New Mod Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Babies!

[Erkilmarl]

Following your advice elsewhere I made a zip file of the loc_ses file and then unzipped it. I seem to have a multilingual version there, although I don't remember a language choice, and all prefixes have only two letters (en_ and so on). I changed all prefixes in the mod files from eng_ to en_ and now I'm in the training part of the game. I have Inquisitors instead of Peasants, so something is changed.

But I encountered another problem: when my hero reached level 2, his choices and the rune numbers were all blank.

[Fatt_Shade]

Hello
ALso changed my patch form 1.xxx (no idea) to 1.7 and placed all your files to game/data/mods/homm3_babies and it works now. I`ll report if encounter some other problems. Until then have fun

[MattCaspermeyer]

Sweetness!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Hello
ALso changed my patch form 1.xxx (no idea) to 1.7 and placed all your files to game/data/mods/homm3_babies and it works now. I`ll report if encounter some other problems. Until then have fun

[Erkilmarl]

had time to check some things:

My files compared to yours:
King’s Bounty\data\data.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 33,447KB (mine is 33,582KB)

2.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB (the same)

3.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\loc_ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 809KB (mine is 3,353KB but it has several language files)



I opened and saved those two files in Notepad and replayed the level up and noticed that still things were blank. I could continue but noticed no increase in runes or elsewhere (I checked mana and rage, too). I don't know what else to check - weren't most of your advice for getting the mod to start?

And I forgot at first to save those files in unicode. If I do it, things don't change - but I get an error message for the logic file: unexpected symbol near `ÿ'.

Erkki

[MattCaspermeyer]

It looks like you've covered my ideas pretty thoroughly. What is interesting is that the ses.kfs size is identical to mine so as long as I edited the files correctly, everything should work!

The problem is that it doesn't. I have no problems with the levelup code on my end so what is different on your end? The only thing I can think about right now is that our versions of LUA.EXE are different. Can you let me know the size and date of your LUA.EXE? This file is located in your King's Bounty folder along with KB.EXE. I'm not at home right now, so I don't know mine, but will find out what is is later.

That's the last thing I can think about. The only other thing I can suggest you try is before you level up, can you go purchase some Thorns and try out their Gift of Life ability? Check to see if the ability works (they need to using sowing first, then they can use Gift of Life on an adjacent plant). That is more LUA code that I added and so the idea here is to see if any of the LUA code works. Another thing you can try is to restart a new game with a Paladin and check to see if the Glory skill decreases the leadership requirement of your units 2%. I think Priests have 50 leadership so their leadership should be 49 and I think Inquisitors have 100 leadership so thier leadership should be 98. Once again the idea is to see if any of the LUA code works with your setup.

I wish I could work on your computer and find out what is going on - this is driving me crazy! The next step would be to run the debugger - I'll go into how to do that if it comes to it...

Originally Posted by Erkilmarl

had time to check some things:

My files compared to yours:
King’s Bounty\data\data.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 33,447KB (mine is 33,582KB)

2.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB (the same)

3.King’s Bounty\sessions\base\loc_ses.kfs – 7/8/2010 10:01PM, 809KB (mine is 3,353KB but it has several language files)



I opened and saved those two files in Notepad and replayed the level up and noticed that still things were blank. I could continue but noticed no increase in runes or elsewhere (I checked mana and rage, too). I don't know what else to check - weren't most of your advice for getting the mod to start?

And I forgot at first to save those files in unicode. If I do it, things don't change - but I get an error message for the logic file: unexpected symbol near `ÿ'.

Erkki

[Erkilmarl]

Glory skill seems to work; Inquisitors have 98 Leadership.
There isn't any LUA.Exe, only LUAIDE.dll., 928KB.
HERO.TXT and LOGIC_HERO.LUA become twice as big if I change them from ansi to unicode, but since the warning about an unexpected symbol slows loading down, I returned them to ansi.
I can't remove portraits, the game won't load then.

[Helios]

It seems you have a very sound approach to implementing your changes in this mod, Matt. Well done! Some of the useless units might actually be viable with the changes you've made. I'll PM you when I've finished my current game.

About the Phoenix: did you not change its HP values? That seemed to be the most glaring deficiency of the spell--it always dies in one hit not too far into the game.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Thanks to Erkki for helping me track down the problem he was having!

It didn't occur to me that he was playing a difficulty level other than impossible, where I had an error in the changes to the levelup code that I made where both Easy and Normal increase the amount of mana and rage you may get on level up. Since I had been play testing on Impossilbe I missed testing this part of the change!

I've also added a version of the mod for those with an English localization where the *.LNG files use "en_" instead of "eng_". So now if you have either English localization version you can playtest the mod!

Thanks again for all your help!

