Master of Magic Remake – April 2022 Developer Diary

Last week, MuHa Games published a new developer diary for their remake of Master of Magic. It starts by introducing us to the team, then brings a sizable Q&A section, shares a quick visual update, and finally wraps things up with some beta news.

Here’s a couple of excerpts to get you started:

Community Q&A

We also reached out to the community for any questions they may have.

Here’s a fun question to try to answer without upsetting fans of either camp: How much influence of Thea will there be in the new MoM?

This is a tough one to answer really. Thea and Master of Magic are very different games and while they obviously share some aspects of the 4x genre, the two/three games approach those aspects in vastly divergent ways.

But, if I was to fish out an aspect, apart from hexes and some genre similarities, I would say that both games appreciate that perfect balance is not always the way to have fun in games.

Will there be any balance changes to existing spell factions?

No, we are not balancing the magic for now, however, this is subject to change, pending the beta tests and player feedback, that’s when we will consider tweaks and changes to mechanics and balance.

When will we see the first animations? When magic effects? When will we hear music?

A question I have been wondering about is: is there going to be like a couple minute play through that THEY have done and recorded? Not necessarily for us which I know beta is coming for us… but if we don’t get picked for it. I’d like to just see a couple minutes of it if nothing else.

In answer to both of the above, Slitherine is planning their Home of Wargamers Live on May 10th and you can expect some Master of Magic exposure there, so note the date!

How much of the gameplay is 1:1 with the original game and how much is revisited? I’m interested from the perspective of future plans: are you going to expand on the original concept more on a future game? Or DLC to this upcoming game? Or are you planning to encourage more user content and mods as a primary means to extend the game?

We have tried to recreate as much as we were able to without the source code and detailed design notes. As for the future plans, well, we are not counting anything out, but neither do we have any solid plans right now. This is because we are a small team, and we tend to focus on the project at hand as it is, and then expand our plans accordingly once we see how it is all going. However, we have included a lot of modability, so yes, we do hope modding will pick up and be great.

Will the music be done in house, or are you looking at outside talent? Also, will it be only remasters of the originals, or are there plans to add a few more entries?

Our music is outsourced, and done by the wonderful Murmur Studio. The OST is actually ready, and the music is inspired by the original rather than a remaking of it.

Do you intend to make AI profiles, that means different AI routines that play differently instead of one AI master routine?

Our diplomacy AI does have several variants depending on the Wizard’s character (see answer below). Apart from the diplomacy AI, at the moment, we have only one AI routine, although this routine can be modified in the game settings to raise/lower difficulty. The scripts for the AI are moddable though, so perhaps in the future, either we ,or the modders, will be able to adjust this.

How smart will the AI behave in regards to diplomacy and co? Pls don’t give us something like the original that goes like: “you want peace? Ok!” and “you want this awesome spell that is gamebreaking? ok!”

An mentioned in dev diary #7 January 2022 , we are working on the diplomacy AI having a lot of complexity. So the enemy Wizards have their behaviour patterns, and should act in accordance to those, as well as our actions towards them, or any needs they may have (so, in theory, they should offer to trade when they actually need something from us, and not randomly offer up spells).

How is the New MoM going to address the ‘final 50 turns’ problem? Mainly that the latter 1/4 to 1/3rd of most 4X games range between ‘dull’ and ‘perfunctory’, where the outcome is defined and known by the player but not yet the game engine.

This one is a huge question, for most of the 4X genre, I guess. In short, and I will sound like a broken record here, we have not addressed such things a lot, beyond putting an effort into working on the AI and its complexity. We are finding that recreating Master of Magic in all its glory and faults alike, is a huge task for us already, so we will approach such questions most likely during the beta process. In the past, with our Thea games, we found working with our community was the best way to find/add/polish and in doing so, also address those kinds of big questions from new angles. So, in short, we hope to find some ways to address this, but our focus remains on the remake first.

This [MoM] story needs a proper wrap up! Could we have an interview of the original creators together with the new team and modders? This game has been burnt in so many minds since the 90s, I think the world needs to know more about it. Such brilliant ideas surviving the test of time mean a lot more than what meets the eye.

I [Yuuki] would be happy to participate in such an event, for sure, but apart from the modders and dedicated fans with whom I am always open to talk to, we have not had any contact with the original game creators.

[…]

Beta news

Our plan is to begin beta tests this week!

We will do the tests in waves, meaning that we will not invite everyone who applied at once. Our first wave, in fact, will be very small. We do not have precise plans on the frequency with which we will increase the beta tests, so please remain patient with us as we do our best to include as many willing participants as we can.

Thank you so much to everyone who has applied by the way! The response has been super cool, and I know together we will make Master of Magic great again.