Master of Magic remake - Hello Worlds of Magic!

[doomtrader]

Hi all,

I'm registered here for couple of years, but this is my first post on the forum.

I'm one of the developers working on Worlds of Magic.
As we have promised the FAQ has been launched, and can be found here:
http://forum.wastelands-interactive.com/showthread.php?8774-Worlds-of-Magic-FAQ
If you will have any questions, please ask, we will do our best to answer them (if possible).

 

[Red Key]

This year looks very promising for fantasy strategy. Age of Wonders 3, Eador, an expansion for Fallen Enchantress, and probably others I am forgetting.

What is the target release date for Worlds of Magic?

 

[Maniacal]

We already have a thread: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=488112

 

[doomtrader]

Red Key, we would like Worlds of Magic to be finished this year, or early 2014.

 

[Wastelander]

Hello again! First, the promised FAQ:

- Hey, what’s that “Worlds of Magic” thing?
- Worlds of Magic is a turn based strategy game in development, designed as a spiritual successor of the classic Master of Magic DOS videogame.

- What do you mean with spiritual successor?
- Worlds of Magic is trying to capture the true “spirit” of MoM. 4X game play in a fantasy world heavily dependent on magic. Units, heroes, spells, cities, random maps, multiple planes. It's all going to be in WoM.

- Does that mean you are working on a retro game?
- The game will have the classic’s flavor, but it's being designed with a modern engine (Unity3D). We hope to give it a classic “feel”, but with all the modern trimmings.

- How do you plan to distribute the game? Will it be open sourced?
- The game won't be open sourced, for sure the game will be available by digital distribution channels. If local distributors will be interested in retail version, we'll certainly consider it.

- How much do you plan to charge for it?
- Just a handful of rupees. We will do our best to make this game really affordable.

- What do you mean with the D20 system? D&D stuff?
- Not exactly. The D20 system is a ruleset released to the public under the Open Game License and could be considered version 3.5 of the AD&D rules. In some places WoM sticks to the D20 rules. In other areas, such as magic and spell casting, it uses a D20 “inspired” system making use of mana points.

- What platforms are you programming the game for?
- For PC, Mac and Linux, we are also planning an iPad version.

And then, few later updates and questions.

Planes

As you probably already know Worlds of Magic is going to boast a number of different planes. These are going to be:

Prime Material (A normal fantasy planet)
Paradise (Life)
Shadow (Death)
Air
Earth
Fire
Water

During game creation you'll more than likely be able to pick the number of planes (from 1 to max) and control what planes may be created and whether or not a plane can “repeat”. That is to say, might you get two or three prime material planes or two shadow planes. The planes themselves can almost be considered “planets”.

Read more here

Independent Empires

Here's the idea. Each independent city has a limited AI (as they all must anyway). It builds units to defend itself, builds buildings to better itself, sends out raiding parties to enrich itself, etc. Now, we give this AI a random “ambition” element. The bigger the city gets the more likely it is to get “ambitious”. Once that happens it receives (however we work it in the code) an AI upgrade. This AI can have some real random elements in how it plays, but it uses no magic. The idea is that some civic leader has risen through the ranks to found their own small empire. Once this happens an announcement is made that the empire of such-and-such has just been founded. The new empire AI starts playing like any other AI. It looks for cities to conquer, settles new cities, tries to eliminate it's opponents, etc.

This new AI empire could even start hiring heroes and causing real trouble. Now, this runs into another debate about whether we should use custom or predefined heroes, but we'll discuss that in another thread.

The basic question is this: How would you feel about getting stomped by a random AI that couldn't even use magic?

Read more here

Unlockable content

School 1: I bought it! Why should I have to work to play it my way?
Good point! I generally agree that if you paid for a game you should be able to enjoy it your way. If you want to set the difficulty on “I fell asleep playing it while watching TV, but I still won.” that's up to you. It's not my play style, but I'm not the game police.

