Version 0.52 Released

Every few months or so, I get a new RealmSpeak user that decides to hit the game really hard, and report bugs. I love this, because it's always good to get new eyes on the program, and get a new perspective on the interface. It's also a chance to get someone's honest first impression, which in turn gives me a chance to improve the interface.

Recently, I got a new user (alias Yxklyx) that took this to a whole new level. He began discovering little nits here and there, and decided to report every thing he found that was either wrong, or difficult to use. A large part of his bug reports were simply "It would be cool if" types of requests, and I decided to implement a bunch of them. He also found some pretty gnarly bugs that have gone unnoticed for some time. Did you know that with version 0.51, that if you are between clearings, you can move to any clearing on the board? :-) Of course, this kind of reporting is what keeps RealmSpeak on track to becoming bug-free, and user-friendly.

Yxklyx joins the top ten RealmSpeak reporters of all time:

• vincegamer - 178 Reports
  
• dwfiv - 152 Reports
  
• dewkid - 135 Reports
  
• Yxklyx - 52 Reports
  
• srschacher - 37 Reports
  
• gambulator - 36 Reports
  
• mcknight - 35 Reports
  
• Netzilla - 21 Reports
  
• Brightstar - 20 Reports
  
• ahiggins - 17 Reports

Of course, bug reporting isn't just about the number of reports. Quite often I'll get somebody who reports a couple of bugs/ideas, and really makes a big difference. Thanks!!

Lots of neat interface enhancements in this one. One of my favorites so far, is the character notebook (a Yxklyx idea). You'll see a new tab on the character frame:


Anytime you discover clues (Peer), learn something from magic sight, or see what the natives have to trade, it will be added to this window. You can even manage your own custom notes!

I redid the spell selector window for spellcasters, so that you can manage your color chits and spell selections at the same time. I know, I know, that just makes too much sense. Heck, you can even see how many slots you have to fill!


One piece that was sorely lacking, was the code that allowed you to place visitor/mission/campaign chits. You know, that clunky thing that forced you to step through three windows, with not even a wink or a smile. Thanks to Yxklyx and vincegamer's suggestions, I compiled the code into a single dialog that has a complete library of information at your fingertips for making the tough decision as to what goes where.


The last new interface improvement I want to point out (you can see all the new changes listed below), is the addition of "Castable Spells" above the character icon in the battle windows. This gives spellcasters a quick look at what they can do, and acts as a reminder to cast spells in the evening.

Ok, it's late and my daughter has an early soccer game tomorrow. Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• A bunch of interface improvements:
  
  • [932] - Treasure Locations show clearing number on Discoveries Tab
    
  • [927] - Prowling row(s) highlighted on setup card.
    
  • [930],[942] - Choosing spells and starting chit enchantments now occur at the same time.
    
  • [933] - Treasure backs on Setup Card show Large/Small, and Spell backs show type.
    
  • [926] - New option in the options menu, to allow you to visualize clearing numbers on mouseover. This can be very handy when a lot of clearings are covered by chits!
    
  • [949] - Display game phase (BIRDSONG,DAYLIGHT,EVENING,MIDNIGHT) in the title bar of each character window.
    
  • [949] - Added current season/weather to title bar on game map window
    
  • [951] - Added a submenu to the View menu for viewing all 16 of the character cards.
    
  • [954] - Added some more information to the TRADE PAYMENT window, so you can see the current relationship, and roll result.
    
  • [956] - Character Spy window (the one you get when you double-click a character row in the upper left window) includes following hirelings, and active curses
    
  • [941] - All castable spells are visible on the spellcasters combat sheet during combat (but only for the owning player!)
    
  • [935] - You can drop active inventory now (no need to deactivate first), unless of course the item cannot be deactivated (ie., potions)
    
  • [934] - Fame/Notoriety value of inventory has been added to the detail view.
    
  • [957] - You can view the price lists from the VIEW menu now.
    
  • [879],[931],[937] - Character notebook tracks information you learn throughout the game:
    
    • Clues (local or remote)
      
    • Perceive Spell
      
    • "I Wish for a Vision"
      
    • Native & Visitor Treasures/Spells
      
    • Custom notes can be added to your notebook by clicking a button
    
    
  • [962] - The Witch has a new button that will enable her to turn her familiar ON or OFF. This is useful in long games, where the familiar becomes fairly useless.
    
  • [928] - Right-clicking on the treasure setup card will enable you to view the back sides of all the counters
    
  • Horses, Clubs, and Dragon Heads (if any) are now shown in the popup window on the treasure setup card.
    
  • [929] - Revamped the gold chit (mission/campaign/visitor) placement dialog to include lots of relevant information
    
    • Relationships for visitors
      
    • Relationships for natives in the respective boxes
      
    • Mission/Campaign stats are shown
      
    • Visitor's stores (treasures, spell types) are shown
      
    • Types of spells (if any) that your character can learn
      
    • Chits that have already been placed
  
  
• [692] - By clicking the pony icon in the phase window, you can now lock the pony extra move, and use regular moves. This will enable non-pony-mounted followers to stay with you as their guide. Pony-locked moves are represented by "M!" instead of "M".

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [917] - Monster die is red again
  
• [925] - Casting a spell while hidden, no longer causes your hidden hirelings to be unhidden.
  
• [913] - Fixed a problem where the Swordsman was not getting one die on rolls on the Commerce table.
  
• [921] - Fixed the Warlock's special pricing to comply with 3rd edition rules, which really is a reflection of 2nd edition rules + The General's Errata.
  
• [918] - Fixed the representation of ownership on Native Horses from extra boards.
  
• [920] - Option to abandon Dragon Essence (and other enchanted treasures) before energizing permanent spells.
  
• [902] - Boons taken by hiring are now treated the same as those taken by buying goods.
  
• [899],[924] - Fixed a bug that would crash the game on loading a save game where a player is between tiles. Fix should also address other issues where RealmSpeak is trying to determine the location of a clearing before the map has been drawn for the first time.
  
• [915] - Fixed a bug that would crash a multi-player game, when more than one player is in a dwelling at the same time, and needs to buy drinks. I think this same bug is responsible for other in-combat crashes, so I believe you will find it to be a lot more stable.
  
• [908] - No longer able to make a controlled T Monster RED-side-up by simply flipping it in the Luring stage.
  
• [869] - When all hirelings are held by Red-side-up monsters at once, and the character is absent/hidden, random assignment no longer locks up the game.
  
• [960] - Balrog (Pruitt's Monster Set) is now armored, as it should be.
  
• [914] - ALERT phase can be used to turn weapon counter EITHER-side up.
  
• [954] - No longer able to close BUY window by pressing the RED-X (close button). This complies with 3rd ed rule 7.6.5.
  
• [963] - Fixed a game crash that would occur when a hired leader or controlled monster created a new CACHE.
  
• [959] - Fixed a problem with how the third H Spider returns to the setup card in the Pruitt's monster option. Also fixed a similar problem with the Minotaurs.
  
• [947] - Getting blocked during the day no longer affects whether you can do day-end trades, or not.
  
• [964] - Map of Lost Ruins, and Map of Lost Castle no longer tied to specific board in a multi-board game (I could have sworn that was in the rules, but alas it is not!)
  
• [966] - Frigid Air will no longer cause fatigue when you cancel an action.
  
• [953] - Trade window shouldn't hide behind the main frame anymore.
  
• Fixed a problem in the battle builder, where characters were not getting the default starting native relationships.
  
• [935] - Enchanted cards are always active inventory now.
  
• [922] - Transforming into a Mist will prevent your own underlings from following now (they are left in the last clearing where you were solid).
  
• [965] - Enchanted cards acquired from Remains of Thief will properly radiate magic.
  
• [874] - Flying away from combat properly drops horses, if applicable.
  
• [944] - Underlings are left behind when flying, if applicable.
  
• [903] - Hired Leaders no longer keep the FAME for themselves when selling items with a FAME value.
  
• [943] - Controlled Monsters will drop all inventory in the clearing when the spell ends, instead of moving it to the SETUP card.
  
• [901] - Campaign/Mission Chits can no longer be sold.
  
• [895] - Enchanted cards will now remain face up on the treasure setup card.
  
• [418] - Spellcasters limited to a maximum of 14 spells at any time. Added an option in the house rules tab, to disable this limit.
  
• [872] - When casting POP as a Demon, you now appropriately get credit for multiple kills with Terror result.
  
• [968] - Orc Archers will properly use the MISSILE table now.
  
• [955] - You can enter the mountains in Easter with a Pony now, when you only have 2 phases.
  
• [970] - Can no longer move from between clearings to any clearing on the map (ouch!)
  
• [722],[969] - Fixed a serious bug that crashes the game if you end up between tiles after flying away, and then stay there for a day (intentionally or unintentionally)

Version 0.51 Released

Well, I'm slowly recovering from my hard drive loss, so I don't really have much to say about this release. Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [896] - Added the clearing color magic to the mouseover display
  
• [883] - A new option in the option menu allows you to display monster numbers on the monster chits, where there is more than one kind of monster. This is helpful (for example) when you need to identify which Bat is which.

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [877] - Expansion tile Lake is properly distinguished from Ledges now.
  
• [892] - Woodsgirl no longer gains ONE DIE advantage when in a clearing with her own cache.
  
