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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted April 02, 2016 03:16 PM |
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Quote: Changing the skill descriptions on the skill wheel require usage of GIMP with the DDS plugin. I can give you the source file and all you would need to do (for each of the ~250 descriptions, lol) change the text in the textbox and export as dds, and then overwrite the existing dds.
??? Are you aware if you want to add the descriptions ingame this way you shouldn't add text as pictures, in fact you can just link to the already existing skill descriptions like how it was done on the 3.01 skillwheel, which would immediately make use of localized txt.pak's as well. This should also increase performance.
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MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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Belisarius
Promising
Known Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 03:26 PM |
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magnomagus said: ...in fact you can just link to the already existing skill descriptions like how it was done on the 3.01 skillwheel, which would immediately make use of localized txt.pak's as well. This should also increase performance.
Also by using links, skill description text can be changed in future (for lets say balance purpose changes), without the need to update the skillwheel pictures.
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 03:40 PM |
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magnomagus said:
Quote: Changing the skill descriptions on the skill wheel require usage of GIMP with the DDS plugin. I can give you the source file and all you would need to do (for each of the ~250 descriptions, lol) change the text in the textbox and export as dds, and then overwrite the existing dds.
??? Are you aware if you want to add the descriptions ingame this way you shouldn't add text as pictures, in fact you can just link to the already existing skill descriptions like how it was done on the 3.01 skillwheel, which would immediately make use of localized txt.pak's as well. This should also increase performance.
Can I change the font type and size in any way I need?
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 05:01 PM |
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Unless there is a "tiny" text size, Azard's approach in SkillWheel 3.0.2 will not work for me. The amount of text I have to deal with (thanks magno ) is huge, compared to short descriptions in the vanilla game. I'm not sure even "tiny" text size would work, even if it exists. Does it exist really?
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted April 02, 2016 05:29 PM |
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You may be right I had not really thought about that issue, a different design is probably needed to fit the txt that way.
In the old skillwheel mod UI/Doc/Skills/Description the desc textview xdb files link to a textformat file that starts with the indication <small>, that is probably what makes the txt small.
but your method may be easier to make, in any case the decision is yours...
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MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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dredknight
Honorable
Supreme Hero
disrupting the moding industry
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posted April 02, 2016 05:55 PM |
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Here is something from the facebook fans.
http://www.tawerna.biz/pobierz_plik_90_nowe-areny.html
Mod that introduces new battlegrounds design.
Can you use them?
@Belisarius on the Necropolis video at 1:11-1:13 mark you have spelling error on Skeletons and Skeleton archers ("Sceletons").
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sayke
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 02, 2016 06:49 PM |
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Edited by sayke at 19:12, 02 Apr 2016.
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First off, this is awesome. The skillwheel discussion is great and I really look forward to seeing and using it! It looks fantastic =D
I've been playing with Sylvan/Wyngaal on Ultima ARMG maps generated with a consistent random seed (8), so I can control the output, repeatably test hypotheses, and adjust difficulty systematically. I also play with 8 skills, a 25% chance of neutral heroes to keep it interesting, and an AI rush discount because the AIs need the help. I think this makes for the ultimate H5 game. Here are some findings, for whatever they're worth:
* On Heroic difficulty with Hard Monsters, neutral stacks quickly stopped presenting a challenge to me. They also didn't have very many high-level monsters. The Academy, Haven, Dwarven, Inferno and Dungeon AIs seemed to work quite well, but Stronghold was quite weak, and Necropolis never got past one town. Also, the AIs took a very long time to consolidate their starting zones, preferring instead to head out into treasure zones instead of, say, getting all their mines and outposts back at home, and developing their core 3 towns.
* On Impossible difficulty with Very Hard monsters, neutral stacks were too hard by default. I couldn't even get my non-wood/ore mines. I would just get wrecked. The AIs were also just trapped. They couldn't take on any stacks and would just sit there. However, the presence of high-level monsters was fantastic... There were just too many of them.
* Keeping Impossible with Very Hard monsters, I then adjusted H55_NeutralStackSize to 0.5, and H55_BanksDifficulty to 1.5. This made banks awesome, and it's great having higher-level monsters be more common. Very Hard monsters + H55_BanksDifficulty = 1.5 is just great - all those buildings on the map now present a real challenge, even for my awesome Wyngaal build. However, Necropolis still didn't take any fights, didn't even get its mines properly, and got stuck in the early game. Most of the other AIs, though, didn't consolidate their starting zones at all, preferring instead to head out into treasure zones instead of securing their initial mines and outposts.
* In order to get the AIs to consolidate their starting zones, I was thinking to manually double (or triple?) gatekeeper strength at town exits, and maybe at zone borders generally. That would encourage consolidation and slow expansion. I think I can simplify doubling or tripling it by changing the Ultima map template so that the GuardStrength on all the connections is 4, or 5, or something, rather than the 2 it is currently.
