Heroes of Might & Magic TW and some questions

[Soldatenhandel]

As a huge fan of the Heroes of Might and Magic franchise (when held by NWC; in my opinion, Ubisoft wrecked the series) and a fan of Medieval II Total War-not to mention a skillful player of both, which is also in my humble opinion-it’s only natural that sooner or later the idea of merging the two manifests. In order for this idea to be fully manifest and to my increasingly improbable standards, there are some tricky obstacles to be overcome… Here begin the questions:

1. The hardcoded limit to cultures is seven. Is it impossible to change this limit without the source code (and whatever else is required) or are there “theoretical” loopholes or bypasses to this rule (no matter how tenuous the loophole may be; I’m desperate and knowledge of the possibilities in this area will alter my whole design scheme).

2. In Heroes there are special buildings on the campaign map (each type of building has its own unique model) that a hero may visit. These buildings provide certain benefits to the hero when visited (extra morale for the hero’s troops in the next battle; paying gold (or florins in TW) to receive extra troop stacks immediately; etc.). The effects of these buildings can be easily implemented into the game. My question is whether or not the buildings themselves can appear on a campaign map. Am I correct in thinking if they can appear on the campaign map they can also appear on the battle map if the model for it is present?

3. In Heroes, multiple resources are used for troop recruitment and building construction. In MII: TW there are many ways to mimic this effect, but I want to duplicate it. Is it possible to create multiple resources similar to florins and that are required for recruitment and construction? An example would be a large wall costing 150 gold (florins), 25 ore and 25 wood; without meeting and paying all of the resource prerequisites the wall cannot begin to be constructed.

4. Flying units… Where to begin? I know they’re possible, but what are the limitations? I would be fairly happy with a unit that flew to its target destination then grounded itself (that’s how the developers of Heroes of Might and Magic solved this problem as well; seeing as how none of the flying creatures have long-ranged breath weapons or ranged attacks, this might just be the best way to go about them). Maybe the creatures will be able to maintain flight to avoid melee, but to attack they’ll have to land. But in contrast there are fly-by attacks and dives… And rather large dragon corpses falling out of the sky and crushing the units they land on. Hmm…

5. The magic system. Some spells should be relatively easy to integrate while others will be damn near unachievable. Same goes for the heroes’ primary skills (attack, defense, spellpower and wisdom) if I choose to integrate them. Any suggestions are more than welcome.

6. I want to make the “heroes” (generals) outfitted with an experience-to-get-next-level & next-level-grants-benefits-based-on-class and, in general, to see different “hero classes” prancing about the map (a level 10 Knight, level 18 Ranger, etc.). The text part is possible, but is the meat of this idea even remotely possible?

7. I know that for every model there’s an array of body parts, body features, etc. to choose from. Can someone please explain this process in brief to me? Can I have a base creature (say an ape without any fur and a discolored, rockesque skin texture; Behemoth) and then have an array of possibilities that add gray hair in some areas, white hair in others, mottled gray and a decayed, tinged yellow in others hairs, with some battle-models having a full body mixture of one color of hair, other models having a full body of multiple colors of hair and some having no hair to expose their craggy skin?

8. By having its armor upgraded does the battle-model of a unit change? Does anything else change, excluding the armor value of course?

This here bit isn’t really like the above questions, but rather the opinions of those intrigued so far: what would you (Heroes’ fans) like to see in this game? The plan is to make the mod cover Heroes I, II & III and I’m pretty adamantine about this. This mod will not be a total conversion from Medieval II: Total War to Heroes of Might & Magic (Just as well play Might & Magic, then), but will instead combine the features of the two (the graphics, trait system, hardcode, etc. of MII: TW; the history and factions/creatures/cultures, etc. of Heroes). Also, this mod will combine the desirable features of each Heroes game into a whole (the “specialties” of Heroes III, secondary skills of Heroes II and III, etc.).