• [878] - Accidentally allowing characters to choose Visitor/Mission chits, and then changing your mind, will no longer leave the Choose button active.
  
• Fixed a couple of problems with the Pruitt's Monsters option:
  
  • [873] - Game crashes when also using the expansion tiles
    
  • [898] - Game crashes when starting the Witch King with the ghosts
  
  
• [887] - Denizens returning to the setup card will correctly have all bewitching spells canceled
  
• [897] - Mandatory "Gold" special action buttons (Assign VPs, Energize Spell, etc.) have been fixed.
  
• [885] - Using Power Gauntlets with Battle Bracelets no longer prevents changing your attack.
  
• [888] - Moved "Unassigned Hirelings" warning to the SEND button, so it doesn't harass Timeless Jewel users.
  
• [871] - Fixed a problem where RealmSpeak wouldn't allow you to pick up FOOD/ALE if your FAME was negative, even though FOOD/ALE only charges Notoriety.
  
• [886] - Inert spells (ie., Transform) that are nullified by Melt-into-Mist, will no longer energize when Melt-into-Mist goes Inert.
  
• [884] - The T Dragon from the Transform spell is now armored, as it should be.
  
• [876] - World Fades no longer allows you to hide during combat, when you also have the SQUEAK curse.

Fried Computer

Last Monday, my wife turned on my computer, and after running for about 10 minutes, it shut itself down, along with a slight electrical smell. Not good. I asked her to unplug it, and it was a good thing: the plug was really hot, and might have even caused a fire if left alone.

Since I purchased the computer from one of those computer building shops, and I had a 5-year labor warranty on it (at least that's what I thought before they charged me $110 for labor - still not convinced I didn't just get robbed), I decided to let them replace the power supply, and get this thing back up and running. At least that's all I figured it would need.

As it turns out, not only did the power supply burn up, it took the motherboard, and my primary hard drive with it. According to the guys that fixed the computer, the hard drive spins, but just isn't recognized as a peripheral by the computer BIOS, so there's no way to get at the data. No cheap way, that is.

The good news, is that I ALWAYS make a backup of my code, and carry it around on a USB stick, and occasionally (2-3 months) make a backup of my repository to a CD. Though my last backup of the code repository is way back in May, I have the most current code safe and sound in three different places now (I made a bunch of copies after the incident). I'll lose a bunch of "checkin" history, but the end result is safe, and that's good enough for me.

I did lose a number of other things: a couple months worth of digital pictures, documents, a number of e-books, and who knows what else. I guess I'll just have to say goodbye to those things. I am considering buying a SATA external drive enclosure, and see if I can get at the data at all, but I'm not really holding up much hope for that.

Did I learn any lessons? Despite never having lost a hard drive in my 25+ years of computing, it can still happen, and there is no excuse for not having a good backup strategy. Granted, it could have been worse (I would have cried for weeks, if anything happened to RealmSpeak), but it could have been better.

I'm looking into some real backup software for the first time in about 5 years, because my strategy of "oh, I guess I'll burn some files to a CD now cuz it would suck to lose them" just isn't sufficient. A friend of mine recommended Dantz Retrospect, but if any of you PC users out there have any suggestions, I'm all ears.

I do have a new version of RealmSpeak nearly ready, so I may get that online pretty soon. It really depends on how long it takes me to get the fixed computer back up to a point where I'm able to build and upload the software. Of course, when that happens, you'll see it here first!

Backtranslating RealmSpeak

A couple of months back, I got an e-mail from a RealmSpeak user (Jorge) who was stuck using a Mac with an old version of OS-X. Apparently this version (10.3) did not support Java 1.5, and so he was unable play the latest version of RealmSpeak. He suggested to me that I look into an open source project called Retrotranslator, that allows you to take a Java 1.5 compiled project, and backtranslate it to Java 1.4, without doing any coding. I tried it, and it actually works!

If any of you are in the same boat as my friend Jorge, then I recommend you look at the new RealmSpeak Tools Page (someday I hope to add more here). There you'll find a link to a page that gives you instructions on how to process the latest RealmSpeak.jar into Java 1.4 compliant code. Though I strongly recommend you use the latest Java available, this will get you going if you can't.

Some of you will ask: "Why don't you simply provide both versions?" The primary reason, is that the need is going to be fairly low, and I really don't have any interest in maintaining two files instead of one. However, if you are one of the people that need the conversion, it will be as simple as running a translation script.

Hope this helps!

On Vacation Next Week

I'm going to be on vacation next week, so no updates or RealmSpeak bug acknowledgements for awhile. If you find a bug, just add it to the tracker, and I'll get to it when I return.

Later!

Update 7/31/2007: I'm back! I'll get to issues again in the next couple of days.

Version 0.50 Released

Only have a couple of nights work in this one, but its got some nice new features. First off, is the ability to build a board using a mix of the expansion tiles. I'm not going to go into great detail, but the jist is that the regular tiles are randomly mixed with the expansion tiles to allow some variability. Of course, this is an optional feature, so if you don't want to mess with it, don't.


I added a new option in the Options menu that will allow you to change the look and feel. By default, you are using what is called the "System" look and feel, but this has caused some problems for my Solaris 10 user (users?). The new option lets you switch to the "Cross-Platform" look and feel, which is supposedly more robust on these machines. I'm hoping this will enable him to get around the conflict he has encountered, and actually be able to play this game again.

Still no progress on Treachery, but I think that is my next area of focus.

Anyway, here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [440] - Added a new option (Option Menu) to allow you to switch the look and feel to "Cross-Platform". Hopefully, this will resolve the strange graphics problems on Solaris machines.
  
• Hidden Enemy status shown in character spy window (the one you get when you double-click a character in the character list window)
  
• Backspace button allows you to "unsend" your recorded turn, in case you change your mind before the other players have finished recording.
  
• Option to include a random mix of expansion tiles
  
  • Ambush always starts enchanted side up, to facilitate placement
    
  • Paths/Passages attached to tile edges work like one-way gates. For example:
    
    • Tile A Clearing 1 connects to the north edge of the tile via normal road
      
    • Tile B Clearing 5 connects to the south edge of the tile via hidden path
      
    • You can move from A1 to B5 without knowing the path
      
    • You must discover the path to move from B5 back to A1
      
    • There are only two tiles where this matters: Dark Forest and Pinnacle
    
    
  • Chasm logic is not implemented (normally prevents woodswalking across chasm)
    
  • Volcano logic IS implemented:
    
    • Red-clearings cause daily fatigue
      
    • Orange-clearings cause daily wounds
      
    • White-clearings cause daily serious wounds (1d6 wounds)
      
    • Hirelings are NOT affected by any of these (I agree that doesn't make sense), but for now, that's how it is
    
    
  • If you do a multi-board, you will not necessarily end up with two of every tile, but you will still have:
    
    • 5 "Mountain" tiles for every board
      
    • 5 "Caves" tiles for every board
      
    • 5 "Valley/Swamp" tiles for every board
      
    • 5 Woods tiles for every board
    
    
  • NONE of the rest of the expansion (spells, treasures) is implemented: this is just an inclusion of the new tiles
    
  • If you don't like this ruleset, then don't play with this option turned on

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Fixed a problem where recording a turn, and then saving the game would create a situation that made loading the game impossible
  
• Clearing plot (the yellow line that shows which clearings you are planning on moving to) is updated when different characters are selected in the character list. This is only applicable if you have multiple characters, and are plotting their turns simultaneously.
  
• [867] - Changed the threading logic on a major piece of the program that I'm hoping will eliminate the possibility of a deadlock on Solaris 10 running Java 1.6.
  
• [821] - Fixed a strange bug that would occasionally crash the game on a double-board.
  
• Fixed a graphics anomoly that was appearing on triple/quad boards
  
• Added an optimization to the map building code that has a noticable speed improvement in the auto-builds of multi-boards.
  
• [729] - Shielded Lantern, when activated in a cave with the Timeless Jewel, will properly allow you to take a bonus phase.

Dwarven God

Just thought I'd share. I played a game with the Dwarf last night. I used the Productive Dwarf rules, which allows the Dwarf to get the same number of phases as anyone else, but must pay an extra MOVE for every non-cave clearing. This appropriately punishes the Dwarf for having short legs, but does not penalize his ability to do non-move things, like resting, and searching. I did notice that there is a problem with getting the Dwarf to move from a Cave clearing, and into a Mountain clearing: since you only get 2 basic phases for being in a cave, and the Mountain costs 3 to enter, he's stuck. The only workaround is to run from the cave clearing during combat, so that he's outside during Birdsong, but that ends up costing two days to do, and really hurts the Dwarf speed. Another workaround is to simply have the Dwarf follow another character, but that doesn't help in a solo game...

ANYWAY, I got distracted. The reason I'm posting, is the amazing luck I had with this little guy. He had just finished killing a Bat and two heavy trolls (love that Duck T3!!), when he discovered the Vault. He opened it, and immediately scored the Garb of Speed. This thing is a sweet treasure to have when you are a heavy fighter like the Dwarf. If you don't remember:

** = Speed 3
* = Speed 4
- = Speed 5

The conversion of his chits is phenominal:

Move H6 => Move H5
Fight H6 => Fight H5
Duck T3* => Duck T4*
Fight H5* => Fight H4*
Move H5* => Move H4*
Move T6* => Move T4*
Fight T6* => Fight T4*
Fight H4** => Fight H3**
Fight H4** => Fight H3**
Move T5** => Move T3**
Fight T5** => Fight T3**
Fight T5** => Fight T3**

The only chit that suffers, is the Duck T3* chit, which loses a point of speed, but all in all this is a pretty nice setup. The Dwarf ends up with 2 Fight T3** chits, which can just about undercut anything on his sheet, and he has plenty of asterisks to fatigue, especially since he doesn't really need the Fight H3** chits.

