It's been awhile since the last release, but with all the new issues that appeared recently, I figured it was time. Take a look at what's new:
[1239] - Boats will be placed next to Shrineheart Abbey now
[1250] - Fixed a bug that sometimes failed to save the game
[1253] - When all players lose a turn during "Evil Attacks", lost turns will be counted
[1241] - Fixed a problem with Event 49 charging you an extra day past the end of the fortnight
[1242] - Die roll of 5 on the Demon table will send you to a RANDOM Dragon's Lair space, instead of the CENTER now.
[1255] - A map situation that could lead to too many boats is fixed.
[1256] - Fixed a problem with the map chooser not showing highlights at first display
[1243] - When you are healed by the Order of Wizards, you are no longer able to also fulfill a task
[1261] - If you choose not to encounter a task marker, the regular (random or specific) encounter will occur instead.
[1257] - When a task marker teleports you, your animals are lost.
[1244] - When you are transported by task marker, you will be able to pick up the new marker at the other end.
[1247] - You can no longer stay on a Sorceror hex or Ruktal, and repeatedly encounter them without leaving the hex and/or tile
[1264] - Animal Summoning can no longer be cast during your move, or after having an encounter.
[1240] - Director's Cut "Impossible Demons" rule is a regular rule now, and not an option
[1265] - Mandatory tasks are no longer made Optional when save/load. Note: if you load an old game (pre 1.5), you will still see all tasks as optional, but this is fixed going forward.
October 1, 2006 -
Version 1.4
Got a report of a nasty
game crash for new users, and that's a killer! I know what my
first reaction is when a program crashes before I even get
started!! Anyway, fixed this, and a couple of other annoyances:
For first time users,
the radio buttons on the "Map Setup" section were all unmarked.
If the user failed to make a choice here, the game crashes. This
is fixed, by making the "Auto Build" option selected by default.
Loading a game where
tiles have flipped to darkness was restoring their face! A good
way to combat evil, I admit, but its also cheating. I've fixed
this problem, so you'll have to resort to completing tasks!! ;-)
There was a problem
with the "Winged Horse" player encounter. Only one player would
get a "2-turn" Winged Horse, while the other was getting
"1-turn". This is fixed.
The little option panel
next to the task table is now saved and restored, so you don't have to
reset it each time you load a game.
August 8, 2006 -
Version 1.3
Decided it was time to
squash a couple of old bugs:
Fixed a problem with
saving the game with multiple players on the first turn.
Fixed a bug in the
movement logic that was allowing players to move into hexes containing
a task or demon token with only 1 movement point
I also added a new project to
my bug tracker to support Wizards issues. This will make it
easier for me to track these things, and for you to report them.
Check it out:
Tackled a few more bugs
(Thanks to Scott M for finding these)
Fixed GUI update issues
when loading the game (Task marker, day marker, thwart icons, player
buttons, etc.)
Fixed save/load
behavior for tasks involving High Wizards
Of course, this means that
your current save games will no longer work. Sorry about
that! I knew that adding the save/load feature would open a whole
new can of worms, which is why I avoided it for so long. I really
appreciate those of you that have been reporting bugs in this latest
release. I apologize that this release wasn't a bit more bug-free!
Speaking of which, there are a couple of issues I am aware of, but am
not planning on dealing with right away:
Task view options
(Complete, Impossible, Started, etc.) aren't saved/loaded. For
now you'll have to set them up each time you load a game
Auto-cast options
aren't saved/loaded.
Shouldn't be too hard to do,
but they have a much lower priority than the recent bugs.
Thanks again for your patience!
September 8, 2004 -
take 2
Another minor problem found
and fixed. Thanks to Rolando for pointing this one out!
Using auto-map build
with continent percent set to 100 creates islands when it shouldn't,
but only when the "Strict Tile Placement" option is turned on (man,
I've had more trouble with this feature!!) This has been fixed.
September 8, 2004
As usual, somebody found a
couple of bugs barely 24 hours after the last release.
Fortunately these didn't involve crashing the game, but needed to be
fixed nevertheless. Thanks John for pointing these out!
