M&M: The New Order (MMTNO)

[GrayFace]

Wow! This demo is very impressive! I had fun playing it, but couldn't finish.

Here are some bugs:
- After using Alt+Tab in full screen mode I couldn't return to the game. It occupied space on the screen with a stay-on-top window, but didn't switch screen mode and didn't show anything.
- When selecting an Elf you can lower his might and you get 2 points per each might point. In MM7-8 it was different. Two points of might were taken out and only 1 point was gained.
- Mountin climbing is pretty wired. The way you are knocked back is especially strange when you try to go along the mountin on some height, but when you try you you are knocked back and so you move in the oposite direction. You can also walk on walls. When you climb some mountain at the edge of the map you can like fly by touching this edge and going along it. I can upload a video of mountain climbing
- Sometimes attack doesn't work. This happened to me in the first cave with lots of rats. I was standing near a rat, tried to hit it, but characters didn't strike it. My guess is that there was a rat behind me and it was chosen as the target of attack. But since I wasn't facing her they didn't hit her.

Quest bugs:
I couldn't complete any quest in the town. Actually, I couldn't finish any at all, 'cause at the beginning I killed a man sitting in the cave and attacked the other two.
- I got the shopping list and completed it. When I returned to her she took away the candle and a bottle, but gave me the same quest once again. And she didn't take away the shopping list. So, I had a couple of shopping lists.
- Same thing with the letter to town. She gave it to me once again.
- I killed rats in the granary, but the Major didn't accept the quest as completed. Just looked in buildings\1.as - there should be Write(9,1,2) instead of Write(9,0,2).
- The guard asking for cheese doesn't accept it. It always goes through the "Towers" - "The tower key" - "Zombie problem" sequence. I guess the reason is that "HasItem(19)>0" isn't put into parenthesis in the string "if(HasItem(19)>0 && (Read(13,1)==0))". If so, the string "if(Read(13,1)==3 && (HasItem(15)>0))" doesn't have those too.

[Krogul]

- I got the shopping list and completed it. When I returned to her she took away the candle and a bottle, but gave me the same quest once again. And she didn't take away the shopping list. So, I had a couple of shopping lists.

She tells you that you have to bring her a cheese too (she forgot to add it to the list). You can complite that quest.

Same thing with the letter to town. She gave it to me once again.

Are you sure that you made it? I have done it , it is ok. Maybe there is a some kind of combination that crused quest but I didn't notice it.

The guard asking for cheese doesn't accept it.

I have done that quest too. Maybe you have to leave house and enter it again?

I killed rats in the granary, but the Major didn't accept the quest as completed.

Ok there is a bug we will fix it.

Thanks for testing GrayFace ;].

[GrayFace]

She tells you that you have to bring her a cheese too (she forgot to add it to the list). You can complite that quest.

But she gives the quest again.

Are you sure that you made it? I have done it , it is ok. Maybe there is a some kind of combination that crused quest but I didn't notice it.

Yes, maybe I haven't got this quest in the beginning.

The guard asking for cheese doesn't accept it.

I have done that quest too. Maybe you have to leave house and enter it again?

When I re-enter he acts like he didn't give me the quest and gives it once again.

[Talin_Trollbane]

just played the demo, good work, now add some sounds and more adventures and world (and some friendly overpowered guards to the city and village, i managed to draw in rats into the village) and some bug testing (i CTD when clicking on the mayors scribe in the inn) and all will be fine.

[matgaw]

Now our biggest problem is lack od 3d modellers and music composers/sound engineers. Without them, we won't be able to create many good-looking models, especially monsters - as you can see there are now only 2 types of them (excluding peasants).

And without music composers - we won't have any sounds nor music, because no one in our team has ability to create them... It's not a technical matter - including sounds won't be any problem, but we don't have any now :/

If you know anybody or you are a person who could help us with graphics or sound - please contact us.

Probably, next patch will have the saving option implemented, and ability to fully translate every text into other languages as well. If we find someone with music skills, we'd also like to add some music to the game...

