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Heroes Community > Heroes 3.5 - WoG and Beyond > Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Announcements, Questions, Features
Thread: [Official Thread] HoMM 3: Horn of the Abyss - Announcements, Questions, Features This Super Thread is 548 pages long: 1 70 140 ... 201 202 203 204 205 ... 210 280 350 420 490 548 · «PREV / NEXT»
Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 02, 2016 04:56 PM

Wait, I guess I am misinterpreting the bonus then. His specialty says it boosts attack and defense for every level above the first; at level 30, wouldn't that bonus then be +29/+29?

I thought you meant the base ATK and DEF values that a Hero gains on levelups, not those granted specifically due to their creature specialty for that particular creature.
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P4R4D0X0N
P4R4D0X0N


Famous Hero
posted August 02, 2016 06:18 PM
Edited by P4R4D0X0N at 18:21, 02 Aug 2016.

phoenix4ever said:
Regarding Galthran I just wanna say I did some excessive testing regarding creature specialists and Galthran came out the very best!
I tested all creature specialists at level 30 and Galthran got +8 attack and +6 defense = 14 points. The other Death Knights all got +4 attack and +4 defense, so Galthran is clearly better than them, also because of Necromancy, so I kinda understand why he is banned now.
I wonder why Galthran gets so much bonus in addition to necromancy...
Still not sure he is better than Isra, Vidomina and Thant though...

Regarding skill specialists Drakon came in at number 2 with 13 points and Shakti and Ufretin came in at number 3 with 11 points.

The worst creature specialist is Jabarkas, giving only +4 attack and +2 defense = 6 points, makes him kinda hard to recommend.



As for Isra and Vidomina... in HotA they got quite a big boost since necromancy is 1/2 but their 5% trigger is unaffected. Also you only can make a comparison if you use the same hero type (Death Knight)every other class gets different results, Barbarian = 55% chance for AT <10, Dead Knight only 30% <10. Rest was already described... you have also to compare lvl1 creatures (this means only Ignatius, Shakti, Drakon ufretin is lvl2).

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potmdehex
potmdehex


Known Hero
professional ERM™ scripter
posted August 02, 2016 06:20 PM
Edited by potmdehex at 18:33, 02 Aug 2016.

Cip016 said:
how can i convert a wog map into a hota map ??

1. Decompress the map using e.g 7-zip (right click the h3m in explorer ->7-zip->Extract Here).

2. Open the extracted map in any hex editor and change the first 4 bytes from 33 00 00 00 to 1C 00 00 00.

The map is now a SoD map (no need to re-compress it, both the map editor and the game handle uncompressed maps).

3. Open the map in HotA map editor and save it.

The map is now a HotA map.

Note that you will have problems if you had WoG objects on it.

Quote:
What's the roadblock you guys have run into? Can you give any info about it?

I'm not speaking for HotA team when I say this but by far the most common thing for skilled modders is not any technical/practical issue itself but just getting enough time to prioritize it with everything else in life.

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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted August 02, 2016 06:33 PM
Edited by phoenix4ever at 18:35, 02 Aug 2016.

Maurice said:
Wait, I guess I am misinterpreting the bonus then. His specialty says it boosts attack and defense for every level above the first; at level 30, wouldn't that bonus then be +29/+29?

I thought you meant the base ATK and DEF values that a Hero gains on levelups, not those granted specifically due to their creature specialty for that particular creature.


Not trying to be degrading here, but I assume you know how creature specialists work? In Galthrans case he might get attack or defense at level up, but not both attack and defense and not at every level, that would be incredibly OP.

@Paradoxon
Well if we compare the level 1 specialists Galthran is the best, Drakon second best and Ignatius the worst.
For level 2 Ufretin is best, Tyraxor and Piquedram second best and Valeska, Calh and Straker are worst.
Yeah I actually find Isra and Vidomina even better in HotA, since they will take much longer to reach 100% necromancy, which Galthran also could achieve pretty easy in RoE-SoD. So even though he gets the best stats as a creature specialist, I'm not sure he is the best Necropolis hero...    

