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

[Fatt_Shade]

Thx for clearing unit/hero stats , i cant check anything connected to games at the moment But i can still check game files in notepad, and think about ways to make player curse those who made mod that is killing their nerves
Max of 600% you mentioned is a bit much but for it hero would must have 90 attack so not really an issue, but try to make it so it`s not limited like it was so far on +60att to enemy def, and everything above is a waste. Defense bonus on other hand should be reachable with your change to spell system and stone skin/magic spring 80% def bonus , belt of victor etc, but it will be really situational. This will make neutral stacks a bit inferior, but battles with enemy heroes will be much more fun, and just maybe you`ll finally make mod that is truly impossible to do with no loss (hero with 50 intellect and 3x cast , and your rage/mana stop regenerating after 20 turn so no resurrecting

And Q : how did you plan to implement Tomes of Might&Magic in game here ? As items, and if so will they be for hero, or companion, and will they be removable or like kids in tLegend when equipped with no way to replace them (maybe only to destroy it). In tLegend it was nice idea, you get a kid and if it soothe you great, but if you play warrior and get intellect/mana bonus kid tough luck no adoption available
What i mean to say is if you acquire 1 tome(kid) next gets available after 10 battles and it`s random, or you can buy one you wish for 100.000 gold but next will cost 200.000 and 4th 300.000 or you just play battles and get some random like with kids.
Then you change whole army and drop all tomes and start over and then again every next cost 100k gold more starting from 0. I guess that would be tricky to make functional in game, but i thought how will player use this new tomes you want to import. In tLegend it was doable since there kids already had system working and you just made bunch of new kids and give them HoMM3 heroes images and it was great. But how you plan to do it for AP/CW ? No wife to surprise you every 10 battles with new addition to family

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Thx for clearing unit/hero stats , i cant check anything connected to games at the moment But i can still check game files in notepad, and think about ways to make player curse those who made mod that is killing their nerves

Sorry to hear that - must be driving you crazy not to play!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Max of 600% you mentioned is a bit much but for it hero would must have 90 attack so not really an issue, but try to make it so it`s not limited like it was so far on +60att to enemy def, and everything above is a waste.

Yah - I hear you, that's why it just might be +50% per 15 Attaack rather than +100%. We'll have to see how it pans out during the alpha development, but +100% is technically the inverse of the defense relationship.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Defense bonus on other hand should be reachable with your change to spell system and stone skin/magic spring 80% def bonus , belt of victor etc, but it will be really situational. This will make neutral stacks a bit inferior, but battles with enemy heroes will be much more fun, and just maybe you`ll finally make mod that is truly impossible to do with no loss (hero with 50 intellect and 3x cast , and your rage/mana stop regenerating after 20 turn so no resurrecting

Yah - we'll see although I have some ideas on the neutral stack with respect to the "commander" unit mentioned previously. Also, they'll at least get the difficulty level bonus as well as the map location difficulty bonus and I'll probably implement a system to increase neutral stack caps based on map location difficulty as well - we'll see...

This will certainly make Stone Skin and Magic Spring more interesting / useful and also units with attack boosting abilities (like Ogres) will get a good boost in damage if the caps are higher.

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

And Q : how did you plan to implement Tomes of Might&Magic in game here ? As items, and if so will they be for hero, or companion, and will they be removable or like kids in tLegend when equipped with no way to replace them (maybe only to destroy it). In tLegend it was nice idea, you get a kid and if it soothe you great, but if you play warrior and get intellect/mana bonus kid tough luck no adoption available
What i mean to say is if you acquire 1 tome(kid) next gets available after 10 battles and it`s random, or you can buy one you wish for 100.000 gold but next will cost 200.000 and 4th 300.000 or you just play battles and get some random like with kids.
Then you change whole army and drop all tomes and start over and then again every next cost 100k gold more starting from 0. I guess that would be tricky to make functional in game, but i thought how will player use this new tomes you want to import. In tLegend it was doable since there kids already had system working and you just made bunch of new kids and give them HoMM3 heroes images and it was great. But how you plan to do it for AP/CW ? No wife to surprise you every 10 battles with new addition to family

Now this is a good series of questions. Here is the plan, which I'm not sure how it's going to workout, but the idea was to simply add them as items and hopefully you'll get a handful of them in your game. This is certainly something to think about as I'll be adding roughly 160 items to the game with these kids and with all the other items, I have now idea how many might exist in a game.

