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Upcoming changes to next version...
***BEGIN EDIT 2014-05-11***
There is a new update available, see this thread for the changes. ***END EDIT 2014-05-11*** Now that I've just released this major update, I thought it would be a good idea to keep track of changes as I make them before I release my next update. So this list is meant to keep a running tally of changes in case you have a bug or crashing problem, you can check this post from time to time to see if your issue has been fixed or see what's coming in the next update. The first problem with ITEMS_HINT.LUA deals with the variable text for containers. You only see an error message if you're running in debug mode, but the container text doesn't show properly if you talk to an NPC in a castle and when closing the conversation they add new container items to the castle shop and you cursor over them to see their description (a natural response for new items). I'm not sure why, but the Obj Library function get_param does not work in this situation. I tried various ideas to see if I could get the information some other way, but none of them worked. So I had to brute force generate the values when get_param returns empty strings. The other changes so far deal with adding two new NPC's that will trade containers for Magic Crystals. Father Owein will trade 125 (Skeleton) Coffins for 1 Magic Crystal and Furious Paladin will trade 20 (Vampire) Carved Coffins for 1 Magic Crystal. This allows them to train their priests or recruits on actual Undead troops. Seemed like a good fit for both NPC's and it keeps them close to Greenwort. So I just have Griffin and Bone Dragon Eggs left to find NPC's that might be willing to exchange Magic Crystals for those eggs. I'll keep searching, but I might pick Carl Leanard for trading Griffin Eggs. He'll say that he's getting ready to travel and would like to bring them along to help him and Martha in their travels. I can't remember, though, if Carl is not available after a certain point in the game, so I need to check that unless someone here remembers. I'm thinking for the Bone Dragon Eggs it's probably going to be someone in the Undead lands. I need to find an NPC that still brings up the dialog before their shop. I have a couple NPC's I want to check to see if they meet this criteria - the first is the Necromancer that has you get the Red Dragon Eggs (he's going to experiment on them or something like that to make them stronger) or the Necromancer that has you get the Evil Book (same premise probably). I can't remember, though, if either bring up their dialog after you complete their quests, so I'll see... ***BEGIN EDIT 2014-05-10*** Well, it looks like both Necromancers that I mentioned above just show their shops after completing their quests. So I'm going to look for some other candidates... I may have to learn how to change NPC's from just showing their shops if I can't find anyone else. Maybe Foritop, the Dwarf in Marhan Swamp wants Bone Dragon Eggs. Hmmm... or maybe Welbewooll in Demonis. Hmmm... or maybe Dragon Atta in Verlon Forest. Hmmm... I also implemented Carl Leonard as the one to trade Griffin Eggs for Crystals, although I may still consider Harl for trading Griffin Eggs for Runes if I decide to implement Rune exchange variants for the other containers like I did with Drahha exchanging dragon eggs for Runes. We'll see... I added the capability to choose the path for the Black Dragon's Power of Fire talent, just like the AI uses! I basically used the Warriors of the North (WotN) functions and spliced the changes I had made to burn into the WotN ones as well as added a battle message to aid you in selecting your path. The reason why I added the message is that the first time I used the talent in WotN I had no idea what was going on, but then realized that I could select the path. Can you select their path in AP / CW? I don't remember, and don't have a savegame handy to check - just curious... I also made some changes to the dialogue text when you don't have enough of a container to exchange Magic Crystals so that you are reminded of the exchange rate in case you can't remember what it is. Here is the file change list in the upcoming release... Version Beta 2014-MM-DD (future date unknown, but certainly this year!)
That's it for now! If you have any issues, check this list to see if it has been fixed. If it hasn't then please post the problem or issue so that I can see if I can resolve it - thanks!:) /C\/C\ |
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I wasn't sure if it would be weird for him to sell them and then ask for them in return, but I could have him say that there have been a lot of thefts of griffin eggs or something like that and that he'd like them returned to him for crystals. /C\/C\ |
Hi Matt! You can't select the black dragon fire path in AP/CW. But the russians have made a mod for that and I actually can't remember the last time when I played without it. I can give you a link if you think it'll help you.
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Hello Matt,
I tryed the last version with a new game, but the game crash (no message error even with the -dev :( ) at first battle with dragonfly and thorn. I'm 100% certain thorn are the cause. And specially archer one. The crash don't start at the begining of the battle but during. This happened near turn 3, the thorn was moving away of my nearest unit and should have fire, but crash pop between. |
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***BEGIN EDIT*** Okay, I tried fighting some Thorns (both variants), but haven't had any issues so far so it might be somewhere else. I'll certainly need your savegame with instructions to be able to fix this it looks like. The only other thing I can suggest is make absolutely certain you're not running it with any other mods or you may want to go through your KB directories and ensure that you don't have any stray files that don't belong. ***END EDIT*** ***BEGIN EDIT2*** Okay, Saroumana sent me the save and I can confirm there is a crashing issue if you are using Build 35,234. This is the GoG version of the game. There are no issues with Build 35,396. I have both 35,396 and 35,234 and so I'll see what I can do to figure out the crash. For now I'm going to say that if you have Build 35,234 then you may have problems with this update. I noticed something curious that on turn 1, the first unit, Elves, showed damage as 0, although when I attacked it still killed a stack. I know that Build 35,234 cannot show all the rage abilities' damage properly as well as issues with using Logic.hero_lu_item in certain situations. I emailed GoG before about them using Build 35,234, but I never got a response, but maybe it's time for us to press the issue with them to see if they can somehow get Build 35,396. I'm not sure if emailing 1CC would help either, but I'd rather not support two different builds of the game if I can help it. Nonetheless, I will investigate this further to see if I can figure out what is going on here as maybe there is a way to fix it so that it works with both - it must be something new I've added so there may be a different way to go about doing something without sacrificing new features I've added... I'll keep you posted with respect to the progress with this issue... ***END EDIT 2*** ***BEGIN EDIT 3*** Okay, I discovered the issue and there is no easy fix. Go here for the latest updated version that provides a workaround for the issue... ***END EDIT 3*** /C\/C\ |
Thank for looking about it.
