Feedback

[VM]

If you have tried reMOM, and have an opinion, or even if you haven't but still have an opinion, we would love to hear it.

[WhiteMage]

I looked at the Remom version on Oct 14, 2011 on sourceforge.net and I have the following review:
1. When I went to http://www.sourceforge.net and searched for “remom”, “remaster of magic”, and “master of magic” terms, none of those found your project. I tried both with and without the quote marks. So somehow the search finding should be improved.
2. Too slow to download all files one by one through sourceforge’s aggressive advertisement packed web site. In addition to what you have, upload a single zip file, which includes everything someone needs to test. I would also add the installation instructions there.
3. After successful installation and start of the game I see a movable window. As I click on places, pixel coordinates show up, which are relevant to the viewable window, not the whole map. This is fine.
4. The scrolling works by right click and there is a city, which can be also entered by right click. City production selection appears to be correct. This is fine.
5. After the “Change” button is pushed, I saw a small graphics problem under “OK” and “Cancel” buttons: some white shadow appears to the top left of these buttons. Same problem exists for “OK” and “Dismiss” buttons on existing units.
6. Next turn button is clickable and it advances production correctly, but in turn 1 I had 17 production and in turn 2 and after that I had 12 production. Not clear why.
7. Trade goods and housing do not appear to work yet.
8. I built some buildings and units. This is fine.
9. Settler and spearmen make unlimited moves per turn.
10. Settler and spearman flash too fast so that it is bothering in graphics.
11. A group of spearman was built, but I could not separate them.
12. When I right clicked a spearmen unit, massive melee bonuses were shown, which increased even more when there were many of them. Not clear why.

[VM]

1. When I went to http://www.sourceforge.net and searched for “remom”, “remaster of magic”, and “master of magic” terms, none of those found your project. I tried both with and without the quote marks. So somehow the search finding should be improved.

This is odd. I remember finding it, but now I cant. Im not sure what I could do about this.

As I click on places, pixel coordinates show up, which are relevant to the viewable window, not the whole map. This is fine.

This is a small developer feature, it helps me placing graphics on screen.

5. After the “Change” button is pushed, I saw a small graphics problem under “OK” and “Cancel” buttons: some white shadow appears to the top left of these buttons. Same problem exists for “OK” and “Dismiss” buttons on existing units.
Next turn button is clickable and it advances production correctly, but in turn 1 I had 17 production and in turn 2 and after that I had 12 production. Not clear why.

Ill check these out. There is something fishy with the original city, I have noticed that remaining turns are calculated incorrectly.

Settler and spearman flash too fast so that it is bothering in graphics.

What would be an acceptable? Currently it should flash every second for half a second or so.

A group of spearman was built, but I could not separate them.

Yes, separation and merging of stacks are to be implemented, as are movement limits. Ill tackle this once I have the map generation.

When I right clicked a spearmen unit, massive melee bonuses were shown, which increased even more when there were many of them. Not clear why.

That would be +5 melee for all bonus on barb spearmen. I was testing special abilities, and apparently that one remained in the uploaded version.

You can press C (capital c) to access the debug screen, where you can create new cities for different races. Then you should be able to doublecheck the building tech tree. You also should be able to create any unit tn the game, hovewer, special abilities do not work yet. Basic stats can be doublechecked.

[WhiteMage]

OK. After further testing of the same version:
13. When the game begins, there is a negative food production in the city. When I click on the workers, 3 of them change to farmers and they can’t be changed back to workers. This explains why the 17 hammers were shown before pushing them. This is currently an initialization problem, so those 3 workers should start as farmers. Other workers can change back and forth to farmers.
14. Each farmer produces exactly 2 food. This is about appropriate. Each worker produces variable amount of hammers. This is consistent with the original MOM, but is not appropriate, since it motivates human players to do micro management. I strongly advise uniform hammer production per workers and farmers at all times, which can be a fraction. As you and I discussed earlier, a rounding accurate to .01 hammer would be an ideal solution that can drastically improve player experience. Also, these fractions should be displayed in graphics. Simply show the last food’s picture partially (from left to right), which approximates the numeric value being calculated. Even better, show the exact numeric value in addition to the picture when the mouse is hovered over the food production, hammer production, etc.
15. Selling of buildings is not possible yet.
16. Flashing of my unit is about 5 cycles per second. I think that half cycle per second is about right. That is, one second on, the next of off. Flashing rate should be an graphic option to be chosen by players for those of us who have epilepsy or eye irritation. Also, programming to conform various hardware, OS, etc. maybe necessary.
17. When I pressed “C”, the debug screen appeared. After I pressed “Create City” I got an “Unhandled Exception” error. Let me know if you need the details and I send it to you by email.
18. I got another error when I clicked “add unit” then “OK”: “System.Exception textbox for figuresbox should be an INT32!” … My understanding is that in the debug window only the “create city” works so far (more or less). The buttons on the right are not ready yet.
19. After many tries I was able to create a city by using position 001,001, but these are not pixel coordinates, so it was a guesswork. More help in the window for creating cities and coordinates maybe good.
20. Building tree will need some change. I will write about that later.

