OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Kind of surprised me, more info here .

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

YES!...Great news http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
MOM 1 was one of my Favorites in the past, I hope they don't screw MOM2 up, like Quicksilver did with Master Of Orion 3.

Edit: Star Dock did a survey and polls to see if there was an interest among star docks fans and ofcause there was http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ July 15, 2004, 15:47: Message edited by: Thilock_Dominus ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

StarDock did a great job with GalCiv, if they make a MoM2, I'm looking forward to it.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

City-building and diplomacy, both features of games like the Civ-series, are the only things I can recall that MoM had that Dom 2 doesn't. Plus there are tons of MoM-like games already on the market (Dom2, AoW, Warlords, etc.). It's too bad Stardock already has their own 4X space game GalCiv, because if they wanted to do the gaming community a real big favor, they should buy the MOO license from Atari, instead of the MoM license, and fix all the bugs in MOO3 (or better yet, scrap it and make a MOO4).

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hillarious, I was thinking the same thing. God did I ever try to like MOO3. I literally worked at trying to like it. In the end, it was just a steaming pile of donkey refuse. Same goes for UFO or whatever that supposed X-Com remake was. What it was was garbage. Consider yourself lucky. StarDock has one good game under their belt. I didn't like GalCiv, but it seems like I was one of the only TBS nuts who didn't so they must have gotten something right.

Take pity on my BELOVED Jagged Alliance series. First, Sirtech goes tits up, then the franchise is purchaced by infamous garbage-spewer Strategy First, who oh by the way just layed off everyone and fired the whole JA legacy team. Then they hand the whole kit and kaboodle over to an unknown russian developer, who don't seem to have anyone on staff who speaks english. Actually to call them unknown would be generous, as they are best-known for a horrible piece of trash cyberpunk game whose name escapes me. To make things worse? TWO DAYS after the 2-year development program is announced, they RELEASE SCREENSHOTS. Yes in two days, they managed to get a working alpha going and post screens on the webpage. Seems they are using the "engine" of another TBS to kick start their process. I've never heard of a TBS using an engine from an existing game before. This ought to be interesting.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Says they need only 5000 votes to proceed with Master of Magic_2 !

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

I've already registred to give my vote http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Another thing that MOM had that dom2 havn't is you move with your units like the civ games and had underground world too (which also can be found in the AOW series).
I didn't like galciv so I agree that the should have bought he rights to MOO instead of building Galciv, but I'm looking forward to see what Star Dock got in mind with MOM2, perhaps they surprise us all? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif


best regards
Thilock

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Actually there have been, and still are, many efforts to create a MoM2. I think SourceForge has 2 or 3 open source MoM projects on it. I check that rallypoint site often to see how things are going. The problem with most of them is that they try to "improve" it. One of the most common things is adding multiplayer to it. Thats not easy. And its not just the coding headaches. Its that too much of what made MoM so popular is tied into the randoms which multiplayers hate. Equal races, equal starting positions, equalized maps, are good for MP but not for SP. Everytime they try to MP it they end up with Age of Wonders.

StarDock (the makers of GalCiv) are now interested in doing MoM2. That wouldnt be bad. They excell in AI's, and have said they will hold true to MoM only improving the graphics and AI. IF they keep to that then I think they might make it, and I would probably buy it.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I didn't like it either, although not because of the gameplay: I disliked it because of the intermittent crashing bugs combined with the fact that trying to even download a bloody patch was like trying to perform root canal in the field with a butter knife.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OH, TROGDOR! I PINE FOR YOU!

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Excellent news! GalCiv was very good, although a little bit too "dry" for my taste to prevent it being absolutely perfect IMO. But it was a great game nevertheless, and it had one of the best AI I ever encountered in the strategic game, and I have played a lot. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

If they will take MoM1, add nice graphic and great AI, and perhaps add few interesting features into it, it'll be THE GAME in my book. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/rolleyes.gif


We will have to wait and see how it'll go, but these news are certanly sound very promising.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Eh? The only major difference between Civ and Dom2 movement is that the number of neighbors of any given "cell" is variable, as opposed to always being 8.

