GalCiv2 Interview...MoM2??

[Sky]

Find the interview here. I enjoy the occasional game of Gal Civ around a year after I bought it, and Stardock does things pretty well imo (I also bought it via digital download for the folks into that kinda thing). The tastiest quote (imo) didn't concern GalCiv2, rather....Master of Magic 2!

HomeLAN - Finally, Firing Squad quoted you as saying you were talking with Atari to release a sequel to the SimTex-Microprose fantasy strategy game Master of Magic. What can you tell us about these talks at this time?

Brad Wardell - We're still in negotiation on the various fine points. Stardock WILL be doing a fantasy strategy game title after Galactic Civilizations II's release. We're in pre-production. So the question isn't IF such a game is going to be made but rather what the title will be. Outstanding fantasy strategy games such as Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic demonstrate that there is interest in these types of games. Our vision is to create a game where you're really building up a fantasy civilization that is full of magic and sorcery. Throw in a 3D engine so you can morph the ground when you start doing powerful spells and I think you'll find that a lot of people will want this kind of thing.

[Merusk]

Oh so sweet.  Gal Civ was a good game and a far better successor to MOO2 than MOO3 was, IMO.  The only part I really missed was customizing my own ships. (After a point, the turn-based battles in MOO get get to slugfests, particularly if you had a large fleet.)

If they can keep all the good elements from MOM, and do it with the competency of Gal-Civ I'd be so very pleased.

[SirBruce]

I'm surprised Sid Meier didn't buy the rights to MoM when he bought them for a bunch of other Microprose games?

Bruce

[WayAbvPar]

Sid could probably nail a sequel to MoM. Hell, anyone could- give it a polish, a few tweaks, and Bam!

Goddamn I hope this comes to fruition.

[Sky]

Last good game Sid made was SimGolf. Before that....Civ2? He really isn't knocking them all out of the park like he used to. If only Brian Reynolds hadn't sold out and went RTS, dammit.

[Rodent]

Last good game Sid made was SimGolf. Before that....Civ2? He really isn't knocking them all out of the park like he used to. If only Brian Reynolds hadn't sold out and went RTS, dammit.

Ah, Sid and Brian. Alpha Centauri will probably remain on my harddrive till the day I die.

[Lum]

This thread may be of interest.

http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=11874

Hi guys, I dropped by and bam, the MOM stuff has really spread more so than I would have anticipated.

So here's what's going on.

1) The basic question is the value of the NAME Master of Magic. If a third party, such as us, wants to have the liberty to do the game how we want to do it we have to license it from Atari and there is a substantial cost attached to this. So then you're in the position of having to determine whether the NAME Master of Magic is worth the cost or whether it should be called something else (Stardock owns the domain names MasterofMagic AND MasterofSorcery for instance).

2) For a Master of Magic II we would focus on taking the original game and updating the graphics and focusing on good computer players. We feel that the first step would be to try to stay loyal to the original game with changes only having to do with visuals and a few other tweaks. That would mean no multiplayer initially but that could be added in an expansion pack or sequel. BTW, The Political Machine which comes out next month, IS multiplayer. www.politicalmachine.com

3) Drengin.net is currently $69.95 for the first year and then I believe $35 for subsequent years. After an upcoming major announcement the price will increase. We have lined up several AAA game titles that will start going into it in the coming months. There will be official PR on this soon. We've already got a bunch of big companies lined up to put their titles on this (as well as stand alone). No wrappers, no copy protection stuff, no worries of losing your downloads (you can, even years later, just press a button and redownload your game in total). Stay tuned on that.

4) A fantasy/Civ style game wouldn't come out until AFTER GalCiv II so we're talking Fall 2006 at the earliest for the release.

We are really struggling on this. I think there is a big demand still for this type of game. What I don't know is whether the name itself matters enough in the bigger scheme to justify licesning (not buying, licensing) the rights to the name when a very similar game could be created and start a new franchise that we could move forward on our own into the future.

That's why we asked how many people would be interested in preordering a MOM 2. Is the name itself, Master of Magic, enough to bring in enough users who would otherwise ignore the game to justify the added costs.

[AOFanboi]

A tiny bit off-topic: "Drengin.net" (now TotalGaming.net) seems to be yet another site like Atari on demand, though currently only with lesser-known games (including Stardock's own). Presumably you can only play the (non-individually purchased) games while you have an active subscription as is the case with Atari on Demand? Anyone know?

[personman]

Ah, Sid and Brian. Alpha Centauri will probably remain on my harddrive till the day I die.

I love the way AC plays.  I just can't get into the game theme - I like "historical" recreation.  Something about establishing a New World of Peace and Prosperity using Irish just really appeals to me.  I bought Civ3 hoping it would be AC starting back in 4000 BC.  Rats...

