Mana Investigation - Magic Carpet - ADG Pro 22

[@sonofeyeabovealleffoff5462]

This game deserves a full modern reboot. I used to play this like crazy when I was 9 in 96.

[@NinjaRunningWild]

All this info is already documented in Magic Carpet 1 & 2 Guide that was published at the time. You can find copies floating around the web.

[@Pixelmusement]

I don't doubt it. The whole point of the Pro video format is to figure stuff like this out with only the games themselves as our guide! ;)

[@KitsuneZeta]

So the Castle Mana requirements to *unlock* the spells is listed in Bullfrog's official guide (which includes the Hidden Worlds spell Homing Meteor, which replaces Wall of Fire - 60K to unlock, 5K to cast). Notably, Duel is listed as requiring 20K to unlock, not 16K, but whether that's an oversight or something changed in a patch is something I do not know. Some of the other bits from that guide (to fill in some holes) are: 1) Lightning Bolt is 1000 mana per shot, and it fires at full-auto at a speed twice that of Rapid Fireball (and thrice that of the fastest possible "Standard Fireball" fire rate, though you'd need a macro to be able to come close to hitting that). 2) Rapid Fireball is 600 mana per shot fired at full-auto, and even the official guide notes that it doesn't see much use due to being unlocked later than Lightning Bolt despite being slower, weaker, and counterable by Rebound. It's even weaker on a per-projectile basis than the starting fireball, though that would get made up by sheer volume of projectiles. 3) Rebound vs Shield: Rebound explicitly counters only fireball, Rapid fireball, Meteor, and the Homing Meteor spell from Hidden Worlds, returning those to sender (at a hit to your mana for every projectile it bounces off). Shield is a blanket 75% damage reduction from all spells with a flat cost for its duration, but also lasts roughly 2.5x as long as Rebound, so in terms of mana per second, it's cheaper (even ignoring Rebound's additional mana cost for actually rebounding spells)

[@Pixelmusement]

The fact that I messed up Duel as 20,000 as well, then noticed it's 16,000 while reviewing my footage during editing, suggests that whoever was making the official guide may also have had to try and discern the spell values themselves without Bullfrog actually telling them! :P

[@NinjaRunningWild]

@@Pixelmusement Or the numbers were altered for game balance after when that book went to press. The act of putting a book out is a lengthy process even once the manuscript goes to the publisher. I speak from experience. 😉

[@Pixelmusement]

@@NinjaRunningWild Yep, also possible. :B

[@dukdukgoos]

Magic Carpet would be a great candidate for a modern remake. Kinda surprised it hasn't happened already

[@Pixelmusement]

There's been a few attempts over the years but I have noted almost every attempt which tries to match the same style of play also has a surprisingly heavy focus on summoning monsters to do your bidding for whatever reason. :P

[@reaty05]

@@Pixelmusement that's not the magic carpet combat system

[@PlayStationPaul]

Episode 300 is obviously Tomb Raider. Can't wait for that.

[@YusuflaOyunZaman]

Hi from Turkey. Your videos took me back to past. I had a dos pc now its not working but still i have the case. You deserve more views. Thanks.

[@Spacemutiny]

Absolutely loved this game growing up. Shame they never made a level editor.

[@Pixelmusement]

They SORT of did actually. I've been thinking of covering it in an ADG Mod video, the only trick is that I don't think it would make for a very long or useful video since you can't edit the placement of objects, just the landscape. :P

[@NinjaRunningWild]

@@Pixelmusement And weirdly that tool was only included in the original release of the game, and was not kept with the release of MC+.

[@thewiirocks]

Probably a few too many hints that we're going to be spelunking in deep, cavernous tombs next week...

[@Nezuji]

Oh, of course! I was focused on asteroid mining but thinking, "Surely everyone thinks of that as a PC game, right? And there's only one console port of the original game, so 'consoleS' doesn't fit, does it? And was it really a 'game-changer'?"

[@Darxide23]

@@Nezuji I'm pretty sure said asteroid mining game was the first fully 3D game on PC, but I did think of Indiana Jolie first. Asteroid mining released on PC a year and a half before Crypt Plunderer.

[@j.a.8224]

It's the "turned heads in more ways than one" line that cinched it, I suspect. In the end, a lot of these big games remembered were game-changers in the dramatic "industry shifting" sense. And a lot of the time they weren't the first there, they were the first that did it *big*.

[@lilwyvern4]

Would've adored this game as a kid. Sadly, the only Bullfrog game I experienced in The Brighter Times was Populous: The Beginning, which is still incredible, but I love me some Arabian Nights stuff. At some point in the future, I'd love to see you cover an old curious title called Robinson's Requiem. It's an old first person adventure game with voxel-based terrain and a big focus on survival mechanics. It also has an infamously ghoulish game over screen which players see a _LOT_.

[@wizardscrollstudio]

Would it be possible to do an investigation with Ultima Underworld 1 stats? Also this engine was re-used with some heavy modifications for Dungeon Keeper. If you look at DK ceilings they use the same terrain deformation logic.