Also, I was thinking about what class of item I should make them (i.e. Regalia, Artifact, etc.) and then just discovered that the item you get from the Caretaker can be put in any slot. So I was thinking about making it this way, but then I'm not sure how I'd limit the number you can place on your character. Originally, I was thinking of making them Artifacts, but then you'd only be able to equip 3 or 4 if you had the right companion / hero class.

I was also planning on making them upgradeable morale-based items, which I've never seen in the game before so I'm not sure if you can combine the two or how it works - need to do a lot of investigating here. The bonuses would start out like Rina's, but then you could fight the guardians and advance all the way to Xeona's / Neoka's bonuses for each tome. I have a lot of ideas here if I can figure out how to implement them all.

I was also planning on having them equipable so that they act just like items, but if you can put them in any slot then you could literally have a Tome in every item slot, so I'm not sure about this. I think we'll have to experiment with this and see how it goes. On the other hand, it may make sense to have them equipable in any slot, but once equipped you can't remove them - except by destruction as you mentioned. Hmmm... not even sure if that is doable, but who knows...

I'm actually about ready to start diving into this as I've finished my CW game and so now am looking at situational stuff (i.e. like the Brontor's) before I starting implementing features that require a restart.

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

Playing isn`t important so much ,as it frustrates me not to be able to do little things like checking att/def bonus from hero i asked you. Now playing is secondary, to trying to make some things work as i thought of and checking `will it blend` in game

There is no need to implement 160 items in game, if you make them upgradeable : every item have this part in it`s items.txt

price=3000
maxcount=2
level=1
race=neutral
use {}
mods {
defense=count,1
}

where maxcount is number of possible items of that type can appear in every game. So my idea is that you import some items like Tome of Gretchen , and give it 2 more lvl`s to upgrade - Tome of Kilgor and final Tome of Crag Hack (this is just expl, because all 3 of them have same basic bonus to dmg% to melee units and after that some other individual bonuses, though you might change upgraded tomes info in files to keep bonuses from previous so no to lose goblin/goblin2 bonus from Gretchen and black dragon Kilgor after upgrading to Crag Hack, or make it so previous bonuses do get lost, same as in composite items in CW holy ring/belt of victor/gloves of destroyer final item is great but you also lose some interesting bonuses when you make composite item from it components). I know this can be done with all tomes you plan to import but in this way there wont be in game shops with 20+ items. So try to get all kids from previous mod and see which could upgrade to higher bonus (i saw lots in Orcelyn/Xeona as i mentioned Gretchyn/Kilgor/Hack expl, but there are also lots of intellect/spell dmg kids that could be upgraded , or Erdamon to Boragus to Dessa (+1 all speed should be enough with all other bonuses), Drakon to Alkin to young Yog. There are bunch of possible upgrades, so only in first item should be maxcount=1, and in upgraded variant maxcount=0 so no upgraded tomes in game, only basic and player can fight them. This could reduce number of items in shops by 50% at least but there are problem of making upgrading battles for all those items, generic battles should work out so same fight for 1st upgrade same for all tomes, and 2nd lvl upgrade also same for all items only type of units change depending what `race` item is. As for making upgradeable items check my attachment in HoMM babies tread for tLegend post #93, about upgrading items, hope it will help. Moral for tomes i dont think will be necessary fighting them for upgrade should be enough.
And for number of tomes, no worries : player can use only 5 stacks in battles so no more unit related tomes will be equipped, and for other type non unit this game is random enough i dont think many other will appear in lots of games (expl in some game appearing 30 tomes, all upgradeable tough luck of it happening).

[MattCaspermeyer]

Hmmm...

You may be on to something here - you've got my hamster running on the wheel...

I see why you chose some of your upgrade paths, because of the advancements in skills like Offense, for example.

But I may have an even better idea germinating - stay tuned...

/C\/C\

[MattCaspermeyer]

Okay, I now know how I'm going to implement the Tomes.

I've already modified the Portrait of Bill Gilbert to produce Tomes after a certain number of battles.

The way it works right now is that it uses a cumulative counter so that you get a few Tomes pretty quickly, but then it slows down.