A bit more searching in the Vault yielded a couple more amazing treasures: Battle Bracelets (replace Fight over 4), and the Golden Arm Band (M armor vs Swing). Since the last two treasures of the Vault were now a bit too hard to aquire, the Dwarf moved onto the caves, where he found the Pool. After dispatching a Tremendous Troll, another Bat, and couple of Flying Heavy Dragons, the Dwarf went to work looting the Pool.

Feeling rather powerful already, the Dwarf made a rash decision to skip hiding, and simply do two loot actions in the Pool The first two treasures he found were the Power Boots (an asterisk free Move H4), and the Elusive Cloak (replace Move over 4). Laughing with all the power I had in my hands, I noticed for the first time the monster die roll: I had rolled a 3. The Octopus was coming out, along with 6 axe goblins……. and I’m unhidden.

Not giving up, I put the Octopus in the first red box, and then divided the goblins between the other two. I targeted the Octopus with a Fight T4* (unalerted axe, of course), and played the Power Boots as my maneuver. The Octopus lined up, and died right away, but the other two boxes changed tactics. Now I’m looking at some particularly nasty goblins. Rounds 2 and 3 brought down two of the angry goblins (thank you Fight T3**), but also demolished the last bit of armor the Dwarf had. Round 4 delivered enough wounds to leave the Dwarf in a very broken state, and despite a hard fought combat, left him dead in round 5. Dang it!

I probably could have played that better. Getting slaughtered in the caves by a bunch of Goblins was NOT how I wanted to go, but at least I got to play with some neat treasures.

Version 0.49 Released

Needs New Resource Pack v0.49!

Another big batch of bugs and features to get out to you guys. I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and its inspired me to work even harder on this stuff! I've very nearly cleared out all the issues on the bug tracker for RealmSpeak, and that's pretty darned nice. Granted, there's still a number of bugs that crash the game that I've never been able to nail down, but I think that a lot of the stability I've been building into the code lately, will make those bugs more and more rare.

Big new thing in this version, is a feature that's been needed since day one: character blocking. Yes, at long last, you can block your buddies, and block monsters to your hearts content. Simply turn on the blocking feature for each of your characters, and other characters will require approval to pass through your clearing. Unless, of course, they are hidden, and you haven't found hidden enemies. I added a couple of new icons to the character frame to account for BLOCKED status, and whether or not you've found hidden enemies.

The other big thing in this release, is the ability to do trades/rearrangement after combat, but before the new day. Look for the "Day End Trades" checkbox on your character frame to enable this feature. Turn it on, and you'll have an opportunity every evening to trade amongst your characters, and/or rearrange your belongings.

Most of the rest of this release, is really just fixing bugs. Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [75],[313] - Characters can block other characters now
  
  • Each character has a "BLOCK ON/OFF" button on their frame
    
  • When this button is active, all characters passing through your clearing must get approval before continuing with their turn
    
  • If you are the blocking character, a "Block Now!" button will appear that will allow you to determine whether or not to block.
    
  • Once approval has been given, the only way to reset, is to turn the button off, and then on again
    
  • Midnight resets all block buttons
    
  • You cannot block hidden characters, unless you have found hidden enemies that day
  
  
• [313] - Characters can block monsters now
  
  • Activate the "BLOCK ON" button when moving through clearings with monsters
    
  • If there are monsters to block, a "Block Now!" button will appear
    
  • Pressing the button gives you an opportunity to block the monsters in your clearing
  
  
• New icons in character frame
  
  • Block icon shows if you've been blocked
    
  • Hidden Enemies icon shows if you've found hidden enemies - mouse over to see who, if you found enemies using magic sight
  
  
  
• Battle Builder has new option to specify whether the character has "Found Hidden Enemies" or not
  
• [552] - New "Day End Trades" checkbox on every character frame, allows players to do trades/rearrangements once combat has ended (but before MIDNIGHT)
  
• [618] - Missions are affected by season now (if you are playing seasons).

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [854] - Using a color chit during the actions phase will no longer disable the run button.
  
• Daily Combat button state will be remembered when you save/load a game.
  
• [360],[406] - Added a "flip" hotspot to the luring stage for hirelings, to allow the owner to choose their initial side.
  
• [557] - When doing random assignment, you can no longer add monsters to natives with a Red-side-up T Monster on their sheet.
  
• [861] - Trading the belt of strength while activated no longer leaves your chits in the enhanced state.
  
• [855] - Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented you from flying away after transforming.
  
• [508] - When you have multiple inert absorb essence spells, you will get to choose which one becomes active when you are in the presence of a permanent color source.
  
• [814] - The strength of the transmorph spells are now considered when dealing with conflicts (ie., Absorb Essence cannot overpower Transform)
  
• [753] - "Wish You Were Elsewhere" will properly cancel combat targets on the wished victim.
  
• [619] - Map of Lost Castle and Lost City no longer give you the bonus BEFORE the chits are discovered.
  
• [862] - Problem with Discover Chits in a tile with Lost Castle or Lost City before chit reveal, is fixed.
  
• When you are energizing an inert Transform, or just looking at the spell info, you can now see the target animal (Dragon, Lion, Eagle, Squirrel, Frog, or Bird) that it will turn you into.
  
• [863] - The "End Game" menu item now reads "Exit Game" to distinguish it from the END game button, which does an entirely different thing.
  
• [774] - Hired Leaders that find hidden enemies during the day can be deployed to hidden targets during combat now.
  
• Charging a hidden character now requires that you find hidden enemies.
  
• Switched the wording and logic on the "Decline Opportunity" dialog, so that it doesn't require a voting mentality to figure out which way to go.
  
• [796] - Fixed a nasty bug that would crash combat anytime an unhired native HQ was killed, and grudges/gratitudes is in play.
  
• [793] - Denizens transformed into mist become unassigned, and cannot be randomly assigned, lured, or deployed against.
  
• [858] - Fixed the mission logic for multiple boards.
  
• Fixed a issue that was causing missions/campaign from BOTH boards to be summoned
  
• [829] - Fixed cross-board specials
  
  • Lost Keys match to Vault and Chest from same board
    
  • Maps of Lost City/Castle match chits from same board
  
  
• Pressing END game does some additional work:
  
  • [799] - All Missions/Campaigns that are underway are expired, and the owning characters punished appropriately.
    
  • [537] - All spells (of every type) are cancelled.
  
  
• [624],[818] - Treasure setup card improvements:
  
  • Visitors are all available in the sidebar
    
  • All cache's appear on the sidebar
    
  • If the cache belongs to you, you can see all the treasures face up.
  
  
• [669] - When buying items that are worth less than zero from a native group (commerce rules), they will give you the difference in gold to take it off their hands.
  
• [806] - Witch's familiar can follow the witch when she flies
  
• [729] - Shielded Lantern, when activated in a cave with the Timeless Jewel, will properly show a bonus phase in the display.
  
• [521] - Native horses no longer grant an extra move in the caves.
  
• [866] - Positioning stage is enabled every round of combat (used to only show when there was somebody targeted). This will enable the strategy of extending combat while hidden, by playing two asterisks during this stage.
  
• [792] - Followers that get blocked, can still finish the follow activities.
  
• "Find Hidden Enemies and Paths" Peer result was NOT setting the hidden enemies flag (Only "Find Hidden Enemies" was).

What's next you ask? Think "Treachery"... :-)

Version 0.48 Released

The first thing you'll notice about this release, is the large number of bug fixes. I wanted to knock the bug tracker issues down to a manageable level, focusing on some of the oldest bugs. Some of you may remember posting these issues more than (gasp) a year ago! I apologize for taking so long to get to them, but that's just how things go when you are a single programmer.

I redid the character list window interface a little bit. You'll notice the change immediately with the presence of a lot of new little buttons. Don't worry, the log button is still in the same place (I took some heat for moving that one last time). Mostly this affects the host, but if you only play solitaire anyway, this is you. I'm not going to explain them in great detail here, because I think you'll figure them out quickly enough. If my icons leave you baffled, hold your mouse cursor over the button for a couple of seconds, and and explanation should appear.



During my last online game, one player suggested that there be a popup calendar, so that he could plan for a certain type of color. This is especially true with Seasons in play, because the 7th day color changes every month. The calendar button on the character list window (3rd button in from the left, in the image above) replaces the season icon that used to adorn the individual character windows. I think you'll like the change.



Lots of other nice goodies to talk about here, but I gotta get my act together for a game starting at 9:00 pm tonight. Just take a look at what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [133] - Riding Horses Optional rule implemented
  
• [134],[135] - Horses in combat, Optional rules implemented
  
• [136] - Penetrating Armor Optional rules implemented
  
• [844] - New Calendar window (thanks Dave S for the great idea!)
  
  • Shows the current day from the perspective of an entire month
    
  • Shows all the 7th day colors
    
  • Season (if any) and weather (if any) are shown, and a detail button allows access to more information about the displayed month.
    
