Master of Myrror Fantasy Mod 2.0

[mrtn]

Well, I've played 130ish turns as Tauron now, and have some comments and bugs.
The pedia needs more pics IMNSHO. Oil as the default Strat resource is kinda silly. You should also make terrain icons.
How about prechosen victory conditions? Do you have all conditions or should you disable some?
Remember to fix the author names ("Livy compiles wealthiest nations"). One idea is to use the mages not included in the mod as authors...
the popHeads.pcx is no beauty, the unhappy chaos guy has severe palette spots.
The serpent pedia pic is the flak one.
Should Curagh upgrade to galley? Just an idea.
The Durloc (or whatever his name is, Sauron) city name Rashem give me bad vibes as that means Race Home in Swedish.

Anyway, I'm having fun.

 

[Drift]

@dreiche2

Tech tree text visibility can't be helped. Although, I could test different color techboxes. Prerequisites could be clarified. I'm still unsure about removing the restriction of level 3 techs requiring all level 1 techs, level 4 techs requriing all level 2 techs and so on. It comes down to tech costs I think. Other than that, the prerequisites are simple - you can move either horizontally or vertically from tech to next one.

Reason shields are called energy is to make it a bit more feasible that they are used to cast spells and summon units. Final mod will talk about summoning stuff, not about building. I guess I could have kept the shields as they are more familiar to people. Energy could be called simply production. Hmmm.

@mrtn

Pedia is a work in progress. I've focused my efforts on the actual gameplay and content instead of niceties. Terrain icons are something I'm not sure about... Most people won't ever visit terrain section. I'll consider it though. I'll go through different unit pediaicons for the next patch - serpent isn't the only one with a wrong pediapic (at least elven lord and shadow rider that were both changed in the last patch, but didn't get new pediaicons.)

I don't really like prechosen victory conditions. Freedom of choice is in my opinion a good thing. Thanks for the author reminder - didn't have them on my list. Idea about unused mages is a good one.

Popheads are also bit of a work in progress. I noticed the unhappy chaos guy's palette problem after uploading the last patch. If E.D makes those skeleton popheads he offered, I can live with the rest. Unless someone wants to do some demonic popheads. If not, I can fiddle with their coloring a bit more.

Complains about city names should be directed to Simtex, they are straight from original MoM. Besides, I'm not complaining about Persepolis even though it means Asspolis in Finnish, am I?

Glad to hear you like what you're seeing.

Edit: and yes, curragh should upgrade to galley. Will do for next patch.

 

[dreiche2]

About the Energy thing:

No don't call it production, it makes sense as it is now (when casting spells etc. just like you said), and adds to the atmosphere... I was just curious...

So basically shields/energy is the magical energy used to cast spells, and gold/mana crystals is a way of storing magical power for later use?

The only problem I see then is what about buildings and units that are actually built not "cast" (only a philosophical problem of course! ).

Still I prefer it the way it is now, even if it means that sometimes you "cast" buildings and the like... I was only confused when I read the civ.pedia for the first time, because of the difference between Mana and Energy... also because in the city screen it still says gold and shields (but I know you will change that later, so again no problem here...)

Keep up the good work!

 

[Cabbit]

I've been playing your mod a bit, not enough to have any great comments on gameplay but I do have just a couple on appearance:

The Tech tree can be hard to read for 2 reasons:

1. You can't see pre-reqs

2. The orange text for turns to research is hard to read

I don't know if 2 is made worse by the blue background and I don't know if you can change text colors, just making an observation.

In general a lot of the mod is very dark... I don't know if it's because it was raining here today or if its becuase of the darkness but I found it a little bit depressing.

All in all I think your concept is really cool and so far the gameplay seems pretty good. Back to the mod for me.

 

[Cabbit]

Played a couple hours more and noticed the following bugs:

When I pulled up a link to Horses and Cattle in the civilopedia
I got something that siad "invalid entry" or something like that

(maybe you took these resources out... but they were still referenced in a tech advance for something)

edit: also the picture for shadow rider is a catapult

I had a problem when I tried to build a costal fortress... it wouldn't complete; it just stayed at 1 turn to complete for a few turns, then I switched to caraval and that built imediately... I have no idea why that happened.

A couple not-so-important comments:
I don't know if I'm the only one slightly bothered by seeing "Merlin of the Merlin", might it be plausible to name the civs Merlinites, Freyenites, Arielians, etc?

Admittedly I never played MOM (although I did play the old mod for civ II) but is there really no better name for the eras than "first era" and "second era"? If nothing else you could do something like "the age of mages" & "the age of wizardry" or something like that.

Great mod... I'm really starting to like it

 

[Drift]

@Cabbit

The texts are a bit hard to read because of the blue coloring. I don't know whether you can change text color, perhaps from palette files, but it's something I don't know how to do. Like I said to dreiche2, I'll experiment with different colored techboxes.

About the prereqs, I can't really make them show since I'll run out of space in the advisor screen. I'll think on the whole prereq system for a bit though.

About the darkness, have you downloaded the updated terrain graphics?

Did it crash to desktop when opening those links in pedia? I'll try to go through civilopedia and remove these dead links.

All unit pediaicons will be corrected for next patch.

The coastal fortress thing sounds strange. My guess is that it's not caused by the mod. (At least I have no clue why it would do something like that.)

"Merlin of the Merlin" and others will be fixed when I start with the mod's texts. Until then, you just have to suffer them. Sorry.

First age and Second age are placeholders. I tried to think of something better but nothing came up. Age of mages and age of wizardry doesn't sound bad at all btw.

