Master of Magic News

We’re looking for beta testers
Before we move on to the actual dev diary, we would like to make an announcement that might be very interesting for quite a few players: the start of the beta isn’t far now, and we’re looking for willing beta testers!

If you would like to give us a hand and give honest feedback on the current version of the game, look no further and click here.

Show and tell



So this month the dev diary will be brief, or rather it will certainly show more than tell, as we are gearing up towards a proper Beta build now. Our friends and family have been hard at work being our personal guinea pigs and precursors of the process. But, soon (can’t tell you a precise date, but it is coming up fast now) we will want to extend this to all of you, our lovely fans.

So, for this month, I will share once again, some of the feedback led changes we have made, especially to the visuals of Master of Magic.

• The zoom out option was improved, to give a better overview of the land. 
  
• Many tooltips were given more precise information, so you can see where the various numbers come from. 
  
• City borders are now visible, so you know the area of influence of a city. 
  
• And markers for places of interest were changed.
  

• The new game settings have been updated, and more customisation options added (we hope to increase the list further in the future too).
  

• The new town image was changed to look more like a drawing, rather than mimicking reality in 2d. 
  
• More information was added for the city’s production, resources etc, as well as some immediate info for the race. 
  
• All of the buildings on the map have a tooltip attached. And you can now destroy buildings from this window too.
  

More pretty things

• The new Wizard Info window, on top,  has received many facelifts and we think it is finally hitting the right notes.
  

 

• As you may have noticed via the other screenshots, the parchments have been updated with a more vibrant colour palette that has brightened things up.
  

Unit info screens have undergone the visual upgrade as well. 

• Firstly, there is the parchment with a more vibrant feel.
  
• Secondly, inspired by feedback from our Discord channel, the icons got a revamp and are now more colourful.
  

• The city management window is also brighter, but it also received an additional functionality - when you double click on the city, it will now take you directly into the city view (before, you had to click on the button, and it placed you outside the city, so too many unnecessary clicks). Note, that the mini map in both is a placeholder!
  

• The race selection screen got the visual update too, but also, it now contains more information about the specific race bonuses and limitations.
  

Sss’ra

For a final art reveal, as hinted before, we have redone the mighty Wizard’s portrait, to reflect his old, noble visage better. We hope you like him, we ain’t doing another one...

The Magic of Master of Magic


This month we decided to go back to the beginning as it were and talk about what exactly makes Master of Magic magical. The answer of course is spellcasting.

Over 200 Spells

Firstly, there are so many different types of spells. There are resistance spells, buffing spells, battle spells and global spells that can affect the whole world, terrain changing spells, curses, damage dealing blasts, crowd control, transforming spells, creating objects, summoning creatures and/or heroes, buffing the Wizards themselves, making your towns more efficient/or making your enemies towns suffer - the list goes on. And even within these types of spells, there are unique characteristics and effects. For example, while some spells share a simple and common mechanic, like summoning spells - they pretty much do what they say on the can, they summon things, but even they can sometimes surprise you.

Summoning spells call upon a creature of magic to serve your will. Those creatures are governed by their own set of rules, and are typically split into two types: battle only summons and world summons: that become part of your army both overland and in combat. But then, even here, you get Torin, the extra special champion that can only be recruited via a Life summoning spell. He is an exception to the summoned units and to heroes because his ‘tags’ are both “fantastic units” and “hero”.



For the purpose of game mechanics then, Torin is classified as fantastic (mostly... ), so that all spells and skills that affect fantastic units can also affect him - although he has kick ass immunities, so you are not likely to affect him at all! But, as a hero he becomes a more complex and unique case. He is presented in-game as a hero - so he is listed as one in our army, and so gets the hero equipment screen where he can be equipped with items. His presence in a town will stop it from rebelling and so on. But, he cannot be resurrected, only summoned again, and none of the spells that work on normal units (therefore also on other heroes) will work on Torin.



So even in this one example you see how Master of Magic likes to break its own rules and make exceptions that give so much flavour to the game.