  • Some notes on specific days to identify when:
    
    • Weather changes
      
    • Denizens reset
    
    
  • If playing with seasons, you can step through the months to see what is coming
    
  • Since this button is on the character list window, you can check the season (when using random seasons) before picking a character
  
  
• Iconized the buttons on the character list control for easier layout
  
• Many Modal Dialogs converted to Frames (will reduce the likelihood of a game freeze due to a locked window state)
  
  • Treasure Setup Card View
    
  • Character Card View
    
  • [852] - Transform and Weather dialogs
    
  • Any of the "VIEW TABLES"
    
  • View Remodeled Counters
    
  • Memory window
    
  • About window
    
  • View Hall of Fame
  
  
• Experimental feature in combat frame to "Lock" the Next button
  
  • Allows you to lock any of your own characters out of combat
    
  • This feature can only be activated if the "End" button is enabled (ie., there are no angry denizens in your clearing)
    
  • Spellcasters don't have to wait for other players to press next
    
  • Pressing END only confirms with the non-locked characters
    
  • Currently, there is no way to undo the lock for a given combat, so don't activate it unless you really want out
    
  • Use this as a convenience, not as a way out of trouble! If there are hostile characters in the clearing, locking your next button is the surest way to die.
    
  • Cannot lock ALL characters. The last character must either play the combat through, or press END.
  
  
• [633] - New House rule must be turned on for results of looting and reading runes to appear in the log (which is visible to all players)
  
  • If it is turned off (default), the log simply shows "Found Treasure" or "Learned a Spell".
    
  • Enchanted cards, sites, the Mouldy Skeleton and Remains of Thief are always revealed, as per the rules.
  
  
• [633] - Double-clicking on a character in the list will now bring up a display that allows you to spy on:
  
  • Character Card
    
  • Fame/Notoriety
    
  • Current state of chits
    
  • Activated Inventory
    
  • Current relationships

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [836] - Fixed an issue with double prowling (from Solitaire rules)
  
• [835] - Don't show the "Decline Opportunity" dialog when simply rolling for native block/battle in the Evening.
  
• [765] - Fixed a harmless warning message, when a flying character follows another character.
  
• [756] - Fixed a rare bug that happens with Watchful Natives, and the Wish I Was Elsewhere result
  
• [840] - Fixed another Absorb Essence problem, that was allowing controlled denizens from continuing to battle an absorbed monster
  
• Combat log is now cleared between battle simulations
  
• [838] - Fixed another harmless bug, that happens when you exit the map, and press the Reveal All button.
  
• Fixed a problem with Premonition spell lasting beyond its expiration
  
• Shuffled some spell activation to the host, where they are less likely to crash the game.
  
• [842] - Fixed a problem with weather fatigue and the Witch's familiar
  
• Better reporting of fumble logic and meeting rolls in the log
  
• Bunch of Wish You Were Elsewhere result fixes:
  
  • [755] - can no longer select a horse in the clearing
    
  • [851] - no longer carries all following hirelings with you
    
  • [849] - no longer includes yourself in the possible choices
    
  • [850] - hirelings which teleport to dwellings on the board, will not become unhired
  
  
• [805] - Swordsman (or Premonition spell) will no longer allow you to take a turn between the Witch and her familiar.
  
• [771] - Killing the last Giant Bat in the same round you take control of it no longer ties up your spell (and chit) for the following day.
  
• [290] - Hirelings and Red-Side Monster combat issues fixed
  
  • [847] - Deploying a native to a RED-side T Monster on another native sheet, causes the T Monster to move to its own sheet
    
  • [848] - Natives attacking a RED-side T Monster, that aren't its target, will disengage properly now.
    
  • [557] - Natives deploying to a RED-side T Monster on another native sheet that also has randomly assigned monsters will work correctly now.
    
  • Hirelings locked in combat with a RED-side T Monster can no longer deploy to another monster
  
  
• [846] - Monsters moving to a clearing will properly block ALL the unhidden characters, not just the first one.
  
• [845] - Native relationships are handled properly now for multiple boards
  
  • Soldiers B are a completely different group than Soldiers A for purposes of affecting relationships
    
  • Missions from Board B affect only natives from Board B, and so on.
  
  
• [644] - Characters that restart will get a fresh slate with the natives.
  
• [416] - When you fly to a tile, and record a non-fly action, the character token is moved to the clearing immediately so you can decide what to do.
  
• [462] - If you transform after recording phases gained by activated treasure items, those items will no longer be automatically activated, and the phases will be cancelled.
  
• [689] - Activated items that become inactivated due to a transmorphing spell, will return to active state when the spell goes inert.
  
• Character option panel shows the full name of the character, including board identifier (B,C,D)
  
• Natives with Board Identifier properly show # now. (Was showing RB for all, instead of RHQ, R1, R2, R3, etc)
  
• Non-hostile attack spell placement is no longer invisible to the other players

Luring versus Deployment

Magic Realm is a game that is both very complicated to learn, and very rich in detail. The strategies we use to get the best score vary from character to character, and often from game to game. You never know where you'll find the next treasure site, or if it will be in a cave or a mountain. You can't be sure that you'll ever encounter the tremendous flying dragon, or find the motherlode of goodies in the Hoard. If you are lucky enough to find one of the magic swords, you can change your course in the game from being a lowly peasant, to being the king of the realm, but then only if you know how to wield it in combat.

That's what it all comes down to: combat in the realm. If you don't know how to handle yourself when besieged by monsters, you will die before you even make it through the week. If you are smart and/or lucky enough to have hirelings, you may be able to survive even longer, especially if you know how to use them. In a recent discussion on the Magic Realm mail group (see http://wolff.to/mr/ for joining information), the strategy behind luring and deploying was dissected, and I thought it would be worth bringing forth here.

The luring stage comes before the deploy stage, and the end result is similar: your hireling is battling a monster on a separate combat sheet. What really differentiates these two actions, is what happens during battle resolution. A hireling that lures a denizen, gets to choose its side and position and will not be affected by random placement or changing tactics. This can be very important if your hireling has a definite power attack on one side. The most dramatic example of this is an archer, who has no attack on one side, and a speed 1 attack on the other. If you lure with an archer, you are guaranteed to at least undercut the lured opponent, and score a hit. If you deploy an archer, you lose that control, and the archer even has a chance to "change tactics" (ie., flip) and become virtually worthless for one round of combat.

Why then would you ever deploy? Where luring only allows a hireling to bring one denizen onto his sheet, deploying enables you to pile your hirelings onto a denizen's sheet, and better your chances of getting the kill. It's true that you cannot guarantee where they will end up during battle resolution, or even which side they will be on, but the numbers are in your favor. Remember that when you deploy, the LAST attacker on the denizen sheet, is the TARGET of that denizen.

If you are playing by yourself, this enables you great control over how the hirelings will lay out on the sheet, and lets you choose which hapless hireling will be the target. However, playing with multiple people can definitely mess things up a bit. You might lure with your archer, assuring a kill, but then lose the advantage when another player deploys his hireling assassin to your target. What happens in this case? The target moves to its own sheet, with the assassin as the first attacker. The luring archer is now added as the second attacker, and the target of the denizen. Not only is your archer a target of the original lured denizen, but his position and tactics are randomized, limiting its effectiveness! (Thanks Vincent for pointing this out!)

If you are confused about the comings and goings of luring and deployment, this example (provided by Vincent on the discussion group) does a good job of bringing it all together:

• A lures monster
  
  • Monster moves to A's sheet, A is the defender.
  
  
• B is deployed against monster
  
  • Monster moves to its own sheet with B as the target
    
  • A is now alone, so A moves to Monster's sheet
    
  • Monster switches to targeting A since A was the last to enter his sheet.
  
  
• C is deployed against monster
  
  • Monster targets C since C was the last to enter his sheet.

In summary, lure when you want to have control over your hireling, deploy when you want multiple attackers against a single denizen. When playing with others, watch out for luring/deployment combinations that might change your battle plans.

Update - I just got this note from Steve M:

But there is another obvious reason to deploy rather than lure. You can only lure unhired denizens. If you want to attack a character or another hired denizen with your hired Rogue, you've got to deploy!

Friday's Game

I promised I would get a report online, to let you know how version 0.47 worked for us, but then I got sidetracked with a lot of other things this weekend.

We started at about 9:00pm, and selected a double-board, with player build option turned on. We also had random starting season, and weather active. With three of us placing 40 tiles, it took somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 minutes to setup the board, but it was worth it. We ended up with a board that concentrated treasure tiles in the middle, and woods/valleys around the border. I did end up with a bunch of errors going into the log, but they were harmless, as they didn't affect the process at all.

I saved the game immediately (in case something crashed), and then we began choosing characters. I always press "Random Character", because it keeps me from playing the same thing every game. I got the White Knight, and I realized that I hadn't played this character in a very long time. I selected Make Whole as my spell, and started at the Inn, knowing that's where I'd find my friends. George started with the Black Knight, and my friend Dave picked up the Magician. The season started with Halloween.

The first turn found the two Knights hiking into the Mountains to scope out the treasure possibilities (of which there were none), leaving the Magician behind to chat with the Rogues. He was able to hire two short-swordsman, and catch up with the Knights in the woods beyond the Mountains.