[tolich]

Suggestions:
1) Make keyboard equivalents for some mouse commands. During party creation it would be very comforting to choose persons with 1-4 keys, to navigate the attributes table with arrow keys, and to spend and return bonus points with gray + and gray -, resp. Also during gameplay, it's useful to open questlog with Q.
2) Those sofisticated trading dialogues. I hope you'll replace them with inventory exposure sometimes and let player to make potions himself.

Bugs:
1) Party generation - Clear command makes Might of all persons 20 instead of setting it default.
2) Falling from cliffs doesn't harm, dead guys (with health below -Endurance) can be returned to life with red potion or by rest.
3) When I sell Widowberries to Alchemist in city, he doesn't take them. This allow to gather much gold by just clicking.
4) On the graveyard one of tombstones 'flies'.

[matgaw]

Suggestions:
1) Make keyboard equivalents for some mouse commands. During party creation it would be very comforting to choose persons with 1-4 keys, to navigate the attributes table with arrow keys, and to spend and return bonus points with gray + and gray -, resp. Also during gameplay, it's useful to open questlog with Q.

We didn't think of that, thanks for this suggestion

2) Those sofisticated trading dialogues. I hope you'll replace them with inventory exposure sometimes and let player to make potions himself.

Yes, we'll replace them. This is temporary solution using our standard dialogues engine. In the future we'll have separate solution for that (similiar to MM6-8 system)

2) Falling from cliffs doesn't harm, dead guys (with health below -Endurance) can be returned to life with red potion or by rest.

About falling - this is also temporary. We'll fix that in near future.
About HP recovery - there was actially no possibility in the game to raise dead in other way than by making all of your characters dead (so they'd respawn), so we decided to turn off this "is dead" check in this demo. When the healer gets better engine in some near future - we'll enable it.

3) When I sell Widowberries to Alchemist in city, he doesn't take them. This allow to gather much gold by just clicking.
4) On the graveyard one of tombstones 'flies'.

Thanks for reporting. This is to be fixed.

[tolich]

...there was actially no possibility in the game to raise dead in other way than by making all of your characters dead (so they'd respawn)...

What about the temple in the city?

Also, again: Clean sets Might to 20, but when you click twice race (to set Human again) it becomes 11. However, all bonus points are lost.

And... when I cleaned the Granary, guys in mines thanks me, ignoring all the rats around. Maybe, wrong sequence? And Mayor thinks I'm still to clean.

[matgaw]

Thanks for all bug reports. After our exams at univerisites are over (in next month) we'll look at them and fix all problems. Also, we'll add new things to the engine (involving demonstration of physics capabilities, savegames and probably some music and/or sounds). Stay tuned!

[GrayFace]

Another bug: unconscious party members still get attacked by enemies and thus eventually killed.
Space picks up items and enters houses only if the mouse points at them.
Don't forget about the '1'-'4' characters hot keys, 'I' inventory shortcut and the rest.
It would be very nice to have alternative 3D action style controls. To have a kind of crosshair in the center of screen which points to the person to talk or monster to attack.
It would be good to have more than one quick spell. Say, 'S' casts quick spell #1 of each character, 'D' casts quick spell #2 and 'F' casts quick spell #3. This is useful when one character always uses attack magic and the other uses healing from time to time. This way I would be able use 'S' to attack with magic and use 'D' to attack and heal. (by setting attack magic to 'S' and 'D' keys and setting healing to 'D' key only)

And I'm curious why you chose AngelScript and not Lua for example?
To my mind, the Read/Write functions with numerical indexes aren't a good decision. Same with indexes of quests, items etc. Numerical indexes would be very bed for mods and unofficial additions as they would cause conflicts between mods. We're now getting rid of indexes in WoG 3.59.

[matgaw]

Another bug: unconscious party members still get attacked by enemies and thus eventually killed.

In original M&M IIRC this was the same - only the killed members weren't attacked anymore.

Space picks up items and enters houses only if the mouse points at them.

Yes, we must work on that. If the mouse is covering interface (down panel), then space acts as if mouse would be somewhere in the center of the screen. This has to be improved.

Don't forget about the '1'-'4' characters hot keys, 'I' inventory shortcut and the rest.

I didn't use those hotkeys so I forgot to implement it. Thanks

It would be very nice to have alternative 3D action style controls. To have a kind of crosshair in the center of screen which points to the person to talk or monster to attack.