And you _can_ have an underground world (or the mirror world that MoM2 had) in Dom2. Some of the user made maps by Andrew Osborne do things like this, as did the "Hollow World" map from Dom1.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That, and the concept of significance. In Dom2, every cell bears innate significance, but in Civ-style games, no cell bears any real significance unless another player has chosen to populate and develop it. As such, Civ-style has a lot of "whitespace" in which units move about in, whereas Dom2 features a mighty battle at every cell.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is very troubling news. I followed Sirtech's demise with sadness. I probably played JA2 more than any other game so far. I think I finished 4 times now from start to finish. Just the personalities of the Mercs were entertaining and what came out there mouths were hilarious and sick. To this day the funiest line in any game I played is when I the hot babe Merc was killed (her name escapes me) and one of the Phycho Mercs from AIM wanted put her on ice for later use!

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I would heartily agree that reducing or removing the 'randomness' would be removing the reason I loved MoM so much more than all the other similar games (including Galciv which I thought was only 'ok').

I can also see how competitive multiplayers might not like a lot of randomization.

However, there are already lots of MP games like AoW and not so many that are truly like MoM. No, I don't consider Dom2 to be an improved MoM. While Dom2 is really good in its own right, it doesn't have the same level of randomization as MoM, nor the turn based fights (and given it's PBEM focus, this is totally understandable).

I would hope that even if they add MP and try to improve it, they would not remove what made it special. Surely, there are some players who are ok with a high level of randomization.

- Kel

PS: Nice post, Gandalf. I might find some MoM2 board somewhere and make a similar point.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Huh, interesting.

MoM also appears to differ from Dom/Dom2 in a variety of other ways, like

- the limit on spell books and life/death magic meaning two players might be exploring entirely different trees
- having a very different way of limiting spellcasting
- multi-turn magic which could be Spell BLasted by a wily caster with Detect Magic
- mana upkeep
- wounds taking more time to heal
- heavier emphasis on enchantments on individual units (invisible flying spell-locked warships?)
- potentially very, very nasty independent stacks guarding nodes

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

MoM is very different than Dom2. But I usually feel safe in telling people who still have Stars! and Master of Magic on their machines, that if they love those then they should try Dom2. The similarity is hard to point out.

I think that they all were popular because you didnt feel like you were learning the strategies that the game writer had in mind when he wrote the game. You can create your own personal nation which can play best using the tactics YOU come up with. Its the pre-game design which actually makes a difference and isnt just changing what color of cloak you wear.
Oh yeah, there is also a game on the shrapnel site called Space Empires IV which is pretty good for that.

But of all of them I think Dom2 has done it best (so far)

[ July 16, 2004, 01:43: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Never had this problem myself. One of the very few ultra-stable games I have. It's more stable than Dom 2. And patching via Stardock Central for me is painless and quick. You're not on ... ack, ugh ... dial-up, are you???

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Never had this problem myself. One of the very few ultra-stable games I have. It's more stable than Dom 2. And patching via Stardock Central for me is painless and quick. You're not on ... ack, ugh ... dial-up, are you??? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I bet he's still using 28800 modem. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Dom 2 never crashes (at least not on my system) so I can hardly call anything "more" stable.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh, hell no. I was referring to the absolutely ridiculous number of hoops and obstacles you had to work around just to get a freaking patch.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What "hoops and obstacles"? How hard is it to have a net-connection, launch the Stardock Central app (SC), and then watch it download and auto-install whatever the latest patch is? Or are you referring to the *registration* process to initially set up SC? Once it's set up it's essentially brainless. And if you don't want to deal with SC, you can always just go to their site via browser and download the patch (or get it from some other site). I simply fail to understand what's so hard and what your problem is? (Of course this Last question is one helluva juicy straight line for your detractors to jump all over ...)

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

The saddest thing is that I get 90% of my (purchaced) game patches from a site like gamecopyworld. In fact, much of the crap I've bought requires a CD in the drive or some kind of asinine registration to get patches. Why game companies insist on making owning a legal copy of a piece of software more tedious than simply stealing it is beyond me. I have downloaded "illegal" Versions of several games I already own, simply because the pirated stuff comes without spyware or requiring me to email my life story to some anonymous server. The fact that I actually pay for the game seems more like a paypall donation to your favorite website. Thanks for the hard work, keep it up. You want your unopened box back?

[ July 16, 2004, 07:07: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

I legally own all the games I have, despite having several excellent CD copying tools and knowing how to use them effectively. I also have downloaded no-CD cracks (from gamecopyworld) for every one of them that has such annoying copy protection. IMO, according to the Fair Use laws, once I buy something, it's my right to use that product however I wish so long as I don't abuse "Fair Use" (ie, give copies to other people, etc.). If I want to create 20 backup copies for myself, or install it on 5 machines, that's my right. So long as my legally-owned copy is only played on one machine at a time, the game publisher has no right whatsoever to dictate how I use what I have paid for.