As a group again, they had a choice: explore the Caves to the north, or continue west into the Borderland tile. Both choices required entering caves, so it was agreed that checking out the Caves first was the best option, since it really connected to nothing else, and would be good to get out of the way. Both Knights followed the Magician, so they could take advantage of his bonus Alert phase, and moved into the Caves. Nothing, and another wasted turn.

After a short bout of cursing, the party turned around, and using the same follow strategy, moved into the Borderland. At last, the group found a treasure site: the Altar. The Magician, knowing that he had the Absorb Essence spell, and a day filled with color magic coming up (Halloween is EVERY color on the 7th day), rubbed his hands together in anticipation.

The first treasure discovered, was a site: Toadstool Circle. A permanent source of BLACK magic, and an evil temptation for all players. After fending off a couple of heavy Trolls, and some pretty fruitless looting, the Demon finally makes his appearance. As I mention, in an earlier post, the Absorb Essence spell was broken, so we were forced to dispatch the Demon with brawn and steel.

As the Altar was not proving very valuable, the White Knight decided to roll the dice on searching the Toadstool Circle. First roll, he is teleported to any cave. Rather than making a smart choice, and choosing a cave in the same tile, he decided to explore the adjacent Borderland B tile. Having neither alerted a weapon, nor hidden, the two Heavy Trolls that appeared were more than a little concerning for the White Knight. The Magician, knowing precisely what happened, searched the Toadstool Circle, and actually got the same result right away. He popped over to the same Cave clearing with the White Knight, and assisted him in the combat. Both Heavy Trolls were dispatched fairly quickly, and the Knight having suffered no damage, and just a little fatigue, was pretty happy.

The Black Knight, having been left behind (and unable to locate the Toadstool Circle) decided to reunite with the party on foot, in the Ruins tile just South of the two Borderland tiles. As all three members convened in the same clearing (hidden), the Lost City made an appearance, and brought with it, the Lair, Hoard, and the Vault. Thanks to a monster die roll of four, it also brought two Tremendous Trolls, which immediately moved to our clearing. Damn!

The mismatched trio decided it was best to escape the situation, and plan a course of action. All three moved into a nearby woods clearing...

... and that's where we stopped. It was getting late, and at least two of us had early days on Saturday. Not to mention the fact that the computer I was playing on is in our bedroom, and my Wife was trying to sleep. I knew I should have used the laptop!!

Anyway, I think we only had a couple of technical problems. The Combat Frame messed up on one of the players, and we had to restart. The second time it happened, the affected player had been looking at the Treasure Setup card, and simply had to "find" that window (ALT-TAB), close it, and then all was well. I'm convinced that at least 70% of the so-called game freezes are due to this kind of problem. I'm hoping to get rid of most of the modal dialogs in RealmSpeak, so this should happen less and less.

I'm very pleased that the manual board builder worked without a hitch. If you haven't been using it because of the past problems, I think you can safely try it now.

Well, that's all I got. We'll pick up our game next week, and I'll let you know how it goes.

Version 0.47.1 Bugfix Released

I'm probably going to regret doing this one so quickly, but I really wanted to get this done, and enjoy the rest of my Father's Day.

Here's what's new:

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [834] - Absorb Essence bug introduced in 0.47 fixed.
  
• [830],[832] - Witch can enter the board with her familiar now (Solitaire Rules)
  
• Fixed a bug in the Suggest Action AI, that would throw an error if you don't have a weapon, or are transmorphed.

Absorb Essence Broken in 0.47

I played a game on Friday with a double-board, and all went pretty well, except for a one thing: Absorb Essence is broken.

The White Knight, Black Knight, and Magician were looting the Altar. To the Magician's pleasant surprise, the Toadstool Circle appeared, bathing the party in the sickly glow of BLACK magic. Why would the Magician care? Because he chose Absorb Essence as one of his spells, of course! After dispatching a couple of Heavy Trolls, the Demon appeared. The Magician grinned an evil grin, and the two Knights stepped back to let him do his work... but things didn't go as planned.

The Magician lured the Demon onto his own sheet, knowing that the Demon's speed of 4 was equally matched to his sole MAGIC V4** chit. He cast his spell, targeted the demon, and in a flash of lightning, and maniacal laughter.... the Demon became unassigned.

That's it? No transformation? No Magician/Demon to protect the Knights? Augh!! It it weren't for the Magician's loyal Rogue servants, the Demon might have taken us all down - it did manage to hit the Magician with a FORGET result, but the White Knight was able to counter with "Make Whole". One of the Rogue's managed to line up with the RED-side demon, and take it down before it killed the other Rogue. Freaking amazing!

So, it's true. This spell is broken, and I suspect Transform is too. As this spell is pretty important to a lot of people, I want to recommend that you all wait for a bug fix, coming later today, or maybe tomorrow. There's a couple of other bugs I can fix related to the new Solitaire rules, so that will make it worth it. If you've already downloaded v0.47, just stay away from the transmorphing spells, and you should be good.

Version 0.47 Released

Already, you ask? Yes, though there isn't a ton of new stuff here... well, there is a lot... I wanted to get this online for my game tonight. I'm hoping that we'll be able to play a double-board game, built by the players, with seasons and weather. You might want to wait until I can post a report on how the game goes before downloading the latest release.

Double board game. I've never really played with a double-board, even though this feature has been in RealmSpeak as "experimental" for quite a few releases. Part of the reason, is because it had so many issues. I think the last release (v0.46) resolved about 80% of the problems, and this release will do away with another 15% or so. There are still some minor nits (see the bug tracker for more info), but mostly its working pretty danged well. Once the logic was in place for 2 boards, taking it out to 3 or 4 boards was as simple as adding a slider to the setup panel. That said, I imagine you are going to run out of memory pretty quickly with a quad-board, but you can give it a try if you like.

Yes, I mentioned that we would be building our own board tonight. If you've ever tried this feature in RealmSpeak, you know that it has had problems: chits appearing off-board, game freeze when building online, failure to save the board. I worked on this part pretty hard, because I really think this feature is essential to Magic Realm. Looking back at a review I wrote at BoardGameGeek.com some time back, I suggest that building the board is "quite fun", so it makes sense to get this piece working right, at long last. At least one recent e-mailer will be happy to see this.

Oh, I made a neat change to the way the Magic Wand works. Normally, when you have this treasure item active, and you roll on a spell table (Curse, Wish, PoP, etc), a dialog with 6 faces of the RED die pops up, and asks you to choose one. Unless you have all the tables memorized, this task is pretty daunting, and can often have you choose the result that will get you killed. Now, when this dialog pops up, it will include an image of the table, so you can use it to decide what you will do. I can't tell you how nice this is.

Finally, I added a bunch of code to the "Suggest Action" button, added into the combat frame in the last release. Though its still not complete, and will not always give you the BEST advice, I think it does a pretty good job of guiding you in the right direction. If you have a new player joining you in a game, teach them to press this button often.

Okay, I gotta game coming up in 40 minutes, so I'd better tell you what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• Player Board Builder is fully working (see bugs below) - I know I've said this before, but it really is working now. Give it a try!
  
• Changed "Double Board" feature into an expandable "Multi Board", allowing up to 4 boards to be in play at once (OMG!!)
  
  • I haven't playtested anything beyond a double board except to see the map, but it should work
    
  • The only real issues are memory and speed
    
    • I might need to bump the memory allocation in the batch file for boards larger than 2 (even 2 is pushing the limit!)
      
    • You will notice that the game startup is slower, but overall, things should run normally
    
    
  • Notice the different chit renderings for Board B, C, and D.
    
  • Quad boards might make for good multi-month games (someday, character development games)
    
  • I did get an OutOfMemory error trying out the 3 board game, so maybe its not quite ready for prime time... If I can figure out a better way to handle the board memory...
  
  
• [442] - Solitaire Play Options (see new "Expanding the Realm" tab)
  
  • Two rows of monsters prowling (instead of one)
    
  • Dwellings not revealed at the beginning: discovered like campfires
    
  • Start the game by entering from a map edge
  
  
• [351] - You can move off board to exit the game now
  
• More work on the "Suggest Action" button in combat, now has suggestions for:
  
  • Luring
    
  • Deploy/Charge
    
  • Attack Spells
    
  • Alerting Weapons (existed previously)
    
  • Assigning Targets
    
  • Playing Maneuvers

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Removed some harmless debug code that ends up in the error log for every game.
  
• Fixed all the issues with the manual board builder:
  
  • [706],[823] - Clearing locations are no longer messed up after board completion
    
  • [700] - When a game is saved right after building a map, and then reloaded, the start game is properly shown, instead of the build map button
    
  • Fixed the issues with building a map in an online game
  
  
• [414] - FLY activity requires that untransmorphed horses are left behind (see 2nd ed 47.2/3). This works now.
  
• [743] - You can activate PHASE chits (ie., Protection from Magic) in combat now
  
• [826] - Chapels from other boards will properly cure curses at midnight now
  
• [813] - Transmorphing with a color chit negates any spell casting you may done during the same actions phase.
  
• Play Color Chit triggers the reset button now
  
• [504] - You can be blocked after a BLANK phase now
  
• [760] - You can activate items before bonus phases when using Timeless Jewel now.
  
• [419] - New "Land Now" button in the turn interface will enable flying Timeless Jewel users to land before they perform further actions.
  
