Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Master of Magic is a classic, one of the most popular strategy games of the 90s. It is a 4X fantasy strategy game that allows you to play as an extremely powerful wizard, leading your troops and overcoming your magical opponents.
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AlbertoC
Slitherine
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Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Post by AlbertoC »

We're releasing new updates for both Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows.

You can find the changelogs down below.

Caster of Magic v6.08 changelog:

Fixed 6.06 bug : Game freezes when the AI tries to set production in a city and all of the following are true:
- AI wants to build housing in the city because it's low population in a good enough spot, difficulty is lower than Expert, the AI has 180 gold available and the city has a Marketplace but isn't Gnoll nor Dwarven.

Added an overhaul to the map object generation process provided by Drake178, see below :
- Map generator no longer has a a low chance to freeze on Tiny landmass
- Minimal distance between towers was increased to 5
- Map generation time for Tiny landmass greatly reduced
- Probability of Towers or Nodes being placed on ocean islands is drastically reduced.
- Average distance between startig capitals and terrain quality is slightly increased.
- Towers will never be in a node aura.
- Nodes, Towers, and islands created by them can no longer merge into the polar caps.

Added an overhaul to the treasure generator. This should fix the low chance of freezing on smaller maps. (by Drake178)
Fixed two minor bugs in Ore generation.


Caster of Magic for Windows v1.00.04 changelog:

