Version 1.0.8.0 Released

NOTE: version 1.0.8.0 is NOT compatible with savegames from any previous release. It will allow you to open an earlier savegame, but the behavior may be unpredictable. If you are currently playing a game, I suggest finishing the game before upgrading to the new version.

This release is mostly a fix to bugs related to the expansion, as well as a few adjustments to game play. If you are not playing the expansion, there really is no need to update. I will get back into fixing "regular game" bugs eventually, but I wanted to get the expansion "playable" before that.

There were several treasures which were causing the game to crash, or were behaving weirdly, and I think the last of those are fixed. Also, I added some new monsters to cover the X tiles, so those aren't going to be a walk in the park anymore.

The big thing in this release, is that the monster generators are working now. Blobs move and grow, undead shamble down paths, and giant wasps swarm. The rules for the generators have changed a bunch from the written expansion, so you'll probably want to check out the new ruleset. If you look at the "View" menu, you'll find a new entry called "Expansion Rules" which will be the home of all new rules that I put into the game. Right now there is only the single entry "Monster Generators" which you can use to read up on how these things work, and what you have to do to destroy them.

I've had at least one person comment that the F/N and gold prices for many of the new treasures were a bit high, and that's something I still need to fix. I'll probably get those tweaked for the next release.

Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• Monster generators
  
  • Rules are available under "View|Expansion Rules|Monster Generators" menu
    
  • All monster generation and movement works
    
  • Killing Hive Queen destroys Hive
    
  • Killing Lich destroys Tomb
    
  • Flaming oil destroy Hive/Pond
    
  • Looting 2 Large Treasures destroys Pond/Tomb
  
  
• Dragonmen and Murkers added to character builder for relationships

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Only show the sidebar info for cards when they are face up (like author name or "Expansion 1")
  
• [1583] - Fixed a bug that crashes the game when the Murkers are on the board, and a monster die of 4 comes up
  
• [1583] - Fixed a bug where the HQ and Rank 1 Murkers are not prowling on a die roll of 4
  
• [1582] - Fixed a problem where the Pirate's Map would crash the game at Midnight
  
• [1577] - Fixed a bug with the Journal that caused the game to crash when activated
  
• [1584] - Expanded the Woods Girl's special ability to include the Dark Forest and Grove
  
• [1574] - All one-way paths are learned automatically when you enter, so you no longer have to search to leave. Also, spies on the "hidden" side will learn the location too.
  
• Incantations Book should have been type IV not VI
  
• Ice Storm correctly says "mountain only" instead of "cave only"
  
• BLANK chits are now HAMLET chits, for a bit more realism, and to reduce confusion.

Blanks and No X

One thing I'm discovering, both for myself, and from e-mails I'm getting, is that the Expansion is a little too easy. I think a big part of this comes from the fact that there are no roaming monsters for the X tiles explicitly. That means more often than not, you are safe in the X tiles when there are no treasure sites. That's not good, and makes the game easier than I intended. That will change in the next release, as I assemble some monsters to cover that portion of the board.

Also, the balance of treasure at some of the sites is a little... off. The generator site has something like 12 treasures, and when you find that, its easy pickings to get a load of new stuff, and get very powerful very fast. I need to adjust that a bit.

There has been some confusion about the "BLANK" chits. I have had some people think this was an error in the program, but truly these are intentional. The 10 BLANK chits are meant to mix up the board a bit, to provide a level of danger to the normally safe Valley tiles. In most cases, the Valley tiles will end up with either a GOLD or a BLANK, but there is a small chance that the Gate of Chaos will appear which brings a lot of chits at once. If you want to calculate the odds, you can see the setup in the original expansion rules.

That said, Roberto U had a wonderful suggestion: make these BLANK chits into something meaningful, if no effect. One example he gave was "HAMLET". The chit would still have no overall effect, but would have more flavor than just "BLANK". Oooh, hey I just thought of something. If I made each of the BLANK chits actual "places", then there would be something to reference in the Guild Quests (coming soon) for various tasks. For example, imagine a quest that reads "Travel to the Cherry Hamlet, and pick up a package. Deliver the package to Druid Grove where ...." anyway, you get the idea. Since the Guild Quests feature will come with a quest generator tool that you can use to make your own quests, this will open the door for all kinds of variety.

Version 1.0.7.0 Released

Requires new Resource Pack!

