New Magic Stones data pack?

[AQ]

I start the game, get the very small screen with a choice of full screen and 16-bit images, so far all looks good. I click to continue and the window gets larger with a message about loading. The message and its bg image are ok, but the rest of the window is full of garbage. Kind of a mosaic of about 80x80px tiles from outside the window. Sometimes the window also has two namelists, but that fixes iteself when the game is fully loaded.

When I run the game in fullscreen mode there is no garbage, just blackness until loaded. With a resolution of 1920x1440 the game looks very Z-80'ish that way though so I avoid it. Besides, I like being able to see what the rest of my computer is up to while I play games.

If, but only if, the game was laid out a bit differently in fullscreen mode I think I'd use that more often. For example if the avatar summoning screen didn't cover the enemy half of the battlefiled, and if there was a window to list all jewelry instead of press space to show, click to hide, move cursor, repeat.

Another small problem I've noticed it that sometimes avatars I have collected are still dimmed in my view druid screen. Starting as a fire druid I have two fire avatars and one spell to start with, and it says correctly Fire: 2 1 in the list, but all the fire creatures are dimmed when I click to see them, and the same with earth. Hasn't happened with air yet. It never happens with spells though, as far as I have seen.

BTW, are you ever going to make this game playable against others over the internet? I know someone I'd dearly love to send a few Treants against.

[jack1974]

Ah ok, the garbage when loading should have been fixed in v.1.1.6 (please check if this is the one you're using), anyway doesn't compromise playing the game at all

The graphics surely looks odd at big resolution like 1920x1440! LOL it is 2d graphic so doesn't rescale to fit higher screen resolution.

Thanks for reporting the dimmed avatar, I didn't noticed it, I'm going to check it now! (just a minor graphic bug but still need to be fixed).

[anita]

Hey you didn't answer the question about internet play!
I know that probably is very hard to make it, but would greatly enhance the game

BTW 1920x1440 resolution? hehe I don't even have a monitor big enough to show that!!!!

[AQ]

Ah ok, the garbage when loading should have been fixed in v.1.1.6 (please check if this is the one you're using), anyway doesn't compromise playing the game at all

The .zip archive and the .app have creation dates of November 26 2005, but the namelist says (c) 2006. Ah, I found a version number at last, in the options screen! 1.1.6. Strange place to hide it, maybe you could make it visible when one hits cmd-I in the Finder as most apps do?

Thanks for reporting the dimmed avatar, I didn't noticed it, I'm going to check it now! (just a minor graphic bug but still need to be fixed).

I found another small bug. When an avatar has the Raido spell cast on it, it says 1 turn left all the time. I haven't found very many runes yet, so I don't know if this affects all spells that last several turns.

[jack1974]

Sorry forgot to tell you that the version is reported in the Readme.rtf file (so you can know it without launching the game).

The Raido displaying always 1 turn left isn't a bug because it grants the avatar the possibility to fly for the rest of the fight. I'll change it to a different text, basically it should say "This avatar has a permanent fly effect on it"

Other spells/abilities instead last for several turns but not forever, in this case you should see something like "for 7 turns" or "for 4 turns".

[AQ]

The Raido displaying always 1 turn left isn't a bug because it grants the avatar the possibility to fly for the rest of the fight. I'll change it to a different text, basically it should say "This avatar has a permanent fly effect on it"

Aha! That's good to know. In that case it's the description on the rune that's wrong - it says 5 turns. Probably a lot easier to change than going into the code and fix a counter.

[jack1974]

Ah ok, didn't know the description was still sayin 5 turns, originally was that but then I realized that was a spell too feeble (not worth casting just to get the fly for 5 turns).

Thanks for reporting, I'll fix this also on new version!

[AQ]

I hope I'm not delaying its release by finding all those irrelevant little things!

It's a great game without you fixing the cosmetic details, and I don't think I'd have noticed them if I didn't stay up playing until 6am. By then I'm so tired that I have to read everything very carefully in order not to get my avatars killed by stupid mistakes.

[jack1974]

Np don't worry, I just write a note to remind me to fix those small bugs. Of course is much worse when someone reports me a big bug !
Those are easy to fix and don't delay the update at all. What's delaying it are many other projects I'm working on (like USM2)...

[Astral]

Will the BETA version for MS: Ice Queen be arriving in mid to late Feb., or is it more realistic to assume that it will be released next month?

I know your hard at work on this and other games, but my excitement for this new expansion has gotten the best of me.