Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Tomes Alpha Mod Development for CW

[MattCaspermeyer]

Well, I'm disappointed to say that it looks like my mod was too ambitious for the AP / CW game engine to handle.

I have 180 Tomes with 5 levels each for 900 new items. This is almost 125,000 lines of h3_tomes.txt. This is simply too big of a file for the game engine to handle and the EXE bombs when it tries to read the file (when including it from ITEMS.TXT).

If I delete tomes from the file until I get about 27,500 lines then it is able to read that in okay. Unfortunately, this is slightly more than 1/5 of the tomes.

So I'm a bit bummed with not being able to implement this feature of the mod as I saw it since I think it would have really been a lot of fun. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with this aspect of the mod so I'm just going to move on to implementing the other aspects from my H3B mod.

I guess the easiest thing to do with the tomes would be to take the 180 tomes and simply implement 1/5 of them (for 36 total tomes with 5 levels each). If I did this you'd probably only get about 5 tomes a game for replayability. I don't really like this, though, since it would mean leaving out 4/5 of the variability. I could also just implement the 180 tomes at level 5 already since I tried just the level 5 tomes and they read in okay as well. But then you don't get to fight the tome heroes to level them up so this isn't perfect, either. What would really be neat is if I could pre-generate the items you'd get out of the 180 (about 20 or so) at game start and then that would be well within the constraints above. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do this.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I'll also continue to check if I have any errors in my h3_tomes.txt file as maybe it's bombing on something that is not specified properly. Or perhaps if I slice it into smaller files maybe it'll take it?

In the meantime I'll just work on the rest of the mod while I think about this some more...

I've put so much work into this part of the mod, I'm really bummed - sigh...

Matt

/C\/C\

[Ju22dith]

You can check out the various posts for my babies mod / mini-expansion for TL in these links:

[Fatt_Shade]

@Mat
Did you ever try Red sands mod ? There they added some new items, and made eng_items.txt (for all old items) and eng_newitem.txt for their new ones. But there is only 1 items.txt file, and all new are in it. There is no newitems.txt. I`m not sure, will it work if you split all original items from game in items.txt, and place all your new mod items in tommitems.txt (just example for file name).
Try it out, i think game search for cod lines in game files. maybe you can split all new mod items in 3-4 files, but also you`ll have to make eng_tommitems.txt file for every one of tommitems.txt files.
Try making 1 try, with split items.txt , and all first lvl tomes in tomm1items.txt and add eng_ file for those items, if it work you`re golden
If not, i`m out of ideas

[MattCaspermeyer]

Well, I tried splitting the file and it still doesn't work.

I actually experimented with whether there was too much information and it doesn't matter whether it is 27,500 lines or 4,000 lines. On the 233rd new item, the game bombs.

So I can do 180 (or technically, 232) items no problem. There must be an item limit within the game engine that they didn't think anyone would ever hit.

I also have 1 other new item - the modified Bill Gilbert picture (I left the original alone) that hands out the tomes, so I guess it is technically +1 more than the numbers above.

Anyway, I'm now thinking about how I could implement item levels with just the base items and have it be modified somehow. Not sure if it is possible, but that is about the only thing I can think of right now.

What I really need to do is generate items on the fly. I looked at WotN on the item crafting and the recipes are just items that give you existing items. Since I only give out about 20 tomes a game, that would be just 100 new items, but they need to be variable. This can manually be done, but I wonder if there is a way to do it within the game?

Matt

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

Ok so technically size of items.txt file isn`t issue, but number of items.
How about kicking out some of 1st lvl items (simple belt +1defense, iron tooth +20lds and such), and just replacing them with your 1st lvl basic tomes that are upgradeable.
That would be some 20+ items less, but will mean something.

On other hand question : Did you make Bill Gilbert painting give only 1st lvl tomes ? And made all other lvl`s 2-5 maxcount=0 ? Maybe game cant generate so many items available on start of game but only after you get that item 1lvl and upgrade it from there. What i say is in game you can get several bronze rings +5mana, but no silver +10mana or gold +15mana because those 2 items are set in items.txt to maxcount=0.
So maybe game try to put in game all those new items on random, and crashes because there are no way to make it playable without hero tripping over 1000+ items on every step in game. Try to make all new items 2-5th lvl maxcount=0 , and tomes that appear in game to be only 1st lvl ones that you upgrade during play.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Bill Gilbert's painting only gives out level 1 tomes, but all tomes are maxcount=0 already as well as having the rare and moral propbits.

I thought maybe the moral propbit, since it creates a counter, might have been causing it to crash since counters are a limited resource as well, but when I removed it, it had no effect.

I may have an idea how to "level up" the tomes by using a parameter and so instead of fighting them to upgrade, I could have it where you fight a certain number of battles and then their level would increase, using the item's parameters.

If I did it this way, though, I'd have to manage the bonuses for levels 2-5 internally via LUA script. This would work okay for the fight bonuses, I guess, since I could mod them at the beginning of round 1, but not for the mod bonuses since they are counters. It may be possible to execute scripts on equip and on remove when you are wearing the item versus when it is in your backpack to increment / decrement the mod counters. I'm not sure...

Anyway, thanks for the ideas, I'll keep thinking about this aspect of the mod. I may implement just the level 1 versions and work on how to upgrade them later - we'll see...

Matt

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

For upgrading items on counter, i guess you mean like Ring of mind (+3 intellect permanent after 30 battles). This is interesting idea, and doable, but only for 1 lvlup i think. Because you lvlup item from 1st to 2nd lvl, and then what ? How does counter resets, and start counting next 15-20 battles for that `new`2nd lvl item ?
And problem with this is, later in game when you get 1st lvl from Bill`s portrait and want to upgrade it but have no more enemy stacks to fight.
Simple fight item to upgrade it was great, higher lvl of item, tougher battle and it was great. But as you said it, it created problems with number of items in game

Sry for not being of much help here Good luck.

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

And problem with this is, later in game when you get 1st lvl from Bill`s portrait and want to upgrade it but have no more enemy stacks to fight.

*Exactly*

So that would be compromise.

I have two new ideas:

1. Include all tomes, level 1-5, but tomes level 2-5 are commented out. When you get a tome, then you uncomment out levels 2-5 so you can upgrade it. Once you get all the tomes, then you'll probably have to comment out the level 1 tomes you didn't get since you'll need more head room to level up all your tomes (if you don't level them all up you can probably leave the level 1 tomes alone).
2. Generate the tome choices on game start. Generate the tomes.txt files needed from this list. You then have to save the game, exit, restart game, reload, and continue.

Option 1 is easy to implement, but requires a lot of manual work from people who play the mod. Nobody would probably want to do that manually, but it would be a way to experience the mod as I intended it.

Option 2 is much harder to implement, but would allow minimal user intervention to get it working for them. I'm not sure how to do any of option 2, but I think LUA has file I/O capabilities, although I'm not sure how to handle UAC.

Anyway, those are a couple of ideas that I just thought up...

Matt

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

I vote for option 1, if you manage to make it functional. I`m sure players would help, because here wearn`t for split second action but for decision in leading armies. And for quality mod are ready to involve.
Hope you make it working version soon

[MattCaspermeyer]

Option #1 is readily doable, so I think I'll go with that for now during the second alpha phase and see what everyone thinks as they play it...