I don't approve of software "piracy", but the software industry, with its utter lack of concern for such things as fitness for intended use, and fascist licensing, just begs for piracy. Software is the only product I can think of that you can buy without any consumer protection as to getting what you ostensibly paid for. Be it a functional game (countless example of games that won't even run out of the box, such as UFO:Aftermath or MOO3) or million-dollar enterprise accounting apps from Oracle (that won't install or even if you get them installed won't actually work).

Sorry about the rant.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">As far as what they have done with it is to release what is a mod of Jagged Alliance called "Jagged Alliance 2: Wildfire". It is a mod created already in the strong mod community for Jagged Alliance by this russian guy named Popov. It adds more guns, notably a lot of russian type ones, makes the game harder in that the easy setting for "Wildfire" is harder than the hard setting on the original game. By harder I mean they throw more men at you, make town loyalty harder to gain and easier to lose, and the AI will tend to dogpile you in daylight ops. Dressen airport, for instance, is extremely time consuming and difficult to take now and the AI makes damn good use of roof-tops. It is also designed so that you can run it on windows xp and down. Other than that it is essentually the same game as the original JA:2. It also has some really annoying bugs such as the sam site number 8 crash, game corrupts saves if you quick save and if you save in mine areas of a town and unfortunately because of a legal dispute between the russian modders and Strategy First over not getting payed there will be no patch fixes to the game forth comming except those fixes the JA community have been able to come up with.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is absolutely nothing I loathe more than being told I have to install YET ANOTHER PIECE OF CRAP just to download a freaking file! Frankly, this simply adds yet another point of failure to the computer, as if Windoze wasn't unstable enough. I don't *WANT* another piece of crap which may or may not conflict with something I actually want installed on my computer! I want my freaking patch.

And trying to download it elsewhere? At the time I was still trying to put up with the game, this was a royal pain in the ***. You certainly couldn't simply download it off their webpage. I couldn't even *FIND* it on their webpage. In fact, the only place I could actually find the patch at all was from piracy sites.

I ask myself, why should I pay for the game so I can have to resort to this? I have since returned the game(which in itself required a loud argument and several shots to be fired). This game is entirely not worth the hassle, and I dread the idea of going through this BS with the proposed MOM2. I think this time, I'm definitely going to exercise "try before you buy".

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

JA2:Wildfire is one of the buggiest pieces of code I've ever had the misfortune to use. And the fact that I paid $20 for it, when the by far bigger and better mod JA2UC (Urban Chaos) is available free, just rankles that much more. Popov wasn't supporting his mod worth a damn even before the dispute with Strategy First arose. Worse yet, to essentially screw over the JA2 player community by not supporting the product you agreed to accept money for, because of a dispute between the dev and the publisher, something the players/customers are not at fault for and have no control over, is outrageous. Perhaps Popov wouldn't be having a money dispute if he'd released a stable product that lived up to its hype, and supported it as he was obligated to. Personally, I think SF is doing the right thing by not paying him. He doesn't deserve it. Regardless of reason, it's the game players that get screwed in the end though.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, always buy games (or most anything else) with a credit card. If you are unable to get proper satisfaction (typically a refund) from whomever you bought it from, the threat of disputing & refusing to pay the charges on your credit card will almost always work, and have the seller cave in to your rights as a consumer. This works even at places that have posted policies in-store of "no refunds on opened merchandise ... yadda yadda" (CompUSA is one such place that comes to mind).

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I greatly prefer to avoid credit cards, for the precise reason that every single one of your purchasing habits is logged for posterity. There's something inherently fishy about this, and I don't like it. Combine this with the increasingly obnoxious spyware tracking habits employed by software developers today, and you can see why I greatly prefer to minimize any element of traceabilty. Such behaviors greatly strain whatever faith I had in the company, and I never really had any to begin with. Clearly, these companies are abusing their freedom from being shot by irate customers. In my day, if somebody tried to peddle bad merchandise, he could reasonably be expect to be killed gruesomely by his surviving customers.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh come on! That is a little extreme don't you think? You lightly maim them at first and see if their merchandise improves a bit THEN you kill them if it doesn't. I mean if we were to kill them first then we would have nothing to spend that yankee dollar on and that would be UNAMERICAN! Only a bunch of pinko, commie slack-jawed hippies kills em first!

