I just checked Kotaku, and it’s not there yet. Those guys are slacking off.
It will always be Not Master of Magic for me :(
I have some questions, if there is something that can be answered at this moment, thanks in advance.
How many single players modes it will have? You mention at the webpage a campaign telling the story of Elemental, but will you offer non story driven campaign too?
What are the objectives for the creation part? how many aspects will be able to be manipulated? will it be part of the game or you have to work on that on a separated editor (one of the many things I loved from MoM was the ability to forge items that were mine, created by me as part of my campaign and war effort).
I guess it will have random maps, what is the target for sizes?
What type of feedback are you looking for the beta process?
Any extra payment for the MMO part? what is the general idea of this?
How will you organize the generated content and make it work as part of a balanced strategy experience? What limits can we expect from the creation side?
The “Pollination” works like Spore?, where I start a single player campaign and I don’t know exactly what I’m going to find?
What about diplomacy? will you try to improve the achivements of GalCiv on that? Will you be able to be influential to other civilizations, develop trade routes or work in resources?
What type of players are you looking the most for the beta process? 4x experienced players? people who played MoM and AoW:SW? What is the type of things you need more intensive testing?
Best of luck :), this is from now one my most anticipated projects.
I’m sure 1up will make at least one sentence of that joke a headline, with the rest as quotes from the maker of the game in the article, and a link to the post (post only, not the thread, wouldn’t want any of that pesky context to get in the way).
Great to hear! Thanks Brad.
Art does look great. I thought you guys bought the rights to the Master of Magic name, though, am I crazy?
Do we really need yet another fantasy TBS…I mean, cmon, just like I HATED Oblivion cause it was just another fantasy RPG, there have been so many fantasy TBS’s. Yes, I loved HOMM2, played all the others including MOM, but it’s just been done…too much. Yea, a few different features here, a few different there, a few new victory conditions here, a few there…I look at the screenshots and it looks like any other fantasy TBS I’ve played over the last 20 years.
Of course, I’ll buy it and play it…I bought Hinterlands, played it for 10 minutes, quit…I’m an addict.
They’re large. I can’t really relate the specifics, but we’re (me!) putting a great deal of effort into the map generation process so that each game world will end up looking like a map created by a level designer.
That sounds sort of like a stock response, but even in its current iteration the map generation creates some pretty impressive results.
Close enough. Plan to preorder as soon as my credit card stops smoking.
What’s up with Vista/XP 64 possibly not being supported? That’s singlehandedly keeping me from pre-ordering.
What exactly happened to the Master of Magic intellectual property? Why didn’t this game end up being the next MoM, which is what seemed to be hinted at by yourself (Mr. Wardell) and variety of press for many years…?
Will game focus on being a sequel to MoM? Same factions & critters (or slightly different-looking critters with slightly different names but same stats)? Or is it going in different direction?
If game takes a totally different tack than MoM, that’s fine…but will have trouble looking at it as anything other than yet another fantasy non-MoM (e.g. HoMM series, AoW series). Nothing wrong with that, mind (and I hope it’s at least as good as AoW:SM, which is the closest thing to MoM 2 so far), but if game is truly getting away from MoM, would suggest not throwing around MoM name publicly anymore. Can come off disingenuous and confusing.
I really hope this is sarcasm.
Err, I think Brad can answer this himself, but I want him to save time to answer the important stuff.
The Master of Magic thing was a gossip coming from Game Informer. Nor Brad, nor anyone from Stardock has said they were working on a Master of Magic sequel. They tried to get the license, Brad explain it here (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20061115/mcmaster_01.shtml), but they didn´t get it. However, some of us call it “Not-MoM” for amusement and because obviously Stardock want to do something of that spirit (that is why they wanted the IP I guess). I hope you can relax now.
Awesome! Thanks for the answer.
Is this sarcasm? I can’t tell.
Edit: Heh. I see I’m not the only one.
Oh, wow. WOW.
Feb 2010? That seems like an awful long wait, I’d almost rather the game wasn’t announced until next summer. But, with a game that his THIS much potential, I’d rather it spend all the time in the oven it needs.
It really doesn’t read like sarcasm.
I wish I could preorder with paypal.
No credit card here (not too young, just German :P).
Stardock, please let me give you my money!
I know Paypal doesnt work with how you handle preorders (worked fine with World of Goo or Mount&Blade for me. :P ), but perhaps that just means that you could improve your preordering stuff. ;)
Error in boiler plate. They’re in the process of updating it now.
Not only is 64-bit Windows supported but there will be a native 64-bit edition of it. This info should appear (hopefully) in some of the previews.
It will always be Not Master of Magic for me :(
I have some questions, if there is something that can be answered at this moment, thanks in advance.
How many single players modes it will have? You mention at the webpage a campaign telling the story of Elemental, but will you offer non story driven campaign too?
There will be single-player skirmishes ala GalCiv or Civ4.
What are the objectives for the creation part? how many aspects will be able to be manipulated? will it be part of the game or you have to work on that on a separated editor (one of the many things I loved from MoM was the ability to forge items that were mine, created by me as part of my campaign and war effort).
There will be pre-made maps and randomly generated maps in which players can insert a large number of variables in deciding what kind of world they want.
I guess it will have random maps, what is the target for sizes?
From tiny to ridiculously large. We are also making a 64-bit native edition to support even larger worlds.
What type of feedback are you looking for the beta process?
Everything. The beta process starts about 9 months before release so that beta testers can seriously mold the game.
On a personal note, for me the beta process is the whole point of making the game as that’s what helped get me into game development in the first place.
I was one of those Usenet guys on comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.strategic hanging out talking about games and picked up Teach yourself C in 21 days to start writing (this is obviously a long time ago now). So hanging out with other gamers to tweak and add to the game is the best part.
Any extra payment for the MMO part? what is the general idea of this?
No. It’s not really an MMO part as much as Impulse hosting the game on the cloud to make it much easier for people to interact with their “world” with their friends.
How will you organize the generated content and make it work as part of a balanced strategy experience? What limits can we expect from the creation side?
What users submit we moderate and categorize. Players can then choose what kinds of user created content they want to make use of.
The “Pollination” works like Spore?, where I start a single player campaign and I don’t know exactly what I’m going to find?
It’s somewhat different than Spore. The idea is that the worlds you get will slowly evolve based on what players make. New races, new types of buildings, new technologies, new spells, new units, etc. will alowly find their way into the game if users choose to the option to allow user submitted content.
The moderation will categorize it and rate it on quality and then users can choose what kinds of content (and of what quality threshold) they want. We do this to a large degree today with WindowBlinds and our other non-game stuff.
What about diplomacy? will you try to improve the achivements of GalCiv on that? Will you be able to be influential to other civilizations, develop trade routes or work in resources?
We plan to overhaul the diplomacy engine we had in GalCiv so that there’s a lot more options in Elemental. The beta testers will have a lot of influence on this part.
What type of players are you looking the most for the beta process? 4x experienced players? people who played MoM and AoW:SW? What is the type of things you need more intensive testing?
People who would buy this type of game.
thanks!
That one paragraph is so full of win I just about had a nerdgasm.
Is there Death magic? It’s curiously not mentioned in the previews…aspiring zombie generals want to know.
Brad -
What’s your combat system going to be built around? Master of Magic-style tactical combat, or Civilization-style randomized abstraction? Or will both be options?