Not compatible with previous releases!

At long last, I have a new version of RealmSpeak that includes an unofficial expansion pack. The expansion provides new monsters, new treasures, new spells, new natives, new tiles (well, technically new), as well as a host of other things. Though most of this comes from the unofficial expansion my friend and I put together nearly 10 years ago, quite a few spells and even a couple of treasures were taken directly off the Magic Realm Wiki. In the cases where I knew the author name, I asked permission, and included their name as a credit down the left side of the card in light blue. Thanks guys!!

Although the expansion isn't completely finished (still some work to do on the special rules), you'll still find a lot of it in place. Take a look at the final list of spells (click to enlarge):


and treasures:


Of course, there are a lot of other new things:


To play with the new expansion, simply choose the game variant in the setup window:


Alternatively, if you want to play regular Magic Realm, but want to try out the new spells, you can do that too:


When the game starts, be sure to take note of the new "Expansion" tab on the character window:


You'll also want to take a look at some of the new tables you'll be rolling on:


One new concept in the expansion I want to draw attention to, because it doesn't exist even in the print version I have online: Cursed Items.


These are items that once activated by a character cannot be deactivated! The only way to deactivate a cursed item, is to spend the night at the Chapel. Once this has happened, the cursed item is destroyed, and removed from your character. I think you can probably see why you would (or would not) want to activate these items.

I'll probably post more about the expansion later. Anyway, I'm tired, so let's just get to what's new in this release:

Version 1.0.7.0 - October 11, 2009 - Changes since 1.06
NEW FEATURES:

• Changed version code to a more standard format (app.major.minor.revision), to reduce confusion
  
• "Expansion One" implemented.
  
  • 60 new treasures (all but two are ready to go!)
    
  • [1467] - 36 new spells (that's about 3-6 new spells per MAGIC type)
    
  • Some special rules in place
    
  • Using Gates to move in the realm
    
  • CURSED items - Once activated, cannot be removed. If you spend the night at the Chapel, the item is removed, but is also destroyed.
    
  • Minor treasure locations and bags of gold
    
  • New chit setup - Valleys will be a little more interesting... still pretty safe, but you never know.
    
  • Hive/Pond/Graveyard treasure location is randomized
    
  • Labyrinth must be discovered before character can leave clearing!
    
  • NOT working yet:
    
    • Events, Travellers, Guilds (they are there, they just don't do anything... YET)
      
    • Monster generation at the generators (Hive, Pond, Graveyard) - The Hive has a queen, but the other two are unguarded.
      
    • Minotaur buckler does not parry attacks like it is supposed to.
  
  
• Option to use expansion spells in normal play or with Pruitt's Monsters
  
• Better spell selector - spells separated by type, and sorted by name for easier finding.
  
• Hirelings following a leader are visible on the board now (always hated how hirelings could appear invisible when following a leader!)

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Fixed a couple of bugs with enhanced magic:
  
  • No longer lose the actions phase in the round AFTER casting a day/combat/permanent spell.
    
  • Cast enhanced spells properly expire on death
  
  
• Went through EVERY spell (old and new) and verified that they were working - fixed them where they weren't:
  
  • Bad Luck spell didn't do anything, and apparently never ded (guess that tells you how often it is used!)
    
  • Illusion spell when tied to a tile wasn't giving +1 to search rolls in that tile.
    
  • Fixed the text on the map when using "Talk to Wise Bird"
    
  • Pentangle no longer allows the Demons and Imp to attack the target
  
  
• Fixed a problem that would crash the game when a spellcaster was killed BEFORE his controlled monsters killed their target.
  
• [1573] - When a missile attack exceeds TREMENDOUS, it kills the target outright, ignoring armor, as per the rules.
  
• [1560] - Fixed a spelling error in the HTML report (Squeak curse is no longer the Squak curse!)

Sixty New Treasures

I've been working pretty heavily on the new expansion for Magic Realm/RealmSpeak, and thought I'd give you an update. There are 60 new treasures planned, and 43 new spells. Most of the treasures are done, so I'll be moving to the spells soon. If you are familiar with the expansion my friend and I released a while back, then you'll recognize a lot of it, but there are definitely a bunch of changes too! For one thing, there were a few treasures that were a little out of character for the Realm, and needed some tweaking. If you are curious what is coming, this is the current list (click the image below for full-size):



Of course, there's bound to be changes, especially those that are marked in green as UNFINISHED. I'll post the list of spells at a later date.

