Master of Magic: Development Diary #11 - June 2022

[Edmon]

Dev Diary #11 June 2022

Busy beta times.
Last month we officially entered into closed beta and now, together with the first wave of testers, we are working hard at bug hunting and monitoring player feedback. As such, this month I am only going to quickly say that we are alive, we are working hard to make that announced early Autumn deadline!

Here is a link to the Home of Wargames video, where you can finally see some gameplay and myself


And here are a few screenshots of things we improved via feedback (we did a lot more, but those are a few visual bits I can share.


Locations no longer have the additional red markers under them, to allow for better immersion. And units also have a less obtrusive bottom marker.


We now have a help button in combat that explains battle mechanics in a more comprehensive way.


And the building queue now has the arrows so you can rearrange your building orders. You can do this from either the building manager screen or the main city view.


And, the main city view no longer shows you the current unit/building being constructed as next, as it did before.


These are obviously only little snippets of the work happening behind the scenes now. We are hunting down many bugs as well as balancing issues with the help of our committed testers. We hope to show you more gameplay in the future as we push on towards release, but for now, that’s it folks.


And I shall leave you with a peek at some amusing (well, not so amusing for us when we try to find it..) bugs. As you see below, we sometimes have our players pay a hefty price for destroying their enemies' cities or, in fact, for keeping them!


*Note this is not a feature and the bug has been potentially found and squashed as we speak...


Thanks for your patience and stay tuned for future updates.

[Arent]

Looks good!

The grasslands seem a bit empty. You might want to add more resources, forests, rivers etc. I remember mirror and arcanus being full of gold, silver, coal, mythril, nightshade.

[Teppic]

Interesting the battle help. thx!
You talk about more ressources, I think that will impact the balance on the map. In other games there is a possibility to change the amount of ressources on the map. As there is no options menu for the world generation where players can manipulate the world at the start, I suppose this is no option.
For me grassland can look empty, especially when nobody lives there.
It is quite another thing when people are around in cities or hamlets: no pastures, no caravans, no farms or pillaged land on the map. All this might give players an indication what to expect in the fog (of war).

[Arent]

Interesting the battle help. thx!
You talk about more ressources, I think that will impact the balance on the map. In other games there is a possibility to change the amount of ressources on the map. As there is no options menu for the world generation where players can manipulate the world at the start, I suppose this is no option.
For me grassland can look empty, especially when nobody lives there.
It is quite another thing when people are around in cities or hamlets: no pastures, no caravans, no farms or pillaged land on the map. All this might give players an indication what to expect in the fog (of war).

It could also be that the little shrubbery(?) in fact is no grassland, but a marsh/swamp. Or maybe even a kind of plains. In that case, maybe it should look a bit more distinct from grassland.

Or there could be simply different looking grasslands - one empty grassland, one with a lone tree, one with a slightly different green.

[MerlinTheWise]

I applied for beta-testing a few months back, haven't got a reply yet. Is the testing on already?

[Taskr36]

I applied for beta-testing a few months back, haven't got a reply yet. Is the testing on already?

It started a few months ago, but apparently they only took a very small number of the people who applied. There hasn't been any update since then on when they'll expand the beta.