The glorious Evolution of Master of Mana - Big Update over the years - Soon (tm) on Steam

[Sephi]

It is a very good question. You just try out stuff. Some strategies will work and some won't. It is more about the process of creating these strategies. I find this process really fun. With time you will get better but the more important thing is that you are having fun. And of course you don't have to minmax. You could decide to roleplay and play a leader or a faction with a certain worldview and base your decisions on that.

 

[Covr]

Very good progress! It is impressive how much has been done since 2023, amazing.

I have a couple of comments, might be useful based on my experience (almost 10 years of IT project management/delivery of software):

-It is about time for you to set up your company(if you don't have one already) or selfemploy and put the game officially on Steam/GoG/Epic. You need a legal entity to do this, you surely know this all. You need to trademark the name of the game, the world, etc. It costs a very little but for 4X games market is rather small and audience needs a lot of time to discover hidden gems like this.
-you need to start getting wishlisted on Steam and this is also time consuming
-This might also help you to find a proper publisher. I know that right now you are probably kind of against it, and you are right! But there are still some good people there who won't interfere with development giving the space to focus on important stuff. See Esoteric Ebb development history. Keep in mind that vast majority of publishers would just rip you and don't go with the first one that have reached you. Unless it's hooded horse or raw fury Localisation, better art and promotional activities are the most valuable areas to help you with. Usually translation to 3-4 extra languages (Chinese and Spanish especially) might boost the sales by 50%, see early announcements by Brad on Elemental:Reforged.
-AI animation - don't overdue this, I can't be as distracting as the lady with a sword gif. However the second gif (warlock?) was really good. There's a vast group of ppl that will absolutely hate you for using any AI art in the game and you should just ignore that and be prepared for a shower of **** from them.
-You should work more on worldmap screens, especially these resource icons with black backgrounds, they does not fit all not and could be considered as repulsive. Do you have a full worldmap (I mean the main game screen, where you control your units, see resources, etc) with full UI? Nevertheless, resource icons needs to be smaller, maybe with a oval shape? I assume that armies would be a 2D static images - just a face of a leader is not good enough. This should be a full sprite, because that's what ppl are used to. Shields of Loyalty did it almost right recently, as for the low/no budget game. They've even managed to animate the sprites, maybe that's the place where AI could help you.
-This might sound subjective, but unless you have all major features implemented you should not focus a lot on details or finetuning things that work right now. I feel you are focusing too much on AI, small improvements to terrain, minor diplomacy efforts while there's no full UI or general presentation of the game. I think your priorities are right, but sometimes you get drifted off by some new cool idea to implement instead of focusing on boring basics. This is very common for one man projects and difficult to overcome.

Out of curiosity - what's the engine and tools you are using to develop this?

 

[Sephi]

Thanks for the feedback, I use mostly unity, visual studio, blender and paint.net.

I will set up a company at the beginning of next year. Unfortunately I cannot register as selfemployed in my country for game development. Currently working on the in game help / tutorial / advisor / pedia. That's the last major thing that needs to be done before putting a demo on steam.

Right now I am just experimenting a little bit with AI Animation. Some is good, some is bad, some is confusing/distracting and some is plain weird or gives you nightmares .The models should get a lot better in the next years. Sadly I cannot try out Sora 2 yet. I will probably make the whole leader animations toggable anyway with a video option.

I worked on the traderesource display on the worldmap since I last posted them. This is how they look currently, the background is a bit transparent to make it less dark.

The way I have developed the game is that I implemented a major feature, then finetuned it, then implemented the next major feature etc. I have seen too many projects where the finetuning is done at the end and then they run out of time and nothing was finetuned. At this point the game is feature complete. I might implement some smaller features to spice up the lategame later on as I playtest the game more. The worldscreen UI is done, it looks like this. Screenshot is a few weeks old but It should give you the idea. Notifications to the left, Resouces and Worldmap at the top. Empire overview with different tabs/views at the right. Screen buttons at the bottom. I would like to improve the minimap at some point.

Thanks for mentioning Shields of Loyalty, I did not know that game. They use a few interesting technique, I might have to buy the game for some proper "research" .

 

[Covr]

Thanks for reply - the Worldscreen looks really nice, I like a lot of information and brownish colour palette. Some minor nitpicks and comments:

-The label with city name, population (15?) and something else/growth (57) - yellow font on yellow/beige background is not a good idea. I've saw that screen on my phone display and could not read the name properly. Similar with notification - grey on yellow, not that easy to read.

-What's the huge number near the cities list (e.g. Fallsden 40750) - is it pop number? is it really needed?

-Minimap is cool Old Panzer General/Fantasy general style!