I was fortunate to beta GC when it was first developed for OS/2.  I was disappointed it wasn't brought fully up to modern tech with the re-release but I too consider it still a better MoM than MoM.  I'd like to see a MOG game environment with flight physics like Jumpgate, the trade route/piracy PvE of Elite, and strategic overlay of GC.

[Merusk]

Just updating the game and re-releasing it with new graphics is a good 'safe bet' but probably not enough for them to avoid aquiring the license.

Plus, since MOM plays fine on my machine with nothing beyond a few EMS/XMS settings in WinXP, why would I buy it if the game were completly the same.  Sure it'd be 'shiny' but I've played the same graphics for 11 years now and haven't had a problem with them.

I'd hope they'd tweak at least a few things. Like adding in some more enchantments to the weapons, and maybe another school of magic or some more writs.

I was disappointed it wasn't brought fully up to modern tech with the re-release but I too consider it still a better MoM than MoM.

Err.. you mean MOO, yes?

[Sky]

Hey, Merusk. Care to share the tweaks to get MoM running on XP? I still have the disks in storage (though with floppy media, who knows if they've maintained integrity...). At some point I'd like to dig the old game out, I really enjoyed playing it back when.

I bought Civ3 hoping it would be AC starting back in 4000 BC. Rats...

And I had thought Civ2 would bring all the improvements from Colonization, a seriously underrated game that most gamers seem to have missed. I felt it really improved the Civ franchise, but they dumped every improvement it had, like resource production, second level resource production (tobacco into cigars, etc), specialized citizens instead of 'happy..content...unhappy' drones, natives you could integrate into your society, the radical endgame shift...just a solid damned game imo. Civ2 was great, but could've been so much better...

[Nazrat]

Thanks, Sky.

Now, I have to go find my Colonization game and load it up.  I loved that game.  Just when you thought you were winning those damn British show up and overrun every thing for a turn or two until you can slaughter them.  That is a fun game.

Someone also mentioned SimGolf which I now have to reload on my system as well.  

There goes my weekend.

[Tebonas]

Dosbox (from Sourceforge) works like a charm with MoM Sky. And it has the added benefit of being able to slow it down on fast machines. I have my Games Partition mounted in Dosbox and can play all my Dos games on a whim. Darklands and MoM are permanent inhabitants.

[Merusk]

Dosbox (from Sourceforge) works like a charm with MoM Sky. And it has the added benefit of being able to slow it down on fast machines. I have my Games Partition mounted in Dosbox and can play all my Dos games on a whim. Darklands and MoM are permanent inhabitants.

Yeah dosbox works well for some things I hear.  I'll have to check the .exe when I get ome so I remember what I did to get MoM running without using it.  I had a disk copy of the game, but lost one of the install disks years ago. I got my version off of certain  certain abandonware sites that carry the MOM install so it might be different from the original disk version.I'd provide a link to, but that's too close to warez to risk it being deleted. (I don't feel bad having it, tho, because I bought the game orignally.)

D Simpson's FAQ (That man writes FAQs for everything it seems) has been updated by another guy to include various ways of getting it to run in newer OSes if you just can't wait until I get home to try something.

[Sky]

Someone also mentioned SimGolf which I now have to reload on my system as well.

Heh, that was me, too :) I love SimGolf. Busta Clubs for teh win, biznatch. Glad to hear others liked Colonization, too bad Sid apparently didn't feel the same, and now Reynolds is a dirty RTS bitch.

I know the abandonware site, I don't feel things like that are warez...I mean, if I can't buy it at retail, can you really bitch that I'm costing a sale? I use the abandonware site for stuff I can't find for sale. Actually, I have the abandonware version of Colonization zipped to a cd...just in case my disks are bad.

But I might re-assemble ye olde 486 (an old Tandy...they mocked me when I bought it, but it still runs great 11 years later!), which I did about two years ago to play some Ultima. Unfortunately I sold the sound card (SB16), gotta find a new one, heh. It's a great box for playing vintage pc games...if only it had DVI out so I could hook it to the hdtv....how pixelicious that would be...

[Alkiera]

New version of DOSBox out, v 0.62.

Emulation speed improvements have made MoM run much better on my Win2k system with a 1.4 Ghz Athlon.  It's important to turn up the emulation speed manually tho, since it has no idea how fast the game should run.  I generally put the Task Manager in the system tray so I get the little bar for CPU usage, and the turn up the emulation until the CPU is near max...  at 1.4 ghz, it's a decent pace for the game, but not as fast as it ran on this machine natively on Win98, which was silly.  Animations went crazy, and it still used alot of time on the CPU.

--
Alkiera

[Merusk]

I know the abandonware site, I don't feel things like that are warez...I mean, if I can't buy it at retail, can you really bitch that I'm costing a sale? I use the abandonware site for stuff I can't find for sale. Actually, I have the abandonware version of Colonization zipped to a cd...just in case my disks are bad.

