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#2
05-27-2013, 07:15 PM
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No Restart Required!
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As it turns out, it was just misreporting having a child as my baby hint didn't account for this possibility properly. So if you played those 5 battles, it would say "expecting baby in 0 victories" and then if you continued, -1, etc. never giving you a child until you spoke with her about it and picked the correct choices. The *.CHAT files for the most part had the proper logic, but I didn't have the correct snap labels in the *.LNG file as you saw the chat_system_... label placeholders. Thanks again for pointing this out so I could fix it as I thought I had coded this properly, but never tested it until now. Matt /C\/C\ 
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#4
06-06-2013, 03:53 PM
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Hello Matt!
I didn't had much time to play in the last two weeks, but I have some feedback now. In general I cleared the pirate lands and the dwarven lands including the subterrains and Mechgard. The game is interesting ,but the challenge is definately not like impossible. The pirates were like normal and the dwarves felt like hard at best, so maybe some meat% increasing should be done or creature stats changed if possible. The hero vs hero fights are really interesting,very good job  . I liked Duke Sov fight very much, he was a real pain in the ass.When James is killed you can go to the dwarven lands. So going in the upper and lower Haddar is good,but then when you get to Taron mines ,you can without any problem bypass the creatures and access the Dwarven King's palace and then his sons palace and that is too much. You get many things too easily. So this is solved in the GM-mod, by making one immobile guard in Taron mines,so you can't get past it without fighting and I like it a lot. In the standard version of the game it is also possible to continue even further - descend from Taron mines to the zone where the Demon world entrance is and enter bypassing the guards. And in the demon world there are so many precious things and experience that it must be not so easily done also. So the decision is another immobile guard in front of the entrance. Another thing is the Gremlin castle that you buy from the dwarven king. Entering there gives you access to at least 2 black dragon eggs,which are easy to get again bypassing the guards. And again there should be immobile guards to the eggs, otherwise getting 2 black dragons so early means devastation of everything. Next point : my favorite theme - the Spirits . Zerock seems to be ok so far,not overpowered and usable,the same goes for Slime. But then comes Lina. The Ice thorns are nicely changed, I like them so far, the ice ball seems to be ok, but I didn't developed it much so I cant really say. But the Chargers are seriously overpowered. Being able to cast them every turn replenishes everything way too easy even with the mage and I suppose with fighters is easier. They should be nerfed a lot. At least a bigger rest and lower their number.Scroll prices - I think they are too high , I've got too much money selling them,that means I can loose much army and replenish it easily. At least in impossible you should make them 3-4 times cheaper. Trade skill is useless - you spend so much runes to get it to lvl3 and you can never sell so many things so that you can buy your runes back. So with so high scroll prices I just leave it to lvl1 ,keep my runes and still get much money from selling scrolls to be able to buy army and some runes. Meditation skill is also not comparable to the other skills so it just stays to lvl1 ,maybe it must give something more to give some incentive to the player to spend the runes on it. You have increased the mana needed to cast many spells and also increased the mana that the hero acquires by leveling and skills. I think it's well balanced with one exception. You left the artifacts that give mana the same and that makes them useless. For example there is a picture artifact that gives 20 mana and that was a major artifact in the original game, now I don't even consider using it, it makes almost no difference and it's not competitive with the other arts. It should give at least 40-50 mana to be competitive. And the other mana-arts should be increased respectivly. The spell sheep is too powerful because of it's duration , I think it should be with at least -1 base turn duration. Now when I cast it I don't think for that creature too long, that's too easy. Spell Fireball is a bit weak, in the center it does less damage then the flaming arrow and in general it is not so usable, it should do 20% more compared to flaming arrow ,it is quite expensive ,so more damage is required.The same goes for Fire Rain, it is also a bit weak. Unit Canonner - there is no logic that it has no melee penalty. The hero Big Pato - he is supposed to be a super dumb warrior and you gave him the ability to cast spells. He was very challenging before anyway. So maybe you should remove the spells and make his creatures harder or whatever you think fits,but no spells Now some bugs I encountered : -Another 2 heroes that dont appear in battle : Zombie Noric and Thorny Dog -Red Beard tries to cast something,maybe it's phantom ,but it just gives a writing on the screen and nothing happens. -Drammina has the shroud bug . I removed shroud from her spells and left her with the other two. One of them was the ghost blade I think, but it was strange that she didn't cast anything for the first 2 turns of the fight. -The Archmage's Telekinesis is not working correctly or maybe you changed it somehow. Sometimes it works and sometimes not, I couldn't figure it out. -The Royal Thorn's Entangle skill works on ghosts ,no logic in that. -You added a decription to the Giants that says they can't be frozen, but the Lina's Ice thorns did freeze them. -I cast 2 flaming arrows