[ July 16, 2004, 09:48: Message edited by: Anglachel ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh, I know you're just kidding here, but I don't think you realize the seriousness of bad merchandise: When somebody sells you a defective weapons or armor, this can get you killed. You will be understandably very angry if you survive the discovery. Perhaps some of your teammates didn't. This will make you even more unhappy. In such cases, blood is required. Otherwise your teammates think you don't care, and others are encouraged to peddle their bad merchandise. Thus it is not as common to see people dishonestly peddling shoddy goods, as these sorts do not Last very long. One should never trust a dealer who hasn't been there for a month or so.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heh, I know you're just kidding here, but I don't think you realize the seriousness of bad merchandise: When somebody sells you a defective weapons or armor, this can get you killed. You will be understandably very angry if you survive the discovery. Perhaps some of your teammates didn't. This will make you even more unhappy. In such cases, blood is required. Otherwise your teammates think you don't care, and others are encouraged to peddle their bad merchandise. Thus it is not as common to see people dishonestly peddling shoddy goods, as these sorts do not Last very long. One should never trust a dealer who hasn't been there for a month or so. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah I can see how way back in the day if you were a young freelance merc and wanted to go off and fight in some war and you purchased a new sword from a merchant only to have it snap in two with the first swing you do and a splinter of it flies into your left eye blinding it for good and how you would want to go back to said merchant, cut off his manhood, and feed it to him. Reminds me of that movie "Remo Williams" where they are field testing some contractor's shoddy machine gun and it blows up in some soldier's face killing him. The soldier's buddy, close to tears, brandishes the mangled gun saying "I like to tell you what I think of this new gun, sir! It's worthless, sir!"

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Same story, different thing:

Derek Smart wants to buy the Freespace license.
OH MY GOD DEREK SMART.
Freespace Cruiser 3000 ahoi!

Lets see, Freespace is not that old... so reviving it might produce a soulless. Still bad, but it could be worse

Edit: spelling

[ July 16, 2004, 13:28: Message edited by: PrinzMegaherz ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Apparently you dont understand, that is the purpose of copy protection. Not worded quite that way but there are plenty of studies in the software publishing world that says copying/running legally owned software is the main problem. Piracy is a minor side-target.

Copy protection is to avoid "casual copying" of friends giving software to friends. Its an effort to keep up with software that is provided with CDs or available on shelves which "allow copying those problem CD's" without making it clear that the user might be violating an agreement.

Of course if it throws a stumble in the path of pirates for abit, thats good too but they know thats a shortlived win. Its usually worded as trying to turn a 1-day sales-to-crack time into a 3-6 week sales gap.

[ July 16, 2004, 17:26: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's Wildfire, which came on the Heels of Jagged Alliance: Gold (Repackaged old material). This mod, which I did not buy, is something different. For the first time since JA2: Unfinished Business, some actual new content is coming out for the game. There are two announced games, one is Jagged Alliance 3D, which is essentially the third time Strategy First has repackaged JA2. Apparently this will be the same story as JA2, but incorperated into their new engine. Finally, we have JA3, using the same engine, which is finally some new content after JA2, JA2 Gold, JA2 Wildfire and JA 3D which are all the same game. Hysterical.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oh I understand the purpose of copy protection, but in the same way I now understand why your forums are backwards. Regardless of your reasoning for inconveniencing me, it's irritating. Before buying another game from say... Strategy First, I will remember that every one of their games requires a CD in the drive and therefore the company has made a choice to inconvenience their paying customers in an attempt to prevent the inevitable.

Casual copying may have been the primary issue back in the 1990's, but today every game is available on P2P systems the same day it is released into stores. You speak of a 3-6 week jump on the pirates, this is nonsense. What is more common is a leaked gold master resulting in a 3-6 week jump for the pirates. No protection known, even the very newest Versions will give you anywhere close to a 3-week head start. If you are lucky you might get 3 days with a brand new top-end scheme from Securom that hasn't been used on any other games. The only games which are truly free from piracy are the Online games, such as Warcraft 3, or Everquest. Coincidentaly these are also the best selling games, a factor not of their popularity, but of the simple fact that each has virtually unbreakable copy protection due to the need to connect to a central server to play. The decline of the single player game is as due to piracy than any choice made by the buying public. Many Users simply steal what they can, and buy only those games which they are forced to.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I said it was an effort to change one day to a greater gap. But the battle isnt quite as lost as you predict. There is really not as much piracy as you think. Just because its every game doesnt make it every user. Piracy isnt doing enough damage to make game developers pay enough attention to it. P2P isnt much of a factor as long as efforts are succesfull in making it clear that its piracy.