[VM]

City creation:

type in name
select race from dropdown menu (note: the uploaded version may have textbox insted. Ill refresh it later today)
select population (for best results, select a number between 1000 and 25000)
select placement in format X,Y where both X and Y are tile coordinates. (example: 2,3 for best result select a tile with land and not sea)
Click create city.

When you click add unit, you have to fill all fields correctly. Then the unit will be added. Notice, that all units currently in game are already added. You can doubleclick on a unit to view/change its statistics.
Same with Buildings and races. Special abilities are under construction.

Building tree is created as described in the manual.
These are developer features, therefore I didnt spent too much time on them. They arent very userfriendly at all. :|

[VM]

I updated the downloadables.

added features:
You can now sell buildings.
Main screen now displays mana/gold/food income, and reserves.

[VM]

Oh, and also: magic screen

[WhiteMage]

I tested again on Nov 5, 2011.
21. After downloading and extracting the zip file, and changing the path to point to the original MOM folder and executing reMOM.exe, I received an error and was prompted to reintall .NETFramework. I thought this was strange since the previous version still worked fine on my computer. So I reinstalled .NETFramework, which made it possible to start the game.
22. After the game started “Network lobby” appeared. I tried each of “Join Server”, “Start Server”, and “Start Game” options and each resulted in “Unhandled Exception Error” or error message that “Wizard does not correspond to the rules”. I also tried to play around with values, but I had no luck what I was supposed to enter. It is not clear what else I can test here at the moment. A help button would be appreciated here on what to do. Also, maybe automatic IP detection. How to get correct port? Otherwise testers will likely get stuck.
23. Your post in Realmsbeyond is not clear “you might want to generate starting cities for all wizards in startupInfo”. Where is the startupInfo? How to do that?

[VM]

Ill add features to make things easier. Like,
-folderbrowser if path not found
-description on how to create a game and how to join

Currently, a wizard needs a name and a starting race to validate.
Later things like pick numbers will be checked against the rules.

To host a game (or play alone) you have to enter a port number, "start server", then "start game".
The idea behind is: start server will start listening for clients to join. Once all players joined, start game will start the game.

To join a game: enter ip address and port number (must be the same port than on server) then join game while server is listening.

Automatic ip detection is planned (the label is there alredy), but this will be lmited to local ip. If youre behind a proxy (like most internet isps), you will have to do some magic yourself. (port opening, ip determination, whatnot). You can determine wether you are behind a proxy or not by going to whatsmyip.org or similar website, and compare the ip seen by the site with that of your own ip config.

Your post in Realmsbeyond is not clear “you might want to generate starting cities for all wizards in startupInfo”. Where is the startupInfo? How to do that?

Thats a remark for MelvinBates. Hes doing the map generation, so all Wizards need a starting city. Dont worry about that.

[WhiteMage]

Continued testing of download on Nov 5, 2011:
24. After entering Name, Race, Port (I entered 1 under Server controls), Start server, Start game I was successful starting the game.
25. There was a basic layout of the old MOM’s magic screen. It will be necessary later to add slots for more than 4 wizards and +- buttons to fine tune mana distribution, since MOM did not allow exact choice when mana income was high.
26. Selling building was possible by simple right click on building. This is fine for now, but as an option a right click should bring up a question to confirm and gold to get. Some players may prefer single click, other players may prefer 2 clicks.
27. When the first spearman was built and I clicked the city, I received a System.Exception error followed by a permanent freeze/inability to do anything in the game. I had to force end application from Windows.