Magic Realms: Sorcery Invisibility - this one is really powerful, it makes your unit invisible and thus impossible to hit without some countermeasures, and Mass Invisibility is a really powerful boost that makes all your units disappear from the enemy’s gaze.

*Invisibility was also a headache to implement, there were issues with handling the pathfinding, how to ‘display’ the unit and so on.

The variation of possibilities in spellcasting, depending on the choice of magic books, is a wonderful thing. To give some examples of this, I’ll start with Sorcery. Sorcery is a realm specialising in illusions and the purity of magical power. It has good combat spells and summons, and can also counter and dispel enemy magic with several spells.



The realm has a good variety of battle summons. Phantom warriors are a pretty basic summon, but, as you have them from the start, they can make a difference in early game encounters. And then later, you get the Phantom Beast and Air Elemental and those can truly master the battlefield for you.



Sorcery also has a lot of ways to protect from and/or counter enemy spellcasting. To mention just a few: True Dispel - triples the power of Dispel Magic, Counterspell - creates an antimagic field that the enemy must punch through to have any of their spells working; Resist Magic - a spell that gives your units greater resistance against spell attacks or Disenchant True - another spell that is three times as powerful as its arcane counterpart and allows you to try and dispel magic cast in the world. And just to finish off the anti-magic tools, you get the super powerful Spell Lock that prevents the enemy from banishing your fantastic units or dispelling your enchantment.



Sorcery really has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, even early on in the game. One of my favourites, and a cheap spell too, is Confusion - by the power of illusion you mess with the enemy’s mind and they start acting erratically, quite often fighting their own allies. I’ve turned the tide of many early game battles with that one.


Magic Realms: Life


Life realm, on the other hand, has very few summons (although the ones it does have are pretty powerful!), so it relies more on buffing, healing and countering and attacking Life’s biggest enemies is Death and Chaos magic. While Sorcery is focused on magic as a power in itself, Life derives its power from an unknown yet ever present divine source.

With this power of the divine, the Wizard can cast such buffing spells as: Endurance for the units to move faster; Holy Weapon that can strike down creatures who cannot be harmed by mundane iron; Holy Armour that gives more protection, or High Prayer that buffs all the units, making even a humble, normal unit a formidable force to be reckoned with. To top that, the few fantastic units of Life are divinely powerful and they too further buff your friendly units in combat.

This humble halfling, was buffed with several Wizard spells, but also strengthened by the presence of Torin, unicorns and the archangel - all of whom gave additional boosts.

A Life army ready to kick some butt (though, I actually, lost that battle, badly...)

Some of the most staple spells of the realm, like Healing, or Resurrection can truly turn the tide of a battle, or even a war. But, it is in the battle against the enemies of Life (Death and often Chaos), where the realm really shines.

Note: In our current design, we are keeping the restriction of either Life or Death books owned by one Wizard.


Conclusion

Just from this brief glance at the two realms, I hope we are recreating the true magic of the game, where you can really discover so many ways to play, to mix the magic books, to surprise yourself and your enemy with arcane strategies. There are not only three more realms that I did not talk about, but also the many possibilities of mixing the books, and the added complexity of choosing Wizard traits and the right peoples to rule, which can further influence how your magic will work.

Diplomacy WIP diplomacy screen.

Diplomacy is an integral part of the Master of Magic gameplay. It refers to the interaction between the Wizards. This interaction ranges from the initial meeting, to trade agreements, peace treaties, throwing out threats or joining an alliance, as even though there can be only one, sometimes it is a good strategy to work together to beat a common enemy. All of this is of course handled by the AI that decides how and when a Wizard will react to the player and to other Wizards. In the original game, there were a lot of things that never really worked beyond the concept, so we hope our AI will bring to life the ideas of the previous designers.

Personalities

The AI behaviour is based on the concepts from the original, so there will be the six personality types : maniacal, ruthless, aggressive, chaotic, lawful and peaceful. Based on those personalities the Wizards will have modifiers to their behaviour both in tactics and diplomacy. So a peaceful Wizard will be much more likely to try and have a treaty with you, and much less likely to resort straight to violence, while a maniacal one will be almost the opposite, quick to attack and generally paranoid.

