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Heroes Community > Heroes 4 - Lands of Axeoth > Thread: Heroes 4 Modding Revisited
Thread: Heroes 4 Modding Revisited This thread is 17 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 · «PREV / NEXT»
NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 11, 2021 07:20 AM

Karmakeld, Iliveinabox, etc., any ideas on how to assign working projectiles to creatures?

I got creatures to be ranged by editing their animation index file, table, and abilities (all three are necessary for it to work),

but even then, except for Magi (who seemed to have pre-coded a ranged attack with the default magic ball), my new creatures just shoot an "invisible" instant projectile.

That's just visually underwhelming and not very intuitive (even if they do animate themselves), so I'm looking for any clues you might have found about missiles and ranged attacks connecting. You can see the effects for yourselves testing Earth Elementals and Mummies on the H4 ULTIMATE prerelease, as well as the (correctly working) ranged attacks of Magi.
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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 11, 2021 04:18 PM
Edited by iliveinabox05 at 16:19, 11 Jun 2021.

NimoStar said:
Karmakeld, Iliveinabox, etc., any ideas on how to assign working projectiles to creatures?

I got creatures to be ranged by editing their animation index file, table, and abilities (all three are necessary for it to work),

but even then, except for Magi (who seemed to have pre-coded a ranged attack with the default magic ball), my new creatures just shoot an "invisible" instant projectile.

That's just visually underwhelming and not very intuitive (even if they do animate themselves), so I'm looking for any clues you might have found about missiles and ranged attacks connecting. You can see the effects for yourselves testing Earth Elementals and Mummies on the H4 ULTIMATE prerelease, as well as the (correctly working) ranged attacks of Magi.


Not completely sure how to do this for something that didn't already have a projectile assigned to it.

I think the important files to look at are the combat_actor.missles, but right now those are some of the few files the resource editor can't open. They are slightly different than the format Namerutan documented for them.

Those have all the projectile combat actors, which somewhere should be what get assigned to the various shooters. It could be one of the unknown values in the combat actor files for the units themselves.

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karmakeld
karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted June 11, 2021 09:13 PM
Edited by karmakeld at 21:14, 11 Jun 2021.

Not at my pc, and havent look at that stuff for a while, but there should be some link that tells Archers to use Arrows,, Evil Eye using Laser beam etc. Isn't listed somehow in the actor sequence file?
Coz as iLiVe wrote, there's a section for the actor_missiles. Using Namerutans tool can display those.
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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 11, 2021 09:24 PM

Yeah so far I haven't been able to find that link. Somebody must have at some point? Doesn't seem like something that would have been hardcoded in the exe, but I guess that's possible as well.

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 11, 2021 10:18 PM
Edited by NimoStar at 00:07, 12 Jun 2021.

I used an hex code sector that seems to be intended specifically for projectiles, like if you open the sprite file the archer units have codes than the non-archer ones don't, and not in their anims, in their header. However, that didn't change anything.



Bild "2021-06-1117_09_27-hebtj0l.png" anzeigen.

(I still don't know what these exes encode exactly, but they are different in creatures, and you can see some difference with non-archer creatures)



Another point is that copying the missiles and classing this this way also has no effect:



(this was to give earth elemental the Cyclops rock)

Besides this, it is:
- Giving the ranged ability
- Adding shots in table
So, all that is not enough.

Could it be in the footer? Doesn't seem so. Elf footer looks almost as dull as conceivable. Cyclops is all zeroes. They are different so there is that.





Gargantuan has a projectile that looks like cyclops's, but its footer is not the same, so doubt it's related? Haven't expermienting with changing them. Making this H4D on the data folder has no effect so they always need to be packed.
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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 11, 2021 10:53 PM

I'll add this to my list of things to try to get figured out.

I think I actually saw something on the Equilibris forum about switching an Orc's axe with a Cyclops's boulder, so I'll see if I can find that again. Hoping it wasn't an exe modification.

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karmakeld
karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted June 12, 2021 12:18 AM
Edited by karmakeld at 00:22, 12 Jun 2021.

Well I've been looking in the following files:

- Creature.table: Contains no columns with any mention of Missile type. Just the "Shots" to tell if it's ranged.
- Creature Abilities table: just mentions the ability Ranged.

and none of the other tables or string files suggest any mentioning or reference to Missile type, so those seems to be ruled out.

I also didn't find any link to Missiles or Creature specific missile type, like Boulder in any of the Combat actor files. But looking at their strings in Namerutans tool, the Missiles are separate of any of the creatures combat actor files.

There is a section in the Exe files, around 00673d68 where thorn, spittle, spear, pebble, mana, magic fist, magic_arrow, life_force, ice_bolt, heavy_bolt, fire_bolt, fireball, chain_lightning, boulder, beam, arrow and armageddon appear. Most of these are named such under the Missile_actor_sequence.
Perhaps one could look with one of those decoder/link tools to find the link from there? That was the only place in the exe I was able to find the word Boulder.