* I note that GuardStrength is misspelled GuardStrenght in a whole bunch of files, including the Ultima template, but also in various things in MMH55-Data.pak. Is that on purpose? Is it breaking anything?
* Where would I go about manually tweaking the difficulty settings? I like the monster growth curve of Impossible difficulty, but I don't like the relentless cheating or scarce initial resources. Further, I suspect they may not be necessary if I can get the AI to consolidate in its starting zones with a higher connection GuardStrength. I'd like to create a Testing difficulty between Heroic and Impossible, and use it to experiment with connection GuardStrength.
* Do Necropolis AIs just generally suck, or is what I'm seeing anecdotal, and a normal result of the RMG etc?
* Is there a way to cloud-data test-engineer AI balance? Like, could we run 100 (or 1000, or 10000) games on AWS instances, with different randseeds 1-100, and just see what happens when the AI plays against itself? Can we collect stats (and graph) ingame strength and performance?
* How would I go about editing item effects? I feel like there are a bunch of items that nobody is actually going to use, and I want to experiment with them!
* When I cheated and gave myself a Tear of Asha to test its functionality, it didn't work. I walked into my starting town and nothing special happened. Is this to be expected? Is there a script event or something that should fire before being able to do that?
Again, thank you all for working on this, and especially @magnomagus, of course!! HoMM5.5 is basically the best thing ever =)
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zmudziak22
Supreme Hero
Heroes 3 Fan
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posted April 02, 2016 07:20 PM |
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Maybe Tear of Asha is disabled to build even if you get this by cheats.
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Gidoza
Famous Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 07:31 PM |
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Need Help Understanding
Allright, I'm a wee bit confused here. I'm trying to understand what Heroes 5.5 actually is, because the description and vision seem rather generic to me and don't really answer any of the questions I'm after...
1. Is the AI in Heroes 5.5 any better than the AI Quantomas made for the standard Heroes 5?
2. Is Heroes 5.5 rebuilding the game from scratch, OR is it a simple balance patch to fix things?
3. Is it more graphics and production-related, or game-related?
I guess what I'm looking for is whether if I get and play Heroes 5.5, that it would be essentially Heroes 5 *without improvements* barring needed balance changes. I want to know if I'm actually playing the same game, or something different.
Thanks!
-Gidoza
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dredknight
Honorable
Supreme Hero
disrupting the moding industry
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posted April 02, 2016 07:47 PM |
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sayke said:
* On Impossible difficulty with Very Hard monsters, neutral stacks were too hard by default. I couldn't even get my non-wood/ore mines. I would just get wrecked. The AIs were also just trapped. They couldn't take on any stacks and would just sit there. However, the presence of high-level monsters was fantastic... There were just too many of them.
The idea is not to grind your mines on week 1-2 but be on the verge of extinction every single day. With very hard and impossible you need to chose your battles very carefully.
This is how we usually play the game in PvP actually.
If anyone is keen for a game just now let me know. ;D
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sayke
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 02, 2016 07:48 PM |
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Gidoza said:
1. Is the AI in Heroes 5.5 any better than the AI Quantomas made for the standard Heroes 5?
2. Is Heroes 5.5 rebuilding the game from scratch, OR is it a simple balance patch to fix things?
3. Is it more graphics and production-related, or game-related?
1) It uses the Quantomas AI, but it performs better because of balance changes and feature additions.
2) It's not from scratch. Think of it as an unofficial expansion pack.
3) It adds a ton of new features, both graphically and gameplay-wise, as well as fixing bugs.
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sayke
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 02, 2016 07:58 PM |
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Edited by sayke at 20:09, 02 Apr 2016.
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dredknight said:
The idea is not to grind your mines on week 1-2 but be on the verge of extinction every single day. With very hard and impossible you need to chose your battles very carefully.
This is how we usually play the game in PvP actually.
If anyone is keen for a game just now let me know. ;D
Dude that's awesome =) It sounds hard but fun! I'm more focused on balancing Ultima games against the AI for now, though. I'm coaxing it to be as strong as I can, all the way through mid- and late-game, while minimizing cheating. I want to help create the conditions for an absolutely epic game, every time, in which the AIs are tough and will smoke you - early, middle, or late, depending on when they find you.
I would also like to set them up to focus on consolidating their home zones, so they don't get stuck without all their mines and dwellings, etc. I think they'll perform better.
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted April 02, 2016 08:17 PM |
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@TheSayke: I will come back later to some points, for now about AI: take in mind that you can make impossible high resource in RMG by setting resources setting to max, there will be so many free resources in start areas its effectively the same thing. late game zones are not affected.
@Gidoza: The AI from 5.5 is the same as 31j, but you can optionally activate AI-cheating with makes it a lot harder. The Ai can also use some new features such as optional towbn conversion and I also restored some missing script functions and workaround fixes for issues between 31j and the H5 script functions in campaigns and scenarios.