-Do you plan to have visible roads on the map? Or large forest areas? Ruins? It looks barren now to be honest.

-Where's the next turn button?

 

[Sephi]

yes, the city overview display with "Delaward" is horribly outdated and needs a complete remake. The yellow color is very bad and in general it has too much of a comic style vibe. It's like 5 years old, I will cook up something better soon. The huge numbers at the cities are the population.

At the moment the mapscript does not have any beautification logic that adds little details at the end. A 1-tile forest or hill or lake here and there would go a long way. On the minimap the darkgreen area is a large forest that does not fit on a single screen. something like this.

The button at the bottom with the circular saw blade is the next turn button. When you push the button to end your turn the saw blade spins until the next turn starts.

 

[Sephi]

The new city overview display is done

On the left is an icon that represents the faction/race living in the city. The number is the population in the city, it's just there for immersion like population numbers in civ1. On the right side is a mini portrait of the leader of the empire that owns the city if it is owned by an empire. the mini portrait will show different emotions that depend on your relation. Instead of an abstract defense power value it now shows the amount of fortications the city has. Fortifications are basically free units if you defend the city in a tactical battle. The number of fortifications a city has depends on the defense power of it.

 

[Blake00]

Looking a good mate.. I really gotta share this project with my Master of Magic communities.

With that in mind I recommend you update your OP at some point with your best/latest stuff to ensure lurkers visiting the start of the thread see just how far you've come.

If you wish to preserve the original post then you could always shove in a horizontal line [ hr ] [ /hr ] and put some new sexy stuff above line and keep the original starting out OP post beneath it.
.

 

[OzzyKP]

Looking good!

I recommend adding commas for the population numbers. 57,224 is clearer than 57224.

 

[Sephi]

Looking a good mate.. I really gotta share this project with my Master of Magic communities.

With that in mind I recommend you update your OP at some point with your best/latest stuff to ensure lurkers visiting the start of the thread see just how far you've come.

If you wish to preserve the original post then you could always shove in a horizontal line [ hr ] [ /hr ] and put some new sexy stuff above line and keep the original starting out OP post beneath it.
.

Thanks for the recommendation. The ugly old desert screenshot had like 2.7k views, some people gonna be in for a surprise next year when they see the trailer. I have added a screenshot of how the desert looks currently and kept one of the old screenshots. It looks better in motion with the sandstorms. I should probably add some more screenshots soon to make it easier for readers to keep track of things.

 

[Sephi]

Looking good!

I recommend adding commas for the population numbers. 57,224 is clearer than 57224.

Thanks, I have changed population display and everything that has a similar size like housing and unrest. The separator used will depend on the windows culture settings, so en-us gets a comma and fr-fr gets a point for example.

 

[Blake00]

Thanks for the recommendation. The ugly old desert screenshot had like 2.7k views, some people gonna be in for a surprise next year when they see the trailer. I have added a screenshot of how the desert looks currently and kept one of the old screenshots. It looks better in motion with the sandstorms. I should probably add some more screenshots soon to make it easier for readers to keep track of things.

Yeah definitely stick the trailer there in the OP as well when it's ready! Also once you've got that trailer I'll def do a shareathon.

 

[Sephi]

I had to redo the mountains because of the new heightmap system and I had an idea how to make longer mountain ranges more interesting. Before it felt quite repetitive.

 

[Sephi]

I have added a few more screenshots to the second post of this thread.

 

[Covr]

How is progress, mate? Would you mind if I spread the news reg your game over rpgcodex.net forum? They will love the ideas and hate the AI stuff!

 

[Blake00]

Yeah posting there gets you a lot of attention which is good, but you need a thick skin as the folks there can be savage.

 

[Sephi]

How is progress, mate? Would you mind if I spread the news reg your game over rpgcodex.net forum? They will love the ideas and hate the AI stuff!

Sorry for the silence, I was busy to finish polishing the combat system before christmas. The americans have a saying that goes something like this 'What happens at civfanatics, stays at civfanatics.' Otherwise I would have to edit the thread heavily since there is a lot of old graphics that could be misleading. When new year starts my first priority will be to set up a steam page. It should be online at some point during Q1 and can be shared then.

This was the roadmap I was working on.

The interactive tutorial should be very useful for new players. There are about 10 hints that guide the player through the first turn and only focus on the basics (camera, found your first city, start a building, recruit your first explorer and send him on a mission, set your laws, use the end turn button)

The game will display more hints as they become relevant. For example if one of your cities is sieged by an enemy you get information on how to break the siege. If you need to press a certain button it will be highlighted with an animation.