Fixed bug : Production view cannot display 18 buildings, causing the game to crash
(possible only in coastal cities of races with no or very minimal building restrictions)
Fixed bug : Apocalypse can apply Chaos Channels to fantastic units
Fixed bug : Global enchantment scrollbars are not reset when re-entering the wizards screen
Fixed bug : It's possible to activate the relations window when clicking the ok button on the wizards screen
Added "Modding.ini file". Currently, there is one option, the maximal number of different unit types. When adding new units, you have to also add the necessary unit data and images. This feature is untested, use at your own risk. Bug reports are welcome.
Fixed bug : When the player requests a treaty from an AI, and the AI wants to mention a previous spell or attack as the reason of refusal, the game crashes.
Fixed bug : The human player's engineers can enter tiles disregarding the 9 unit limit, causing the game to crash next time that stack is selected
Fixed manual : Engineers are incorrectly listed as available for Lizardmen
Fixed bug : Excess research is not carried over to the next spell
Fixed bug : Sharee's and Raven's diplomacy music were swapped with each other
The "Win" button is now functional starting from turn 50 instead of 100.
Monument now produres 180 SP instead of 150 SP
Linking Tower now produces 1200 SP instead of 1500 SP.
Supreme Light effect is now applied last, after Resistance To All, Holy Bonus, and Prayermaster
Fixed bug : Resurrection does not play a sound effect
Fixed bug : Chaos Channel flight doesn't grant minimal speed of 2
Clarified help text for Darkness : it affects all attack strengths, not limited to melee.
Fixed bug : When the only remaining uncleared lairs in the game are towers, and a tower that isn't the last one in the array is cleared, the connection between the two halves of the last tower breaks, causing the game to crash later when that tower is cleared.
When a tower with broken tower link due to the previous bug is opened, the game will no longer crash.
Fixed bug : Animate Dead can be cast on already undead units by the human player
Fixed bug : "Invalid Target" cursor can appear during combat spell menus (Animate Dead, Raise Dead)
Fixed bug : Viewing the Hall of Fame screen sets the RNG seed to a fixed value, causing the "random" option in New Game to malfunction and generate the same result on race selection every time.
Easy and Normal difficulty no longer forces all AI players to start on Arcanus. Instead, normal rules for wizard distribution apply.
Myrran wizards are generated by removing one spellbook from the default AI wizards to add the retort, in this order of preference : Chaos, Sorcery, Death, Nature, Life.
(This applies to Easy and Normal difficulty only, otherwise the AI uses custom wizards.)
Added Score Modifier : "I Am The Boss". Start alone on your plane, all other players start on the other plane. Towers have weaker garrison and the AI prioritizes breaking them earlier the same way they do on the Race to the Unknown setting.
Fixed bug : Minerals event can spawn a new ore on a tower.
Fixed bug : Towers can be targeted by the Raise Volcano spell.
Changed the plane size calculation when "Race to the Unknown" is enabled. The two planes are now the same size even if the players start on Myrror, instead of Arcanus being larger in that case. This also applies to the new "I am the Boss" mode.
Fixed bug : Cancelling a global or local enchantment does not reset the state of the scroll arrows.
Fixed bug : Casting a Disjuntion does not reset the state of the scroll arrows.
Fixed bug : Stasis overland and combat icon descriptions were swapped
Fixed bug : Attempts to dispel Stasis or Warp Creature cause the game to crash
Fixed bug : Spell Binding remembers the result of the last targeting instead of allowing the player to target a different spell
Changed display priority of movement types : Flying will now be shown instead of Sailing if both are available.
The Familiar advisor (F12) now shows the name of the settings in addition to the selected value.
Fixed bug : Vials didn't initialize item variables when created, causing them to sometimes have item power auras.
Fixed several diplomacy texts that referred to a third wizard as "he" instead of the genderless "they", as their gender is unknown by the system.
If you come across any additional such texts, let me know.
Fixed bug : Sharee's summoning image has a row of green pixels at the top
Fixed manual incorrectly listing 1 guaranteed very rare at 6 spellbooks.
Fixed bug : Game crashes if the player's fortress was at y=4 or lower on the map when centring on the fortress (space key or loading from a save)
Fixed bug : "Fair" Mineral and Climate setting was named "Normal" instead.
When playing with the "Race to Unknown" scoring option, the plane with no wizards will get extra "pick" and "vial" treasure.
Updated manual to correct the amount of picks generated and added the above modifier to it.
Fixed bug : Entangle affects Non-Corporeal units
Fixed bug : Warp Reality reduces the hit chance of Chaos units instead of Non-Chaos units
Fixed bug : Players can cast Stasis and Mind Storm on their own units
Fixed bug : Eternal Night does not grant Darkness effect unless Darkness was already cast manually.
Added warning to the "Cached Terrain" option explaining that it's a last resort option to speed up rendering that shouldn't normally be used.
Fixed bug : Cities with exactly 1000 population don't build.
Added support for more than one page of Scoring Options
Added new scoring option : Continental Lord.
The human player will always start the game on the largest continent but receives 85% score.
Added new scoring option : Tree Mastery.
All players start the game with Tree of Knowledge already cast and researched.
The AI has a greatly increased priority to build military buildings in their fortress city.
Added new scoring option : Undeveloped Start.
All players start with a fortress city that has 1000 less population, halved fortress power and casting skill.
Players don't get starting settlers.
Fixed bug : After casting Earth to Mud, the move costs for the already selected unit are not recalculated.
Fixed bug : Dwarf bonus does not apply to Coal and Iron
The AI will not consider using Focus Magic as a combo enabler on Normal and Easy difficulty
When "No Overlap" is enabled, the overexpansion warning formula will calculate as if the map size setting was 1 lower to compensate for having less city space available.
Adjusted AI resource multipliers for Normal difficulty.
Production : 90->85
Research : 100->90
Overland spell cost : 80->90
Upkeep costs : 70->80
Added Scoring Option : Everything Nice.
City and Land destruction spells are banned.
Changed default starting spells in Chaos.
Corruption -> Wall of Fire
Call the Void -> Great Drake
Fixed incorrect mana cost in help text of Apocalypse
Fixed bug : When Animate Dead is cast on an enemy unit, you don't get ownership of the unit
Added sorting for Scoring Options. Options recommended for beginners appear at the top of the list.
Reduced maximal number of characters in city names : 14->12, as a crash was reported when using the maximal amount of characters.
Fixed bug : There is overlap between the global enchantment clickareas of adjacent spells.
Fixed bug : When Spell Lock is dispelled, it is not removed from the unit.
Fixed bug : Phoenix Healing Aura heals all damage instead of 10.
Fixed bug: Charm of Life sometimes has no effect.
Fate Mastery will no longer target units that are immune to Fire or Magic. If different units are available, one of those will be targeted.
Fixed bug: Mind Storm is not reported "invalid target" when targeting aid option is enabled.
Fixed bug: Mind Storm is not blocked by Magic Immunity.
Fixed bug: Direct damage spells don't report "invalid target" on units immune to magic even if the option is enabled.
Updated building descriptions for Bank and Marketplace to make it easier to understand the bonus applies to all sources of gold in the city.
When any player casts Great Unsummoning or Final Wave, this fact is added to the monthly report.
If the human player used the spell, it also adds the total number of units killed. Otherwise, it adds the total number of units owned by the human player that died.
At the beginning, "loading images" now shows the progress of loading in increments of 10%. This should help showing the game is working correctly on slower hard drives with longer loading times.
Fixed bug: When a confused unit tries to move randomly but is surrounded by tiles exceeding its available movement points, the game pauses for a random amount of time.
Fixed bug: A confused unit can't move randomly if it has less movement remaining than the cheapest adjacent tile, ignoring the rule that moving is possible as long as there is at least 0.5 movement available.
Fixed bug: Help text doesn't open for the Invisibility item power due to typo.
Fixed manual listing AEther Binding and Inspirations maintenance cost incorrectly.
Fixed bug: When all units in the combat are currently fantastic, "normal unit only" buffs cannot be cast even if there would be valid targets such as Chaos Channelled units.
Added missing scroll buttons to the city resource breakdown scroll when there are more than 21 lines displayed.
Fixed bug: Fireball Spell Animation crashes in 30 FPS mode.
Added new setting: Random background music.
Added new setting: Overland unit counter.
Spell Data is now located in the external SPELLS.INI file.
This should allow users to mod research costs, casting costs, or other parameters of spells.
After editing the file, always delete the "Spells.dat" cache file to force the game to read the INI file. (Same applies to the items.dat and units.dat files and their respective INI files.)
Fixed bug: After combat where monsters raise undead, the remaining number of units in lairs is not limited to 9 so undead creation can exceed the limit and cause crashes in future turns.
The game will log missing files/failure to load files in log.txt even if debug mode is not enabled.
Fixed Vertigo unit icon help text.
Added debug mode logging of map land generation.
Minor adjustments to how continent generation handles the X edge of the map.
Adjusted how the map generator handles preferred radius of continents.
This should fix the problem of having too much Mountain tiles on Large Continent settings.
Adjusted the probability of generating lakes in Mountain regions.
Generating a random wizard will no longer skip the starting spell selection on Fair and higher difficulty.
Fixed bug : Raise Dead and Animate Dead unit selection menu does not appear and makes the spell crash when the spell is cast during another player's overland turn.
Fixed bug : Gaea's Blessing fails to convert some of the city tiles from desert/volcano.
Improved the ingame race description help texts (unit resistance inconsistencies)
Fixed bug : Map generator sometimes freezes when there is only one opponent on a minimal size map with Islands continent size.
eddieballgame
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Re: Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Post by eddieballgame »