Some of the Actor_Sequence.Missile(s) like Life Drain and Armageddon contains a "combat_actor.missile.armageddon at it's footer but the Creature Missiles doesn't seem to contain this footer info.
This seems to only be the case with the ones that only uses a non-directional named animations.

Okay, so under Combat_Actor, there's a Missile tab, featuring the various types of missiles. Eg. Axe links to the Orc_missile Actor Sequence files. So that's the combat spr or index file for the missiles. But still no Missile or Axe keyword is found in neither the Adv or Combat actor Orc file. As I wrote above, they're only found at 1 place in the game exe file.

So I searched for Beholder (Orc would just cause to many hits contain "orc" in it). There's only the Beholder_dwelling and the Beholder (creature) in the exe. Not Beholder_missile as in the Combat_actor.missile.beam.spr file.
So I'm not getting any further atm...
I think with this info you could easily change the Centaur's spear to become an Axe when thrown, but I don't really feel I'm any closer at being able to tell you how to add a ranged animation to non-ranged creatures like Earth Elementals.
Searching the word Ranged leads to a Combat_User_Action_Ranged and combat_action_ranged_attack. Dunno what actions these call.

So somehow the Combat_Actor.Orc file triggers the Combat_Actor.Missile.Axe file.
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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 12, 2021 12:22 AM

By just substituing graphics or anim indexes, you can easily change the type of the beam in already existing attacks. I had already done this in Greatest Mod to change the default magic into a lightning from a red glowy ball.

So yes, the real challenge is to get non-ranged creatures to use graphical ranged attacks.
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karmakeld
karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted June 12, 2021 12:25 AM

iliveinabox05 said:
I'll add this to my list of things to try to get figured out.

I think I actually saw something on the Equilibris forum about switching an Orc's axe with a Cyclops's boulder, so I'll see if I can find that again. Hoping it wasn't an exe modification.


As Nimo wrote... wouldn't bother go looking for that
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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 14, 2021 04:29 PM

There is another thing, and it is that the game actualy uses a creature with ranged but without projectile: The Medusa

This may give some info.
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boho
boho


Hired Hero
posted June 15, 2021 04:53 AM

So I’d like to tweak Quick Combat to help the AI out in a programmatic way instead of jumping through hoops with map-specific scripts. H4MS (and/or maybe H4API?) seems to be the tool for this since it should allow me to write a simple logger in a dll to narrow down the spots to watch.

Before I (try to) re-invent the wheel, has anyone already written a dll-injected logger for the purpose of reverse-engineering memory locations?

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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 16, 2021 07:05 PM

boho said:
So I’d like to tweak Quick Combat to help the AI out in a programmatic way instead of jumping through hoops with map-specific scripts. H4MS (and/or maybe H4API?) seems to be the tool for this since it should allow me to write a simple logger in a dll to narrow down the spots to watch.

Before I (try to) re-invent the wheel, has anyone already written a dll-injected logger for the purpose of reverse-engineering memory locations?


The map specific scripts have already been written, they just need to be applied to the map of your choice, but it would be cool to not have to add the scripts at all with the same result.

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Jagerfeld
Jagerfeld

Tavern Dweller
posted June 19, 2021 07:12 PM
Edited by Jagerfeld at 19:14, 19 Jun 2021.

Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum.
A few years ago I was playing homm 4 and was thinking how bad it was. I recently discovered the equilibrium mod and was quite interested that the game can be modified. Finished several campaigns, the game really sparkled with new colors.
Then I discovered this forum. You guys are awesome.
I dig deeper into the game resources with tools from the forum, looked at how everything was arranged there, but did not really understand anything.
I have a few questions.
1. Is it possible to add new buildings to the city? As I understand it, slots for buildings in cities are strictly prescribed. Is it possible to add new slots somehow?
2. Is it possible to add new properties to buildings. For example, doubling the creature growth for the castle?
3. Is it possible to add new creatures to the game? Draw a model, make sprites out of it, and somehow shove it into game resources?
4. Is it possible to change the contents of the battle location? Here I am more interested in changing the siege. It would be interesting to move the towers to where they should be - along the edges of the wall. And I also don't like the fact that the creatures are fighting through the wall. Maybe it would be possible to somehow create blocks of the wall, on which creatures can climb, like on towers, and from there fight the besiegers. As if the creatures are really on the walls.
So far, all the questions. Of course, I have a lot of ideas (or rather dreams), but I will not clutter up the topic too much.

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted June 19, 2021 08:29 PM

No you must code new game. In this game nothing is possible. Really we mod 1% of content. Next 2% is hard work and small efect. Simply unit recolloring is gigaproblem because its 1000 pictures or more. New music maybe 1 man can do correctly. Its simply mp3 changing! Big mods you can make in H3. H4 is only to repair. Its very bad made game.

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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 19, 2021 10:26 PM

Baronus said:
No you must code new game. In this game nothing is possible. Really we mod 1% of content. Next 2% is hard work and small efect. Simply unit recolloring is gigaproblem because its 1000 pictures or more. New music maybe 1 man can do correctly. Its simply mp3 changing! Big mods you can make in H3. H4 is only to repair. Its very bad made game.