As long as it cant be casually copied, it will cover the losses or costs of implementing the protection. As long as their are clear lines between legal and illegal then it will be controllable. The dangers they are watching now are misuse of words like "backups" or "abandoneware" or "shared copies". If a friend is not able to copy a game for a friend with plausable deniability that its anything illegal then the business world is safe.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

I still play and love MoM. I actually built a system from older components once I gave up trying to get it to run on Windows XP Pro.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is really not as much piracy as you think. Just because its every game doesnt make it every user. Piracy isnt doing enough damage to make game developers pay enough attention to it. P2P isnt much of a factor as long as efforts are succesfull in making it clear that its piracy. [/QB][/quote]
-------------------------------------------------
(ugh I suck at html or whatever)


That's only true in the U.S. It's gets real crazy once you get out of the country. Here's a link I found real quickly.

http://global.bsa.org/usa/press/news...-10.1129.phtml

Granted it includes all kinds of software (and it's a little dated), games are still a major factor. There's been a big movement towards cleaning Asian software piracy, which is the highest in the world. The fact that the Chinese gov't is now cooperating with Western software companies to crack down on pirates, means there's a lot money at stake. I have a friend who went on a business trip to China and saw Warcraft 3 for sale two weeks after it's release here, for $3.00, IN CHINESE! Though I see the reasons for copy protection, I believe it to be ineffectual. It only stops the most ignorant of computer Users, and only in the U.S. I've never had a problem copying, or cracking a CD, and I'm not that savvy at this kind of stuff. IMO, the only reason it's not so bad here in NA, is because our culture respects the idea of copyrights and such, and most of us are affluent enough to go and buy them. I don't think it's because of copy protection in any effectual way.

Vig

[ July 16, 2004, 23:03: Message edited by: vigabrand ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmmm it runs on my WinXP Home Edition

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

I loved MoM. the hooded guy that chucked that fireball ruled over everyone.

after reading that thread I want to know if any of you have played that galactic civ game. It sounds promising.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have, it was so-so, but great AI.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Its been around a long time and is famous as an AI game. When I heard he ported it to windows I snagged one quick but I wasnt as impressed as I had hoped. It lived about a month.

Ive had much more fun with Space Empires IV (available here from Shrapnel). I like it for alot of the same reasons as Dom2

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yeah i've played around with the demo of se4 but just never got into it.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

For myself, I found Galactic Civilization extraordinary. Had a lot of the same replayability as Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri--various different ways to play and win the game which make it a lot more fun. Every bit as enjoyable for me as Master of Orion.

I'm not the crusader on machine privacy/control that a lot of you guys are, but we each choose areas of our lives to understand in more detail or less because they might or might not impact us unfairly (e.g., tax codes, local business ordinances, software copyright protection, PC system security).

As for the StarDock App, if you're fundamentally opposed to installing apps on your system, I can see that being a limitation. I myself have found the App to be perfectly reliable and nonobtrusive--the fact that StarDock doesn't make most of their money publishing games (they mostly develop GUI utilities and such, I gather) means there's less potential for commercial conflict of interest...

I think the MoM sequel would be a very cool thing. Dom2 is the best game in the genre since MoM (with Heroes 2 coming in a close second place), and is perhaps better in its own right. Sort of like comaring girlfriends from when I was 17 and when I was 32? The things that I loved most about MoM:

1) Random sites populated with varying levels of evil nasties that would occasionally go rampaging out in my kingdom.

2) Developing those Heroes to "Legendary status". You can do it in Dom, but it relies more on a lucky break for your Heroic bonus and loading him up with the right magic items, as opposed to growing and nurturing a Hero's skills. Maybe I'm just too slow, but I regret building a Dom Hero up over 20 turns and then having him die in one silly battle because I forgot to change his orders.

3) Finding those distant, mouth-watering city spots early in the game, and spending 20 turns extending my "sphere of control/stability" so I could colonize it and bring the resources Online.

4) Having different cities produce different types of value. Some city sites were great research centers, others were awesome troop factories (yeah, Adamantium!), others were all about income, and many were just thriving metropolis sites. Valuing different city sites differently for different sides was also fun (e.g., Dwarves love gold-rich cities and don't care so much about cities with huge hind-end population limits because they grow slowly).