I’ve been toying with multiple ideas for a while now. Combining all of the “cultures” (Heroes I and II: Knight, Wizard, Sorceress, Barbarian, etc.; Heroes III: Castle (Knight), Stronghold (Barbarian), etc.) into a single culture. The problems here (especially to any Heroes fan) are apparent: the unifying of the Heroes games conflicting with one another. I assure that such problems will be dealt with satisfactorily (satisfactorily for myself and hopefully for the majority of players). An example of such is Heroes I, II and III all conflicting with each other: in Heroes I the best troop the “Knight” culture can field is the Paladin. In Heroes II the same is true, except for a higher-tiered (upgraded) instance of the Paladin exists, that being the Crusader. In Heroes III, the Paladin isn’t in the game at all; the Crusader is, but is far removed from even being among the Knight’s best units. Instead, we now have the Crusader being the upgrade of the Swordsman. My solution is to once more place the Paladin and Crusader in the Knight’s elite (a decision which Heroes IV agrees with) whilst retaining the Swordsman as a unit; all that remains in this example of ours is to reintroduce the Master Swordsman of Heroes II as an upgrade to the Swordsman (didn’t think I’d let the Swordsman be all lonely like, did ya’? Besides, the Crusader of Heroes II is much too kickass to relinquish).

I’ve also been toying around with making the cultures of the continent Erathia dissimilar with their cultural counterparts on Enroth (one reflecting Heroes II and the other Heroes III), which is only possible if the seven cultures hardcode can be worked around. Of note is the Wizard culture: the architecture and rural beauty of the Wizards of Heroes II is, at least to me, far more appealing than the snow-clime Wizards of Heroes III, though I’d love to use both. However, if push comes to shove, I’ll have to omit something somewhere down the road. The Heroes III Wizard might just get a tough break and a cold shoulder in return for all the battles he’s won for me.

Perhaps of special interest to those older or more diversified players of the Heroes series, I plan on including some content from the original King’s Bounty. The Demon creature has me particularly excited. King’s Bounty also had some excellent heroes (well, technically they were called villains…); trying to think of my favorite villain, but it keeps slipping me. Ah! And I nearly forgot the long lost gnomes. And giants. And so much more that was never in the Heroes series. I’m also willing to draw on some of the elements of Heroes IV, to a minor extent. As for Heroes V… None of that.

Mods to the Heroes games, such as WoG, will be unaccounted for in this mod.

The actual design of this mod will be freeform. Instead of King Ironfist coming out the victor, perhaps Lord Slayer will this time (which could lead to a new vista of possible events not in the Heroes canon). In fact, I intend for the byword of this mod to be freeform (which, coincidently, greatly adds to the replayibility factor). Not all of the events will ever happen in one, two, or even three games, which also dramatically increases the replayibility (especially and only considering the amount of content in Heroes I, II and III; the Wizard’s Font of Heroes II The Price of Loyalty is a premier example, only occurring every thousand years or so. Perhaps you’ll happen to have a game where that 1,000 years is near, perhaps you won’t.). Constant throughout every game session will be the Great Artifact (a generic term and not an actual artifact). This Artifact provides its wielder with unfathomable benefits. Its location can be discerned by visiting obelisks and uncovering the “puzzle map” one piece at a time. The Great Artifact will differ from game to game: in one game it could be the Sceptre of Order; in the Next it could be the Holy Grail. Only one Great Artifact can be in any one game, which will also modify possible missions: you can’t be given a quest to rescue the Grail from the defilements of its undead exhumers if it is instead the Sceptre of Order that is the Great Artifact for this game instance. The possibilities are many and will hopefully delight fans and casual players alike, much as the original Heroes of Might & Magic did.

Now, down to the gritty reality of it all. I have next to no experience in modding MII: TW. I have sufficient experience in modding several other games, however, and am reasonably competent with computers in general (not skilled or expert, average or poor; reasonably competent). I’m very avid to begin learning how to modify MII: TW, but at this stage, the barebones theorizing, brainstorming, organizing and conceptual development, all learning to mod MII: TW will do is make me realize how difficult implementing such and such could be and, frankly, limit creative vision. I’m not really looking for a team at this stage either; merely asking for the opinions and creative input of those interested in this project and for answers to the questions I posted. I do have a life outside of gaming and, in general, the internet and so make no guarantees of delivery and definitely no release dates. In short, “It might be done when it might be done.” A far cry from unconditional optimism, huh? Before even beginning to gather a team I feel that I myself have to get more than comfortable with modding MII: TW and so, short of conception, this mod could be quite away off. If you’re beyond-a-doubt interested in joining the to-be mod-team then pm me with you vision of what this mod should be and the direction(s) it should take, what you would like to work on/specialize in, and examples of your work. You’ll be considered when the time is right (if you’re still interested, that is). I have no experience in graphics, modeling, skinning or animation (at least not very applicable experience) and so individuals skilled in the above, as in most any mod, will be received more warmly. Finally, don’t forget the primary purpose of this thread: the answers and opinions of the knowledgeable and the fans, respectively. Especially the fans: let’s get these thought processes a-rolling’! Any and all of your thoughts are more than appreciated, though I may dismiss some after the fashion of a perhaps overly dedicated fan.