School 2: If I can just have everything from the start why bother working for it?
Good point! I like to earn things with e-sweat, e-blood and e-tears (I hardly ever really cry over a game anymore). As soon as I start a game I set it on impossible and take it on at it's best. If you can earn something I go after it.

You see the problem here? Both are right. There's nothing wrong with either. So, how do we do both?

Read more here

Well, more questions? Any ideas?

 

[Double A]

Can there be a space plane?

 

[Maniacal]

Just a handful of rupees.

So.. 25 cents CAD/USD?

 

[GrayingGamer]

You keeping the unit-stacks fight on a new mini-map feature?

 

[doomtrader]

You keeping the unit-stacks fight on a new mini-map feature?

Yes,
with a possibility to autoresolve the battle

 

[LDiCesare]

Any hints of how far the game is, like is the design done, is there a prototype or somesuch?
Do you have a budget, a team, an ETA?

I hate unlockable stuff so please make it anything but mandatory. Achievements (shiny badges) are ok as I can ignore them.

Ever checked Dominions? Your undead race really looks like (late era) Ermor (Ashen Empire) in terms of not needing gold to get troops (whereas corpses are good for reanimation).

 

[doomtrader]

The game was pretty far in development state in Torque, however we have decided to port it to Unity 3D.
It's not yet alpha, but is farther than a prototype, the works on the game started about a year ago, so we are pretty far with the development, but still in a place which will let us implement new ideas or make some changes.

 

[Wastelander]

Happy monday there! Today we have a lot of updates about Worlds of Magic (as well as lots of questions for you lol) so let's get on it.

1.- Undead race and Necromancy.

Here is the starting lineup for the Undead race.

Settlers (They need another name, I know)
Engineers (The undead race can think, remember. They can use roads.)
Skeletons
Skeletal Archers
Zombies
Deathweb - The deathweb attacks with a poisonous bite, and can disable opponents with its web attack.
Huecuva - They fill the role of clerics in the Undead empire and unleash negative energy to consume a map tile. Corrupted tiles provide a boost to Undead cities but decimate resources in living cities.
Bonestorm - The Undead army's siege engine.
Phantom Lancers - A full suit of armor and horse barding, animated by the vengeful spirit of a slain warrior.
Arcane Wraith - Arcane Wraith are powerful sorcerers.
Spectres - Spectres are agonized spirits of murdered humanoids, unable to find rest in the afterlife. Their cold touch draws life essence from the living, and humanoids killed by this life drain may become spectres themselves. Fortunately for the living world, spectres are nearly helpless in sunlight and flee from it if possible.
Death Guards - One of the ultimate evils, these undead knights are heavily armored, and powerful in both martial and arcane attacks.

Additional info here

Bigger version here: http://screen.bitterglory.com/in/13-02/jwtpjwlqk.jpg

Tightly related with the Undead, we have the Necromancy. There's no need to explain too far what Necromancy is, but there's an important concept: energy. Necromancy uses positive and negative energy to effect the body. It has no dealings with the “soul”. In other words:

"Necromancers can heal the living, just like life mages do. However, once someone is dead necromancers don't bother to bring them “back” they just reanimate them and make them get back to work as an undead slave. While someone is living they use positive energy to keep them going and negative energy to hurt them. If they're dealing with someone who's already dead they use negative energy to heal them and positive energy to damage them."

A ton more info about Necromancy

2.- The insectoid race.

We want the insectoid race to be a really UNIQUE faction. A unique faction needs a unique name, so I want to hear your ideas . Also we are discussing how to turn characterize the faction, and there are some of our considerations (in Aaron's voice).

"In my mind all this makes their strengths fairly obvious. There is no unrest. They pay 100% taxes minus food. (The hive mind understands that other races love useless gold.) They have high production bonuses. They attack using wave after wave of their men. They have exoskeletons so their base armor class is good."

And that sounds good. But...

"On the other hand they give the other races the creeps. It's almost impossible to effectively bring other races into their hive. So, captured cities have extreme unrest issues. However, if they complete destroy enemy cities they generate even more negative feelings."