Yeah it's a shame 1c tolerate 2 versions and don't offer an update to harmonise this. But i loose faith on 1c long time ago. My version is a DVD retail (european), but it's normal you develop your mod on the last one. I don't know if we can't update the 35.324 to 35.396 by coping some files, but i doubt. Katauri make a better job with Armored princess, as far i know there only one version. |
I started a warrior with the 2014-05-11 35.234 version. In the dwarven area now, haven't encountered blue dragons yet so I'll give an opinion on them later. I'm recording the number of dragon eggs I pick up and the amount I spend on them to see how many runes I get from turning them in. I'm curious to see how many runes total I get from that vs the cost. Obviously, the comparison point is the machine that makes runes starting at 150k/rune, which scales up by 50k for each rune you buy of a particular type.
I think the Horseman's charge! skill may be subtly broken. Here's numbers from several possible attack routes (mostly attacking different enemies, so don't directly compare the damage between the different sets, except 1 and 5). All in straight lines. Equipped artifacts/kids include +1 poison damage and +1 physical damage. 2 empty hexes: Attack - 5395-7093 damage Charge! - 5094-6782 damage 3 empty hexes: Attack - 4755-6206 damage Charge! 4855-6477 damage 4 empty hexes: Attack - 5943-7771 damage Charge! - 6269-8359 damage 1 empty hex: Same enemy as 5 empty hexes Attack - 5083-6647 Charge!: 4905-6541 5 empty hexes: Same enemy as 1 empty hex Attack - 6932-9064 Charge! - 7565-9953 Supposedly, attacking in a straight line is +10% damage per hex, and charge is 15% per hex. So why does attack do more damage over 1 and 2 hexes and charge do more over 3+? |
The 2 attacks work differently...
This is just a difference in how the two attacks work...
The normal attack allows the horseman to back up to maximize distance with respect to action points, whereas charge is always in a straight line with no backing up. The horseman typical speed is 5 and here is a damage summary based on number of hexes from the enemy (this assumes the horseman has adequate room to back up): Adjacent: +20% (moves two hexes back for a total of 2 hexes away) 1 Hex: +20% (moves one hex back for a total of 2 hexes away) 2 Hexes: +30% (moves one hex back for a total of 3 hexes away) 3 Hexes: +30% (attacks from this distance) 4 Hexes: +40% (attacks from this distance) Now for charge, it is only the number of hexes away from the target that matter as the horseman does not back up (it is up to you to position them for maximum damage since they can charge even with just 1 action point left): Adjacent: not valid, must be a minimum of 1 hex away (note that you can backup manually to increase distance, more on this below) 1 Hex: +15% 2 Hexes: +30% 3 Hexes: +45% 4 Hexes: +60% ... So you can see here that there are situations where the normal attack appears to be better, but the strategy of charge is that you can manually position the horseman for a minimum of ( AP - 1 ) * 15% if you have the room. With a speed of 5, you should always do a minimum of +60% damage if you have the room or at the very least attack from the same maximum distance as the normal attack. Note that if you have higher speed for your horseman, then their normal attack will appear to be even better than the numbers above (so don't forget that you can manually position them with charge because the numbers are misleading you). /C\/C\ Quote:
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What you say makes sense, however, there was no backing up in my experiments. I just tried this again: Walking a horseman forward one hex at a time and comparing charge vs normal attack. When he was really close to the enemy, he didn't have the movement left to back up, but normal attack was superior with 1 hex empty. I launched the attack and there was no backing up movement.
In any case, charge is useful for the no retaliation and being able to cross the map with almost no movement left, so I use both still. |
I think the bonuses you have only apply to base and not talent damage...
I think in this case, your +1 poison and +1 physical damage may have been coming into play, as I'm pretty sure these damage bonuses only apply to base attack and not to talents (by the way, these types of bonuses are awesome on low level troops).
Horseman damage is 12-16, but with +2 your damage was technically 14-18 (+16.7% to +14.3%), while charge damage was still 12-16. I checked some things out yesterday, and I couldn't get the horseman base attack damage to exceed the charge damage for the same hex distance, but I didn't have any bonuses. Here are some numbers that seem to verify what is happening in your situation: Base Attack Damage / Charge Damage: 14-18 (with your +2) / 12-16 (no bonuses) +10% / +15%: 15.4-19.8 / 13.8-18.4 +20% / +30%: 16.8-21.6 / 15.6-20.8 +30% / +45%: 18.2-23.4 / 17.4-23.2 +40% / +60%: 19.6-25.2 / 19.2-25.6 +50% / +75%: 21.0-27.0 / 21.0-28.0 +60% / +90%: 22.4-28.8 / 22.8-30.4 So you can see that you only do more maximum damage with charge at the +40%/+60% and up cases whereas the minimum damage is always equal or lower unless you go to +60% / +90% (which would require you to have a speed bonus to your horseman). If you have other bonuses (sounds like you may have some additional melee damage bonuses) then the base attack will most likely always be higher damage because 14-18 might be 15-19 or even higher. I'm pretty sure this is what is going on... /C\/C\ Quote:
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Yep, that explains it. Seems like skills systemically don't deal with the bonus damage items. I remember archers using their cold arrows doing less damage than their physical attack. I still love those items though.
I ended up abandoning my warrior run. Playing again as a mage. The warrior was plenty powerful, but I just find it more fun to play as a mage. Casting 2 spells a turn gives me much better control of the battlefield than having bigger stacks. So it'll probably be a week before I get to combat test the new dragons. |
Mod development done for the time being
I'm pretty pleased with this last effort since the start of this year to update my mod to V2014-06-01.
I feel that I've implemented everything that I wanted to implement as I've improved the spell casting AI, added Blue Dragons, added options to trade containers for crystals or runes, added the rune exchange capability, added difficulty level and map bonuses to enemy hero spell power and enemy unit talents, most ability / spell / spirit ability durations are now affected by the target's resistance, and many other changes that I feel make the game more enjoyable. So I'm going to be finishing up my current Paladin game (I'm level 29 and in the Labyrinth) and then probably take a break before I move on to modding AP/ CW / WotN / I&F / DS. If there are any crashing bugs or bugs discovered, I'll work on an update to fix those as they are found. I've also been updating the *.LNG files with grammar fixes found by @Dohi64 and me. There are a few grammar errors in a couple of *.LNG files in my mod (for example EN(G)_ITEMS.LNG) since I updated them before I fixed the originals. I'll probably wait for @Dohi64 to finish his current playthrough before I update my mod to include all the grammar fixes found in the *.LNG files that were updated after I modified them for my mod. The next update in a few months will most likely (finally!) be V1.0. Thanks to everyone's input for helping make my mod the way it is! This has been almost 4 years in the making and it is crazy to look back at all the time that has passed and how far the mod has come in that time! :) /C\/C\ |
Hi Matt, thanks again for all the work you have done. It was a pleasure playing your mod :) .