[Tsarsies]

Sounds like quite an interesting undertaking. I have played the Heroes of M&M but only briefly. Enough to have an idea of what you could achieve anyway. First of all, id like to suggest this mod idea would be better suited for Mount and Blade!... But seeing as you are asking about a TW conversion, here is my advice (helpful or not)...

1. The hardcoded limit is 7. Keep in mind there are religions AND cultures available. It is possible to have 2 factions with the same culture but different religions. This in essence could expand the 'culture' sets if one was to combine the two to act as one.

2. You can use resources, and simply change thier strat map models to resemble that of the buildings you refer to. Using a script you can tell when a charcter of a certain type is on that x,y coord. From that you could make it possible to recruit special units based on character and resource type. These 'buildings/resources' would not be constructable, but already preplaced at game start... I am doing somthing very similar with my Defender of the Crown Mod where i am using resource icons to resemble buildings/towns/horses/ etc on the map, i am also using the mine building to enable the player to construct jousting lists... the mine strat map model will look like a jousting list instead of a mine... So your idea here for HMM is possible. I do not think they could appear on the battle map though. You would have to edit the battle map environments, somthing i am not knowledgable of.

3. This idea is 100% doable. I wrote a script called Trade and Supply for Vax Lux Luucis, a dark age mod (unfortunatly it was put on hold indefinatly). The Trade and Supply script forced the player to acquire materials. Resources on the map provided some of the materials, buildings could refine these base materials to produce more materials. The player had to stockpile resources to build/recruit and otherwise take normal actions. Bonuses from buildings were also limited dependant on ones avaialable resources (dont have enough Ale, there goes the bonus your Inn was providing... etc)...

4. Flying units… I am not skilled in this area so you would need some one of more skill here to answer this question...

5. You can use the hero abilities granted with kingdoms expansion. It may not meet your requirements exactly as you wish, but it is a step in the right direction. Also, using a very detailed and thorough trait and ancilliary system can achieve some very interesting results. and grant your characters special abilities. I am a member of the Wheel of Time mod team and that series has some very hard to achieve mechanics, we will be attempting to build a very extensive trait system which will represent certain areas, such as magic (the one power).
It all depends on how you use your imagination to achieve what it is you wish to achieve...

6. As far as i know, the experience sytem in TW is hardcoded. But, you could use a script that keeps track of your own experience system. How you go about doing it is left to the imagination. I am using a similar kind of experience system approach for certain ideas i have for both DotC and tWoT. Dependant on a generals experience level (that is the experience your system provides, not the hardcoded TW one), you can gift the general certain abilities through the trait and ancilliary system, and also allow certain buildings or units to become avaialable to that general at certain 'levels'... So yes, this idea is possible...

7. This is an area of modding TW i can not help you with im afraid.

8. I believe if you set a new model for it then yes, otherwise its just the value that is affected.

Your mod idea sounds great!. But now i have a few questions for you.
1. How many Factions?
2. How many Regions on the map?

Thats all i want to know... The reason is because i am leaning away from the 'grand' mod idea of 31 factions and 199 regions (hardcoded limits). Although thats great, i honestly feel it limits the scriptable parts of the game. The mod i am working on in my spare time is Defender of the Crown (me and one other - Absinthia) has only 60 odd regions and 10 factions, and only 1 religion and culture. It is very centralized and has a timascale of 52 turns per year over a 10 year period. The mod will be heavily scripted and include a lot of ideas that are unachievable in the larger scale mods because i am working with less variables and therefore, expanding the possiblities of scripting.