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 02, 2016 10:17 PM
Edited by Maurice at 22:21, 02 Aug 2016.

phoenix4ever said:
Not trying to be degrading here, but I assume you know how creature specialists work?


Nope, I didn't, since the base game isn't very descriptive about what the bonus really is. I just created a test map of my own to check some numbers and found the general formula they applied. I also found the same bug with Galthran's specialty that you already noticed, which seems to apply the bonus from the base Skeletons to the Skeleton Warriors too, instead of deriving the bonus from the Skeleton Warriors to begin with. At level 30, that gives a difference of about 2 points of ATT and DEF short of what they should have.

Anyway:

Creature Total ATT = Creature Base ATT + Creature Base ATT * { 5 * ( [ Hero Level ] / [ Creature Tier ] ) / 100 } + Hero ATT

Creature Total DEF = Creature Base DEF + Creature Base DEF * { 5 * ( [ Hero Level ] / [ Creature Tier ] ) / 100 } + Hero DEF

The computed value between { } is rounded up for the final summation.

For the Skeleton case I mentioned, the second mention of Creature Base ATT and DEF of the Skeleton Warriors in the formula above seems to stem from the Skeleton instead. Skeletons have a base ATT of 5 and DEF of 4, while the Skeleton Warrior has 6 ATT and 6 DEF. Substituting yields the following for the Skeleton case:

Skeleton ATT = 5 + 5 * { 5 ( [ Galthran's level ] / [ 1 ] ) / 100 } + Galthran's ATT
Skeleton DEF = 4 + 4 * { 5 ( [ Galthran's level ] / [ 1 ] ) / 100 } + Galthran's DEF

Skeleton ATT = 6 + 5 * { 5 ( [ Galthran's level ] / [ 1 ] ) / 100 } + Galthran's ATT
Skeleton DEF = 6 + 4 * { 5 ( [ Galthran's level ] / [ 1 ] ) / 100 } + Galthran's DEF

I've bolded the bugged values, which should be 6 in both cases. For other creature specialists that I checked, Piquedram and Broghild, the formula seems correct - with the notion that Wyverns and Wyvern Monarchs both have an ATT and DEF of 14, so a bug there is masked by the similarity between the base and upgrade .

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Cip016
Cip016

Tavern Dweller
posted August 02, 2016 10:53 PM

potmdehex said:
Cip016 said:
how can i convert a wog map into a hota map ??

1. Decompress the map using e.g 7-zip (right click the h3m in explorer ->7-zip->Extract Here).

2. Open the extracted map in any hex editor and change the first 4 bytes from 33 00 00 00 to 1C 00 00 00.

The map is now a SoD map (no need to re-compress it, both the map editor and the game handle uncompressed maps).

3. Open the map in HotA map editor and save it.

The map is now a HotA map.

Note that you will have problems if you had WoG objects on it.

Quote:
What's the roadblock you guys have run into? Can you give any info about it?

I'm not speaking for HotA team when I say this but by far the most common thing for skilled modders is not any technical/practical issue itself but just getting enough time to prioritize it with everything else in life.




tkx i will try. my map does have a lot of wog objects. hope i dont have too much problems.
i will try to eliminate those objects from the map first. before doing your tip.
tks again
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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted August 02, 2016 11:00 PM
Edited by phoenix4ever at 23:02, 02 Aug 2016.

@Maurice are you saying the bug with Galthran is that it adds the base attack (+4) and base defense (+5) of skeletons in addition to the other bonus? In that case that is I bug, I wonder if HotA Crew is able to fix it or if they just won't bother with Galthran at all?
Did you find other bugs related to creature specialists?
The math for them is a little complicated and time consuming to work out, but Galthran gets too much bonus in any case.

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 02, 2016 11:04 PM

Why do you think his bonus is too large? He boosts a Tier 1 creature after all .