I have a question - is it possible for me somehow to extract the blue dragon and implement it in other mods as well? I want to play with it in my other favorite mod for TL. You've said "AP/ CW / WotN / I&F / DS " - what is the meaning of "DS" ? Wish you a pleasant time working on the future mods :) Thanks! |
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/C\/C\ |
It was a long journey ,but many interesting and fun moments Mat :-)
I`m glad you concluded your mod, and you should be proud on your work. Onward to future victories :-D |
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Both, in my opinion, are great features of this mod because 1) it encourages you to play a unit that you might not play and 2) it makes the enemy more challenging. Quote:
I've never seen that before with my mod and I did not even change any of that mechanic and so there should not be this problem. So if you could be more clear with what you're thinking here maybe I can be of more help... /C\/C\ |
Mine english is not so well so ill try explain once again , i had maximum mana auround 110 then i started quest where you have to battle those 3 altars in the map most left from start location.But when i finished quest i had only 30 mana maximum.And this happend also i think when i want rise mine mana cap in archamge tower , when you give archmage 2 manapotions. I have save games somewhere maybe i can send them to you. Hm?
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Also i want to thank you for yours work done, its 100x better game than for example darks side or wont cause theres no real difficulty balance and i hope you will mod these games same way you did here, and i also wish you will do this to CW red sands or red sans extreme mod.. i like most on yours mod that you are changig attack and defense od creatures not thier numbers only.. Also is thomes for AP this good also? and do you need any help betatesting or something?
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Thanks in advance for sending me the saves and reporting the problem here in the forum! /C\/C\ |
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I've been playing Dark Side recently, but hope to get back to modding AP / CW soon. I released just some basic alpha versions of my Tomes mod for those 2 games, but I ran into a snag with the implementation of my mod so I've been taking a break so that I can start fresh on the problem. I hope to get back to modding them in another few months. I do plan to mod the new games at some point, but there's only so much time in the day and I kind of needed a break from modding and so have been enjoying playing games again. We'll see how it goes... /C\/C\ |
Scratching my head on this problem and other ideas...
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So I'm just scratching my head on that one. For now, since I can't repeat it we'll just keep an eye out for it, but if anyone runs into this problem, please let me know - preferably with a save game that repeats the problem in only a step or two. I do have some bugs that I've fixed, but haven't released yet. For example, with the WotN code, Black Dragons will still land on your troops occasionally. So I just set it to use the original TL code if the Black Dragon is controlled by the computer, otherwise it will use the WotN code to allow you to use the special ability to full effect. There are 3 functions that this ability uses and so now the AI will use all the original TL ones and humans will use the WotN code. Before I had only 2 of these 3 functions doing this and now all, but it is more likely that the one I had originally excluded was the culprit so I may do some more experimentation with this in the future to see if I can use the WotN code for the other two functions. I've kind of been taking a break from modding, but I have some other features that are going to be nice like displaying more information about your total Mana Recovery / Rage Drain rates when you cursor over those icons. As mentioned previously, I pretty much have everything that I want implemented and so am mostly in the debugging / polishing phase. I'm also experimenting with having Bless / Weakness affect all talents / abilities with a range. So for example, if you Bless a troop and they have a talent that causes damage, it will also be maxed or, for example, Demons will summon at the maximum of the range. With Weakness the opposite is true. I kind of got this idea from Dark Side, but expanded it to include all talents / abilities instead of ones that just damage. Unfortunately, there are a lot of places in the code where I had to change this so I've been trying to debug them before I do any kind of release. I'm also thinking of expanding Critical Hits (krit) to damaging talents so that there is no penalty for using them in this regard since krit is so important. We'll see as I'm still on the fence with respect to this from its implementation in WotN / I&F / DS. /C\/C\ |
Great Mod, Bugs Galore
An amazing mod MattCaspermeyer, my heartfelt thanks for your great work! :-P
I doubt you are still dealing with it, but just in case I will try to list at least some of the bugs I have come across, and if you need screenshot proof of them I will go the extra mile to make sure you fully understand the issues listed. This is only a partial list of the bugs I've encountered, but over the coming weeks or months as I replay with other Heroes on Impossible I'll add more bugs and clarify things If i discover more information. Bugs Homm3 Babies- Archmage- Range attack doesn't cause shock, whether in Fighting Trance or otherwise (melee attacks can cause shock). Going into Trance also changes the critical hit rate incorrectly (i.e a 22% critical hit rate in normal mode due to things like belt of luck which grants +10% total by itself, can then be reduced to 15% in trance, namely a 100% critical hit increase of base and not even counting crit bonuses from Hero having 7 attack multiples and ignoring everything else). Archmage as is is borderline unplayable barring his Magic Shield. Critical Hit rate- Plenty of issues with this. For starters though the tooltip doesn't display the effect of morale on the critical hit rate (however as far as I can tell it is correctly applying the morale bonus to the total crit rate i.e if a peasant has a 30% crit rate and +3 morale for the 200% bonus it is correctly doubling the total to 60%), even in battle the critical hit number doesn't factor in morale. However if you cast morale spells like Battle Cry, or get morale lowered from battle going long or things like Necromancer's Curse, then the critical hit number will change, albeit it will still be incorrect. Battle dragging long morale penalty- Reduces stats BELOW their norm. For example if a unit was at +1 morale normally, but then the battle dragged long for the first -1 morale, making the total neutral, the stats of the unit will still take a slight negative hit below neutral morale affect on stats (you can see a Red effect on stats that reduce it below the base). This bug does make it beneficial to have over 3 morale on units if battles go long. Also i believe that morale reducers like Curse variants from Undead Units like Necromancer/Undead Spider and the Bone Dragon ability have the