Building a
map with the new "Strict Tile Placement" option turned off caused some
tiles at the extreme edge to be "trimmed". This is fixed, and
wont happen anymore.
Saving and
loading a player after rolling the dice, but before ending the turn
left the "End Turn" button disabled. The ENTER key still worked,
but to be consistent, this has been fixed.
September 6, 2004
Not exactly "next week", but
still a release. This version will be the first that is compiled
under Java 1.4. What does this mean? Well, in order to use
this version, you will have to download and install the newest Java
from Sun. If you are running OS-X on a Mac, you are probably
fine, as Mac handles the Java upgrade as part of its system
updates. PC users, like myself, need to go to Sun to get the
latest and greatest. If you are not a developer, then all you
need is the Runtime edition at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/download.html. You'll want to get the
J2SE v1.4.2_05 JRE. Download and install this (you shouldn't even
have to uninstall Java 1.3), and you should be good to go. If you
have some difficulty, I may be able to help.
Now that you have Java 1.4, this new release should work for you.
Here's what's new:
You can now save/load
your game. This feature has been fairly heavily requested, so I
imagine many of you will want to be getting this version.
You can save/load maps
- especially useful if you design your own map, and want to keep a copy
of it for later use.
Lots of work on the Map
Builder interface. If you thought it was clunky before (I did),
take a look at it now. A bit easier to use, and a button for
loading maps.
Added a new game option
in the "Director's Cut" tab. The new option restricts map tile
placement from the extreme border. This is something that Coral
and Thomas Mosbø requested, but I never got around to doing
until now.
Option to view the
tiles with rotated graphics. Previously, all tiles positions were
rotated, but the images on each hex were always right-side up. I
like it this way, but I know it has been confusing to some not used to
this design. There is now an option to have the graphics rotate
with the tile, so that it possible to have (for example) Hamrel's
Cottage upside-down when the tile is upside-down. The option can
be turned on and off, so play with it to see what I mean.
Thanks to Java 1.4,
there is finally a decent System look and feel for users of Windows
XP. In the game options, there is an option to switch between
"Metal" (Java's default) and "System". Try it, and you'll see
what I mean. (this works for Mac too, by the way).
Oh, and for those of you not
willing to mess with upgrading to Java 1.4, I'll leave the July 13
release online. It works well, and really only suffers from the
lack of a save/load feature.
August 19, 2004
No new
release right now, but there should be one in the next
week. I'm nearly finished with the save/load game feature,
and a few other things as well. Keep watching here...
July 13, 2004
Bah!
Modified one extra thing in the July 8th release that led to some
problems with player turn ordering (Thanks again, Scott M, and sorry
for the trouble!). I really should learn not to fix what isn't
broken! This latest release fixes the bug I introduced with the
last one.
July 8, 2004
Long time
since the last release. That's because I'm mostly not working on
it anymore. Still, a recent bug cropped up that needed to be
fixed (Thanks to Scott M for pointing this one out!). The bug
caused the game to freeze up when you cast Animal Summoning, and a
Dragon appears. Scott's exact description and inclusion of the
game log made this a fairly easy bug to locate and squash.
Fixed an
older bug where player encounters in the Dragon's lair allowed one
player to receive a Winged horse, which is wrong. (Thanks to John
for pointing this one out many months ago).
Fixed a
spelling error on Task Card #34 (Harbor, not Harmor).
Still no
save/load feature. I may finally tackle this one in the near
future...
February 3, 2004
When I
fixed the logic for jumping into water spaces, I forgot to include the
behavior when travelling across land, and across a boat. This
should be fixed now.
February 2, 2004
Fixed a
couple of spelling errors (thanks Coral and Thomas for pointing these
out)
Changed
the logic of jumping into water spaces. I had this wrong,
allowing
players to jump into water spaces after moving across land. In
fact, the rules specify that ALL your movement points are required, and
thus you either jump in the water, or move on land, but not both.
Again, thanks to Coral and Thomas for pointing this out.
Made the
keyboard shortcuts (U,I,O,J,K,L,R, ENTER) work more reliably. You
will find that you don't have to click on the map anymore to make these
active!