The way it works, is the counter starts off at 1 and then increments and adds to itself. So you'll get a Tome after the 1st, 3rd, 6th, 10th, etc. battle. There are approximately 320 battles in CW and so you'll get roughly 24 tomes out of 172 or so Tomes during a single playthrough (if you married all the wives and had all the children in my H3B mod, you had the possibility of 32 babies). This seems okay for now - we'll see how it goes and the counter can always be increased to have fewer Tomes, but I think this will give sufficient variety to try them out. I could also just go with getting a Tome every 10 battles, but then you'd get about 32 of them in game (which may be too many for one playthrough - not sure). This will be the only way to get a Tome - they won't be sold or acquired through any other means. This also means that they won't have an impact on the existing items in the game. If you don't want any more Tomes, then you can simply get rid of your Bill Gilbert painting and you won't get any more.

I'm going to experiment with what item type to make them - I'd like to make them a combined regalia / artifact item, but that didn't seem to work. So I can either just make them artifacts or maybe I'll consider them like the metamorph item and they can fit in any slot. We'll see - if I can't figure out how to make them regalia / artifact, then I'll probably make them metamorphic during the early alpha development to aid in checking out their bonuses, etc and then just make them artifacts at the end. Unfortunately, there are only 4 artifact slots max right now, and for some class / companion combinations you might only get 1 or 2 slots - the Warrior and Paladin only have 1 artifact slot. I may also consider making them other item types based on their HOMM3 hero class (i.e. maybe Knights are Shields or Armor).

I'm also going to implement 5 levels for each Tome, and some Tomes will transmute to others (think Mutare and Mutare Drake), whereas others may have up to level 10 for an item level (although it may be entirely possibly that defeating the guardians to get that high is impractical - we'll see how it goes, but think how hard the Towers were with level 5 items in my H3B mod and you can imagine that going much higher will be an exceptionally difficult battle).

Also, with respect to items, think of the H3B children as roughly a level 3 item. So for lower levels, their skills will be stripped so that they only have one or two bonuses.

Take Fafner, for example. His skills are Resistance, Scholar, and Nagas. So this is his level 3 form. For level 1, he'll just get Nagas (which will be the equivalent of all snakes in AP / CW).

Something new that I'm going to implement, though, are the Hero's actual starting stats as bonuses to your stats. Once again, referring to Fafner's level 3 "hero", his starting stats are Attack: 1, Defense: 1, Spell Power: 2, and Knowledge: 2 (6 total points). Spell Power will be 5% increase in KB Spell Power per point, and Knowledge = Intellect. His level 1 equivalent will have just 2 total points (Spell Power: 1 and Knowledge: 1).

So if you got Fafner's Tome, he would provide +5% Spell Power and +1 Intellect and give bonuses to all snakes. I'm still debating what to do with the unit bonuses, but I'll probably make it so that the level 1 items only give a bonus to (say) Attack and Defense and most likely a modest Leadership Reduction, and then with each new level, there are more bonuses and greater leadership reduction. For example, Fafner's level 1 "Nagas" bonus would probably be: Attack / Defense: +Unit Level (Snakes, Swamp Snakes, and Royal Snakes), Leadership Reduction: (Snakes and Swamp Snakes) 4% and (Royal Snakes) 3%. The idea is that you would take the Leadership Reduction values and multiply them by the Tome level (for -12% and -9% for level 3 Fafner and -20% and -15% for level 5 Fafner).

The Leadership Reduction scale would be such that @level 5, you'd get this for the given unit levels:

Level 1: -25%
Level 2: -20%
Level 3: -15%
Level 4: -10%
Level 5: -5%

Those are pretty small for the higher level units, but when coupled with Glory's -2, -5, and -10% Leadership Reduction bonus those values above will be much more substantial. Plus, it may be possible to combine the Tomes with other items to get much higher bonuses.

These are just some preliminary values and may be subject to change based on how things go, but should be a good start.

I have the proof of concept working with respect to being able to give Tomes to your hero, but I need to work on getting the pictures, descriptions, etc. into the game, but hope to make good progress on this in the following weeks...

I'm also implementing the bonus system for the Tome Hero's skills. For starters, it is based on the H3B mod bonuses, but now that you can get any hero, I'll do my best to make sure that each Tome's skills are different (the hero bonuses to your hero will be the same for each class type - Fafner is an Alchemist and so you'll see the same (or almost the same) bonuses for all other Alchemits). There are a few special heroes that may get an extra skill or an extra point (or two) in their hero bonuses and that's because they were special heroes in HOMM3.