same overally powerful negative effect that lowers stats more than it should be. Bowman- Melee attack can cause freeze or extend freeze duration (perhaps mainly against high fire resistance enemies). Same with regular ranged shots as well occasionally causing freeze or extending the duration of freeze (again likely tied to high fire resistance units). Cyclops- Can't be Burned, Frozen, and presumably most other status effects like Stun/Poison etc. Eventhough on impossible the resistances to the respective damage types are obscenely high, there is no immunity granted to these status effects by any of its abilities and it should be fixed. "Stone" and a Tier 5 unit should not grant it immunity to basically all status effects. Period. Mirabella- Not granting Unit Level- Atk/Def bonus to Human Race units and , only working with the 3 units (griffin, pirate, sea dog) who are listed individually. My findings indicate that any wife that lists specific units under a Unit Level- Atk/Def bonus the benefit works for them, but any units that should be included under "Race" don't get the benefit properly. This radically weakens nearly all wives and is a monumental oversight. Rina- Human form not giving the full 12% discount to leadership for Robbers/Mauraders, seems closer to a 6% discount like the Undead rina gives to undead units (i.e Robbers at 20 base leadership are only being reduced to 19, even though it should be at minimum 18 leadership. Mauraders at 30 leadership are only getting reduced to 28, eventhough it should at minimum reduce it to 27 .) Rina- Zombie form not granting full 12% discount to undead (I believe only 6% leadership discount). Like all wives not granting Unit Level- Atk/Def bonus to anything listed under Race, in this case Undead. States that enemies get -6% poison resistance, but is giving them -12% poison resistance (which is probably as intended since just -6% would be even more pitiful a bonus than it already is, namely debately the worst wife resist/ - enemy resist bonus). Gerda- Not granting Unit Level- Atk/Def bonus to Dwarven Race units. Presumably all wives that grant the Race variant of Unit Level bonus don't work. Spellcasting Bug- Spells like Sacrifice or Phantom (presumably every spell can get this bug) sometimes you can't cast a lower level of it, and it automatically casts the highest level of the spell (even if you haven't learned the respective magic school to level 3). You can for instance cast a level 1 phantom for only 14 mana and get the level 3 effect (in terms of the % and the duration) early game/for cheap, which is technically beneficial albeit broken for the player, but with something like sacrifice this can be a real problem due to gaining to many units since it automatically casts level 3 sacrifice. Not sure how to replicate this bug, but a fair amount of battles seem to have the bug randomly (if the bug isn't active for the battle then it never will happen, if at any time it does happen then it automatically will cast the level 3 version of a spell for the rest of the battle, even if you don't have the total mana to be able to cast the level 3 version, as long as you can afford the level 1 version of the spell). Combat Takes Place Underground Morale Bonus- Some units like the Cannonneer (http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=...c#.VgA-Rt9Viko) get this undocumented Morale bonus, presumably due to its "Likes Dungeons" ability. However other units like Alchemist (http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=...c#.VgA-Q99Viko) or Dwarf (http://tinypic.com/usermedia.php?uo=...c#.VgA-Vt9Viko) with the same "Likes Dungeons" ability are not gaining the Morale bonus. Also one can see the Red status from -morale due to the battle being long, which is a negative effect beyond what losing that morale should be. Lina's Ice Ball- Not gaining critical hit bonus from the Hero Attack (i.e the +2% from 7 attack, +4% from 14 attack etc). Is properly gaining the bonus from items like Elven Belt or Babies like Ufretin with his +40% crit rate for all units. Also not gaining the Hero resistance bonuses from multiples of 7 defense (not sure about tolerance resist bonus but will check). Tolerance Level 3- INCREDIBLY annoying bug, level 3 tolerance ONLY gives it's +6 resist all during the first turn. As soon as units finish their turn the entire tolerance bonus goes away for the remainder of the battle. However any summons/phantoms or whatever keep the tolerance level 3 bonus for the entire battle. Basically upgrading from level 2 to level 3 in Tolerance is pointless with the bug, since atleast the level 2 Tolerance works with it's +4 resist all throughout the battle without any hitches.. The biggest loss is the extra 2% resistance from the final bonus, but even the demon/elf morale penalty negation being "lost" due to it being foolish to upgrade to Bugged Level 3 Tolerance, is unfortunate. Werewolf Elf, Vampire, Ancient Vampire- Using their transform ability causes them to lose the hero resistances from 7 defense multiples. Potentially many other things not properly affecting them due to transformation, will possibly update (albeit am ignoring them due to the bug). Necro's Call or Necromancer Raise Undead- The units raised don't benefit from either Hero Crit boosts from 7 attack multiples, nor resistance boosts from 7 def multiples (not sure about tolerance). Necromancer's Raise Undead- Devastatingly bugged beyond belief. Basically if using it to resurrect another undead unit or itself it will not end the necromancer's turn, allowing him to keep using for "free" and finish his turn as he wishes either attacking, moving, defending, using another ability, or using Raise Undead to actually raise corpses which atleast does end it's turn. The best work around for fairness sake if one intends to use it as a resurrect is to use it once and then necro's turn manually with either defense or walking back to that position with the final action point to prevent the cheap defense boost. Eventhat requires one to not use the Raise Undead ability for a couple more turns manually since it doesn't start the reload countdown on the ability since it didn't "really" use it.. One way or another the battle is likely to crash if you screw around with Raise Undead, especially if in a future turn you attempt to use it on another unit. Skeleton Archers Magic Arrow- Actually removes the difficulty (i.e Impossible) bonus which is probably a bug (but a cool feature that gives the heavily nerfed Skel Archer more juice), but it actually only lowers base damage, with all other stats still boosted with the A.I bonus (even damage from talents remains). As a whole Undead have an outrageous amount of bugs starting from the Wife, plenty of babies, nearly all the units in one capacity or another, and they go from basically the best race in original KB The Legend w/ the best wife and the only Hero Skill specifically boosting them in the form of Dark Commander, to the absolute worst race for the player in Babies. Maybe later i'll go into depth chronicling their massacre in this mod as it stands. Babies (So many bugs it's almost disheartening, and i'm almost too lazy to chronicle all the numbers that are off but i'll try..)