Sounds like a good idea here, also.

What caught my attention was the dungeon with creatures, treasure, and a dungeon level.  I am wondering if that will be implemented similar to how it was done in the Warlords series where if you defeated the defenders you would receive a random treasure like troops, money, mana?  I always enjoyed having extra things like that to discover and battle as it breaks up the tedium and gives you some little extras to enjoy.

However it works, it sounds promising .

I like this idea. It also means they might be able to get the demo out sooner

They'll probably just start out with all combat being auto-resolved, and add in actual tactical combat in a later beta.

Brad,

An initial "Cloth-only" beta sounds good, particularly for keeping testers focused.  I'm reminded of one project at work where a requirements-elicitation meeting was derailed because the client kept talking about what text she wanted to see on "the sidebar" in our prototype interface.  Never mind what data types and processes the system needed, "the sidebar" became the priority for an amusing amount of time.

Anyway, my wife and I are quite eager to assist in any early/pre-beta testing you want community help with.  We love these kinds of games, and we know how to break software

Thanks,

Keith

Mr Brad I just love the idea.

In anycase beta testing should be for what the developpers need feedback on. I for one will test whatevber you want me to test. I find the idea of helping making a game (even if it is very limited help) an incredible activity.

Keep up the good work and sign me up!

All hail the Frog!

Sounds like a good idea to me. Get the game system working first, then add the bells and whistles.

Sign me up! Heck, I'd still be playing Master of Magic if I was computer savvy enough to get it running on XP. Also, the Warlords series ROCKS! (especially Warlords 3, not so crazy about 4)

Zaisha, you don't need to be computer savy.   Just download a program called "dosbox" > get the windows version.   The most you need to be able to do is drag and drop.   Drag/drop dos-box into your MoM folder using the right mouse button to create a shortcut (or the other way around), then simply grag/drop one of the icons onto the other (usually best with the MoM shortcut to Dos-box) again with the right mouse button and pick "open with" and BOOM!  you have the game.

you can do it in reverse as well (dos-box shortcut into MoM's directory)

No navigating Dos screens required (the no. 1 reason people who arn't comfortable being 'computer savvy' steer away from dos-box)

to get MoM to install you might have to drag-drop the install.exe file as well, but that is the same process and the actuall installation wouldn't have changed from when you did it back in the day.

DosBOX is your friend I didn't have any problem firing it up in DosBOX when last I tried (couple of months ago), but then I got mildly addicted to Dwarf Fortress.

[Edit] To be on topic though, I would love to get in on some early testing. The only reason I haven't pre-ordered yet is that there are still months before the planned beta timeline and I'm squirreling cash away for a car purchase. But I could certainly cough up the cash to get in on something even earlier (and would!).

Not that it's been much of a problem, since I know DOS, but still!

Scrap fancy and just include the cloth map.

Not completly kidding, since i liked the Dominions 3 map.

Thanks muchly! I'm not that afraid of a dos command line, (I was there back in the days of yore when it was the only way) but I was under the impression that the main problem with getting MoM to run was it's greed on the inner 64k of memory. I had a devil of a time getting it to work at the time and that was the reason why it didn't work on early windows versions. Things might have changed in the mean time though. 

Ah well, time to dig out an old CD. Gotta be well-prepared for Elemental.  

I'd also be in favor of releasing stand alone components, similar to Spore:

*Creature builder

*Hero builder

*Spell builder

*Building...builder

*Race customizer

etc.  Even just starting with these individual ideas would seem pretty helpful, as they'd be sub-screens of the main game and could be more easily individualized.

While eye-candy is nice it almost always doesn't make or break a game. Bad gameplay mechanics however will. I never liked the style-over-substance approach. So no problem with me if you go the way of the Dwarf Fortress (although the cloth map does admittingly look better than ANSI graphics).

I'm in total agreement with working on the features and gameplay vs eye candy.  A cloth style map wouldnt' bother me at all.  Eye candy is nice and all but Other than a few minutes of going "ooh, ahhh" I don't pay it any attention.  Just as long as I can figure out what is going on!  Gameplay and the game itself is what's really important. 

I'd love to help beta test (shameless plug) and I've already pre-ordered! *adjusts halo*

Rawr!

I'm not sure I'd notice, I just want it now! As soon as it works, I want to test it, and I love this idea, get a lot more focus on the game.

xthetenth returned!  It has been months!