Trade

One mechanic that we expanded on is trade. In the original Master of Magic, you could exchange or bribe the opposing Wizards with spells and that was that. We decided that this mode of exchange was fairly limited, and so we added more options.

In our Master of Magic, you will be able to trade other things, like Mana, Gold or artefacts. Furthermore, the ‘price’ you may receive for such trade will also depend on various factors, like: your relationship with the Wizard, their Personality and their current ‘need’ for the object you are offering.Furthermore, when you do trade things that are valuable to the opposing Wizard, their relationship to you may increase/decrease accordingly. So the Ai may make special offers for something among player wares that the Wizard needs at the moment more than other things. The AI will bump up the trade value of that offer above what it will normally offer for it and it will try to trigger trade when it has such need.

Combat Work in Progress tactical battle map. You can also zoom out more, for a broader view of the combat.

We had a lot of people asking about combat in Master of Magic, so we’ll share some of the progress we have in that area. The reason this topic was not mentioned much before is really that we have not changed the battle mechanics much. Still , let us go through how tactical battles work.

1. Before you enter a battle, you have a choice to either fight manually,or to use the auto resolve (the possible outcomes are visible, so you can make an informed decision)
   
   
   
   
2. Entering into combat takes you away from the world map and into the tactical map.
   
3. The tactical maps are also hex based.
   
4. You enter combat with the maximum of nine units from the world map, and if you have the full set, you cannot summon additional units via spells (apart from taking over enemy units).
   
5. Power nodes have special effects on them that modify the combat. For example: Chaos node has boosted stats (resist, attack and defence) for Chaos units and non Chaos spells are dispelled (or attempt to be dispelled).
   
6. Other location modifiers may also come into play in combat, so for example, city enchantments or fortifications.
   
7. Combat on water is limited to units that can move on water or fly. Units that cannot take part in the combat will remain in the ship.
   
8. Each figure in a given unit attacks the enemy and vice versa (apart from exceptions to the rule, of course).
   
9. Units can have a variety of special skills and abilities that can be used in battles.
   
10. You can use your spellbook to cast combat spells, and some units will also have their own spell books for use. You can also have enchantments that you cast on the world map that will carry forward into the combat.
    
    Work in Progress tactical battle map and Spell book with all the combat spells you can use.
    
    
11. You can turn autocombat on.
    
12. You can flee from combat.
    
    If you flee from combat early enough, you may get away without a scrape.
    
    
13. We implemented a battle log, so you can follow what happens behind the scenes.
    Work in Progress tactical battle map. The combat log displayed on the left provides details of the combat.
    
    
14. And of course the key element is the AI that decides how your enemy reacts to the combat, what spells to use and when, and what tactics to use to beat you.
    

That is where we are with our combat at the moment. All of the skills and spells (there are a few world spells in the queue, and invisibility is still causing a few headaches, but apart from that...) from the original are now implemented and awaiting the true test of player feedback once we reach the Beta stage (which we hope should be soon).

Community month

As a continuation from last week’s community led Q&A, I will talk a little about community feedback and how we try to balance it as we develop the remake. We’ll also share a few pictures of our own improvements and try to explain the process behind it all.

So, the general rule here at MuHa is that we do our best to read the feedback and keep up to date with community discussions. We then take note of any points that we either find particularly interesting, or pressing, and we try our best to get them into the game.

It is also important to note here, that we have read and continue to read the community forums and wiki as we build our design doc. As such, a lot of our base design choices were already built on your feedback and hard work.

Colour saturation on Wizard art.

Some of our lovely and creative community members have played with the idea of increasing the colour saturation and contrast on the Wizard art. And you know what, we liked what we saw and have implemented a similar change. We felt the more vibrant vibe went well with the high fantasy theme. All of our Wizards got the colour treatment, and while for some, the change is very subtle, we still feel it was a worthwhile improvement.


Lo Pan: bottom image shows the older, more subdued version, while top image shows the progression to the current WIP selection screen.


Sharee with the top image shows the more vibrant version.

Town names

Work In Progress city screen, showing a selection of lizardmen towns.