- Piquedram- Numbers are off for every plant unit benefited. I.e Ancient Ents get a 5% leadership discount and 5% extra health, not the 4% each as listed (even still the number should be higher AND he should get +1 initiative/speed/morale since as the slowest base unit in the game at 1/1 init/speed he can really use it). Royal Thorn numbers are off (believe it's actually 7% discount and health bonus, not 9%), same with the thorn hunters and thorn warriors who are getting even less of a bonus then listed (which is already behind par to other babies for level 1 units). In short he can use fixes and and buffs to make him not complete garbage. Clancy and the other Unicorn Baby- Could REALLY use +1 initiative on top of the +1 speed/morale. Cool Features that would add to the replay value- When starting a new game having the option to exclude certain babies from wives (if you have already acquired some of the babies in a previous playthrough and want to guarantee all new babies to eventually experience most/all of them). Critical Hit for Abilities/Talents- Featured in the newer games, would be cool in Babies as well (including things like bless affecting Talents). Only problem is that on Impossible enemies have outrageous critical hit rates as is (seemingly a minimum of 40, and many enemy units getting near outright 100%), so having to suffer constant crits with their Talents is not particularly exciting.. Enemy Morale like in future games- Would right away benefit 3 of the Undead troops which are weakened for the player; namely Undead Spider with his Cursed ability, Necromancer with his Cursed ability, and the completely useless Bone Dragon Morale Penalty ability. This change would make the woefully weak undead slightly more playable, and not quite as imbalanced in terms of being a strong enemy but terrible army for the player to use. |
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Allright, Matt, I'm playing with a warrior the Gamersgate version of the game, that is, theorically, latest one. :)
Issues/bugs I have found so far: - Critical percent rate doesn't take anger into account. At least the numbers says so (they remain the same regardless your current rage quantity) - My hero has been defeated several times already and still gains a full army and money after losing. Is this intentional? - Whenever a unit does 11x damage, damage output text is apparently incorrec. Higher than it should. Like ten times or so. I didn't suffer a CTD or frozen screen bug yet. *Cross fingers* =P |
Looks like I need to get my head back into this stuff...
Hmmm... Let me see if I can answer your questions...
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I'll have to take a look at this (although I probably don't have the time at this juncture) and see what is going on here... Quote:
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Man, I haven't fiddled with any of this stuff in years, so I'm a bit foggy with it. I'll have to get my head back into it to fully answer your questions... At any rate - thanks for the post! :-) Matt |
Hey Matt, how nice to see you around again! ^^
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Yes, the hint displayed when placing the cursor over the Attack attribute. It seems to overlook Rage quantity. I have not obtained Spirits of Rage cage yet, though. Maybe it's normal. An army based on your level plus some gold. Approx 9000 gold first, then 2700. Also based on your level, I guess. I think the number of units you get should be periodically reduced and lessen overall. Otherwise it's very difficult to actually lose the game. In fact, the mechanic can be exploited. About the 11x damage output. Nevermind. My fault. The floating numbers show both the damage inflicted and the number of units killed mixed together. Hence my confusion. |
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At any rate, a counter could be used to divide into this value (for example, the first time, it is divided by 1 (so 100%), the second time 2 (so 50%), the third time 3 (or 33.3%), etc.). This would apply to both number of troops and gold. That way every time you die, the value diminishes. I don't have any plans to do any update right now, but let me think about this... Quote:
I do actually have some unfinished changes that are in the works, but it has been so long that I'd have to get my head back into it to see. The biggest issue was that when I added the Black Dragon code from the newer expansions to allow you to map out their fire path, the AI code didn't work properly with the Legend so that sometimes the AI would land on a troop. I changed it so that the AI uses the TL code (which of course works perfectly with the Legend) and then if it is a human player then you use the new code. I also was looking at the bonuses for the babies and comparing them to the tomes and I thought that the tomes bonuses for various HOMM3 skills were possibly better so I was incorporating some of that into the TL baby bonuses. That was a lot of work, but I was working on some automation so that I wouldn't go crazy with manually entering in all the data. There were some other things, that escape me, but hopefully I'll fiddle with it sometime in the near future. Anyway, thanks for the comments! :-) Matt |
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There could always be a turn limit, though, I guess where you either lose the battle or start sustaining lots of damage. Note that I took the other tact where I make your troops tired, and you can't regenerate mana / rage any more, etc. so I think this makes up for it pretty well... Quote:
I'm playing (or at least I was) Ice & Fire right now since I never played it all the way through. Unfortunately, I haven't played it in about a month since I have so many other things that are soaking up my time right now... Matt |
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The turn limit is an interesting concept. Moreover, probably complementary with your current penalties approach. First time I saw the penalties in action I really like the concept and how it was implemented, by the way. It makes sense the troops get fatigued over time. Quote:
Minor bugs: - Polar bears critical percent chance bonus derived from Barbarian presence is apparently not applied. The morale bonus shows up/is displayed, and as a consequence attack and defence are improved, but the critical percent remains the same. - Rockfall can frighten instead of stun. It feels ok, though. Watch meteors falling from the sky must be quite scary. A typo: - All bleeding creatures show up as attacked by a werewolf. I mean, when you place the cursor over their claw icon, the description always point to the lupines, regardless the source of the damage. |
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Okay, sorry for the late reply - so many other things going on for me right now... I have no plans to fix any of this stuff in the near term, but hopefully once my schedule frees up I'll get back to this stuff... Matt |
It would be possible to insert a countdown within combat? I mean, that you only have x seconds per turn to decide your next play/move.
I really miss such a feature. |
I don't think so...
Uhmmm I don't think so since I think it would violate the turn-based paradigm of the tactical combat system that is hard coded into the game.