• Added the "Die Roll" to the popup season/weather dialog, so you can tell better what happened to change the weather, or interpret the weather chit.
  
• When using the Magic Wand to affect a spell table, the actual table is shown to aid you in choosing what you want to happen (ie., Power of the Pit)
  
• [828] - Summoning logic with double boards is fixed. Monsters/Natives will summon properly now.

Why Ask Demon?

I got this in my e-mail today:

How does "Ask Demon" work in Realmspeak? Seems to me that this would be pretty hard to replicate in an online game. Surely you could just replicate the effect by asking your opponent via TeamSpeak the question? And how does it work single-player?

Good questions!! Basically, it works like any spell. You cast it during the actions phase, and during the assign targets phase, you specify a Demon, a player (by name), and a question. There is no logic preventing you from asking whatever you want, but it does remind you that you must ask a yes/no question about the past or present, or a question that requires a number response.

Once the spell is energized, the targeted player gets a dialog that looks like this:



Really, they have three options, and three options only. Once the target player responds, the casting player will get a simple dialog with the answer (ie., Dave responded YES). Simple.

Why not just throw up a dialog that says "Hey, you cast Ask Demon, so go ahead and ask your question to the person you want to ask..." Well, for a couple of reasons. First, if you use voice to ask the question, then there is no easy way to make it private. Everyone will hear the question, and everyone will hear the answer. I think that kind of defeats the purpose of the spell, as it is supposed to be a SECRET communication. Now I know that TeamSpeak has the capability of sending private text, or alternatively, you could use MSN or IM or whatever, but then you have to hope that everyone has the right software, and/or knows how to do it. I'd rather just let RealmSpeak handle the busy work, and let the players play.

Regarding single-player: when it comes up with player names during the assign target phase, it filters out your own name. If you are playing alone, the interface will recognize this, and report that there are no valid targets. After all, why would you risk a confrontation with a demon to ask yourself a question? :)

Honestly, I've never used this spell before either, so I don't really understand its utility. I suppose if you were playing a referee'd championship game, and needed to know something important (ie., do you have the Flying Carpet?), it could mean the difference between winning and losing. That's hypothetical, of course, but you get my drift.

If no-one actually uses this spell, why work on it at all? I wasn't going to, but then, why leave just one spell unfinished? I want to someday make the claim that RealmSpeak is "finished", and without tackling every last spell, this is something I wouldn't be able to do.

Version 0.46 Released

This is a pretty nice build. I figured it was time to get a boatload of features into a release, especially since the last couple of releases have had a fairly small amount of "obvious" changes.

First, I thought I'd tackle all the "mean" spells: the spells you would only use if you were playing competitively, and wanted to mess up another character. Basically, this is Fog, Illusion, Bad Luck, Lost, and Violent Storm. Rather than taking a long time to do, I got through them fairly quickly, and realized I only had three spells left to do. I was thinking how cool it would be to have them all done, and decided to go for it.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I started hitting the bug list pretty hard. It has grown past 100 issues, and I really hate that. Also, some older issues needed some attention, so I just kept going until I reached a point where I was comfortable (just barely under 100).

I added a new button to the combat interface, that I'm planning a lot of work on in the near future: "Suggest Action". The idea is that you can press this button at any point during combat, and a little bit of AI determines what your best course of action might be. My thinking here is not that it would be so smart, that you could hone your strategy, but rather be a tool for new players to get a feel of the game without having to understand it all at once. I've played a few online games where new players get completely lost, and it would nice to just tell them to press the "Suggest Action" button. Right now, I think the only place where it actually does anything, is during the Actions phase, and then only if you have an unalerted weapon (can you guess what the advice is?)

Okay, I could blather on forever here, but YOU just want to know what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• All spells are finished! New in this release:
  
  • Fog
    
  • Illusion
    
  • Bad Luck
    
  • Lost
    
  • Violent Storm
    
  • Hurricane Winds
    
  • Peace
    
  • Ask Demon
  
  
• Spells affecting individual tiles (like Fog and Lost) are shown on the tile itself, and in the mouseover. There is an option in the "right-click" menu to turn these indicators off, if desired.
  
• New "Suggest Action" feature in combat (VERY alpha right now)
  
• [742] - Added a check for character attack placement, so that you wont forget to do this, and get yourself killed!
  
• [479] - A new house rule to allow you to decline an OPPORTUNITY roll on MEETING/COMMERCE, and instead take the result of rolling a 2 on the same table.
  
• Ability to save a combat while doing combat in the battle simulator. This allows you to setup a situation, play a round to get things into position, and then save that point in time.
  
• Added log button back to main character panel - I should have never removed it

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Fixed a problem with Enchant Artifact not removing the added spell when INERT
  
• You are properly able to use multiple magic types (like from Enchant Artifact) on an artifact now
  
• [794] - Fixed an issue with Transform causing the appearance of a game freeze.
  
• [294],[795] - Fixed a problem where a magic user killing an opponent with a spell, and then getting killed himself, would cause combat to freeze.
  
• [494],[733] - Fixed a problem where Transform was taking natives out of combat
  
• [494],[698] - Fixed a problem where deploying a native to an unassigned denizen, and then pressing cancel, was causing the denizen to vanish
  
• Fixed a gnarly bug that killed my last online game - involves using a transmorphing spell from an artifact while carrying another artifact with an active permanent spell on it
  
• [711] - Heads/Clubs will show light-side up when a monster is killed and regenerates
  
• [539] - Hirelings following HQ will properly be counted when buying drinks
  
• [714] - Character that fatigues when running will properly extend combat for those left behind
  
• [817] - Fixed a harmless exception that is sometimes generated when you quit a game
  
• [757] - Fixed the PEACE wish result from affecting the entire tile: now it properly affects only a single clearing
  
• [516] - Day actions no longer lost when saving/reloading.
  
• [816] - Reveal All button goes away after extending game.
  
• [815] - Don't assign VPs to hired leaders when extending game.
  
• [770] - Double board discoveries will no longer cross boards
  
• [693] - Double board treasures/spells/chits are appropriately mixed across both boards.

Fixing a TeamSpeak echo problem

TeamSpeak is a great tool for playing games online. The only problem, is that sometimes, somebody joins the group, and causes an echo. The problem IS solvable, but it isn't always obvious how to do it. Here's a short article from the TeamSpeak FAQ on at least one way to fix the problem:

http://www.goteamspeak.com/index.php?page=faq

Q: My mates tell me I produce echos. How to fix?

A: There basicly are two ways echos can occur:

a)   Sound from your speakers/headphones being recorded by your microphone.
b)   Your sound driver recording all sound that you hear for you.

Now, 'which one do I have' you might be asking yourself... You can find out quite easily: Just turn your speakers/headsets off (volume = 0%), and ask your mates if you are still echoing. If you are not, you got (a); if you are still echoing you have (b).

Fixing (a):

This type of echo is nearly impossible to fix completely, but you can minimize it greatly if you follow a few general points:

* Switch your speakers off when TeamSpeak is on, use a headset to hear.
* Use headphones that shield well, meaning they prevent as much sound as possible from being audible to the outside.
* Try and keep your microphone as far away as possible from the headset (or more general, the sound-source).
* Lower the volume of the sound-source.

Fixing (b):

These echos are produced by your sound-drivers, they should be configurable by your driver too (its not a bug, its a feature). From windows users we have often heard you can select from which devices to record in the mixer (a mixer is the place where you can slide all these volume controls). Make sure the microphone is the only entry that is being recorded from. How exactly this is called, and where exactly you can find it depends on your driver/OS combination, you just have to search around. Good luck.

Hope this helps!

Stable Release

I feel like its worth mentioning that version 0.45 is sweeeeeet. :)

I played a game last night from 9pm until 1:30am, and with the exception of one person having to quit and restart due to a gray screen, the game played flawlessly. One big success is the fact that the trade interface worked without freezing up even once! As those of you that have played this game online know, this has been a pervasive problem for a long time.

The speed of the interface online is hugely improved. I promise that you will notice a difference, especially during combat. Because it is so much faster, the combat screen doesn't blink anymore. When you press NEXT, the screen is repainted instantly. I can't tell you how nice that is.

I got to try out the Enchant Artifact spell in a real game, and it was pretty nice. After dying once with the Black Knight (stupid axe goblins!), I decided to play the Sorceror. I selected Enchant Artifact, Fiery Blast, and Lightning as my starting spells. One of the first things that I did, was team up with the Great Elf at the house, and with two alerted IV chits, killed all the soldiers. Looting the house afterwards revealed the Book of Lore, which the Great Elf shared with the Sorceror. I used Enchant Artifact to add the Fiery Blast spell to the book, and suddenly had myself a powerful speed 0 weapon. Nice!

Anyway, the game is still in progress as a save game, which hopefully we'll pick up again next week. The Great Elf found a nice source of income (Food Ale), a M bow, and the Woodfolk in his employ. The White Knight had a pretty nice stint in the Mountain tile, killing 2 or 3 Giants, and a handful of spiders. We found the Vault, Cairns, and just before quitting, the Lair. There's going to be some sweet looting next week.

I should mention that I did lose the Sorceror to some bats right before we quit, but we decided to restore from a save game instead, to recover that stupid mistake (I was getting tired). I know, that's cheating, but hey, we're having fun!