Mooore insectoids info

3.- GOLEMS

Not surprisingly this is one of our potential new races.

"To dive into the problems first (you guys will probably see more problems than I do, but I'll do my best) golem are just too powerful and in D20 they have no intelligence. They're so immune to everything in the universe it's ridiculous. You could throw the entire Mentalism school out of the window when facing them. Some of their lowest tier units would be top tier, so you wouldn't be able to build any units until your city was almost complete. So far it doesn't look like much of a faction option.
So what can be done? Well, I would suggest following (loosely) the example D&D set with it's “living construct” sub-type. Now, we couldn't use it exactly for two reasons: First, it belongs to Wizards of the Coast (I think). Second, their implementation isn't a perfect fit for WoM."
Asmodai, one of the friens in our forum adds (as always) extremely interesting points:
"In my mind, as in D20, Golems are powerful creatures. I like the idea they are created by dwarves, it's true to MoM and it's been cemented in my head by Dragon Age and other lore. I wouldn't mind other faction wizards being able to create them as well via finding Golem manuals (items) or possibly even a high level earth spell or similar but I don't really picture a spearman type (as far as strength) golem. I had a similar weakness with Draconians though and they are quite popular so I'll just defer to the masses. I do think of them though as fantasy robots (which is supported by many of your comparisons) and while I don't mind them as rare high level units having an entire faction of the "robots" running around for me is something I'm not a huge fan of in the fantasy setting. While I'm not a fan of Eberron it's quite popular and players can play as warforged (basically golems) from level 1 so perhaps there is your solution for inspiration.
I definitely want to see golems in the game, I'm just not big on an entire faction of them."

Opinions?

Possible Golem Faction

Bigger version here: http://screen.bitterglory.com/in/13-02/iqkciwwev.png

Well, see you around ;D

 

[Double A]

Settlers (They need another name, I know)

Tombsowers

A unique faction needs a unique name, so I want to hear your ideas

Chitloslavia

 

[da dick]

2.- The insectoid race.

We want the insectoid race to be a really UNIQUE faction. A unique faction needs a unique name, so I want to hear your ideas

a really unique creative would be "simants" if you can avoid copyright issues.

in other news, i really liked the veloxi in starflight

 

[doomtrader]

Hey Double A,

I really like the Tombsowers

 

[Double A]

If it's used, do I get .00001% of the profit?

 

[doomtrader]

Why not.

 

[doomtrader]

The game designer starts to talk about the AI in the game.
This is just a general info but we are very curios what do you think about it
http://forum.wastelands-interactive.com/showthread.php?8861-Artificial-Intelligence

 

[LDiCesare]

I rarely read something that hollow about ai. They write it as if game ai's are bad because they are coded by a bad player. That's extraordinarily presumptuous. They are bad because it's harder to code an ai than to play. How do you recognise an enemy is preparing an attack? How do you value diplomacy? etc. And once you have answered those questions, the ai will always play the same way, which makes it predictable. It can't invent new strategies and can be abused... There's not a word on how to tackle the actual issues of ai programming.

 

[doomtrader]

How do you recognise an enemy is preparing an attack? How do you value diplomacy?

And how does human player recognize the enemy is preparing to an attack, and how does human player value diplomacy?


I'm not going to answer in this particular example but more as a general rule.
The easiest way to check is the enemy preparing to an attack is to compare the enemys (of course this is very foggy word, as this can include various meanings from non-friendly to hated) forces' potential near our borders to our forces in the region. Also some additional checks can be made like: overall economy potential, past events, allies, valuable resources close to the enemy, etc.

Diplomacy in those kind of games (non-historical) should be very personalized. This means every faction/leader should have some scripted habits, with smaller or larger randomness. This allows to create leaders who are trying to adopt to the current events, or always act the same, this can even allow to implement personal preferences.

LDiCesare, if you have any doubts, but can spare few minutes, just register at our forum and ask questions directly to Aaron. I'm sure he will do his best to answer you and also I'm sure that difficult questions will help to make the game better.