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I've been playing my Warrior game for a while :) Some reflections:
- Gizmo feels overpowered. You can resurrect infinite units with it. Should be definitely nerfed, in my opinion. - Sometimes Evil Beholders take control of their own companions instead of player's. |
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It is also smart and heals / resurrects higher level units (especially level 5's) before lower level units as well as prioritizes the removal of highly negative effects on your units / highly beneficial effects on your enemies. Also, Lina has to be over level 40 to get the last two charges and so maxing her Gizmo out is difficult unless you work on her damage abilities (which is pretty much just Ice Thorns). Her other abilities are very potent, too (even Ice Thorns) and so maxing out Gizmo is often not a priority until later in the game since its starting single charge is usually a deterrent for other abilities until you are much later in the game / Lina is very high in level. Gizmo can become very powerful towards the end game (mostly due to its intelligence that I added), but the enemy hero's spells are terribly devastating so in my experience it balances out in the end. Quote:
I wish I had the time / interest to come back to this and fix bugs like this and add features that I still want to put in (Haas unique spell for final battle: Summon Dragon, anyone?), but unfortunately, I've been so dialed out of King's Bounty and gaming in general that I doubt I'd ever get back into to it to research and fix something like this, but you never know... Thanks for the comments and it is amazing that you're still playing! :-) Matt |
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It improved AI is moore than welcome, just keep in mind the exploits. |
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Since the Warrior's Resurrection spell casting is typically weak, you can see Gizmo being a big help for the Warrior class and since the Mage has a hard time getting a lot of Rage accumulation it is a lot harder to cast Gizmo a lot for the Mage, which offsets his Resurrection spell power. So in my experience, things tend to balance out and if you're casting Gizmo, you're missing out on the other Lina abilities and so usually Lina's first casts are for offensive abilities (of which Gizmo is a possibility) and then Gizmo is cast after round 5 (no hero fight) or 10 (hero fight) to start resurrecting your fallen units. Gizmo is a powerful ability of Lina's when maxed out, but I think it is more than made up for on the impossible difficulty level by the strength of your enemies. Thanks for the comments! :-) Matt |
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What's annoying me now is the 0% chance to shock of my archmages. It was supposed to be higher and work sometimes, specially when the "frozen" condition is met, but I don't remember a single time it did. |
Hey, what part of the game are you in by the way, and how high is your hero level, your spirit levels, etc., etc.?
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23, if I recall correctly. My spirits are something like 32, 23,23, 27. |
Have you tried the Blue Dragons, yet? Have you had to fight any yet?
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They're quite powerful, by the way. Took me one or two arrows to defeat them, heh heh. |
Ok, this is serious It seems I cannot defeat Karador no matter the army. Five attempts and nothing. Already cleared Demonis and everything else you can do before the fight.
EDITED: Cyclops did the trick. |
Well, better late than never!
***EDIT***
Okay, I've delved into these issues more and I'm thinking pretty much all the issues I thought were game build ones are real bugs that I've probably added along the way - I'll provide more detail below... ***EDIT*** I've kind of been getting back up to speed on where I left off, but I wanted to address these comments to at least let people know that I've looked at these issues... These comments also assume that you are using the proper game build and that could be part of the problems... By the way, I'm not sure if I have the time to do all this, but if I do then that's what it means when I'll look into something... Quote:
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Range attack should cause shock as the code where this is applied is the same and I didn't change anything in their Lightning Attack code, either. So I'm not sure what is going on here... ***EDIT*** Okay, I found out the issue here - when I added Blue Dragons, they shared the shock code with the Archmages and I added a new level= custom parameter to their ATOMs; however, I did not implement it properly for Archmages (I had only placed it in their melee attack, which was not right), but I have it fixed now (I needed to place this parameter in their ranged attack) and will provide a future update to resolve this issue. ***EDIT*** As far as Critical Hit, there are three ways about this: 1. Critical Hit modifiers are just + to the Critical Hit 2. Critical Hit modifiers are percent increases to the Critical Hit 3. Critical Hit modifiers are set to a specific value I looked at the original code here and the code actually takes the Archmage's current Critical Hit and applies the bonus as the *difference* between the bonus from the Archmage's ATOM and their current Critical Hit. So, it is possible that it could actually reduce their critical hit, if the bonus is lower than their current value. Since this is stock TL code, then this has always been an issue with the game, but probably not due to Critical Hit for Archmages now having quite a few modifiers in H3B. It is most likely that the Skill description is not accurate in the original game and I inherited this functionality. I'll see what to do here... ***EDIT*** I'm going to implement this differently so that it works properly. ***EDIT*** Quote:
***EDIT*** I think there is a bit of confusion here as to what the effect is meant to do. I'm going to revisit the descriptions and see if they are confusing (I remember a lot of them were). I will then see how I've implemented them in the game. So I will attempt to make the descriptions for their implementation more clear and if I need to make any code changes because I implemented them wrong then I'll do that... ***EDIT*** Quote:
Barring an exhaustive search on what could be causing this, I'm going to chalk this up to being the nature of the beast... ***EDIT*** Okay, I think I may know what is going on here. When I originally implemented this bonus (well, er penalty), I think I thought that when I was modifying the morale that it wasn't changing the unit's attack, defense, and critical hit properly. I was probably mistaken here as I am double dipping dropping Attack, Defense, and Critical Hit as well as morale (which causes the Attack, Defense, and Critical Hit to drop all by itself). I will double check this, but it looks like I can just comment out the double dipping code and it should then be okay. ***EDIT*** Quote:
Since Cold Resistance is not an actual resistance category in TL, the game designers sort of used Fire Resistance as a pseudo Cold Resistance. I made a change such that effect durations are affected by the unit's resistance. So, for example, if a poison resistant unit is poisoned, then the duration is reduced by the resistance (so if poison lasts 3 turns and their resistance is 30%, then it will last just 2 turns). The opposite is also true if a unit has resistance less than 0. Since Fire Resistance acts as a pseudo Cold Resistance, Freeze duration is increased on units that have high Fire Resistance. If regular shots are causing freezing on Fire Resistant units, then that is a bug that I'll will have to track down - I know that the shot code sometimes reuses the same function and so it is possible that I failed to check the type of attack being carried out (actually, I don't think there is a way to know the type of attack, but what the developers would do is look at the special values of the attack in the unit's ATOM and guess the attack from the values there). So I may need a way to discern appropriately between their 3 different attacks. ***EDIT*** I've actually gone through both Bowman and Skeleton Archers to ensure that I've implemented my changes here properly. The issues arose with the possibility of modifying parameters that the LUA code assumed would be a specific value. I have implemented the use of the arrows= custom parameter, which was set to 1 when the attack was ranged and I now check that the attack is ranged (arrows=1) and only implement "throw" attacks if this is set to 1; otherwise, it is a melee attack (arrows=0). I then discern which throw attack it is properly by the values set in its custom parameters section (by the way, this is normally the way the original developers discerned attacks via values in their custom parameters section) to make sure that it is casting the proper attack. I've also performed a cursory check to ensure that I don't have errors with the other unit's special attacks and abilities and I think everything looks okay. ***EDIT*** Quote:
***EDIT*** Another thing to mention here is that the Cyclops is considered a "golem" and units with that feature are normally not affected by most effects (other golems are the Ice Ball, Phoenix, and Evil Book). ***EDIT*** Quote:
So if this is not working in your game, then I'm not certain what the problem would be... Quote:
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***EDIT*** For all the children bonuses, I will revisit this and check them to ensure that they are correct and working, but as I mentioned above, they are implemented properly as far as I can tell and since they are grouped with ones that are working, the only way they wouldn't work is if I misspelled something. ***EDIT*** Quote:
***EDIT*** This one I've given it some more thought and if this is a problem, it is probably due to creatures that have spell casting abilities and I tried to share code between the hero spell casting and the unit spell casting. I know that it is really hard to discern sometimes who is casting what and so it is possible that the code is confusing who the caster is. I'm thinking that maybe this happens during enemy hero fights or during fights with enemy units that can cast "spells". I'm going to look into this more and for areas where the code is being shared, I may need to add a custom parameter to the unit to help identify it as a caster. I know that Bone Dragons can cast spells at level 3, regardless of the spell level of the caster and both them and Arch Demons gain spell power from their hero and so it is possible that this behavior is mistakenly being used for hero spell casts instead of only for the unit spell casts. ***EDIT*** Quote:
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***EDIT*** Okay, I've added the special_difficulty bonus to the list of spells not removed by this attack. ***EDIT*** Quote:
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Well, sorry for taking forever to respond, but if I ever get back into modding this game I will see about fixing these issues. I actually looked at my change log from 3 or years ago and I have quite a few changes that I never released. So here's hoping that I can spend some time with this in the near future. Thanks for your comments! :-) Matt ***EDIT*** If I find out any more information about the above issues, I'll be sure to post here and hopefully I'll be able to find some time soon to provide an update that fixes the issues that I've already fixed. ***EDIT*** |
Yep, he's a lot tougher!
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;) Matt |
Maybe...
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Matt |
Found the source of this bug!
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This is a great find. I have to dig up the purpose of this level parameter for Blue Dragons and ensure that I don't break them by fixing the Archmages... Matt |
I think I see the problem here...
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I think I'll have to add some checks to this function to discern properly between whether the attack is burn or freeze and whether it is ranged or melee (the original code didn't really discern this) - I think that's where it might be behaving strange with the changes I made... Matt |
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Who'd you try?
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What kind of troops did you use before you resorted to the Cyclops? Matt |
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Then I left archmages, dwarves and inquisitors and switch to Black Dragons, Unicorns and Cannoners. And finally discarded dragons in favour of cyclops. Regardless the army composition, all units were slaughtered except the cyclops, who ended the battle with 200 attack. |
How were you losing?
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For example, were you being overrun by the Dark Crystal summons or were the dead stacks being reanimated causing problems or was there some other issue? Were you using your Phoenix, Ice Ball, etc.? There is actually a strategy to this one and based on how you were losing, I could probably give you some tips... Matt |
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Yep, I used Ice Ball a few times. And Phantom. Not the best cannon fodder this time. Both were destroyed by a single skeletons attack. Same as Black Dragons. Ice Ball proved to be useful later on, though. When my cyclops were agonizing, less units kept alive and the distance between them were larger. My Mature Phoenix wasn't powerful enough to endure the fight. Also employed traps and teleport to no avail. |
Sigh. Now I'm struggling against Bagu. Any tip? It seems I cannot cope with his three spells per turn.
My army consist of Inquisitors, Black Dragons, Cyclops, Elves, Horsemen, Knights and Guardsmen. Two of them in reserve, obviously. I cast Target on Horsemen (they have unlimited retaliation due to my son), but Bagu turns them into sheep or make them weaker through Pigmy. Things get worse when the orc boost his troops with Phantom or Berserk. It seems key to get some of his units out of play, make them irrelevant. I try to do so through Ice Ball and Phantom, but haven't been very lucky so far. |
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My tactic was to maximize damage output by using repetidaly Cloud of Poison, Black Hole even when such strategy implied sacrify some of my units. And put meanwhile the rest of my last troops at safe positions, boosting them with Enchanted Hero and Gizmo, and using Ice Ball as both a distraction and a weapon. |
Wow - you've had some epic fights!
Glad you did it!
I think you're playing warrior, right? Enchanted Hero is a very important spell to cast due to its autocast capability. Could you not afford the Ancient Phoenix? What about getting your Evil Book to Level 3 or Summon Demon? Glad Poison Could worked! I made that ability significantly better than the original. Also, I think Zerock's Wall can work really good for a Warrior as well as Lina's Ice Thorns for blocking troops, returning damage, etc. I'm glad Gizmo bailed you out. As far as Karrador is concerned, it is important not to destroy his original stacks, but weaken them significantly so that the Dark Crystal summons new Undead troops that don't have the difficulty level bonuses applied to them; otherwise, if you destroy the original stacks, the Dark Crystal will just reanimate them. Back to Bagud, I've never really had any trouble with him, either. It is possible that since I like to end the game with Xeona and her Demon troops that they are just more powerful than some of the other troops. The ArchDemons are really potent with their Amalgamation ability and no retaliation and then Demons are really good with their summon and unlimited retaliation. I actually haven't tried any other troop combinations since I like to cycle through each wife, having the 4 kids and then immediately moving on to the next wife (this works great for debugging, too). I find that when you can get each wife, that the troops she gives bonuses to are well suited to the area of the game you are going through. My most difficult fight (where I usually can't do no loss) is fighting Xeona with Neoka's Elves. I find that Elves vs Demons is a poor matchup due to the fire vulnerability of the Elven Troops, but usually I have enough Ancient Ents to push through and since I'm about to switch to Xeona's troops, I don't necessarily mind losing most of my Elven troops during that battle. Hey, by the way, did you run into any of the issues @SlickDragon mentioned, especially with the spell casting. I've been going through some of the code and I've never seen any issues before, but it is possible that there are some bugs lurking in there still. Let me know how your fight with Haas goes! Also, what is your Hero Level and Spirit Levels now that you're at the end of the game? Matt |
Yeah, I beat Hass yesterday night with the warrior. Another epic fight, although surprisingly a bit easier than the others thanks to two factors: one, the sword you get from defeating Dreddho the Dragon in the tournament (+50% attack vs dragons); second, troops I bought specially designed to exploit Cloud of Poison. I purchased Royal Snakes and Shamans, to pair them with the cyclops and cast Cloud of Poison upon them when surrounded by dragons. He he, devastating.
