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

[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

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[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

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[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...

[MattCaspermeyer]

Well, it looks like with AP / CW there are a lot fewer counter resources available for creating new counters.

Once again I'm saddled with commenting out counters that aren't currently being used since there are not enough counter resources for all of them when starting a new game.

So it is looking like it is going to be more and more of a manual labor nightmare to implement the mod as intended and the more this leans towards some sort of automatic implementation.

Nonetheless, I'm going to see how this manual process goes.

So you'll find that when you get a tome, you're going to have to comment out any sp_... counters in the corresponding file to enable that bonus to work.

This is about all I can do right now until I figure out how to dynamically generate the tomes and their counter bonuses...

Matt

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