[@Pixelmusement]

I'm pretty sure the engines between those two games are not the same given that Magic Carpet does not have the ability to render 3D polygon objects other than the landscape (even the buildings are just landscape tiles with the vertices pulled way up) but at the same time I wouldn't be surprised if pieces of the Magic Carpet engine were used to make the one in Dungeon Keeper. As for investigating Ultima Underworld's stats more closely, that's not something I feel I would be able to do justice without far more time than I normally have to make these videos. :P

[@wizardscrollstudio]

@@Pixelmusement That's what I thought at first but if research shows Glenn Corpes was the developer for Bullfrog game engine used for Syndicate 2, Magic Carpet, Dungeon Keeper, Hi Octane. So is the same engine. There is an in depth description of DK in Retro Gamer. issue No. 160 which mentiones DK engine is a modified Magic Carpet engine :)

[@wizardscrollstudio]

@@Pixelmusement Regarding UW1 I did some of my own research decompiling the 16 bit executable and figured out some formulas for example how Mana or Vitality is calculated, jump height, running speed, how damage is calculated etc. I can send you my sources if you wish just a gdocs file. Maybe would be enough for you to make a short video? I love researching DOS era games :)

[@NinjaRunningWild]

@@Pixelmusement No, it’s the same engine. This is well documented. The reason for the lack of displaying polygonal objects comes during to choices Bullfrog made in how to apply it vs tradeoffs in performance for that. No free lunches in programming.

[@jasonblalock4429]

As an aside, if anyone has a hankering for a more modern game with similar landscape deformation and combat, check out Megaton Rainfall. Basically, it's a cross between Magic Carpet and Superman. It's janky AF, but there's still something oddly compelling about it, especially in just how ludicrously overpowered the player can become. (It also runs in VR on PC, if your stomach can take it.)

[@Pixelmusement]

Kinda looks like the distant future of the same universe: The cities became massive and the wizards became far more powerful... then the alien invasion begins. :B

[@ianeborn6823]

This was interesting--especially as I happen to have just recently started re-playing this game in earnest! ^_^ I will say that, while Rapid Fireball is unlocked later than Lightning, it seems (as far as I've found in my current playthrough, at least) to be encountered in an earlier level. Thus it makes a certain amount of sense as an early-level, less-efficient stepping-stone between the finger-killing inefficiency of Fireball and the utility of Lightning.

[@Pixelmusement]

True, but once you've got lightning you almost never touch rapid fireball ever again... at least until the later levels where you no longer start with all of your spells. :P

[@ianeborn6823]

@@Pixelmusement Sure, but similar might be said of the base Fireball spell too, I think: once you have one of the other attacking spells, there's little point to using it. Thus to my mind those base attacking spells are simple replacements for each other: Fireball -> Rapid Fireball -> Lightning. (...->METEOR! >:D Okay, okay, it's probably to expensive to so use, but I do love it. :P)

[@Pixelmusement]

@@ianeborn6823 The trick with Fireball though is that you HAVE to use it when you're starting a new level because no other attack spells unlock with zero mana accumulated, so yes, you obviously will stop using it as you get more mana, and that's what I find weird about Rapid Fireball becoming available to cast AFTER Lightning Bolt. Fireball you will still use to get yourself going in each level, but once you have Lightning Bolt you'll virtually never touch Rapid Fireball ever again. :P

[@ianeborn6823]

@@Pixelmusement That's fair. To my thinking, in a sense, it's a matter of progression in the upgrades themselves: In early levels, your upgrade from Fireball is decent--Rapid Fireball is very helpful to have early on! But then in later levels, you get an even better upgrade in Lightning, and so Rapid Fireball is no longer needed. Thus there's a sort of progression, with the player gaining access to better options than they had early on.

[@reaty05]

@@ianeborn6823 you can crash the game with meteor and lag it with earthquake

[@TheMoogleMaster]

What does the death spell do?

[@Pixelmusement]

"Global Death" is a weird one. Basically, it drops an invisible bomb in the exact spot you're in which has a short range and goes off after a couple seconds. Anything caught in the invisible blast radius is instantly killed regardless of health values, save for the spellcaster. I have a funny feeling there were SUPPOSED to be graphics added to this so you could see what you were even doing but weren't added due to time constraints as the game was rushed out the door, thus few people understood how to actually make proper use of this spell. :P

[@reaty05]

It's a tricky spell to use on small targets but therapeutic

[@GreySectoid]

Fun fact: Populous the Beginning uses the same engine as this game. Great game but it's on Windows, would been nice to get a review from it as well.

[@Pixelmusement]

The trouble with the third Populous game is it really doesn't FEEL like a Populous game... I might cover it in a filler some day.

[@GreySectoid]

​@@PixelmusementTrue, it's more like RTS but the dreamlike atmosphere sets the game apart.

[@NinjaRunningWild]

As does Dungeon Keeper & Hi-Octane. Programmed by Glenn Corpes.

[@tasospodcast8832]

Strike Commander graphics on steroids :D