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MMH5.5 Downloads | MMH5.5 Translations | MMH5.5 FAQ
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Belisarius
Promising
Known Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 08:27 PM |
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ty Dredknight
Necropolis video with proper spelling for Skeletons and Skeleton Archers: MMH5.5 Necropolis Heroes & Classes
@sayke: I support your quest:
".....I'm more focused on balancing Ultima games against the AI for now, though. I'm coaxing it to be as strong as I can, all the way through mid- and late-game, while minimizing cheating. I want to help create the conditions for an absolutely epic game, every time, in which the AIs are tough and will smoke you - early, middle, or late, depending on when they find you."
Let me give you my observation on this subject:
I don't think that making the game settings harder has anything to do with competitive AI game-play. Harder settings are just that = harder settings, and it drives the game in direction of generically being harder. Not more interesting.
What I am really interested is finding the right settings for a long, long, epic clash with the AI on Ultima maps. Not quite for the game to be impossibly hard from start, but for it (AI) to be as competitive as possible. All the way, from start to the very end. Lets say its 14th month, only one AI left in the game, controlling 2-3 towns. And somehow AI still manages to make a final stand, a glorious hard final battle, or maybe to even turn the tide around.
In my observation, what AI lacks is that very long game push. So I think it needs some "help" in the end game. I see that "help" like giving the AI bonus depending on town numbers that player controls, compared to number of towns that AI controls:
Number of Player controlled towns = a.
Number of AI controlled towns = b.
as long as b >= a than: no end game boost for AI.
if b < a than: end game boost for AI. boost will be proportional with the difference in numbers of towns. boost will happen regularly on each AI turn.
I am playing with @H55_KillMe(x); console command. Which makes all AI to form alliance against player "x" (me).
From my experience, Necropolis AI is very strong on other types of maps, like Stairs for example. So it does depend on the map.
Barbs AI used to be somewhat weaker (imo), but with some changes that were made to shatter magic, I think they are just fine.
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Gidoza
Famous Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 08:30 PM |
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sayke said:
Gidoza said:
1. Is the AI in Heroes 5.5 any better than the AI Quantomas made for the standard Heroes 5?
2. Is Heroes 5.5 rebuilding the game from scratch, OR is it a simple balance patch to fix things?
3. Is it more graphics and production-related, or game-related?
1) It uses the Quantomas AI, but it performs better because of balance changes and feature additions.
2) It's not from scratch. Think of it as an unofficial expansion pack.
3) It adds a ton of new features, both graphically and gameplay-wise, as well as fixing bugs.
Ah ok, I see. I think in that case I won't play H5.5. I just want a balanced Heroes 5 via community effort, not new features.
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted April 02, 2016 08:34 PM |
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sayke
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 02, 2016 08:53 PM |
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Edited by sayke at 22:11, 02 Apr 2016.
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Gidoza said: I just want a balanced Heroes 5 via community effort, not new features.
Heroes 5.5 is wayyyyyy better - plain H5 seems weirdly simple to me now, besides being all buggy, but do what you want =D
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rottenvenetic
Known Hero
Derusticated
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posted April 02, 2016 08:55 PM |
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Emptied Inferno
Sorry to cut in, but I've just encountered a slight problem with an Inferno AI player that just abandoned its (probably) main town:
Orange had Grok there with an army rated Challenging against my main (Ingvar) who sort of barged in blindly through a 2-way portal and freed Yrbeth from that prison.
Not being particularly in need of a Dungeon hero, I sent her on the road to explore, and she passed through another 2-way.
After I ended my turn, Grok set off after her with all his army - didn't quite catch her, either (If you look carefully where I circled with green on the minimap you can see the orange flag under my red) - leaving what I am pretty sure is Orange's main town completely undefended! And you know there's no way Grok can get the town back if my bunch of dwarves squat in it; I have 22 hp on each mountain guard and a lot of them.
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In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted April 02, 2016 09:48 PM |
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Edited by thGryphn at 21:50, 02 Apr 2016.
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magnomagus said: You may be right I had not really thought about that issue, a different design is probably needed to fit the txt that way.
In the old skillwheel mod UI/Doc/Skills/Description the desc textview xdb files link to a textformat file that starts with the indication <small>, that is probably what makes the txt small.
but your method may be easier to make, in any case the decision is yours...
HAHA! I solved the problem
I made the game display very nice small sans fonts, so even the longest description (the one you see on the pic) fits nicely, even better than what you see there!
The implication of this is huge:
1) I'll be able to keep all descriptions in tiny text files and save from development time.
2) It will be infinitely easier to change any descriptions in the future.
3) The skill wheel will run much faster, especially in the Level-Up box.
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rottenvenetic
Known Hero
Derusticated
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posted April 02, 2016 11:54 PM |
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Regarding my post above, turns out Grok wasn't all that challenging, I wrecked him easily enough.
Still, he would've done a lot more harm if he stayed in a town.
I think I'm best served generating maps with Medium monsters, not Strong, and at Impossible difficulty.
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In the darkness, a blind man is the best guide; in an age of madness, look to the madman to lead the way.
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