Don't be so dramatic Baronus  It turns out that maybe the game isn't actually coded as badly as we thought, and might actually be reasonably well coded.

The main reason there hasn't been too much modding of H4 is because of the lower interest in the community. There is a much bigger pool of players for H3 where programmers and people to reverse the game can be found, which just isn't the case for H4.

I'm doing my best to keep an eye out for any programmer types that might be interested in H4 modding

Jagerfeld said:
Hello everyone, I'm new to this forum.
A few years ago I was playing homm 4 and was thinking how bad it was. I recently discovered the equilibrium mod and was quite interested that the game can be modified. Finished several campaigns, the game really sparkled with new colors.
Then I discovered this forum. You guys are awesome.
I dig deeper into the game resources with tools from the forum, looked at how everything was arranged there, but did not really understand anything.
I have a few questions.
1. Is it possible to add new buildings to the city? As I understand it, slots for buildings in cities are strictly prescribed. Is it possible to add new slots somehow?
2. Is it possible to add new properties to buildings. For example, doubling the creature growth for the castle?
3. Is it possible to add new creatures to the game? Draw a model, make sprites out of it, and somehow shove it into game resources?
4. Is it possible to change the contents of the battle location? Here I am more interested in changing the siege. It would be interesting to move the towers to where they should be - along the edges of the wall. And I also don't like the fact that the creatures are fighting through the wall. Maybe it would be possible to somehow create blocks of the wall, on which creatures can climb, like on towers, and from there fight the besiegers. As if the creatures are really on the walls.
So far, all the questions. Of course, I have a lot of ideas (or rather dreams), but I will not clutter up the topic too much.


First of all, welcome Jagerfeld! Always nice to see new folks around here with an interest in H4

1. Right now it is not possible to add new buildings. You can certainly reskin the current ones. You can add new building layers and animation to the resource files, but the game won't read them.

I haven't done too much research into this, so I don't for sure, but it's likely these are coded somewhere in the exe.

2. These are probably also in the exe, but maybe there's something in the tables resource files.

3. So, new creatures! At the moment, we can't add completely new creatures, but you can replace existing ones or reskin the existing ones.

If you have any modeling abilities and are interested in modding H4, send me a pm (HC Messenger at the top of the window).

4. The towers are movable by modifying the resource files. In fact, any object you see in the castle siege is movable (excluding the randomly placed landscape objects.

I've done a little work to try creating a nice easy way to view and edit locations with the H4 Resource Editor, but I still have some work to do to figure out how all of the various offsets are being applied when placing them in their locations.

Townscreens do have this nice feature though, since there is only one offset in this case.

The rest of the stuff you mention would require more digging and research to figure out. Adding objects and placing them in the siege could possibly be doable, but like I said, more research would be needed!

Again, glad to see you here, and hopefully you stick around!

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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 19, 2021 10:27 PM

boho said:
So I’d like to tweak Quick Combat to help the AI out in a programmatic way instead of jumping through hoops with map-specific scripts. H4MS (and/or maybe H4API?) seems to be the tool for this since it should allow me to write a simple logger in a dll to narrow down the spots to watch.

Before I (try to) re-invent the wheel, has anyone already written a dll-injected logger for the purpose of reverse-engineering memory locations?


Check your pm's

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted June 21, 2021 02:13 AM
Edited by NimoStar at 12:02, 21 Jun 2021.

Guys, I'm sure this was adressed in some moment, but Death citadel lacks a turret like other citadels have.

Does anyone have a fixed file with that changed?

In any case, I was hoping Equi had fixed that since many believe it's the "perfect balance mod with no mistakes" , but apparently this isn't the case. Their citadel keeps the same error.

Do I have to fix it myself?

PS: Nevermind, I think there is nowhere towers, and they appear only with castle. I was sure there was one shooting tower with Citadel. Perhaps, I will add one to each city.
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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 21, 2021 06:01 PM

Adding them should be pretty straight forward. I think it is the castle objects that have the objects and layout info in them. The offsets are a little strange, as they follow the battle grid, rather than up/down and left/right.

The resource editor doesn't have the ability to add the objects yet, but you can change the offsets to move them where you want.

I haven't gotten back around to figuring out the origin for all of the offsets, but I do plan to have a similar feature to the townscreen layout for the castle layout, where you can add or move objects around.

Just need to get that origin stuff figured out so I can place the objects in the correct location.

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Jagerfeld
Jagerfeld

Tavern Dweller
posted June 21, 2021 07:25 PM

iliveinabox05 said:
Adding them should be pretty straight forward. I think it is the castle objects that have the objects and layout info in them. The offsets are a little strange, as they follow the battle grid, rather than up/down and left/right.



How to find the right offset? Can I help you with something?

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iliveinabox05
iliveinabox05


Honorable
Famous Hero
posted June 21, 2021 07:56 PM

Jagerfeld said:
How to find the right offset? Can I help you with something?


Hi there again Jagerfeld

I can always use some help, as there is lots and lots to study and get implemented in the resource editor.

Would you be interested in helping me figure out where the origin point is for objects placed on the castle battle grid?

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