Thanks for the comments!

 

[mrtn]

Maybe you could name the eras for the four elements? Or, I guess you get just two of them... Age of Fire doesn't sound so bad.

 

[Nibble]

Drift,

I have the same problem with the Costal Fortress. It is placed on the build list as if it were a wonder and stays at one turn.

Thanks.

 

[Drift]

@mrtn

Age of Fire, Age of Water, Age of Air and Age of Earth? Hmmm... no? I'd have to come up with a reason for them.


About the coastal fortress. It seems to have capitalization checked making it act as a "wealth" improvement. I never build them so I hadn't noticed it. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

It's such a small bug that I won't make an official announcement about this, but here's the updated .biq that fixes the problem.

 

[Nibble]

Drify,
Thanks for the quick update. I'll be testing it later this morning.

 

[Nibble]

Sorry about the typo (Drify) Drift.

 

[Cabbit]

About the dead links in the civ-pedia:
They don't cause the game to crash so its not a real urgent fix I just thought you might like to know.

About the prereqs:
It's not that bad of a system really, once you get used to it you can usually figure out what you need for an advance... It's mainly the text color that bothers me.

About the darkness:
I think I have the updated version of the terrain... which still seems rather dark to me. It's not a big issue though, just something slighlty annoying. One thing though is that sea and ocean squares can be really hard to tell apart.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Cabbit
...About the darkness:
I think I have the updated version of the terrain... which still seems rather dark to me. It's not a big issue though, just something slighlty annoying. One thing though is that sea and ocean squares can be really hard to tell apart.

How about making Ocean really dark? Deep purple, or something like that? And to remove the possibilities of silly jokes I'll add the rock band here already:

 

[Drift]

I'll see what I can do about the ocean. It is a bit hard to distinguish from sea.

mrtn, I was a little tempted to turn that element suggestion into an Earth, Wind & Fire joke so the band was indeed a good idea. I don't think I could have helped myself.

 

[The Last Conformist]

Originally posted by mrtn
How about making Ocean really dark? Deep purple, or something like that? And to remove the possibilities of silly jokes I'll add the rock band here already:

That's not fair!

 

[ChaosLord]

Mod looks excellant, i'm downloading right now. Though its been ages since i've played the original MoM I had an idea of something to add for the mod. What about Apprentice units for each of the 4 magic types that you can upgrade? IE, if you played as Death you'd be able to build 1st Level Apprentices of Death, then various tech advances would allow upgrading the Apprentices.

The base cost of these units should be pretty high, but only as an intial build cost. Don't make the shield cost for higher level apprentices increase a ton, so the AI isn't left with old Apprentices. The Apprentices should also be close to or above the power of other units along the techs their upgrades are with. For the abilities I was thinking this:

Death-Ability to enslave/convert defeated units into Skeleton workers.(starts out without a/d values, but could increase with upgrades so it doubles as defensive/attack unit)
Chaos-Has a ranged lethal bombard that increases with upgrades.
Life-Naturally has more HP(to represent healing) and more defense possibly with upgrades.
Nature-Early on ignores forest move cost, then hills, then mountains, till finally treating all terrain as roads with upgrades.

I think done like this the AI would use them properly. This would be a good way to represent the heros in MoM, since they would be stronger then normal units. With a high cost there shouldn't be a huge number of them and it'd add flavor to the various magic types.

 

[Drift]

@Chaoslord

The idea isn't bad at all, but I feel it requires too much balancing. I'd have to get the unit stats exactly right so that they appear but are not the only units the AI builds. I have a feeling I couldn't get the AI to build them or they would be the only units AI ever builds.

One option could naturally be a small wonder producing these units. Hmm. Well, I'll put it on the list of things to consider. At the moment I'll try to focus on adding simple stuff and balancing the existing content. I've been having less time lately for development so I don't get easily excited about new, large features. Idea is good though, so I'll definitely think about it.

About new patches. Current version seems to work so well that I'm not going to release an update for a while, but focus my efforts on a larger patch.

 

[mrtn]

Originally posted by Drift
[B...About new patches. Current version seems to work so well that I'm not going to release an update for a while, but focus my efforts on a larger patch. [/B]

You think so, eh? well, then you didn't count on Count Mrtn, mwahaha! :vampire:
The Enchanted Spring has palette problems, if you use Photoshop you can have the magenta and green as default colours in the palette... I do, saves lots of trouble.
I think you should use the same pic for the Troll resource pedia pic as for the resource. I was looking for a grey troll for ages until I finally found that yellow Ogre.

 

[Drift]

Originally posted by mrtn
You think so, eh? well, then you didn't count on Count Mrtn, mwahaha! :vampire:
The Enchanted Spring has palette problems

Hmm. True. I don't think it constitutes as a problem that requires a patch of its own though.

I think you should use the same pic for the Troll resource pedia pic as for the resource. I was looking for a grey troll for ages until I finally found that yellow Ogre.

Yep, changed some resource icons in the last patch, but forgot to update the civilopedia. I'll do it for the next patch (the big one).

 

[mrtn]

I want more links in the pedia. The info for a wonder shouldn't just say that it gives a Giant Spider, it should link to the unit (which apparently is called Black Spider... ). This would help.

I don't like the way you have completely messed up the palette for the popHeads. I want civ colours in the heads, but you have even removed them from the humans. The last row (in Photoshop) is different greens, and they give the civ colours...

I think I'll take another stab at messing the WH one up.

I'm enjoying the game.