Master of Magic .NET

This is an example of the current title screen, it's currently one of the only screens I went to any lengths to make it somewhat interesting looking. This was done to simply show off what is possible, virtually anything that can be created with a digital art program can become the background or artwork for screens and controls on them. The user interface system is very rich and extremely extensible, I borrowed the code for the system from the sample UI program that came packaged with Microsoft's DirectX 9.0 release showcase. I then modified the code, quite heavily for the purposes of this project. I saved a ton of time in borrowing and modding Microsoft's code and figured I might as well make use of a good UI foundation layer. Early on in the project I was using Windows C# forms, which were great in that I could very quickly create dialog screens, but it was based on the slow GDI and 2D interfacing system. This actually worked quite well for mocking up screens and testing them and interfaced just fine with Direct3D, but it really wasn't practical and I didn't like the fact that I wasn't taking full advantage of DirectX, so I dumped the 2D screens and am now utilizing fully accelerated 3D user interfaces within DirectX, fully capable of using advanced shaders and the like.

This screenshot is here for historical purposes, to remember where I've come from. Originally I designed the terrain system to be very simple; create land forms using basic discrete tiles that when combined would form little islands or continents on which to play the game. This worked really well and is simple to work with, however it never really looked all that great. Sure it did the job and frankly, if your remotely interested in this project, you probably don't care if the graphics are professional quality or not. Nevertheless, I wanted to make the graphics at least appealing and enjoyable to look at, after all if your going to be spending hours playing the game, it might as well look nice. Suffice it to say, I've overhauled the terrain graphics quite a bit, but this shows from where the project has come. It's also worth noting at this point I merely generated simple random terrain, if you can even call it that, from this screenshot you can tell there's no order to any of it at all and it does not pass as a playable map, but it was a great rough start.

This is the state of the terrain graphics as of recently. The overall structure underneath the hood hasn't changed, but the graphics themselves have changed dramatically. Although this shot doesn't show other terrain types, they will be making it in shortly. Essentially the graphics are generated proceduraly, through some algorithms I designed. Obviously the terrain isn't that fancy smooth kind you would see in professionally designed games, but I think it more than suffices for a project such as this and it's much better than the chessboard look of the earlier iteration. This screenshot also shows the early workings of the in-game editing system, where the user is free to handcraft terrain to their liking. In this shot, I have a very simple setup for generating random islands over the map, this manages to work exceedingly well. Many other terrain types are planned and the system should easily support whatever I can come up with. Finally, I don't want to forget to mention the mini-map in the lower left corner, this is just an alternate view of the map. Remember, in the final product, the player would have to fully explore the world to get such a crystal clear view of the world.

Here I've taken a shot that shows some clusters of mountains and desert regions. Again, everything is generated procedurally to keep it mixed up but somewhat realistic looking, from that birds-eye point of view. Also, the textures are generated on the fly when the map is generated in memory, this also alleviates the need for hundreds of textures and mind-numbing code to hook it all together. I to some homebrew image mixing based on a few criteria to create seamless and smooth transitions from one terrain type to another. At the moment this is only a single pass multi-texturing, and it may well be enough for what I'm driving for. Thinking down the road, I think it'd probably be a nice touch to add in some snow textures to the very tips of the highest mountain peaks for some further variety. The deserts are a mix of desert and grassland and it looks a little off cause that clearly isn't how deserts look, but for the time being I think it will suffice, at least as an easy indicator of what is desert. Again the mini-map captures everything as it's just another look on the world from a different point of view./

This is the most recent shot I've taken of a pretty fair amout of new and interesting things with regards to the map. Rivers can clearly be seen as well as my attempts at making node art. You'll notice the blue lake thing would represent a sorcery node, the speckled forests as nature nodes and the red tinted mountains as chaos nodes. Furthermore, my debugging information in the upper left you can see the framerate looks much healthier now due to the recent rendering and engine optimizations I've made recently. Also included are deserts, hills and forest terrain segments. Tundra and swampland are probably the two terrain types that aren't represented in this shot, though they are implemented. Finally, this landmass was generated completely internally, I didn't edit this in any way, so 'islands' the terrain generator does a pretty good job at creating fairly realistic land masses.

The only other screen that currently makes use of some kind of custom artwork. This is a fully working spellbook prototype. A sample spell is also included to show that it lights up when the cursor is passed over it. The user can obviously select and cast the spell and the appropriate handling will then take place, in this case one could cast Stone Skin on a unit somewhere on the map to increase their defenses. Along the bottom of the screen are buttons for all the various types of spells a wizard would have in their spellbook. Furthemore, due to the large number of spells within the game, the screen is to function much like a book, so many pages will be needed to house all the spells a player will gain through playing the game, just like in the original Master of Magic game.

This is rather drab looking screen, but at the moment 2D textures and artwork aren't a major concern since they can be added in any time down the road. What it does showcase is some of the rich features of the user interface. I've created very custom controls to copy the functionality of the controls from the original Master of Magic game. Wether this will stay or not is not really known at the moment, but I needed to experiment with the extensibility of the UI system to ensure it met my requirements; it more than succeeded. This screen also allows the user to move into the Building/Unit Production screen which has an even richer example of what the interfacing system is capable of.