Could you explain this idea more? I don't quite understand what are you talking about.

It would be good to have more than one quick spell. Say, 'S' casts quick spell #1 of each character, 'D' casts quick spell #2 and 'F' casts quick spell #3. This is useful when one character always uses attack magic and the other uses healing from time to time. This way I would be able use 'S' to attack with magic and use 'D' to attack and heal. (by setting attack magic to 'S' and 'D' keys and setting healing to 'D' key only)

This is a good advice for the future. We thought about it and this would be a good improvement. Somewhere in the future we'll also enable players to choose their own keys layout.

And I'm curious why you chose AngelScript and not Lua for example?

AngelScript is far easier to attach in a C++ object-oriented application. I don't like the Lua C-style commands (I didn't manage to get extensions like lua++ working). Also, AngelScript is more similiar to C++ and has every capabilities we need (our demands aren't great).

To my mind, the Read/Write functions with numerical indexes aren't a good decision. Same with indexes of quests, items etc. Numerical indexes would be very bed for mods and unofficial additions as they would cause conflicts between mods. We're now getting rid of indexes in WoG 3.59.

If you want to discuss this or other technical issues, why don't you contact me by PM? Looks like you have some experience in making/modding games and some of your advices may be helpful.
P.S. Great job making MM6 patch - this requires very high programming and reverse-engineering skills.

[tolich]

I suggest you to remake a bit your dialogue system: now it is two-level (House-2DEvent) with 2D events linked to scripts, that is very inflexible. In MM, dialogue system was three level (House - 2dEvent - Topics) and those topics was linked to scripts. What is advantage? You can set up topic list of a NPC in more flexible way.
Consider you'are to implement W.Humphry: he is a Lord, that also dubs Paladins. His topics are 'Sixth Letter', 'Kilburn', 'High Council', 'Silvertongue's Cure', 'Queen Catherine', 'Crusader', 'Hero'. Some of them can be exposed simultaneously, so your dialogue may have 10 variants of exposed topics.
Oh, I forgot: he also awards for white pearl (a secret quest). So it is 20 variants (with or without 'White Pearl' topic)!

[Macros the Black]

Another bug: unconscious party members still get attacked by enemies and thus eventually killed.

In original M&M IIRC this was the same - only the killed members weren't attacked anymore.

What do you mean, original M&M? Because I'm sure it's not the case in MM6-8.. Only unconscious and dead characters still get hurt from AOE spells like fireball.

It would be good to have more than one quick spell. Say, 'S' casts quick spell #1 of each character, 'D' casts quick spell #2 and 'F' casts quick spell #3. This is useful when one character always uses attack magic and the other uses healing from time to time. This way I would be able use 'S' to attack with magic and use 'D' to attack and heal. (by setting attack magic to 'S' and 'D' keys and setting healing to 'D' key only)

Good idea! And if it could be done, why not add a way to put your favorite spells for each character into a choice menu you can pop up? This would be useful mainly for spells like Enchant Item and Haste..
What I mean is.. like you press v instead of c, and instead of the spellbook, a small choice menu pops up where only those spells you deemed worthy of using can be found in a simple little list. You select one, and poof, it's cast.

[tolich]

why not add a way to put your favorite spells for each character into a choice menu you can pop up?

The reason is the goal of quick spells: to cast necessary spells as quick as possible in the arcade mode. Therefore it must not more than 1 button for 1 spell. Offensive spells search a target automatically. OK, some of spells like Heal still need to define a target to affect, so it can be 2 buttons, or 1 button and mouse click.
However, I think, nobody makes 'Enchant Item' or 'Lloyd's Beacon' quick.

[Macros the Black]

why not add a way to put your favorite spells for each character into a choice menu you can pop up?

The reason is the goal of quick spells: to cast necessary spells as quick as possible in the arcade mode. Therefore it must not more than 1 button for 1 spell. Offensive spells search a target automatically. OK, some of spells like Heal still need to define a target to affect, so it can be 2 buttons, or 1 button and mouse click.

I'm not saying my idea is better than the other one, I'm saying use both of them.