January 1, 2004
Fixed a
"game-killing" bug where the game would freeze when two players had a
Player Encounter that resulted in a Wizard Encounter (Thanks to John
for
spotting this one!)
December 30, 2003
Fixed a
bug where the game would freeze when one (and only one) Wizard is on a
Magic tile when evil attacks.
Fixed an
error in the move selection algorithm when casting Swiftness after
moving your token around the selection region
Changed
the dialog when you FIRST meet an order. Asks whether or not you
wish to join (yes/no). Once you have joined an Order, all
remaining dialog boxes will still have the "Join Order" button, if you
wish to change Orders.
December 20, 2003
I haven't heard much from
those of you playing the game, so either the game is perfect, or you
are
tied up with holiday cheer! (Santa-bound) Here's whats new:
More
detail in the game log: acquired gems, movement, to name a
few. Take a look at a log of a game I won, and another I lost.
Finally,
code to handle the stranded game rules.
"Call
for Help" button located beneath the player icon.
If you
are not stranded, the button will tell you so (ie., "There is a boat
you
can use.")
When you
are stranded, your icon is marked with the word "STRANDED" - any player
encountering a stranded player will get credit for the rescue
Added an
optional rule to include
a variant from Don
Woods website, because it really helps out those playing solitaire
(single player games).
December 13, 2003
This is probably the biggest
release since I originally released the alpha. Lots of new
stuff in this one that I know you'll enjoy:
New Artwork! Coral Mosbø
came through with some beautiful representations of each of the five
encountered animals. I can finally get rid of the corny icons I
was using! I should mention that the original artwork was black
and white pen and ink drawings. With Coral's help, I added some
simple coloring to the icons. Thanks Coral!
New Game Rule pages allow you to
select and use various rule revisions. Currently, there is a
complete set from Coral and Thomas Mosbø, as well as a couple of
optional "House Rules". If you have some house rules that you
use,
let me know, and I can add them to these pages.
New Game Logging feature allows you
to optionally turn on logging so you can track an entire game.
The
log is saved as a file in the same folder as you launch the
application,
called wizards_game.log.
This will also help those of you that find bugs, because you can send
your log, and I can get a sense of what was going on at the time of the
error.
A few bug fixes
Animal Summoning durations are now based on TURNS not DAYS, as
specified in the rulebook
Demon encounters where a die roll is not 6 should lead to the
placement of a new demon (rule 7.3041)
When demon dispell fails, don't allow a roll of 6 on the demon
encounter (rule 11.222)
High hollow should lead to the center of Megmoran's tower, not
a RANDOM space.
Wizards assigning tasks where the first marker is available
from a High Wizard, now lets you pick the marker up before they vanish.
No longer have repeated encounters with the same demon or
dragon.
Found and fixed the "day advance" bug pointed out by Patrick
and Rolando.
Some GUI improvements
Lair time is now a clock that slowly
turns red as time runs out - more obvious that you are nearly out
of
time
Demon Dazed and Dragon Bound icons are smaller, and more
manageable
Animal duration is now shown as a progress
bar, so you can tell how much longer you will have the animal.
November 25, 2003
A surge in new downloads has
led to a number of bugs reported in recent days. With the holiday
coming up, I thought I'd get some of the most serious one's dealt with
before I go out of town.
The map builder was not working correctly. This is
fixed. (Thanks Erik L for pointing this out)
Horses and Winged Horses were doing some weird things around
coastal spaces and Ruktal. This has been fixed. (Thanks again to
Erik L.)
Made the selection of task markers a bit more obvious. Some
people had pointed out that it wasn't clear what the chooser was
asking. I made some changes that should make it more clear.
Put more information into the Move Calculation display, so you
can see how you get to various spaces. Turn on "Show Move
Calculations" in the game option menu to see the change.
November 18, 2003
Couple of quick bug fixes
(sorry to those of you who already downloaded Nov17 release!):
StarCrest was being encountered even when there is a task or
Wizard - this is fixed
When tasks are reassigned, the Magic Items weren't being
transferred - this is fixed
Ruktal was making himself too accessible - this is fixed
November 17, 2003
Not much more to finish up
here! Here's what's new:
Player Encounters are completely done. Everything that can
happen, will happen.