Expansion One

Many years ago, before RealmSpeak was much more than a dream, a friend and I decided to expand the Realm with a new set of rules, tiles, monsters, treasures, spells, etc. After much toil and trouble, the unofficial Expansion One was born. After introducing it to the Magic Realm community, I discovered pretty quickly that there were those that liked it, and those that "wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole".

Many years later, having become even more intimately familiar with the Magic Realm ruleset than I was back when we designed the expansion, I realized why people might not like the expansion, and tried to make adjustments. The biggest problem, is that it's really difficult to playtest, because setup is such a pain, a single game can last hours! In many respects, my inspiration for writing RealmSpeak, was so that I could someday playtest our expansion, and clean it up.

Finally, I can say that I've begun work on integrating the expansion. I started by drawing up some of the monsters, and rendering them onto chits:



Yeah, pretty amateurish art, but what can I say: I'm a programmer, not an artist. :-) I've got all the treasures entered, though none of them do anything yet. I should be able to enable a bunch of them, at least those that leverage existing rules. The ones that don't will take a bit longer, but that's just how it goes.

Of course, the expansion will be a game variant option, much like the "Pruitt's Monsters" option, and if you don't want to try it out, please don't. I'm not sure how long it will take me to complete, but that doesn't mean there wont be new versions of RealmSpeak while I'm working on it. I'll keep you updated.

Version 1.06 Released

Mostly just a bug-fix release, as there are not a lot of new features in here. There is a new option to open the VP selector up, so that you can choose whatever you want. This will enable those of you that are unhappy with how VPs are chosen for different situations (game extensions, restarting characters, etc), to do what you think is right.

In any case, here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [1547] - New VP option to allow each player to select any number of VPs when starting the game.
  
• Added some more details to the log to better explain the situation where a character is unable to perform actions while blocked.

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [1543] - Altar/Shrine/TC/EM work correctly for summoning vistors/mission again.
  
• [1546] - When buying from natives, don't show the names of treasures until they are being bid on.
  
• [1552] - Pilgrim will no longer be blocked during the day by Demons/Imp.
  
• Power of the Pit "Rust" result will now correctly destroy armor that is already damaged.
  
• [1548] - The Imp's Curse alone is not sufficient to keep combat going, unless it does real harm (fatigue chits). Multiple identical curses are logged for clarity.
  
• [1427] - Day end trades no longer prevented if you are blocked during the day, or during combat!
  
• Curses will show up in exported character html now.
  
• [1532] - "Wish for Health" no longer rests the chit you cast it with.

This release is compatible with any 1.00+ version save game.

Version 1.05 Released

This is mostly a maintenance release to fix a couple of bugs, and to add some more detail to the log and html exporter. Sorry, no new character advantages in this release (didn't have any time to build any up), but I did fix a bug in the character builder tool that was making it impossible to have a companion with the same name as your character.

If you are upgrading from 1.04, you will see a warning about the version change, but it can be safely ignored.

Anyway, here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• HTML Export enhancements
  
  • [1535] - Fixed a bug in the exporter that was putting the "clearing" hyperlinks in the wrong places.
    
  • Inactive inventory is visible for each player now. Treasures remain secret.
    
  • [1534] - The exported HTML for clearings no longer contains the NAME of face-down treasures in the Alternate-Text field.
    
  • [1533] - Treasure Card HTML has hyperlinks now, so you can see what is where (face down treasures and spells where appropriate, of course)
  
  
• Detail log enhancements
  
  • [1536] - Trade information (what was up for sale) is shown in detail log.
    
  • [1539] - Change tactics information (new monster attack side) shown in log
    
  • [1539] - Monster numbers added to monsters in log
    
  • All actions (alerting, dropping, activating, etc) shown in log
    
  • Indented combat resolution for clarity
    
  • Each phase identified in log by a separator

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [1538] - Transmorphed characters can do the CACHE activity.
  
• [1537] - Target assignment during combat is randomized each round now.
  
• [1541] - Non-simultaneous attacks on native horses will spillover to the rider now.
  
• [1530] - Fixed a problem in the character builder that was creating corrupt character files anytime your character name is identical to a companion name.

This release is compatible with any 1.00+ version save game.