P.S. By the way, what's the change to the levelup code you ask? Well before there was a set increase in Attack / Defense / Intellect and Mana / Rage making the choice for choosing Leadership when it occured the easy choice, especially later in the game. Now, as your character gains levels, you may be presented with a value other than +1 for Attack / Defense / Intellect based on your level as well as +default for Mana / Rage. This makes the selection of Leadership tougher, especially when you're choosing, for example, between 1000 Leadership and +3 Attack. Hmmm... much tougher choice now.

Okay - making progress!

Originally Posted by Erkilmarl

Glory skill seems to work; Inquisitors have 98 Leadership.
There isn't any LUA.Exe, only LUAIDE.dll., 928KB.
HERO.TXT and LOGIC_HERO.LUA become twice as big if I change them from ansi to unicode, but since the warning about an unexpected symbol slows loading down, I returned them to ansi.
I can't remove portraits, the game won't load then.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Erkki:

I can see these other versions of the game are going to fight us – does the game lockup there or can you pretend to see the values and just click one and continue?

If you can click and continue, can you see if you got any runes and you can’t see which bonus you picked, but can you see if you got an increase somewhere (i.e. mana, rage, leadership, attack, defense, or intelligence)?

I did make some changes to the levelup system, but of course it works on my version. I wonder if there are changes to the LUA files or TXT files? One thing I noticed in the HERO.TXT file is there is a leadership table that is no longer used, but maybe your version still uses it? I don’t know.

I think I’m going to need you to send me your ses.kfs file so I can study it for differences unless it was the same date and size as what I mentioned below (7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB). It looks like you already resolved the loc_ses.kfs issue with the *.LNG files (whew!) so I think I need to understand if there are any differences with the *.LUA files.

Another idea that popped into my head is that you could try to remove the mod_homm3_portraits.kfs to see if there is an issue with the DDS files included there as it may affect the graphics somehow? Not sure just grasping at straws there.

We’ll keep plugging away at this…

Thanks!

P.S. I'm starting to remember now when I was first modding the leveling up that maybe the numbers were blank when I had issues with what I was doing. It's just a vague memory so I can't quite remember. I can always break it, I guess, and see how it behaves... The real question, though, is why would your version have issues with the LUA / TXT files. Hmmm... maybe its the encoding? The text editor that I use predates UNICODE. But you started the game fine and so it needed to read text files for that. Hmmm...

Originally Posted by Erkilmarl

Following your advice elsewhere I made a zip file of the loc_ses file and then unzipped it. I seem to have a multilingual version there, although I don't remember a language choice, and all prefixes have only two letters (en_ and so on). I changed all prefixes in the mod files from eng_ to en_ and now I'm in the training part of the game. I have Inquisitors instead of Peasants, so something is changed.

But I encountered another problem: when my hero reached level 2, his choices and the rune numbers were all blank.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Erkki:

I just had another thought – maybe it is the encoding of the text files I saved. I use an editor that predates UNICODE and I guess other methods of encoding text files.

Could you do me a favor and simply extract HERO.TXT and LOGIC_HERO.LUA from mod_homm3_babies.kfs and then simply open them in your version of Notepad and then save them (without making changes)? You don’t have to re-add them to mod_homm3_babies.kfs, just copy them to your mods folder and they’ll take precedence over the ones in the KFS.

I’m hoping if it’s an encoding thing that your version of Notepad will correct the encoding for your Windows or your locale I guess. The changes to the leveling up are just in those two files, so it is just a minor thing to try.

You can also see if the sizes of the files change after you resave them in Notepad...

Good luck!

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

Erkki:

I can see these other versions of the game are going to fight us – does the game lockup there or can you pretend to see the values and just click one and continue?

If you can click and continue, can you see if you got any runes and you can’t see which bonus you picked, but can you see if you got an increase somewhere (i.e. mana, rage, leadership, attack, defense, or intelligence)?

I did make some changes to the levelup system, but of course it works on my version. I wonder if there are changes to the LUA files or TXT files? One thing I noticed in the HERO.TXT file is there is a leadership table that is no longer used, but maybe your version still uses it? I don’t know.

I think I’m going to need you to send me your ses.kfs file so I can study it for differences unless it was the same date and size as what I mentioned below (7/8/2010 10:01PM, 6,217KB). It looks like you already resolved the loc_ses.kfs issue with the *.LNG files (whew!) so I think I need to understand if there are any differences with the *.LUA files.

Another idea that popped into my head is that you could try to remove the mod_homm3_portraits.kfs to see if there is an issue with the DDS files included there as it may affect the graphics somehow? Not sure just grasping at straws there.

We’ll keep plugging away at this…

Thanks!

P.S. I'm starting to remember now when I was first modding the leveling up that maybe the numbers were blank when I had issues with what I was doing. It's just a vague memory so I can't quite remember. I can always break it, I guess, and see how it behaves... The real question, though, is why would your version have issues with the LUA / TXT files. Hmmm... maybe its the encoding? The text editor that I use predates UNICODE. But you started the game fine and so it needed to read text files for that. Hmmm...