However, I think, nobody makes 'Enchant Item' or 'Lloyd's Beacon' quick.

I do. The moment I get GM Echant Item, I put it on quickspell, stand outside a shop, and enchant everything I got. Putting it on quickspell makes the process alot faster..
But in a list it is also useful, because there are plenty of times when you'll just want to quickly cast the spell only once. Quickspell doesn't help then, and selecting it from a small custom list is alot faster than going into the spellbook. It doesn't break the action.

And also, spells like Stun and Slow are never used because you don't want to go into the spellbook to select a spell that only works for a short duration anyway. And frankly, most of the time I don't even think of them. Having it in this custom list will make them actually useful because they're worth the small effort of selecting it then, and the fact that their name is in the list is actually a useful reminder to say "oh yeah.. I could use Stun". Plenty of reasons why you'd want to do it.

But again, the other idea is great also. I'd just like to see both of them in the game. They have different uses.

But maybe you have a different view of what I mean. I mean a really small list, maybe 5-10 spells or so. You can color-code them if you want, like red for damage, etc.. You pop up the menu with the v key for example and the character you currently have selected is the one who's menu comes up. Lets say it's an Archer.. It would look like this:

Wizard Eye
Torch Light
Stone Skin
Fly
Feather Fall
Jump
Invisibility
Telekinesis
Enchant Item
Town Portal

10 spells that you will be casting alot during your adventures.. Any other spells the Archer gets are not going to be used enough to warrant putting them into this list, but these are useful almost always. And, because the Archer will likely not be the only character with elemental magic, most of the time the list will look even smaller and, thus, faster to use.
Now imagine color-coding it, like the first four are buffs you'll always want to have cast, so you make their button green. The next four are spells you use when you happen to need them, so you color them yellow. The last two are spells only for a specific purpose, so you color them red.

Just an example of what you could do with it.

You could even combine the two ideas, where you have box to the right of the spells in the "list", that you can select and then you press S, D or F and it sets that spell as autospell for that key.

[tolich]

The more interface flexibility the better.
Note that the sorcerers in MM serie already have too much advantages to fighters. Quick spell list will make them even more prefferable. Maybe to balance the features, it's good to add some 'magiclike' features to fighters, like special moves or combos to add to the list you mention.

[GrayFace]

There's a lot of spells like Torch Light, Stone Skin etc. that you have to recast very often. Maybe it would be good to turn them on once (spending a small amount of SP) and have them drain your spell points as time goes then. When you don't need them you'll go to book and turn them off (would be good to have a button to turn off all the spells). However, this way they wouldn't have single character versions.

[Macros the Black]

Well, for the Might characters, what they really lack is an ability to actually do what they're designed to do. They are made to soak up damage while your sorcerer is casting, right? But they don't actually do that, instead they just stay alive while the other guys are dieing..

So to fix them, you can add two skills:

1. "Guarding". Can also be called Tanking or Blocking. Whatever. Every skill point put into it adds a chance that enemies will attack him instead of the weaker characters in your group. Only works for the character with the highest guarding skill who is currently concious. Expert, Master and GM gives it a bonus of x2, x3, and x4 respectively, so at GM level 10 there's a 40% chance this character gets hit instead of another one.

2. "Tactics". Or call it Leadership if you wish.. Every skill point put into it adds half a chance that your characters will get an extra turn (i.e. no recovery time) after they act. At GM level this will be a 20% which isn't too imbalanced, but still makes the character who has the skill alot more useful.

So this way, you can make one melee character who gets GM Guarding, and another one that gets GM Tactics, and another one that's a hybrid between the two and gets Master in both (= 21% chance for Guarding, and 10.5% chance for Tactics).

And of course, you can also still add the Monk for a damage dealer among the melee characters..

As for the buff spells, just make them last indefinetely at GM level of skill. And you can add a Cancel spell if you want a way to turn off buffing spells.