This is the Building or Unit Production screen, very similar to the original Master of Magic. This shows the detail to which the UI is capable of with many icons, images and controls. The left side of the screen is populated with the Buildings the city is capable of creating and the right side is populated with the units availble. Clicking on any of the choices will update the middle of the window with details on the selected item, again very similar to the original functionality. This screen along with the city screen were prototyping experiments into what the user interface was capable of, as I've stated it more than surpasses the requirements so I'm very excited to put the rich UI functionality to good use such as in the in-game editor I'm beginning to flesh out.

This is a standard look of the battlefield right now. The detailed landmass is replaced with the earlier land graphics for purposes of combat. In this case I'm displaying all grassland since I haven't begun to liven up the battlefield itself yet. The standard controls from the original game are available and I've added segment marking to better identify friendly troops from enemy troops. Also, for the time being I'm using the portrait images of the units as 2D markers to represent the troops and still be easily identifiable. Later we'll come back through and replace these with more detailed 3D models. What this screenshot doesn't show is the functionality of combat, units can move, attack, cast spells etc. The AI will also take its turn accordingly.

The screenshot here shows the unit details screen which reports all the relevant information of the selected unit complete with portrait. Again much of this pulls from the original game. Note some of the icons on this particular unit have not had their artwork created yet which is why there is placeholder art instead. This screens is very close to the unit production screen above. Finally, this screen can be used to access information on any units currently in combat, including the enemy.

This is the 'Game Options' screen, one of a few your taken to when setting up a new game. I showcase this screenshot to show how closely I was able to match the font of the original game, only much crisper. The UI again is very rich supporting any fonts I plug into the system and furthermore giving me the option of setting styles and colors etc. All the other new game creation screens are created by they are all very similar to this one.

This is the same 'Game Options' screen as above however this highlights the context sensitive help system available throughout the program. I personally found this feature to be one of the best things about the original Master of Magic in terms of usability. The ability to have instant help at any given point was invaluable and I wanted to make sure I captured that completely. Every screen entity in the game has the ability to display further help information at the touch of a button.

The City Management screen as depicted here has expanded a bit from before (a few images above). I've added a second display port in the upper-right corner of the screen to show a top-down view of the city we're currently managing, this is for user reference and in keeping of the spirit of the original game. It also showcases the ability for me to display different view of the gameworld at the same time. This technique is also used when displaying the mini-map in the overland view. Furthermore the garrison is implemented and units in the garrison will show up in that area of the screen, ready to be deployed into the world. Lastly I've implemented JP's new icons as well as the use of images when displaying what is currently being produced, in this case Housing.

This shot shows quite a bit of new things that have happened to the overland view. At the top under the buttons, I've added all the relevant resource information to the game. This deters from the placement in the original game which was along the right side of the screen. This simply made better use of screen space in my opinion and changed the look up a bit. Below this is the active army area which details what units within the army are currently selected and the various options available to them. Each of these buttons are fully implemented as they existed in the original game. The highlight of this shot is the various terrain rendering representations, you'll see some lighter terrain, some darker terraina and then very black boxes. The light terrain is the area that is not in the 'fog of war', the darkened areas are what the player has explored but are in the 'fog of war' (this means the player cannot see any enemy units in it). The black areas are parts of the world yet to be explored. It's worth noting that the original game did not actually display the 'fog of war', though it did exist. To make things more clear to the player I've decided to display this property.

This is similar shot displaying a fully explored world but some areas are within the 'fog of war' as we have friendly armies in the Northwest and Southeast, the area in the middle could contain enemy armies. This shot also shows a river running along he Southeastern edge of the map. I've overhauled rivers from a few screenshots above (Nodes, Rivers & Terrain). Rivers are now created as prerendered artwork, this speeds things up and I think makes far better looking rivers. I plan to diversify the art elements in displaying rivers and probably including more detail (than just a blue line), so in the end they should look even better. I should note, rivers can now exist in all terrain types, the original game only allowed them on grasslands, but I think rivers should flow through all types.

Here I'm focusing strictly on the new rivers and roads representation. Roads have not previously existed before this point but while overhauling rivers, and realizing how similar they are to roads, I implemented them both the same way, prerendered artwork. I've made the roads look a lot more rigid and organized unlike the rivers which should look a little more natural. I also have not decided if I will render roads connecting from all adjoining segments. I'm somewhat against this because I think it makes the land look ugly and doesn't do much to convey any information to the user (Civilzation has this issue where roads and rail just make everything eventually look really bad, I'm trying to stay away from that). You'll also notice, roads can be built over rivers. Rivers tend to start in mountains and wind their way to the coast and eventually spill off into the ocean. This shot also shows the 'Editing Suite' available within the game, its far from complete but you can begin to see how this will be set up. I actually drew these river and road circuits with the editor in real-time. Lastly, you'll notice a darkened segment in the middle of this shot and in other screenshots, this is where the cursor is on screen and is a very helpful visual cue to the user which segment is currently active.

When the player creates a new city with a Settler unit, the city first enters its existence as an 'Outpost'. This is basically a city with very few people in it and very limited functionality. In fact all you can do with an outpost is give it a garrison and cast spells on it, other than that its up to the whim of the current game situation. In most cases over time the population will increase and increase to an actual city. I've basically copied the design of this screen from the original game. I've made use of JP's Housing image here, shrunk it down and worked some rendering techniques so that silhouettes are created. As the population increases more little homes will light up. Upon founding a new outpost the player is able to type in a name for the city as well.