The gif doesn't loop properly but just ignore that, it looks fine ingame.

I have added the ability for users to deselect individual music tracks so players can customize the music to their preferences. I have also created wildlings/orcs music that I really love. And I found a great Polish composer and licensed very atmospheric dark fantasy music. I will probably license some more music in the future.

In testgame V I had a lot of great memorable moments.

• Early in the game I conquered a trade village located in a larger desert. Instead of keeping it I gave it to a guild of elemental mages who turned the village into a scholar village. Since I aimed for science victory scholar villages are very useful and the village was in the middle of a big desert that is useless to my faction. On the other hand the city would have given me access to a few interesting resources so it was a tough decision.
• One tech gave me a random spellscroll and it turned out to be create mountain. One of my cities had an earth node nearby and casting it next to the earth node created 4 mountain tiles instead of just one. I got a lot of metal from the mountains and specialized the city into tools production.
• I started in the corner of the map and since I had friendly relation with my neighbours I could grow in peace. However when I founded a city closer to the middle of the map I got quickly invaded at about turn 110. I lost a lot of soldiers but barely managed to defend the city. The Invader AI however was not very liked by his neighbours and quickly killed off.
• At around turn 150 I found a great location for a new city. Lots of useful resources for export into my bigger cities and mountains nearby to start another tools production.
• At about turn 200 I met the last AI which at that moment already had 93% of the necessary score to win the game. I knew I could not stop the AI anymore. It had started at the other side of the world and snowballed out of control. In retrospect I should have explored more to meet the AI earlier and then tried to slow it down. However you only loose if you don't make top3 and if you don't make that you can always choose 'one more turn'. Each AI that finishes the game before you will reduce your score but the game encourages players to try difficulties where they are not guranteed to be first to make it more interesting.

 

[Sephi]

After testgame V I focused on the combat system. At the beginning of this year I had reworked the code so that promotions and battlecaptain classes and equipment all use the same system so any effect that is given by a promotion can also be put on equipment. It turned out that there were a few bugs lingering around from that. There were also a few rare cases in which animation would go off in the wrong direction.

I tested each unit and each ability and focused on the visual clarity. There was some old placeholder stuff that I replaced, melee units just through swords at each other when they attacked. Now they bump into each other and sometimes charge when they enter melee combat. Teleport abilities now have an animation, they fade out at their old location and fade in at their target. Archer volleys originally had no animation and when I added an animation it looked weird because the damage to the target was dealt at the start of the animation and not at the end. So I had to add a projectile logic to all projectile abilities so they only trigger once the projectiles hit their target. Not only looks much better now but also opens up some gameplay options. When you see some arrows flying towards your mages you can now give your swordsman an order to protect the mages (short timed buff that reduces damage taken by 30% while active). I did experiment a bit with animations

But I found out that constant animations add too much visual noise. The whole premise of the tactical combat is to be fast paced. I do not want any 30 minutes battles. All units act at the same time to make it faster. There is no scrolling or zooming to make it faster. You basically have the role of the general and need to monitor all units on the battlefield at the same time. Their health, their morale, the abilities they use. There are four different speed settings and you can pause at any time. What I try out now are animations that are only triggered by abilities. When you put your caravan guard into defensive formation they raise their shields. When hellbats use their whispering madness ability their eyes glow red. The tactical combat is very unique and after playing over a thousand battles over the years I still prefer it by far to any other 4x combat system. But my taste might be very unique. I have renamed auto combat to quick combat and made it the default. In the future I want to give player some more option between 1-click-autoresolve and full manual tactical combat. The aim is to make the quick combat automation good enough that players can only use quick combat if they want to. Like if they are more interested in diplomacy or magic or other aspects of the game rather than combat.

I added some very basic beautification logic to the mapscript. It will spawn 1-tile forests or grasslands or lakes here and there to add more variety. I have also added mountains to the map borders to make them feel a bit more natural.

 

[Sephi]

I rewrote the way the AI picks it's leader talents since it was a bit too random before. Every leader starts with a predefined leader talent (a custom leader chooses one before the game starts). At certain leader levels you can pick another leader talent.

Each AI leader has an opinion for each leader talent based on the personality of the leader. Some talents they will take more likely and some talents they will never pick. AI leaders also value talents higher that are shared among their allies and friends. Since having a shared leader talent gives a huge diplomacy bonus to friendship it should sometimes lead to the emergent rise of alliance blocs similar to religion blocs in civ4 where leaders of the same religion often times get along well and work together. Since you can have multiple leader talents you could join multiple blocs.

If you gain the trust of an AI you can teach them any leader talent, also talents that they otherwise would never pick (Sauron Diplomacy).