I recommend trying v0.45 for your next online game!

Version 0.45 Released

This is the second release in a row that is seemingly small in changes, but really there is a lot of work under the hood. This time around, I thought I'd at least give you all a new spell to play with: Enchant Artifact. I doubt its perfect (my first run of a spell usually isn't), but I think it will perform fairly close to what you would expect. Yes, you can actually add a spell and chit to an artifact of your choosing. Yes, you can use the new chit added to the artifact to cast spells ON that artifact.

Another fairly important bit in this release, is a discovery I made to how I was handling the communication between server and client, during an online game. I realized that I was forcing these two to interact with each other in 50 ms chunks, and by so doing, causing an unnecessary slowdown, especially as it concerns messages transferring to the log window. The 50 ms "sleep" time HAS to be in there, so that the CPU can do other tasks, but it doesn't have to be in play until there is nothing left in the queue. After making this discovery, and making the change to process the entire message queue before sleeping, makes a HUGE difference.

For example, a combat I was testing with the Sorceror, Fiery Blast, and 12 goblins was taking 6 seconds to process before the results screen became visible!! That's like 6 seconds too long, in my opinion. After the fix, the combat results come up virtually instantaneously. Granted, that's running a internet connection within my intranet, but I'm guessing you'll still see some serious performance improvements when playing on the internet.

I'm going to be playing a game tonight with some friends, so I'll let you know how that goes. Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• NEW SPELL: Enchant Artifact works now! (caveat: you can still only use the artifact once per combat - I will fix this part eventually)

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Fixed a problem with "Whistle for Monsters" that was freezing the combat interface after the first round.
  
• Reworked the spell targeting logic (behind the scenes) to make it a bit more robust
  
• Fixed a problem with "Talk to Wise Bird", that resulted from changes made to the trade interface in v0.44
  
• Fixed a speed problem when playing online
  
  • This will virtually eliminate those long delays during combat when multiple things are happening at once
    
  • Everything will be as fast as your connection, instead of being tied to a speed defined in the code (at long last!!)

Smack Down

I wanted to see how things were working, since some changes I made to the spell targeting logic, so I played through a game with the Black Knight and the Witch-King. One lesson I learned rather quickly, is that this game can start off easy, and then take you down hard.

The map was harsh, and gave me two options: Go one direction, and explore the Borderland, Deep Woods and Mountain, or go the other, and see all the other tiles. Since it seemed logical to get the first three tiles out of the way, I chose the former. Unfortunately, nothing panned out. All three tiles were completely devoid of any treasure.

With several days wasted, I moved back to the Inn, and tried the alternate choice. The Cliff had nothing either, and I was beginning to think the game was against me, though the monster rolls had been fairly kind: I was able to tangle with, and kill 2 M Spiders.

At this point, it dawned on me that I had taken the Broomstick spell with the Witch-King, and that I could be covering more ground, faster. I sent the Witch-King across the board to the Ledges tile, where he found... nothing!!! In the meantime the Black Knight continued on foot into the Cavern, and found the Statue, and infamous lair of the Imp! As luck would have it, the Imp was there, and the Black Knight was unhidden. One round of combat left the poor Black Knight cursed with Wither. Somehow or another, the Black Knight managed to land an alerted mace on the Imp, and put it down, but the damage was done.

The next turn, the Witch-King travelled on foot to the neighboring Ruins tile, and lo there was much glittering and gold. Of course, there was also a boatload of monsters, which in some ways was comforting to the Witch-King. Seeing the Lair, Shrine, and the Pool, made the Witch-King think that he might not have wasted a spell slot on Absorb Essence after all! Quickly moving to the shrine, the Witch-King begin searching the site, hoping quietly for the appearance of the Winged Demon. Turn after fruitless searching turn, the Shrine remained quiet, though the neighboring clearings were quickly filling up with hungry monster. On the very turn that the Witch-King failed his hide, he was ambushed by a Giant Bat. As the Witch-King had failed to find any useful treasure, and lacked any form of movement options (stupid me for not preparing a Fly chit!!), was killed in the first round. Damn, I knew I should have absorbed the thing!!

The Black Knight, seeing his partner's demise, wandered through the Caves, and hustled to the Lair. Having failed his hide (again!?!?), the Tremendous Dragon that appeared (stupid monster die of 1) made quick work of the Withered Black Knight. All that remained was the glitter of gold:

Some Spell Woes

I rather suspected this would happen: a new problem resulting from the change I made to the trade interface. That's why I chose not to send out an e-mail for the last release, and why I chose not to close the Mantis issues.

Currently, there are some strange problems with casting spells that do feedback, like "Talk to Wise Bird", and "Control Bats". I'll have to back out the changes I made to the Trade interface to fix the problem, but I think I'm getting closer to getting that working reliably.

Anyway, thanks to "BD" for letting me know about this new problem. I'll get another version online this weekend.

Update: Ok, it turns out that "BD" was using an older version (0.41), so he is seeing a problem that was fixed in 0.42. I only tested "Talk to Wise Bird", and there is a problem with that spell, so I assumed it was a broader problem. Near as I can tell, the bug ONLY affects "Talk to Wise Bird", so its not as serious as I originally thought. For the time being, I've disabled the download of v0.44 until I can verify that this is the only spell affected.

Version 0.44 Released

Okay, this is more of a patch, than a full-on release, but I didn't feel like making a 0.43.1 release. I did make a fairly dramatic change to the underpinnings of the trade interface. I'm feeling like it should eliminate the problems you all have had with this accursed thing, but there's no way to know for sure, except to give it a ride. If you still have issues, please let me know. If it works better for you, I'd like to hear that too.

Oh, and this release will fix the annoying problem with the treasure sites that was introduced into RealmSpeak recently (see earlier post), so you looters can get back to looting!! :-)

Okay, not much here, but here's what's new:

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [785] - Can loot the treasure sites again.
  
• [730],[741] - The trade/share interface is fixed. No longer will doing a trade lead to the game freezing up.

Unlootable Treasure Sites

Gaah!! An unfortunate bug crept into the last release, that is making the game difficult to play. None of the treasures sites are lootable:

• Crypt of the Knight
  
• Enchanted Meadow
  
• Toadstool Circle

You can discover them, but they don't make themselves available to be looted afterwards. This bug appeared because of a fix I applied to the "Wish for a Vision" result.

Anyway, I've fixed it in the current (but unreleased) version, so hopefully I can get something online this weekend.

Sorry about that!

New Board Game Link

Just a note that I added a new link to the side bar under "Other Board Games". The link takes you to a pretty crude webpage highlighting my latest Java boardgame conversion: TimeTripper.

Version 0.43 Released

Attn! Resource Pack is updated, so you'll need to download the new version!

Not a lot to say about this one, except that a bunch of problems were fixed. Probably the biggest new feature, is one that allows you to force the end of a game, and then view everything on and off the board.

I was playing this version this morning, and had a pretty awesome game, which is still in progress (currently saved). I'm playing with the Captain and the Sorceror, and we started the game in Midsummer, on a warm day. That's 2 basic, and 3 sunlight phases for 7 days! Right off the bat, we found the Lair, and in the lair were a few useful items:

• Dragonfang Necklace
  
• Handy Gloves (M3)
  
• Timeless Jewel

In addition to that, the sorceror found a bunch of magic artifacts, so you can imagine his glee. Next, we found the Hoard, and a few more items:

• Dragon Essence
  
• Flying Carpet
  
• Alchemist's Mixture

A few monsters have messed with us, but for the most part, the Realm is letting us play. I decided to save the game before the inevitable disaster happens.

Anyway, you don't care about my game: You want to know what's new!

NEW FEATURES:

• [749] - Fixed how game end works, and how/where you extend the game.
  
  • New button "End Game" allows to force the current game to end.
    
  • New button "Reveal All" allows you reveal all chits/cards at the natural end of a game.
    
  • "Extend Game 1 Month" button moved out of character panel, and onto main character list.
  
  
• [629],[725] - Changed how VPs are allocated. Instead of getting them piecemeal, you must allocate all of them at the beginning of the game.
  
  • Considers the number of months to play, and seasons, if applicable
    
  • Extending the game 1 month at a time will still ask for more VPs.
  
  
• [735] - "Items and Horses" table from page 17 of the 3rd-edition rules is now available in the view menu

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [748],[746] - Fixed an error that happens when you find yourself in a clearing with no paths leading out (like after enchanting a tile)
  
• [769] - Charging will cause you to become unhidden now.
  
• [715] - "Encounter" phase in combat now properly reads "Actions"
  
• [767] - Fixed the price of the Lucky Charm from 2 to 14
  
• [744],[758] - Fixed a state exception
  
• [751] - Wish for Vision no longer empties the site
  
• [764] - Curses on non-characters will properly show as having no effect.
  
• [754] - Fixed another run bug, that was saying the path vanishes when you run repeatedly from the same clearing.
  
• [772] - If you can walk woods, you can run into the woods, instead of being forced to move down a path.
  
• [776] - Fixed a problem with Persuade and Watchful Natives
  
• [712],[777] - Fixed a strange problem with Persuade, that prevented you from activating newly aquired items, not on your turn.
  
• [599] - Can no longer lure a RED-side up monster off of another sheet.
  