I'm of the same opinion, but I don't know the prevailing thoughts on the issue from Schild and Haemish, so figgured it'd be best to just not provide the link. Good enough if you know where it's at, though.

I *thought* about rebuilding my 486 for a while. But when I tried, it was just painfuly slow and took up too much space to be worth it, imo.

[HaemishM]

I have no problems with abandonware myself, even with the Underdogs site. Not sure where schild stands on that, but you ain't gonna hear me bitch. After all, if NO ONE is making money from it, drop that bastard into a zip file and offer it for download to anyone with the bandwidth to host it, IMO.

[schild]

Agreed. God love the Underdogs. I couldn't find my system shock 2 discs, but they had it right there for download. Fantastic.

Abandonware will always need a home and Underdogs does quite the good job.

[AOFanboi]

New version of DOSBox out, v 0.62.

THANK YOU! Finally I get to play Advanced Civilization again! And tomorrow I will install Microprose's M:tG and see if it runs there as well...

*dances happy dance of joy happy joy*

[Shannow]

War of the Lance, Mechwarrior I. Best games I ever got off UnderDogs, dear god the popups though!

[Merusk]

Ok, figured out how you run DOS games in XP. (Or at least MOM)  I seem to recall finding this information when googling around one day.  As previously mentioned, I modded the files you find at www.the-underdogs.org  I don't think it would make a difference if you used the original install disks (Other than The Underdogs carries version 1.3, which made some big changes to some broken things like missile units and CTDs)

Step 1) Right click on the .exe and create a shortcut.  Then go to the properties of the shortcut and mod the memory properties so EMS is at least 16384. XMS should be None, but check HMA. The rest should be set to 'auto'.
On the 'screen' tab I've got 'Fast ROM emulation' and 'Dynamic memory allocation' both checked. Not sure if this is required, but hey.

Step 2) You need two files in the directory you're running MoM.exe from.  They should be called config.nt and autoexec.nt   These two files are what XP looks for when emulating. You should have a basic copy in your windows\repair directory or \system32.. at least I have copies there, I may have copied them there myself.  Alternatly, you could just create them yourself and add-in the info I'm going to give.

Step 3) In the autoexec.nt the only active comments are

@echo off


set blaster=a220 i5 d1 p330 t3

The rest of the file is information on what these setting do.  If you remember the glory days of DOS games, you should remember 'em.

In the config.nt the following is included

NTCMDPROMPT
dos=high, umb
device=%SystemRoot%\system32\himem.sys
EMM=RAM
files=80
buffers=80
fcbs=4,0
stacks-9,256

Other than that, I don't see any changes or tweaks I made to the files.  Let me know how it works out and I'll see if I can track down the site I found this info on.

[Jain Zar]

Reminds me I need to use Dosbox to play Wizardry 5.  Pop out the graph paper and rock that sumbitch out!

[Lum]

If you have Civ3 Conquests (and you should) there's a pretty decent MoM mod out for it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=79607

[Ezdaar]

A tiny bit off-topic: "Drengin.net" (now TotalGaming.net) seems to be yet another site like Atari on demand, though currently only with lesser-known games (including Stardock's own). Presumably you can only play the (non-individually purchased) games while you have an active subscription as is the case with Atari on Demand? Anyone know?

False. Stardock seems to hate copy protection and DRM with a passion. When you buy a year subscription to Totalgaming the titles that are in their catalog at time of purchase and for the next year are yours forever. If you lose them you can even redownload without a subscription. This is a fantastic deal, I recommend it to everyone.

[WayAbvPar]

If you have Civ3 Conquests (and you should) there's a pretty decent MoM mod out for it.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=79607

Interesting. Might be worth checking out while I hold my breath for a true sequel.

[Train Wreck]

That would mean no multiplayer initially but that could be added in an expansion pack or sequel.

This is ass.

[Jealous Deva]

If you have Civ3 Conquests (and you should) there's a pretty decent MoM mod out for it.

It's not technically mom-related, but for the same type of thing the Warhammer mod on that same site is excellent.  They successfully made a civ mod with 25 different civs that actually play differently.  Not sure how the balance works out yet though, only played 2 full games so far.

[AOFanboi]

And tomorrow I will install Microprose's M:tG and see if it runs there as well...

Of course it doesn't you silly twit! That's a Windows 95 game.

However, my boxes of Kyrandia, Lands of Lore, Beneath a Steel Sky etc. suddenly sprang into action. Ah, the blessing of mapping stupid labyrinths on paper again! The save-try-shit!-load dances to solve puzzles...

[personman]

Err.. you mean MOO, yes?

Err umm yes I did... :)