on the first turn and set on fire two creatures. When their turn comes ,the first one burns and playies and then the second one doesnt burn. It burns on the next turn with full burn damage if there is no creature that burns before it. That applies to poisoning also or any combination between them, just the first creature takes damage. I like the changed mechanics for burning and poisoning that the creatures take half the damage and so on This is what I can say so far. Now about the mod you work on for Armored Princess. I have a proposal. Armored Princess has so many mods already. So many creatures,so many changes, it is flooded. So my point is that you can do a mod for Warrior of the north,instead of giving your time and efforts on the Princess. It has a good potential and desperately requires a mod to make it more challenging and balance many things.The way it is in the moment makes it absolutely boring to be played for a second time and so on. Please consider it . If you do, I can give some feedback. And I don't understand modding so well, in case you ask "why don't I do this myself"
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#5
06-06-2013, 06:17 PM
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Hello jorko80
Glad you stayed with this mod. As i said before enemy heroes fights are great part of this mod. 1) As for getting from Lucky James to dwarf king is how game is supposed to go, but after that is your choice what to do. Fight to free dwarf prince is hard to do below 10lvl hero, without losing 50% of army. And about kiting demon lands, it`s always players choice to do or not to do. But main game quests are locked with hard battles Free dwarf prince obligatory to continue, to gain access to Elven lands (Sonya, marauder hero in underground, wizard hero in entrance to valley of 1000 rivers), then clear undead lands (evil book hero, Mysticus(horrible), and couple others) then Karador battle (which is horrible in this mod) obligatory, after clear demons Baal battle (also big pain in ass) obligatory, and then it`s labyrinth 7 Haas battles and orc lands 3 hero fights there (main orc hero and lore keeper were tough). And ofc last battle vs army of 5th lvl creatures and high lvl hero. You can decide to go linearly and maintain story plot, but kiting is and always were players choice. Comparing to Ap/Cw where you could kite with hero 1st lvl to Reha and get up to 17-20 lvl before first battle (if not counting training area) , the Legend is much better kite protected. because here are some battles thet you MUST do before going further. 2) Gremlin castle making it so you have to fight first before entering is good idea and i like it, which would make ppl wait before buying it. Because game is set so difficulty of item battles is determined on hero lvl in moment you buy/get item. This i figured out by accident when got 2 same items and suppressing them gave me different battle and different exp. So higher hero lvl = tougher item battle = more exp. So why buy gremlin castle as soon as you get to dwarf king, if you can w8 and get it 10lvl later and get bunch more exp for it, instead those 2 dragon eggs and some gold if you get it soon and kite around it. 3) spirits are better then in original game settings, i like them. But as you said some changes are due. I set some things weaker then in Mat`s settings and it`s not difficult, but if you`re not sure what you`re doing better ask for advice then make problem with game files. Making Lina chargers is fast and i could help you , or Mat could give you advice how to do it. 4) Trade skills/scroll prices etc ... Gold never was big problem in this game, and to me and i`m sure many other lvling trade is only because we want skills after it. But that particular skill really have low potential, and nothing better to do with it, so bear with it and lvlup other skills more useful. 5) items losing usefulness comparing to original game. I think this was main idea. Making you have kids with wife, instead telling her you should wait with family plans, and keep her as simple mule to lug items around. You can carry what ever you want in inventory, but leave your wife to rise children, and keep her busy And randomness with kids is great thing, you can get great pick, or you can have shi.y luck and get battle oriented kids with mage hero or opposite spell kids with warrior/paladin On this topic, what wife/kids you running in your build ?6) spells, as you mentioned pure spell dmg is not main effect but burning/poisoning effects, and more attention is toward buff/debuff spells because here high intellect bonuses work as was described in original game but never implemented (blind,sheep,haste... all those spells work longer for high int bonus). 7) as for bugs - Noric and Thorny werent there in original game either  - Red beard , Dramina it`s spells bug i`m sure it`s fixable - had no problem with telekinesis so far - since ghosts are ,<4 lvl units entangle works on them, but i`m guessing you mean they are incorporal units and entangle shouldn`t be able to capture basically air, but it`s hard to make just one unit unentangleable (?) , same as it`s impossible to make one unit unable to be frozen (giants) but possible to shock (lightning) or some other post hit effect. - also hadn`t problem with more then 1 burn/poison effect per turn. Lets wait for Mats idea on this. In end, Ap/Cw mod is under develpoment for a long time, and i know lots of work is done on it to simply skip it and go to WotN. As WotN is still buggy and with problems/crashes and Ap/Cw is fully functional i vote for working mod for Ap then hasty mod for WotN. Imagine working this mod, with parts of Red sands, so your/enemy units have bonuses from tomes,heroes,and based on game difficulty and more form unit personal experience (as they lvlup depending on location in game). I agree there are lots of mods already for Ap/Cw but that`s because that release was done with more attention then latest WotN and had less bugs/problems to fix.