Also, I'm going to implement all 8 H3B wives as tomes (since there are only 8 of them out of 172 or so they are going to get a little bit better hero stats and their bonuses will be very similar to what you saw in H3B). Also the 4 spirits will be implemented as Tomes as well and once again they'll have higher bonuses and these will be the items that you can take up to level 10 if you're able (you'll have a really low chance of getting one in a game because there's only 4 of them). I'll probably have them provide spell scrolls of all their abilities (possibly even the ones not included in CW like Lina's mana / rage balls, etc.). I also may consider allowing the H3B wives to go to level 10 as well - we'll see.

There may also be some "set" Tomes. As an example, Calh and Marius were married at one point in the HOMM3 storyline and so I may make them have a set bonus if you're fortunate enough to get both of them. Catherine and Roland Ironfist also come to mind since they were married as well. I also may try to make some combined Tomes as well (think of the "young" versions of a few heroes, i.e. Gem, Sandro, Yog, and Christain) so that if you find both hero variants you can combine them into a more powerful Tome. Mutare will be special in that you'll get her from level 1 to 5 and then you can upgrade her to the Mutare Drake (this will simulate her drinking the vial of Dragon Blood) where her levels will be 6-10. I also may do the same with Young Sandro and possibly Gem. Note that for the set Tomes and combination Tomes to work, you'll have to have the same Tome level (i.e. both level 1, 2, etc.).

So anyway, that's the current state of development for this aspect of the mod and some ideas with respect to the Tomes.

/C\/C\

[Fatt_Shade]

You really got yourself nice little project with implementing ToM&M in this game
Nice ideas, with set tomes, paired tomes and upgrading (10lvl`s i think is to much but test it and see what those fights look like and decide). About Portrait of Bill Gilbert giving tomes every 10 battles, do you plan to make it player must keep in in inventory to count battle, or must have it in backpack with items that he dont use (because portrait is terrible item, and among first i change in every game
Wives and rage spirits from the Legend, damn great plan, but HOW ??? This seems like to complicated to be functional. How will spirits work ? will they have active spells like in tL, or just giving some passive bonuses like items, just special in area of influence. Wives i figure will just have bonuses to whole race like in tL, and that will work nicely i think.

I got 1 idea my own. After i started new game with your change to starting units in tL and for paladin i got cerbery , ent and vampires i thought WTF am I supposed to do with this starting army Then i saw i got all active abilities for those units right on start, while in original settings with human starting army you couldnt make special attacks, without Heroism skill 1/2/3 lvl.
So i want to make certain hero skills when upgrading to unlock 3rd/4th/5th lvl units special attacks, but to place them in all skill tree, not just in Heroism. Expl : Archmage unit - Battle mage will be unlocked on 2nd lvl Heroism, as it gives archies more dmg potential. Magic shield will be unlocked on 2nd lvl of glory (glory inspires heroes army to noble acts of valor and help each other since this is support ability it goes to mind tree. Telekinesis goes to 2nd lvl of wisdom skill since it`s . . . i have no idea why it just goes there
Inquisitor holy rage gives rage and makes your units to make more dmg to undead/demons so it goes to 1st vll heroism, but revive is glory 1st lvl. . .
All 1 and 2 lvl units have all active battle abilities from start, but 3rd lvl units need some hero skill to unlock their and not all with same skill, 4th lvl units need 2lvl of that skill to work in battle, and 5th lvl units need 3lvl skill for them ( 5th lvl will be boring here, but in AP/CW there are much more 5th lvl units so there this will work nicely i think). And about placing abilities in skill tree, it depends if it is support it is mind/magic depending on type, if it`s active and work on enemy units it goes to might tree (dryad lullaby cast on enemy units and is might/heroism, summon thorn mind/glory, elven song is magic/wisdom it`s basically battle cry spell for elves). Some abilities i`m not sure where to put : demonolog tread of life is dmg ability against enemy unit but it revives ally so might or mind, alchemist trowing potions are all like spells but dmg enemy so might or magic , and some others.
My question to you is : Where in your HoMM3 mod files is reference how to unlock human units abilities with heroism skill on 1/2/3 lvl ???

[MattCaspermeyer]

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

You really got yourself nice little project with implementing ToM&M in this game

I hear, ya - in the thick of it right now!

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Nice ideas, with set tomes, paired tomes and upgrading (10lvl`s i think is to much but test it and see what those fights look like and decide). About Portrait of Bill Gilbert giving tomes every 10 battles, do you plan to make it player must keep in in inventory to count battle, or must have it in backpack with items that he dont use (because portrait is terrible item, and among first i change in every game

Just in the backpack - I've tried it like this, should also work equipped. I'm glad I didn't sell it in my game because like you said it's all not that great of an item, but okay.