The only reason i bring any of that up is because your mod idea sounds like it will require indepth scripting to make certain desirable effects. (such as detecting when a particular character is at a particular x,y coordinate) - unachievable on larger mods due to the number of possible characters from which faction and how many times the script would have to run (once for each character of whatever faction)... A smaller mod eliminates much of those kind of issues... for the most part (those issues are still very real no matter the mods size)...


Anyway, i like your mod proposal and think it is achievable, but as i first pointed out, i think it could be better suited for a Mount and Blade modification.

[Caba'drin]

7. I know that for every model there’s an array of body parts, body features, etc. to choose from. Can someone please explain this process in brief to me? Can I have a base creature (say an ape without any fur and a discolored, rockesque skin texture; Behemoth) and then have an array of possibilities that add gray hair in some areas, white hair in others, mottled gray and a decayed, tinged yellow in others hairs, with some battle-models having a full body mixture of one color of hair, other models having a full body of multiple colors of hair and some having no hair to expose their craggy skin?

8. By having its armor upgraded does the battle-model of a unit change? Does anything else change, excluding the armor value of course?

7. Units are are constructed out of classes of body parts. Each class (or part) can have multiple versions or a single version, and can be set to appear on all units or only on a random selection of units. For instance, each unit should always have version of a part of class 'Head' but it might have many different versions. For a part of class 'Cloak', you might only want to appear on certain units and not on others, but it to always look the same.

As to your example, a unit can have a part of class 'Body Hair' that actually has 6 different versions, white, yellow, grey, mix1, mix2, and none. Subsequently, that 'Body Hair' would be set to appear on all units. Then, randomly, a unit will be constructed with one of those versions of 'Body Hair', with roughly 1/6 of your units having no hair, 1/6 with all white, 1/6 with a given mix, 1/6 with another pre-defined mix, etc.. To make it more complex, each area of body hair could be constructed as its own class ("Body Hair A"; "Body Hair B" etc) with three versions, yellow, grey, and white, but to not necessarily appear on every unit. In this instance, it is highly unlikely for a unit to be made with all of the same colors of hair. And very likely for it to be quite patchy with some places with hair next to another place with no hair, etc.

8. That is entirely up to you. You code whether it will be a texture change, a model change, or no change.

Also, as you begin learning about M2TW modding, take a gander and Alletun's Tome of Knowledge. While you can ignore the modeling/skinning bits mostly, it will give an idea of how units are put together by the engine and the coding/text editing of the files required to make that work.

[Vaz]

1. You may have up to, but not exceeding 7 Cultures. There are some work arounds depending on what you want to do it with. What's your intention behind them? Religions however have a limit of 10, IIRC.

2. Tsarsies has said it all. The Battle Map though is a real heavy indepth issue, although I believe there is a tool in developement.

3. See Tsarsies answer. Also, you can make a slightly more simple modification, by limiting it based on the available resources in a particular research.

4. Flying units are difficult - they cannot fly per se - i.e not over walls etc. They simply hover in mid air. The animation I think could be scripted to appear like you suggest - but animation is quite an in depth modification.

5. Magic Attacks such as say a fire ball can obviously be easily created - requiring the modification of a ranged units projectile. Magic Spells which modify a units melee attack can obviously be direct modifications to unit stats. Depending on the effect of the magic spell, In my mod Cry Havoc, changes are made to the ability of a sorceror to heal troops after a battle (Battle Surgery), Command, Movement Speed, or Hitpoints.

6. Not too sure whether you mean units or characters. It will be quite hard to allow a wide CHOICE, rather than a wide RANGE of characters. You can script traits to trigger upon coming of age, adoption, or lesser adoption.

7. This is more than possible. In total, during the modelling and texturing processes, you may have up to 12 different variations of a particular location (i.e 12 helmets, 12 shields, etc). Note - this is not a total of 144 parts - it's 12 in total - i.e you can have 12 different model parts with a unique texture on each, or you can have 1 model part, with 12 different textures applied. However, you're limited to two different texture sheets for a particular unit at maximum - a base, and an attachment, so obviously more space taken up by variations could mean a lower resolution texture. In addition, when the game is "building" a unit to put together on the battle map, a maximum of 4 of those particular different models/textures is used. I.e if you have 2 different models, each with 3 different textures, the game would choose a random 4 different variations for that entire unit.