We had some people discussing the original town names for Master of Magic and they expressed that the real world names can have a negative effect on immersion. We’ve then had a chat on the various Discord channels and indeed the consensus was reached that the naming conventions could be changed and maybe we wouldn't get our heads bitten off...

In the original, you could encounter cities like, Banbury, Hannover, Stetin or Oxford, so in our remake, we tweaked such names in two ways. First was to make them similar but not the same as the real world places. Second, was to create a more unified naming convention for each race, so that you could guess the city’s inhabitants even by looking at the name plate above the town you are approaching. These are of course small changes, but we felt they would work a little better with the fantasy immersion.

With that in mind here are a few of the new town names.



These are obviously only a few small things that we were able to add or tweak with our community in mind, but as we push closer and closer towards a beta build, we will of course continue to listen to our fans.


Wizard gallery
Although most Wizards have now been seen in one way or another via various snapshots of the game, here are some more who did not yet get the old/new comparison. Enjoy.







And since this is the season to be jolly, we wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Development Diary #5 - Q&A Time



We’ve asked our community on Discord to put forward some burning questions and we’ve attempted to answer them all the best we can at this point in development. Please note I may have paraphrased some of the questions, especially when there were several that asked the same thing.


Q: What are the main changes/improvements? What are the differences with the original Master of Magic? So far, we know about the graphics and hexagons on the world map, but any other outstanding features?

That is a question I intend to tackle fully another time, as we are pushing closer and closer to a feature complete build, I want to wait and collect all the big ones in one go, because we will inevitably make changes once we play our game and find things that may or may not work for our version.

But, not wanting to leave this entirely unanswered, customising your playthrough is a feature we hope to greatly improve from the original. So apart from the usual difficulty settings, we’d like to include as many on/off options as we can, especially when it comes to things that stray from the original, but not exclusively so.

As an example, in addition to the option of turning the game’s events on/off, we already have a second pack of events that will also be optional. Another plan is to have customisable AI difficulty. While these are only a few examples, our intention is to build up this list, especially once the game is playable and thus open to more precise feedback.

Another feature that already received a makeover, are the events. There will be two event packs at launch, one, the original 18 events, and another, with brand new ones. You will of course be able to switch both/either on and off.

While the original events are copied from the old game directly, they have been updated and given alternate routes. So, when you encounter an earthquake for example, in the original, it was simply a notification, in the new version, you may have an option to mitigate the effects. The new event pack will follow the same rule, events that occur will have multiple ways of resolution, instead of them being simple notice.

Work In Progress screenshot of the new earthquake event.

Work In Progress screenshot of the new Light Moon event (previously known as Good Moon)


Q: What mechanics did you, or will you alter in the remake and why, considering that it is 2021, and so, in theory, one can recreate everything from 1998?

This question arose from our previous statements where we said that : "mechanics may be altered if we are unable to recreate them".

For starters, a simple change of the engine will often make some features impossible to recreate. Then there is the fact that there is no source code, or a comprehensive/detailed design doc from the original dev team. There is of course tons of work done by the fans over the years, but that is still pretty much guess work and reverse engineering. So in short, our design doc is the original game, but there will inevitably be things that we’re not able to remake.

On top of that, there is the domino effect. So, some of the changes we had to make due to my previous point make it impossible to implement other things exactly as they were in the original Master of Magic, because they have to work in our version. And of course there are also changes that need/should be done due to new game technologies/gaming trends etc, improvements that a new player will expect and so on.

One of the most impactful changes so far, has been the non-arbitrary battle/strategic value assigned to units. We base this value on battle simulations between units which gives us a good basis for calculating the numbers. However, these differ from the original values and so this automatically affects things like location budgets, or the algorithms responsible for spawning units. This change was necessary, as some mechanics require very rigid systems to be placed in, due to the fact that we aimed to make the game very moddable. To achieve this, we had to generalise some systems to ensure players can change them. For example, we cannot rely on a fixed unit strategic value, as any change to that unit will require precise update from the moder to ensure a modified or a totally new unit fits within the frames of the system. This will not be so bad when those units will have their value calculated from some clear formula rather than creative guess work.

