then maybe the gold to food conversion is causing it. Nothing else that has anything to do with global gold production was changed.

Quote:- klackon race have corrupted description on start new game screen.
Text was too long, I shortened it by deleting the parts about higher unrest.

Quote:- when starting new game description for mana power and land size is not maching actual values
Yes, still need to update those.

Quote:- when building new unit its sight of view is not affecting world map unless unit is moved single tile. In case of city on 1 tile island its impossible to use scouting ability becasue unit cannot move and therefore cannot refresh map tiles according to range of scouting ability.
I think this was like this in the original game. Probably impossible to change.

Quote:could you share how you did this? many people wanted something like this but i don't think we have the info published anywhere.
A bit too difficult to tell right now, I'll do it later it's like 8-10 places in code that need a change. I can at least say however that the codes floating around for changing the cost of the shots from 3 to another value are wrong, and change several unrelated addresses on top of the correct ones.
Separating the two however is a different thing, you need to also change displays to show the ammo for casters and add actual ammo for the units.
Please find me a text based file-compare and patch tool, I would love to release these changes but manually typing hundreds of bytes of hex code is not fun.

Quote:- help for food reserve on main screen should have info that not used food is sold
thx, will do that, good idea.

Edit : The gold display inconsistencies come from two sources.

First, there seems to be two places in the game where gold income is calculated, Noble and Food to Gold changes were both applied to only one of these. I really have no idea why there are two of these to be honest, looks redundant.
Second, the marketplace fixed gold change contained bad information, this is what I get for using code made by someone else. Back then I haven't found this cool disassembler yet.
The C091F part should be C081F instead.
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0.51 is up!

-Losing and winning with spell of mastery now shows new wizards if that feature is installed. The defeated portraits appearing during spell of mastery are still not replaced, due to technical reasons doing so is not possible at the moment. (The tweaker can't seem to replace animations only single images in the LBX)
-Fixed some help texts
-Fixed gold being displayed wrong on city screens and overland due to buggy marketplace hex code used.
-Fixed gold being displayed wrong overland due to it being calculated at two separate locations, while some changes were only applied to one of these.
-Fixed “halved food upkeep” not applying to actual food produced and converted to gold, only to checks for desertion. Yes, the game actually calculates the total army food upkeep in two, identical subroutines, too.
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