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#6
06-07-2013, 09:17 AM
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Superb comments!
Okay, I've inlined both @jorko80's and @Fatt_Shade's comments where appropriate and responded accordingly...
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You know, when I play TL now, I do as much as possible without even fighting, I think the last game I played I got up to level 5 or 6 before I even fought my first fight. There are quite a few quests that you can do before you go to the Western Islands without fighting - it sounds like you are also using this strategy. When I first did my TL mod development, I was not nearly as good as I am now. Also, I didn't know how to edit the *.LOC files, etc. Now that I've gained all this experience with not only modding and playing TL, I've got some even better ideas for making it harder. So we'll see how it goes as I continue to work on AP / CW and eventually roll what I learn there back into TL... Quote:
The problem with the normal battles is that you simply have a huge advantage against them as they have no spell caster to help them. Quote:
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I'll have to learn how to affect the creatures movement paths as I have no idea on how to do this. Quote:
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So think of them as candy - they taste really good now, but later you'll be regretting that you ate so much!  Quote:
But if you really want to change values, then they are in:
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I'm always out of money at the end of the game, because I'm buying crystals and runes. So we'll have to wait and see if you have excess runes at the end of your game. I did have quite a few extra Mind Runes at the end of my last Paladin game, but this was the first time that ever happened with my mod so I slightly tweaked the Paladin Rune level up. Made me wish I had implemented the AP / CW Rune Exchange system since I wanted another level in Dark Commander since I was running with Demons and didn't have enough Might Runes, but plenty of Mind Runes. I think I might know how to do this and was planning on implementing it some time in the future... So keep playing and we'll see how you're doing when you want some more Runes... If you're playing no loss, you really only need a very small amount of money to buy enough troops if you stick with them throughout the game. I like to trade wives and switch armies a lot so I end up spending a lot more money on troops than normal to take advantage of the wife / kid bonuses... Quote:
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I'll second the wife / kids question! Quote:
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The purpose of single damage spells / rage abilities is that they will do the most damage to a single target, this round. The multi-target damage spells like Fireball / Fire Rain are meant to do more aggregate damage to targets, possibly for this round (depends on the number of units you can target), but should provide more damage in the long run. Also consider Fireball / Fire Rain - how should these spells be different? You'll note that Fireball damages the central target more than Fire Rain, but the periphery less. So you can see that Fireball is sort of a mixture of Fire Arrow and Fire Rain in a way. Also you'll note that all the demon male enemy heroes use Fireball and demon females use Fire Rain! So there is a lot more strategy to spell choice now as you have to consider whether you want to do more damage to a single target or spread it out and whether you want to maximize damage on this round or over many rounds. Also, there is Greasy Mist that you can use as well to drop their resistance in hopes of doing more damage in the long run. I think you'll find that there are a lot of subtleties like this that dramatically increase the strategy of how you fight a battle... Quote:
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I don't think I'd want to stand in front of a cannon! I don't think Bugs Bunny can stick his carrot into the barrel and have it explode in the Cannoneer's face! Ha! That'd be funny! Quote:
Big Pato has a skill tree just like you and he picked his level-ups just like you picked yours! So he decided to pick a couple of Mage School Skills and spent his hard-earned crystals on learning some spells! So leave poor Big Pato alone! Quote:
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I probably should change the description as Fire Immune creates can't be burned, but Fire Resistance ones can. Technically, there are no Cold Immune creatures in the game, but the Resistance to Cold was meant to act like immunity. So I'll think about this some more, but probably make it consistent with Fire / Poison Immunity / Resistance... Quote:
I tried really hard to squish this bug, but I think it is a bug in the game as I noticed that in AP / CW the amount of damage will always attenuate such that it never kills a stack. I'll still try to squish this one, but I haven't found a way yet... Quote:
Well, thanks again for the awesome comments! These are very helpful! Quote:
Well, with things the way they are with my current state of affairs of the too many tomes problem, it may actually be possible to mod AP / CW / WotN simultaneously. It seems like there's going to be no more updates on WotN as far as I can tell and since I'm doing my best now to rename functions I modify (unlike TL where I just modded the original functions) and place them in new files it is easy to transfer them to a new expansion even if there are more updates. I really like a lot of the game mechanics that I've added to TL and it has been a great learning experience. The developers have made the expansions a lot more robust with respect to modding in AP / CW (and hopefully WotN, too). For example, if you misspell a template macro in TL and highlight the item, the game just freezes! In AP / CW, the game says #NF so that you can go fix it! So I'll see what I can do about modding WotN, too, but I've got to be careful not to spread myself too thin, otherwise I'll end up working on this forever and not get anything done! It'll be great to hear your comments as you get further into the game - thanks! And, as always, thanks to @Fatt_Shade's comments, too!  Matt /C\/C\
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#7
06-07-2013, 03:58 PM
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Just couple of my thoughts :
1) rename mod to Toddlers of Might & Magic for goofs  2) about cannoners, i forgot to mention my idea (i already did it in my game files). I changed their special attack, so it`s aoe like druid/necromancer`s range attack. It seemed logical since they shoot salve of cannon balls in certain direction, so they make dmg to area not just single target. Their usual attack is same as before, hit 1 target, but i made it so salve hit 7 hex area with full dmg to central, and 50% penalty to nearby. Looks like this : Code:
megathrow {
dontusenearenemy=1
class=throw
distance=7
reload=3
base_attack=0
mindist=2
penalty=0.5
animation=power/megatag/thtarget
picture=BA1_CannoneerFire_
picture_small=BA1_CannoneerFire_small.png
throw=cannonround
hinthead=special_rembo_head
hint=special_rembo_hint
framekey=x
7in1=0.5
damage {
physical=18,30
3) after this discussion on spells and effects (burn/poison) , i remembered my old idea. Anything comes at your mind Mat about making spell for +poison dmg to units, like hell breath. Hell breath is great vs elves/undead since they have low tolerance to fire dmg, and giving hell breath to main dmg dealer is useful. So how about having similar spell to help against demons/dragons. I tried before to make new spell and just got lost in game files, since there is lots of files connected to spell mechanics. So ppl pls vote spell you hate most to get rid off , and change it`s ingame settings to `venom touch` (my idea of naming it I`m off
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#8
06-08-2013, 01:06 AM
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Good Ideas!
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Matt /C\/C\
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#9
06-08-2013, 01:26 PM
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While on the subject - the guards for the book of the Dead in elven lands are also easy to bypass and that opens the way to dragons ,runes and quests too easily. In GM there are 2 guards of each book - 1 in elven lands and 1 in death lands,both immobile, it is way more challenging. About Gerda - you have no problem with accessing her earlier ,because she is in lower haddar and the immobile guard should be in a narrow area when you enter Taron Mines. So enjoy Quote:
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and I like it. Still it's too powerful. It was cast on me and that's not much of a problem, the problem is ,that the enemy can't react always to it and the neutrals can't at all, so my opinion is that it is way unbalanced in the moment. Base duration for Sheep should be at least -1. Quote:
, there is no way in real fight that some swordsman army will sit in a row in front of the cannon and wait . All be involved in melee and it will be impossible for the canonners to operate the cannon ,henceforth the melee penalty.Quote:
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. But WotN needs far more then just the things you've done to TL. The only part thats interesting and balanced are the 4 initial Islands and then when you kill the spider it gets messy,boring,ultimately easy. I hope you will have the patience to change it,I have many ideas. The russian top modders are so disappointed in it ,that don't want to do it and for now it's frozen .Thanks for your time P. S. Really like the idea of Fatt Shade about the spell with poison damage boost
Last edited by jorko80; 06-08-2013 at 03:07 PM.
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#10
06-08-2013, 06:50 PM
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Very good points!
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But if you play HOMM, then you're losing troops all the time. So it is kind of interesting how between KB / HOMM there are these two different paradigms... Quote:
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I think what I'll do here is if I make any changes to the AP / CW items I'll eventually roll those back into the TL items. Quote:
So I think you'll find that the cost / duration are appropriate... Quote:
Okay, all kidding aside, I didn't change this, but it sounds like you think that Cannoneers should have a melee penalty. So I will consider... Quote:
Okay, let me spill the beans on what is either under consideration or going to be implemented in AP / CW with respect to difficulty level changes.
The idea is to expand eunit + map location multiplier to other aspects of the game (like the enemy hero spells and boss abilities) and make it more potent if it is having minimal impact on a certain aspect of the game. The trick is that right now enemy hero stacks are pretty much perfect, but normal stacks are too easy for the most part. You can't expect the normal stacks to be as hard as the enemy hero stacks, but some of the above might go a long way to making the normal stacks more challenging. Okay, thanks again for the great comments! Matt
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Hybrid Mode