An example of a specific issue with a unit and its inner workings is the hydra. In the original, the hydra was behaving like 9 units, where each unit was its head. This unique behaviour required a lot of custom work and altering in many systems just for this one instance, therefore, we decided to go with finding similar power and effect for a single figure creature. Our hydra is now a single figure that has the battle value of 9 units. This change impacted the way some spells would affect the hydra, like spells that raise stats/buff per unit, but then the single unit has more health points and better defence on its own, and so it remains fully battle worthy for longer. As you can see, it’s a trade off, but we hope it will work out well for the hydra and other such things.


Q: Will there be multiplayer in Master of Magic, or do you have plans for MP in the far future?

The plan is for Master of Magic to remain as a single player game.

To answer the second question, we currently do not have any plans for multiplayer at the moment. This may change in the future of course, as there will be a lot more development and additions to the game, but no such plans right now.


Q: What things will be possible with modding? The inner workings of the event editor. (Work In Progress)

One of the things that are already implemented in terms of modding, is the event editor. The tool will be available from the game’s menu and will allow players to modify and/or add entirely new events into the game.

As for the other moddable features, driven by xml-based databases, players may modify a large number of the game’s functionality via easy to use text editors. Some examples of things you will be able to mod:

• Units and heroes by adding/removal of skills and attributes, or by creation of new units. Give them the ability to add XP (not all units do), the ability to regenerate or change their upkeep costs.
  
• Spells, skills and enchantments - our system allows the modification of a large number of basic parameters, while some scripts driving their exact functionality and the way AI interprets their value are in a separate file, written in c# and also open for modification.
  

Apart from the database, players with more technical skills may look into exposed c# scripts that the game uses to make decisions in many areas. For example, “BattleAIScripts“ allow modders to change the way the AI makes decisions during battle, how it handles spell casting, unit movement and decides when to shoot, when to attack and when to run.

Other script files handle spell, skill or enchantment functionalities, including those that estimate their value for the AI and the scripts that are used when an effect is applied or removed in the game.


Q: What are the post launch plans for the game?

There are no post-launch plans that we are ready to discuss. Much will depend on how things go. But of course we have ideas on features and content we’d like to play with given the time and opportunity.


Q: Once the base game is out, do you plan to make any balance changes for any expansions you might make?

Balance changes aren’t necessarily something we would plan for after the release, we tend to aim at having good balance when we launch, but... Of course we will support and fix any issues post launch, and yes, balance changes may indeed be required if new features appear. But these are not things that are part of any larger plan right now.


Q: Will the unpopular Wizard artwork be redone? Evolution of Tauron: a) beardless and toned down; b) bearded but still toned down and c) bearded and more vibrant.

While we try to avoid the pitfalls of changing things that are unpopular before the game is out, we do listen and when we judge the change possible/cost effective and/or important, we do it. That being said, you should not expect the Wizards to get any major makeovers (except for one, that we cannot confirm yet, but we may redo if we can).

As an example of this, this is how Tauron got his beard back and why we tweaked the colours for the Wizard art (more on this next month), in accordance with community feedback.


Will diplomacy be improved?

Yes. Diplomacy in the original game was complex, but it was mostly suffering from a very large number of issues and bugs. We aim to recreate the system, but of course also fix it.

Some parts of the old design simply do not fit in the new system (for example, we cannot make a list of spells that wizards react to, as it will collide with modability, or rely on all values available from materials we have, as it's likely that some of them are blind shots or simply incorrect) and will need changing.

We try to use later patches of the original game, as well as mods, as indicators of how the original design was meant to work as well as how the community would like it to work and we tried to navigate our own design with these in mind.


Will battle still be square or hex grid? How does battle work?

Hex. Battles are another area that I will cover in future dev diaries.


Release date, date for the beta?

Release dates and beta dates are, alas, still to be confirmed. But, we will have a beta open to our fans. It will most likely start off small and then grow. I will inform you as soon as we have a firm estimate on the dates, but we are aiming at very early 2022 for the beta. Watch this space!