8. The Battle Model of the unit does change - however, to save time you can reuse the models. Defence value is the only one I know - I believe it's more of a hidden "upgrade" in the sense it's far higher than the +1 it shows on the UI.

One important thing to remember though is that the campaign script increases the turn length the more monitors, and checks etc, and not too many people, particularly on lower end computers like to wait 2-3 mins to end their turn.

[Soldatenhandel]

Sounds like quite an interesting undertaking. I have played the Heroes of M&M but only briefly. Enough to have an idea of what you could achieve anyway. First of all, id like to suggest this mod idea would be better suited for Mount and Blade!... But seeing as you are asking about a TW conversion, here is my advice (helpful or not)...

Anyway, i like your mod proposal and think it is achievable, but as i first pointed out, i think it could be better suited for a Mount and Blade modification.

From what I’ve seen Mount and Blade is more of an RPG-styled game, not a turn-based strategy one. Perhaps you’re thinking of the Might & Magic series, which I’d think would better fit Mount and Blade?

Might & Magic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Might_and_Magic

Heroes of Might & Magic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroes_of_Might_and_Magic

1. The hardcoded limit is 7. Keep in mind there are religions AND cultures available. It is possible to have 2 factions with the same culture but different religions. This in essence could expand the 'culture' sets if one was to combine the two to act as one.

Do you mean to treat the religions as separate cultures? By giving culture Z a religion unique to that culture could I provide said culture with a whole new set of settlement strat models and all the other things associated with separate cultures? In essence meaning I really have a sum of 17 cultures to work with if I omitted religion (for the sake of demonstration)?

2. You can use resources, and simply change thier strat map models to resemble that of the buildings you refer to. Using a script you can tell when a charcter of a certain type is on that x,y coord. From that you could make it possible to recruit special units based on character and resource type. These 'buildings/resources' would not be constructable, but already preplaced at game start... I am doing somthing very similar with my Defender of the Crown Mod where i am using resource icons to resemble buildings/towns/horses/ etc on the map, i am also using the mine building to enable the player to construct jousting lists... the mine strat map model will look like a jousting list instead of a mine... So your idea here for HMM is possible. I do not think they could appear on the battle map though. You would have to edit the battle map environments, somthing i am not knowledgable of.

Hmm. I was hoping to make the map objects randomly generated, but this seems like a much better idea, at least for TW. Is there a max number of resources/resource icons? Also, are the trees of the strat map modified resource icons? Can said tress be changed and can I have a variety of different tree models to place on the map? I apologize for all the questions, I’m sure you’re busy as well, but I’ve been researching some areas of modding a bit and the possibilities keep presenting themselves. =P

5. You can use the hero abilities granted with kingdoms expansion. It may not meet your requirements exactly as you wish, but it is a step in the right direction. Also, using a very detailed and thorough trait and ancilliary system can achieve some very interesting results. and grant your characters special abilities. I am a member of the Wheel of Time mod team and that series has some very hard to achieve mechanics, we will be attempting to build a very extensive trait system which will represent certain areas, such as magic (the one power).
It all depends on how you use your imagination to achieve what it is you wish to achieve...

Hmm. I suppose the trait system would be more than adequate to model the magic system and also easier to work with. I was thinking more along the lines of Advanced User Interface; I suppose only time will tell which if any method will ultimately be the best. Guess I’ll have to study the trait & ancillary system of TW a good bit. Thanks for the tip.

Your mod idea sounds great!. But now i have a few questions for you.
1. How many Factions?
2. How many Regions on the map?

Thats all i want to know... The reason is because i am leaning away from the 'grand' mod idea of 31 factions and 199 regions (hardcoded limits). Although thats great, i honestly feel it limits the scriptable parts of the game. The mod i am working on in my spare time is Defender of the Crown (me and one other - Absinthia) has only 60 odd regions and 10 factions, and only 1 religion and culture. It is very centralized and has a timascale of 52 turns per year over a 10 year period. The mod will be heavily scripted and include a lot of ideas that are unachievable in the larger scale mods because i am working with less variables and therefore, expanding the possiblities of scripting.