• [660] - Choosing a spell target now includes a small icon indicating the combat sheet they are on (if any)
  
• [723] - Added a new batch file (runHere.bat) that allows you to keep all of RealmSpeak's preferences and Hall of Fame in the same directory.
  
• Fixed a bug in the battle editor that would always report "Battle Ended" when the only combatants were characters.
  
• [640] - Reset button works after selecting a target now.
  
• [775] - Cleaned up the logic for native positioning and randomization a bit.

Tweaked Blog Format

Blogger has added some nice new page editing features that I wanted to take advantage of, and ended up making a few changes to the overall page. Mostly, it looks the same, but some things you may or may not have noticed:

• New "Blog Archive" for old posts allows you to jump to any post in this blog's history.


• Linkbacks in title for each post


• Smaller Font (I didn't actually change the font size: it came with the template update that I did...)

Hope you like it!

Light Elf and some Bats

I just played a very interesting game of Magic Realm, using the latest version (0.42) of RealmSpeak (see release info below). I started off with the Amazon and Light Elf. Yes, the Light Elf: you know, the one in the optional rules that has only L fight and move chits? Well, anyway, for some odd reason, I ended up splitting these two up right off the bat, trying to explore as much of the map as possible, and I realized pretty quickly that I was in over my head.

The Amazon found the Lair, but was killed by a pair of heavy bats before she had a chance to loot more than some sharpening grease!

The Elf, on the other hand, was quite a bit more lucky. After wandering through the tunnel under the High Pass, and through the Caverns, the Elf found himself in the Ruins tile with the Lost City (how appropriate!) There lay the Vault, the Hoard, and the Shrine, and quite a lot of dragons.

The Elf nearly got caught, but was able to hide quickly enough to allow him to sneak past a pair of Heavy Flying Dragons. With a trio of heavy bats camping out on the other side of a hidden path, the Elf hoped to catch a ride, and get the heck out of the tile before the Winged Demon appeared. He found the path easily enough, but when he arrived at the clearing with the bats, he was quickly joined by a cluster of dragons: Two heavy flying dragons, one tremendous flying dragon, one heavy land dragon, and one tremendous land dragon. Oh, and don't forget the three heavy bats.

Fortunately, the Elf had hidden successfully, and so had one round to cast the Control Bats spell before having to worry about himself. Using the three controlled bats to lure the faster dragons, the Elf made a quick retreat back down the hidden path. The three bats, now under the Elf's control, went to work.

Now I can tell you, that I figured the bats would be toast after a few rounds, but I was amazed at what happened next. One by one, each of the dragons fell, until all that was left was a single Heavy Bat. If anyone asks you what the meanest monster in the game of Magic Realm is, I hope you ALWAYS say "bats bats bats BATS!!!!" Damn those things are brutal!

The Elf returned to the clearing in time to see the Winged Demon and a pair of Heavy Serpents appear a couple of clearings away, and decided it was high time he left. Controling the remaining Bat, the elf quickly flew away to the tile where the Amazon's corpse still lay fresh.

The Elf quickly discovered the Lair, and looted it clean. Other than having to dispatch the Tremendous Land Dragon that appeared fairly quickly (love that alerted light bow!), and an unlucky Giant looking for food, the realm left the Elf alone. I did get a curse from the Remains of Thief, but having found the amulet a turn or two earlier made quick work of the curse (DISGUST). It's a good thing too, because of the VPs I had put into Fame!

I ended the game alive with a score of 5, having put VPs in GT(1), Fame(2), Not(1), and Gold(1). Probably not the smartest game I've ever played, but it was still a blast.

Version 0.42 Released

Well, its been a long time coming, but I finally got myself back into the game, and worked out some new features, and squashed some bugs. My favorite new feature (requested by a RealmSpeak user) is the interactive Treasure Setup Card.


Each and every monster box, dwelling, and treasure that can contain other treasures or spells is represented. By clicking on a box, you get a quick snapshot of what it contains.

Don't worry, it wont give away the specific treasures/spells, but it will let you know how many treasures are there, and even what types of spells are available. This holds true for visitors too! The point is, click on everything, and you quickly learn where it is you want to go.

Oh, and when the game ends, you can go back to the setup card to see where everything was. Dying to know if that last treasure you just wasted 12 turns searching for in the Lair was worth it? Now you can check it out!

Another nice new feature requested by a RealmSpeak user, is the keyboard shortcuts provided for every character action. Check out the new Action menu for a complete list of keyboard commands.

Okay, so its been over two months already since the last release, and you are just aching to play the game without a "Wish" bug, or having the game tell you a road has vanished. What are you waiting for? Here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [461] - Action menu supports using keyboard shortcuts to enter your characters turn.
  
• [21] - At long last, the wish table result "I Wish You Were Elsewhere" is finished. There is a caveat: the casting player gets to choose where the target character goes (the rules say it is up to the character being teleported), but that can be worked out manually for now (ie., please send me to the crags, clearing 6, thank you).
  
• [649] - Treasure Setup Card changes:
  
  • Allows "peeking" at the stacks to see:
    
    • Monsters
      
    • Weapons/Armor (ie., helmet, breastplate, shield, ponies, etc.)
      
    • Number of Treasures
      
    • Number and types of Spells
      
    • Treasures-Within-Treasures
      
    • Spells on treasures
    
    
  • When game ends, the peeks allow you to view the cards "face up", so you can see what you didn't get!

BUGS/ISSUES:

• Fixed a general issue that caused RealmSpeak to repeatedly forget join information (when logging in)
  
• [704] - Native Leader carrying a horse no longer crashes the game.
  
• [726] - Can't abandon or CACHE a BOON token
  
• [726] - Can abandon inactive potions.
  
• [716] - Problem with HIRE/BOON allowing gold to go negative is fixed.
  
• [727] - Can't offer a BOON counter in the trade payment dialog.
  
• [724] - Fixed a problem that prevented an INSTANT spell from being cast more than once.
  
• [500] - Fixed the behavior for a spellcaster that is "buffing up" in an empty clearing.
  
• [708] - Wish for Vision no longer shows you the backs of cards.
  
• [721] - VI, VII, and VIII chits can be alerted in the battle builder.
  
• [707] - Fixed a bug that would sometimes report a path had vanished when trying to run, when it fact it was still there!
  
• [728] - RealmSpeak will now inform you when one or more of your followers are encumbered, and give you a chance to resolve the problem BEFORE moving, and leaving them behind.
  
• [730] - Trade/Share mods
  
  • Only works now if you are the active player. Though this goes against the rules, somewhat, I'm hoping it will lessen the likelihood of a game crash in the short term. In the long term, I'm hoping I can figure out a better way to handle the trade frame.
    
  • Available in the combat frame for "End of Combat" trading.
  
  
• [717] - "Wish I Was Elsewhere" will not crash the game anymore.
  
• [652] - Text on turn action rows wraps around, so you can see all of it without going to the log. Also, the latest processed action is always scrolled into view.
  
• [737] - Text on enchanted chits is easier to read.

Back to RealmSpeak

Sorry folks for the long break, but I needed it. I'm starting to tackle RealmSpeak issues again, so hopefully there will be a new release in the next week or so. I'll let you know!

Version 0.41 Released

I seem to have caught a cold virus (dare I say, a bug?), and as such am not too much in the coding mood this weekend. Still, I was able to finish up a few more issues, and get them into this release.

The main reason I want to get this release out, is because of a fix to a problem with the player board builder that prevented the game from playing. As one e-mailer put it "Ehh - who needs to play the game after building the map?". He he he.

Also, this release sports a fix in the "Graphics Glitch" bug, so those of you that have run into it, will likely breathe a sigh of relief.

Not a lot here, but here's what's new:

NEW FEATURES:

• [690] - There is a button on the Hall of Fame to clear the data if you wish.

BUGS/ISSUES:

• [372] - At looooong last the so-called "graphics glitch" is fixed. The map counters will no longer "vanish" unexpectedly during the game.
  
• [686] - Discovering a path on board A does not automatically give you the path on board B anymore (double-board)
  
• [647] - Native summoning is distinguishing boards now (double-board)
  
• [695] - You can actually play the game now, after constructing a player board.
  
• [675] - Elusive Cloak works with non-character chits now
  
• [435] - Flowers of Rest work now, even if you don't record any actions. They also work in the situation where someone carrying the Flowers of Rest moves through, but does not stop in a clearing with a fatigued character. This will now appropriately put that character to sleep, whether or not they've had a turn.
  
• [676] - Controlled monster head/club kills count towards character total
  
• [671] - Alerted chits will appear in the fatigue/wound dialogs now
  
• [680] - If you MOVE, enchant a tile, and then try to run from combat, the road must not vanish or become "undiscovered", or you will now be unable to run. (see 3rd ed 7.10.4.d.1)

Manual Map Broken

It seems like every time I release a cool new feature, it requires a bug fix or two before its fully functional.

If you go through the trouble of building a player map with the map builder, you cannot play the game, for some reason. There's a nasty bug in there that hijacks the code before it can do the necessary preprocessing, and you end up with an unplayable game. The bug has been filed, and I'm hoping to get it fixed for the weekend.

On a good note, I finally reproduced/found/fixed the famous "graphics glitch" bug that's plagued me for half a year. That alone will be worth getting released.

If you choose automatic map building, it should still run just fine.

Update 1

This bug is fixed in version 0.41 (not yet released). I'll try to put a new release up this weekend.