[ July 17, 2004, 17:44: Message edited by: FarAway Pretender ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

Played GalCiv. Eventually got turned off by the crash bugs, the slow beginning of the game, the AI knowing all the yellow stars, the inevitable waste due to empire-wide sliders, the asymmetrical diplomacy (e.g. AI's discriminated against players in willingness to trade tech, IIRC), and the minors starting with loads of cash.

Played SEIV for quite a longer time; that's actually when I registered for this board. Had more fun with it, and with the intricate ship design (not unusual for me to end up with double-digit numbers of non-obsolete ship/item classes... heavy-cannon ships, fire-every-turn ships, fast/heavy invasion transports, biowarfare ships, warpships, carriers, recon ships, recon sats, defense sats, point-defense ships, repair/shipyard ships, missile ships, pro/anti-mine ships, cloaked deep-penetration raiding ships, capture ships, fast/heavy colony killers, and the occasional cloaked star destroyer). And with the ability to augment the tech tree, even more fun. I eventually stopped after the level of micro got to me (e.g. keeping a notepad indicating which colonies needed atmosphere converters, which colonies were next in line for conVersion from M/O/R resource items to Monolith IIIs, which systems needed system-wide computers etc).

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

For thos ppl talking about JA2 etc etc...

There is a game called Silent Storm by Nival/JoWood which is TBS in the vein of JA2, and whereas not as good, it is pretty close and the graphics are amazing.

With a few tweaks to the engine, it could be a great place to base JA3 on.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Alas, the utterly brilliant folks at Strategy First (an oxymoron of a name to call themselves given their behavior) have elected to go with a different development outfit, and one that has a lousy product record to boot.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Alas, the utterly brilliant folks at Strategy First (an oxymoron of a name to call themselves given their behavior) have elected to go with a different development outfit, and one that has a lousy product record to boot. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The market is in major cutback right now. Companys going down, no new ones starting up, development crews and projects are being dropped.

I cant knock any of them for cutting costs but I do wish they would hold off of the good names rather than give them to inferior crews to try and squeeze some saving bucks out of the name.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

The "market" isn't in a cutback, per se. Its development resources (money, people) are being diverted away from PC games and towards console projects. What true cutbacks exist typically occur in companies that (in general) have lousy reputations to begin with, so their loss is nothing to shed tears for. Unfortunately, some of these lousy companies may own dev studios that do have good talent (Black Isle being canned by Interplay comes to mind), and that is something to cry buckets about.

With the large, loyal, and vocal JA community, it's madness for Strategy First to give the nod to an obscure (and worse, low-grade) Russian outfit when there are plenty of other shops (Russian and otherwise) with proven ability that would likely drool over the chance to work on JA3. It proves (to me at least) that SF doesn't give a damn about their customers and is only interested in doing things they can milk for money (as exemplified by the string of shoddy games SF has already put out).

EDIT: BTW, there *are* new companies popping up. However, it's mainly happening in Eastern Europe and Russia.

[ July 18, 2004, 01:13: Message edited by: Arryn ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And of course, piracy is much harder in the console market, requiring not only a PC, but a highspeed connection, a console, and a mod chip. Despite the studies, I think this has a lot to do with the sluggish PC sales.

As for Black Isle getting canned, it's ourrageous. Any studio that produces the finest series ever in it's genre should never face the firing squad. The same thing happened with Sirtech (JA2 was by far the best squad-based TBS, fallout notwithstanding). Looking Glass is gone, despite the masterful Thief... which was never surpassed by two sequals. But the dissolusion of Black Isle, who produced in my opinion the finest PC game that didn't have Sid Meyer's name on it is a complete disgrace. Baldur's Gate 2 hasn't been surpassed by any RPG, despite advances in technology in the 5? years since it's release. That game was a brilliant fusion of RTS and RPG with enough TBS to satisfy even a nut like myself. The depth and replayability of the game was incredible... save for dynamic worlds like Everquest and UO, no game has held my attention for anywhere near as long... except perhaps the Civilization and Master of Orion series.

[ July 18, 2004, 01:28: Message edited by: Blitz ]

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I thought you were going to talk about Fallout, since Black Isle developed that series. Baldur's Gate II was a Bioware product, and Bioware is still a very financially healthy developer located here in Edmonton.

Re: OT: Master of Magic 2 - now looking quite likely
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I believe Bioware was the publisher of BG2, not the developer.