The only reason i bring any of that up is because your mod idea sounds like it will require indepth scripting to make certain desirable effects. (such as detecting when a particular character is at a particular x,y coordinate) - unachievable on larger mods due to the number of possible characters from which faction and how many times the script would have to run (once for each character of whatever faction)... A smaller mod eliminates much of those kind of issues... for the most part (those issues are still very real no matter the mods size)...

Well, this could be a problem... I did intend for the mod to be more on the grander scale of things (probably not pushing the maximum limits of the engine, but nevertheless grand). What are my options when it comes to file/data compression that is compatible or integratible into the TW engine? I still want quality, mind you.

7. Units are are constructed out of classes of body parts. Each class (or part) can have multiple versions or a single version, and can be set to appear on all units or only on a random selection of units. For instance, each unit should always have version of a part of class 'Head' but it might have many different versions. For a part of class 'Cloak', you might only want to appear on certain units and not on others, but it to always look the same.

As to your example, a unit can have a part of class 'Body Hair' that actually has 6 different versions, white, yellow, grey, mix1, mix2, and none. Subsequently, that 'Body Hair' would be set to appear on all units. Then, randomly, a unit will be constructed with one of those versions of 'Body Hair', with roughly 1/6 of your units having no hair, 1/6 with all white, 1/6 with a given mix, 1/6 with another pre-defined mix, etc.. To make it more complex, each area of body hair could be constructed as its own class ("Body Hair A"; "Body Hair B" etc) with three versions, yellow, grey, and white, but to not necessarily appear on every unit. In this instance, it is highly unlikely for a unit to be made with all of the same colors of hair. And very likely for it to be quite patchy with some places with hair next to another place with no hair, etc.

8. That is entirely up to you. You code whether it will be a texture change, a model change, or no change.

Also, as you begin learning about M2TW modding, take a gander and Alletun's Tome of Knowledge. While you can ignore the modeling/skinning bits mostly, it will give an idea of how units are put together by the engine and the coding/text editing of the files required to make that work.

Thanks for the link; I’ll be sure to check it out. Currently, my largest problem is making the unit roster possible within the limits of the game, but never at the expense of the lore behind Heroes of Might & Magic, so that first paragraph of yours, as can be imagined, was greatly relieving. Can one class of body part cover multiple areas? Say, a cloak class part that encompasses/hides most of the body?

1. You may have up to, but not exceeding 7 Cultures. There are some work arounds depending on what you want to do it with. What's your intention behind them? Religions however have a limit of 10, IIRC.

Ideally, I would like to have the workaround allow me to have a different settlement strat map model, different buildings, etc. Really, anything any other culture would allow.

One important thing to remember though is that the campaign script increases the turn length the more monitors, and checks etc, and not too many people, particularly on lower end computers like to wait 2-3 mins to end their turn.

Yes. Unfortunately, I can see where this would be an issue, not having the best computer myself. How ctd prone is MII:TW to extreme amounts of compressed data?...

As a sidenote: the more responses I get and the more information provided by these responses, the more I realize it'd probably be best to learn how to mod most every aspect of the game first before even proposing such a project. However, being knee-deep in the concept design (have been for some time), I really see no alternatives. Compile a list of modding tutorials and read them instead of my usual literature, while trudging on, I suppose. Thanks for the responses, all!

Further Edit: Been lookin' around a bit. Any one have any good sites that teach modding? I could copy all of the text from the Mod Workshop and TWC University, but I assume learning to mod can be accomplished more efficiently?

[Caba'drin]

Can one class of body part cover multiple areas? Say, a cloak class part that encompasses/hides most of the body?

Definitely. Thinking of the groups of vertices and planes that make up an object class as a 'body part' is a convenience. Many vanilla models have large pieces of the body all as one class--captains/generals, for instance, everything but the legs that stick out the bottom of their tunics are one piece. The modeler groups things into classes as they choose.

[Master Necromancer]

If this mod gets going you can count me in for 2D art. :