Just some ideas

[GrayFace]

I don't like the "Tactics" idea. It makes sense in Heroes 4, but I don't see a reason why in MM game a fighter would make other characters work faster. IMO, the leadership effect can take place in a big army, but a group of 4 people that know each other very well should work equally good with or without leadership thing.
To make fighters more valuable they should just deal more damage. Damage should be more balanced in the game.
In original MM's there is one way to use fighter's HP by casting Shared Life.
Another guarding-like idea is that characters that used weapon or melee spell (like poison spray, sparks, sharpmetal) should step forward. So, melee characters would be in front line and casters would be in back line. Monsters in front of the party would have better chance of hitting characters in the front line while monsters on the back would have better chance of hitting characters of the back line.

Don't forget about the '1'-'4' characters hot keys, 'I' inventory shortcut and the rest.

I didn't use those hotkeys so I forgot to implement it. Thanks

Oh, must correct myself - there was no 'I' inventory shortcut in MM6-8, but it would be very useful.

It would be very nice to have alternative 3D action style controls. To have a kind of crosshair in the center of screen which points to the person to talk or monster to attack.

Could you explain this idea more? I don't quite understand what are you talking about.

Use mouse for turning the view. Make a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Usual mouse cursor won't be visible. (to point at something with the mouse you would move it so that the thing is in the middle of the screen)
Use WSAD for forward-backward-strafes.
When entering some screen, normal mouse cursor should be shown. There should be a key to pause the game and show the mouse pointer so you can look at conditions of your characters and such. This key would be also useful in the classical mode.

If you want to discuss this or other technical issues, why don't you contact me by PM?

I'll write a PM soon.

I suggest you to remake a bit your dialogue system: now it is two-level (House-2DEvent) with 2D events linked to scripts, that is very inflexible. In MM, dialogue system was three level (House - 2dEvent - Topics) and those topics was linked to scripts. What is advantage? You can set up topic list of a NPC in more flexible way.

I think 3-level system is a bad idea. It's very inconvenient. Instead, the function that returns variant index can activate several variants. In addition to returning a variant, it should be able to call some function to activate additional variants.

[tolich]

Oh, must correct myself - there was no 'I' inventory shortcut in MM6-8, but it would be very useful.

This shortcut key is present on party browsing mode:
S for Stats, K for sKills, I for Inventory, A for Awards, Esc for Exit.

It would be very nice to have alternative 3D action style controls. To have a kind of crosshair in the center of screen which points to the person to talk or monster to attack.

Use mouse for turning the view. Make a crosshair in the middle of the screen. Usual mouse cursor won't be visible. (to point at something with the mouse you would move it so that the thing is in the middle of the screen). Use WSAD for forward-backward-strafes.
When entering some screen, normal mouse cursor should be shown. There should be a key to pause the game and show the mouse pointer so you can look at conditions of your characters and such. This key would be also useful in the classical mode.

Too much words to just describe mouselooking.

I think 3-level system is a bad idea. It's very inconvenient.

This means I must explain details.

1st level is 'house'. It is not necessary reference to a building, just a structure where 2devents 'housing'. Walking around peasants in MM6 is an example of 'monsterlike' house.
2nd level is '2devent'. This means NPCs, transitions to another map, containers, etc. More than one 2devent can share one house, and this assignment is not static: Prince Nicolai can leave Castle Ironfist to join circus, Mayor scribe leaves City Hall and meets you in tavern. As a sign of flexability, High Council members share their house with the doors of Oracle, while Oracle himself shares his house with the doors of the Control Center.
3rd level is 'topic'. It is a subject you can discuss with corresponding NPC.
The list of topic also is not static, and is generated depending the game progress. The very example is in my previous post. It is not necessary a dialogue: shop or inventory exposure, or just 'Enter this dungeon' can present here.
Scripts used both to populate houses with 2d events and to enumerate topics of 2devent.

MMTNO implements flexibly enough relations between 1st and 2nd levels.
However, relations between 2devent and topics are too static, especialy to make independent topics for one NPC, and this is what I mention in my previous post. The controlling functions in this implementation can only be used to list sets of topics, not individual ones.

Instead, the function that returns variant index can activate several variants. In addition to returning a variant, it should be able to call some function to activate additional variants.

Better to write function, that returns 1 if topic is to be shown, and 0 otherwise. It is one of good replacements for current implementation. Also, it is functional implementation of 3-level model I telled about.