And of course Enchanted hero, Gizmo, and the Reaper power to kill X% units from a troop (don't remember its name) were key again. First I went for the Ogres, then the dragons (tons of them) and finally face the Ancient ents (another +30 stack) Finished the game with a level 30 character, 41 Zerock , 33 Sleem, 39 Lina and 47 Reaper. Honestly I don't know if suffered all the bugs that Slick Dragon mentioned, I'm just certain about the archmages inability to shock and the weird critical percent calculations. I mean, some skills stated your troops would receive +30% to inflict a critical but only shown little increments in their related fields (tooltips) Now started Armored Princess. =P I want to go with a ranged specialist this time, with Alchemists, Archmages and so on. What class would suit me better? =P I guess you didn't designed another version of your mod to AP, right? |
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That +50% attack vs dragons weapon is pretty awesome (I think you always get that from beating Dreddho, if memory serves). I also presume you weren't able to do no loss - is that right or were you able to do no loss? Quote:
I also messed up the Priests / Inquisitors - they couldn't use their Bless / Holy Rage skills and I've now fixed that, too. I have some other fixes coming, too. I haven't made a new release, yet, but I want to try to play a little and see if I can discover if @SlickDragon's bugs that I haven't been able to find, yet are real. I don't know if I have the time or inclination to play all the way through, but if I can at least play and double check all the bugs he's mentioned then I can feel better about putting up a new release (not that anyone's playing anymore). Also, I think the Critical Hit issues are with the descriptions not being clear. I need to go back through them and ensure that they are clearer. Typically a lot of them work off of base and so one might say +30% Critical Hit, but it doesn't mean that it adds, but rather increases it 30%, and usually to its base. If the base is only 5% than it will only increase it 2% (rounding up). So I think that's where the confusion lies. I think when I first created those bonuses, I didn't realize how low some of the unit's Critical Hit chances were and so bonuses seem small, but I do remember comparing them to other stock TL Critical Hit bonuses and a lot of them worked the same way. In the expansions, they are pretty stingy on Critical Hit bonuses like +3% and stuff like that. Quote:
There are still bugs in my H3B mod, apparently, and I've been working on that since 2010! 7 years is a long time, although I did take the last 3 years off away from King's Bounty. I am going to try to see what I can do about fixing the current issues and would like to make things a little bit tougher for the Hard and Impossible difficultly levels. Anyway, have fun with AP - I think it has a better engine than TL, but I still find that TL is my favorite! Matt |
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By the way Matt, may I ask you a little question concerning AP? Does the hero has no choice when level up? I mean, in TL you can develop him the way you want, but in AP seems you always receive something fixed, like leadership upgrades or whatever.
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Great comments!
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The enemy heroes are much more powerful than the original TL and so I don't think it is possible to balance a non-enemy hero-led stack with an enemy hero-led stack (I have thought of the possibility of what to do with the gap since it widens as the game progresses), but I actually don't mind easier battles here and there since it helps take the pressure off and not make it so much of a grind and so the Spirit abilities (and Spell abilities for that matter) take in mind enemy hero fights (I treat them as Item fights) and so that is where the power comes from to help you push through those tough hero fights. Plus, people will just kite around if things are too hard early (just like people do in the AP / CW / etc. and in WotN, I'd just fly around and snag all the goodies and purchase some good level 5 troops) and so it is nice that you don't have to do that too much (although it is nice to kite in Demonis the first time you get there to see what good troops and other goodies you can get). I think with the mild increase in difficulty (actually hard is going to be closer to impossible, although not quite (say about 90% of what impossible currently is), and impossible is going to be about 25% harder than it is now) that the way I currently have things will work out - I'll see... Quote:
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Balancing is tricky because it is different for every person. Make things too hard and then people don't want to play and the same with too easy. That's, of course, where the difficulty levels come in to play, but a one size fits all just doesn't exist and we, as humans, are very adaptable and often find strategies that are very effective compared to what the original developer intended. So we'll see if I can squish some more bugs if I haven't found them, yet, and hopefully do a touch of refining, to what (in my biased opinion) is one of the best mods for TL! Thanks again for all the comments! :grin: Matt |
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I think since they scaled the hero level to increase more rapidly, they figured people didn't want to be bothered with having to choose something. I like the TL way better, but I think it was a game engine choice, so I don't even think it would be possible to modify it - not sure. Matt |
New Release?
Hey, everyone, hope you're all doing well!
So I've been sitting on some changes to my mod now for almost 4 years, with most of the changes done about that time ago, but with King's Bounty 2 out, I've had the itch to go back and see what I've done and then I've been able to add some new features within the last month. Unfortunately, I only have one day a week to work on it and I've had only enough time to playtest a current change to ensure that it works as intended. I'd like to release a V1.0 of my mod, which would quite possibly be the last release I do, but I was wondering if anyone was interested in doing some play testing for me to see if there are no game breaking bugs. So either post here, or PM me and I can send you an unreleased version if you are interested in trying it out. Matt P.S. I am playing KB2, but I only have time to play it once a week as well (and usually I have to alternate between modding or playing KB2). I'll post some potential changes in the change list post so that you can at least see what I've been working on... |
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