I've been doing some minor testing with my game I just finished and it seems to work okay so far...

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

Wives and rage spirits from the Legend, damn great plan, but HOW ??? This seems like to complicated to be functional. How will spirits work ? will they have active spells like in tL, or just giving some passive bonuses like items, just special in area of influence. Wives i figure will just have bonuses to whole race like in tL, and that will work nicely i think.

Yah - they'll just be items, although I may give them some scrolls to give you (I'm thinking the spirits will have scrolls to give you of their CW spells).

I'm still working on what their bonuses are going to be, but I've got some ideas...

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

I got 1 idea my own. After i started new game with your change to starting units in tL and for paladin i got cerbery , ent and vampires i thought WTF am I supposed to do with this starting army Then i saw i got all active abilities for those units right on start, while in original settings with human starting army you couldnt make special attacks, without Heroism skill 1/2/3 lvl.

If memory serves, Heroism Level 1 was only for Swordmen / Guardsmen special attack, Level 2 Bowmen Fire Arrow, and Level 3 Knight Circle Attack (with H3B Horsemen Charge). All other units get their abilities right at the start.

By the way, the starting armies and spells are now randomized. This gives you a chance to start with a totally different set of units. It is fully customizeable, and can add and remove units to pick from (I'll be implementing this feature in AP / CW sooner or later).

Originally Posted by Fatt_Shade

So i want to make certain hero skills when upgrading to unlock 3rd/4th/5th lvl units special attacks, but to place them in all skill tree, not just in Heroism. Expl : Archmage unit - Battle mage will be unlocked on 2nd lvl Heroism, as it gives archies more dmg potential. Magic shield will be unlocked on 2nd lvl of glory (glory inspires heroes army to noble acts of valor and help each other since this is support ability it goes to mind tree. Telekinesis goes to 2nd lvl of wisdom skill since it`s . . . i have no idea why it just goes there
Inquisitor holy rage gives rage and makes your units to make more dmg to undead/demons so it goes to 1st vll heroism, but revive is glory 1st lvl. . .
All 1 and 2 lvl units have all active battle abilities from start, but 3rd lvl units need some hero skill to unlock their and not all with same skill, 4th lvl units need 2lvl of that skill to work in battle, and 5th lvl units need 3lvl skill for them ( 5th lvl will be boring here, but in AP/CW there are much more 5th lvl units so there this will work nicely i think). And about placing abilities in skill tree, it depends if it is support it is mind/magic depending on type, if it`s active and work on enemy units it goes to might tree (dryad lullaby cast on enemy units and is might/heroism, summon thorn mind/glory, elven song is magic/wisdom it`s basically battle cry spell for elves). Some abilities i`m not sure where to put : demonolog tread of life is dmg ability against enemy unit but it revives ally so might or mind, alchemist trowing potions are all like spells but dmg enemy so might or magic , and some others.
My question to you is : Where in your HoMM3 mod files is reference how to unlock human units abilities with heroism skill on 1/2/3 lvl ???

To do so, just look at one of the units I mention above, and you'll see a parameter called "require_skill" and you can update their skills in their ATOM file to require a certain skill and level. Note, though, that if you do this, then the enemy units won't have that skill at all. There's a way around this in theory, but it is complex and you'd have to mess with the LUA files...

Originally Posted by MattCaspermeyer

I'm going to experiment with what item type to make them - I'd like to make them a combined regalia / artifact item, but that didn't seem to work. So I can either just make them artifacts or maybe I'll consider them like the metamorph item and they can fit in any slot. We'll see - if I can't figure out how to make them regalia / artifact, then I'll probably make them metamorphic during the early alpha development to aid in checking out their bonuses, etc and then just make them artifacts at the end. Unfortunately, there are only 4 artifact slots max right now, and for some class / companion combinations you might only get 1 or 2 slots - the Warrior and Paladin only have 1 artifact slot. I may also consider making them other item types based on their HOMM3 hero class (i.e. maybe Knights are Shields or Armor).

Well, what do you know - I *can* make them Artifact / Regalia! So this part is now working!

I got the pictures implemented and am now working on bringing in the item description labels, etc.

I'll have to check the Artifact / Regalia slots of the hero classes and companion and see what the max Tome slots would be. With Mage and Elenhel you get 5 slots...

/C\/C\