Discussions with Coral and Thomas Mosbø (the original game
designers) have led to a couple other changes:
Increased the number of Task Markers from 20 to 234.
Why? It turns out that their original intention was to have an
unlimited number of task marker counters, allowing the player to handle
any number of tasks at once. Avalon Hill set the limit to 20 for
publishing purposes, but there is no such restriction on the
computer. 234 should be more than enough for one player to handle
as many tasks as they like! No more demons placed when players
are
unable to take on a new task (where on earth did I get that idea!)
Changed the game board border to blue to indicate deep
unpassable waters
What's left to
do?
There's
still a bug where the day clock advances an additional day here or
there. My good friend Rolando has seen this a few times, but I'm
unable to get it to happen when I'm looking. If it happens to
you,
I'd love to hear from you!
New
artwork (coming soon!)
Creating
the "Designer's Cut" game mode, so you can play the game the way the
designers intended. (this will be very cool)
November 9, 2003
This is a nice release.
I went through every Event card, and verified that they work properly,
so I'm confident there are no more bugs in relation to them. I
also fixed a lot of movement issues that were bothering me.
Here's
whats new:
StarCrest actually
works. I thought this was fixed before, but there were some
situations that weren't working correctly, and the revisit thing wasn't
working right at all. I spent a lot of time banging on this part,
so it works rather well now.
Movement logic greatly improved:
If you have a hound in a boat, it no longer modifies your
movement roll
If you have a horse, you can swim two hexes, one turn at a time
Some event cards specify moving on land like water, or using
water to avoid a curse: these work now.
Found and squashed a bug that caused the game to freeze when you
receive a task that you cannot take on. This has been a problem
in
the past, and I thought I nailed it before, but it cropped up again
with
some recent changes. This is FIXED!
A new icon indicates when you
have
enough points to advance a level.
New icons indicate extra or lost turns (plus and minus
appearing after your name)
Modified the boat and wizard tokens to have a little bit of
depth
Reworked the player token to look a little more realistic
(well, a little)
November 5, 2003
Oops! A nasty bug
cropped up in my last release that can cause the game to freeze during
boat travel!! Ouch! Thanks for spotting this one
Rolando! Just a couple of items in this one:
Fixed the
new boat travel bug
Fixed the
behavior of
Event Card 31 - with this card in play, you can no longer complete
existing tasks, as per the rules
November 3, 2003
Had some time tonight to
address a few issues:
Event Card
24 works (choose next tile to fall)
Specific
Encounters are no longer unlimited, as per the rules
Tasks that
specify "EVERY xxxxx" are handled correctly.
Added some
messages where they were missing (various encounters)
Changed
the way Orders are joined - there's now a "Join Order" button on
message
panels for each of the three magical Orders.
October 26, 2003
At long last, Wizards moves
into beta test! This version fully supports the game rules
(exceptions below), and can be played to completion in any of the
magical orders. Here's whats new this time:
Gem
Summoning and Telepathy quirkiness fixed
Player
Move Event cards supported (in solitaire games, the computer moves you)
Lots of
little bugs fixed
Known problems?
Tasks that
specify "EVERY xxxxx" shouldn't become impossible until every
marker on "xxxxx" is lost.
Unlimited
specific encounters (except Hamdrel). For example, hanging out at
an Elven Dwelling will rack up the points - and this is wrong.
Event Card
24 is not supported, and will not appear (the event that allows you to
choose the next tile to fall)
If you have been
waiting for a working version, go ahead and give this one a try!
If you discover problems, let me know at
.
Coming soon: New in-game
artwork by the original game artist.
October 19, 2003
Discovered a bug that caused
the game to freeze up if you get a task when you don't have any more
markers. This is fixed, plus I added some new features:
More
control over which task marker guidelines are displayed
Additional
information on guidelines: marker
name (helps you see at a glance which markers are nearby)
Option to
view tile names
More
message windows to tell you what is happening during "Evil Attacks".