Thank you, as always.
gchristie
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Re: Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Post by gchristie »

I have tried to run CoM4W on two computers via Steam, and neither will run this game. I get 'unhandled exception' errors and am told to send a save game to the developer, but I can't launch the game so no save game.

Now I am trying to download the files from Slitherine and run CoM4W without Steam. My questions, what exactly do I need to download and where exactly should I download the files to give me a shot at running CoM4W?

I believe that I need to download MoM first. But there are multiple files. Which ones do I need to download, and is there a particular order I need to install them in? Here is what I see.
The attachment mom.jpg is no longer available
Likewise for CoM4W, do I need to download all the files?

And if I want to play CoM4W do I also need to download Caster of Magic?

If there are step by step instructions I would appreciate it. Slitherine is making this a very difficult experience.
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"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
~Anne Frank
gchristie
Sergeant - 7.5 cm FK 16 nA
Sergeant - 7.5 cm FK 16 nA
Posts: 230
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Re: Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Post by gchristie »

This took a few days to sort out, and Slitherine support answered my installation questions. But they could not tell my why CoM4W would not launch. I eventually determined that McAfee firewall was the issue.
"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
~Anne Frank
gchristie
Sergeant - 7.5 cm FK 16 nA
Sergeant - 7.5 cm FK 16 nA
Posts: 230
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2010 8:02 pm
Location: Maine, USA

Re: Caster of Magic & Caster of Magic for Windows - New Update (v6.08 and v1.00.04)

Post by gchristie »

And...the unhandled exception issue has returned even when the firewall is disabled. Looks like no one, including Slitherine support has an answer. It is a shame that Sevary's good work is being so poorly represented by Slitherine.
"Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."
~Anne Frank
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