October 12, 2003
A couple of quick bug fixes
to the last release. Rolando pointed out that Event Card 31
(prevents tasks/points until visiting Ruktal or Torwall) never goes
away, essentially ending the game (he referred to it as the "game
killer"!) Sorry about that!
The other bug involved transports from Event Cards, where you could no
longer play after a transport. Both of these bugs are fixed now,
so this version should be much better.
October 10, 2003
This is pretty soon after the
last release, but some of these changes are really needed.
Regarding
boats:
No
longer able to "skip over land" with the boat.
Casting
boat summoning during a move makes an adjustment in the distance you
can
still move
Can't
cast boat summoning if already adjacent to a boat!
Regarding
spells:
New
spell icons make the spell panel a bit
more friendly in appearance
No, I still don't have a
beta. Some of the last few features (particularly Event cards)
are
turning out to be rather difficult. I tried to add a lot of
screenshots here, so you can see the progress without actually having
to
download the jar file. This version has a few bug fixes, and lots
of additions:
Gem images now appear when you receive a
gem
from a wizard (thanks to Rolando Castillo for hunting down these
wonderful images)
Wizards
give gems when met on the board
Most event
cards work, including those that complete tasks for you
Player
encounters mostly done
Visiting
Hamdrel now follows the correct rules: only 3 visits at a time
Tokens
stack, so you can see when there are more than one
Picking up
a task marker negates the effect of the space (ie., Elven Dwelling)
Option to
play the game where Mandatory tasks must be complete to advance a level
Druids
should be complete now (not fully tested)
Corrected
the spelling of the original game designers (Coral and Thomas
Mosbø, not Mosbo!) and added a credit to the artist of the
original artwork (Coral J. F. Mosbø)
September 7, 2003
This is just a quick fix to
some minor issues.
Fixed the
boat summoning spell (thanks to Rolando Castillo for pointing this out!)
New game
option (under Game:Game Options) to include a map
guide to wizards on the board, with distance meter
Clicking
on the overview map adjusts the viewport of the game map
September 1, 2003
Ahhhh, the Labor day
weekend gave me some time to put together a new alpha release.
This will likely be the last alpha, as I'm hoping to make the next
release a real testing beta! Here's whats new:
Finished
endgame for Wizard and Sorceror (sorry Druids!). This means that
the Telepathy and Gem Summoning spells are fully functional.
Added a
game preferences dialog. Currently, only has one
preference:
setting the hex numbering on or off.
Added a Map button, so you can look at a scaled
map at any time.
Finished
the THWART logic, so you can actually thwart
evil now.
Losing the
game is now possible: when the Sacred Circle goes under, the game
ends. Right now, you simply get a dialog with a demon in it that
says "Game Over". Hopefully, I can add more colorful endings
someday.
Finally
fixed a bug where you couldn't pick up a task marker in the same space
where the task was assigned.
The task
where the FARTHEST common town or elven dwelling is designated actually
works now
Movement
events should actually work now (think I broke this in the last
release... sorry!)
August 25, 2003
Haven't updated in
awhile. My wife gave birth to a 7 lb 10 oz baby girl on the 13th,
and I've been a bit distracted. Nevertheless, I have made some
progress:
Added an
About box, with appropriate credits to the original board game designers
Added some
Wizard Locator buttons (look under the Wizards tab) to help you find
wizards on the map
Added the
gem logic, and fixed the Telepathy spell
Nearing
completion on endgame (win/lose)
Added a
game setup dialog to allow you to specify map layout and "evil" rules
Fixed bugs
I wont be
putting a new version up until I finish the endgame, which I'm hoping
(time permitting) will be in the next couple of weeks (I only get a
couple of hours a week these days!)
Thought it would be worth
putting an update here to give you more information (and screenshots)
about the progress of this program. The current application can do the
following:
Create 1-6 players
Build the map
(automatic right now - I'll add support for manual building later...)
Move
around on the map by rolling the dice (boats
too!)
Meet with Wizards, Sorcerors, and Ruktal to join
guilds, and get tasks
All random events are
working
Some spells are working
(switftness, demon dispelling, animal summoning)