As for the creature specialists, I am still checking them out. Considering their number, I didn't yet get very far. I gathered data on the 3 "good" factions so far, 16 specialists in all. Have yet to pull those figures through the mill to see if they hold up.

I assume the bonus ATT and DEF to Skeleton Warriors is simply a copy-paste error by the original developers, where they forgot to point to the Skeleton Warrior base ATT and DEF instead of the Skeleton. Should be simple to fix, though. Will post an overview once I've analysed all creature specialists, but that may take a bit.

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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted August 03, 2016 12:34 AM
Edited by phoenix4ever at 10:34, 03 Aug 2016.

Cool if you wanna work through all the creature specialists like that, I'm not sure I would bother to do that.
Yeah you might be right that they picked Skeleton Warriors instead of Skeletons and then it had to happen on the creature which gets tons of units from necromancy already.    

Edit: Actually I don't think there is a bug with Galthran at all, it's because of skeletons "high" stats, they have the highest stats amongst level 1 units (except for pikemen, but there is no specialist for them) therefore the specialist also gets the highest bonus.
If you compare with Cassiopeia (nymphs) she also gets +8 attack at level 30 because nymphs have 5 in attack, but they only get +3 defense, because they have only 2 in defense.

If Galthran is OP it's because skeletons have too high stats, something which should be easy to fix or Galthran can just stay banned...  

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 03, 2016 10:43 PM
Edited by Maurice at 22:45, 03 Aug 2016.

After some more digging and comparing data between various heroes, as well as trying a few different forms, I think I've found the formula's as used, including rounding and truncating.

Total ATT = Base ATT + Hero ATT + ROUND-UP [ Base ATT * 5 * TRUNC [ Hero Level / Creature Tier ] / 100 ]

Total DEF = Base DEF + Hero DEF + ROUND-UP [ Base DEF * 5 * TRUNC [ Hero Level / Creature Tier ] / 100 ]

This matches for all Heroes, except two: Alkin (Gorgons) and Moandor (Liches). For all other creature specialists (44 besides those 2, if I can still count - I've excluded the Conflux ones as they only give a static bonus), the values match at level 30 between those observed ingame and those calculated through the above two formula's.

For Alkin, the bonus damage of the base Gorgon falls short by 1 and there's no way I can make that one match. At level 30, the Gorgons get exactly 30% bonus damage from Alkin (Tier 5, so Alkin boosts it 5% * 30/5 = 5% * 6 = 30%) and with an ATT of 10, that comes down to +3. Ingame shows +4, however. The value for the Mighty Gorgon is correct.

Something similar happens with the DEF of Liches from Moandor, also Tier 5 and also a base value of 10. By virtue of being the same calculation, the bonus should be +3 but is +4 ingame. This applies to both the basic Liches and the Power Liches.

One thing worth noting is that all upgraded creatures seem to get bonus to ATT and DEF based on the base ATT and DEF of the unupgraded creatures. This seems rather counter intuitive to me. The lower Tier the creature, the higher the relative difference between the base ATT and DEF of the base and the upgraded version - and hence, the bigger the gap between the calculated ATT and DEF based on the upgraded base values and the ones seen ingame. Taking Ignatius with his Imps, for instance, shows a deficit of 3 ATT and 1 DEF at level 30 compared to when the game had taken the upgraded ATT and DEF instead.

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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted August 03, 2016 11:29 PM

Well I reached the same conclusion, but you explained it in a much more technical and advanced manner.
Yes the bonus is calculated from the non upgraded creatures, no matter if they are applied to upgraded or not, a little weird if you ask me, but maybe they where afraid creature specialists would be overpowered?...

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 04, 2016 12:18 AM

I'm not sure. Given how counter-intuitive it seems, I rather think it's an oversight or a copy-paste error. Could it be they initially developed the creature specialists and then designed the upgrades? Or are the values of the statistics of each upgrade simply an offset from the base creature? I don't know the internal data structure on that one.

Alkin and Moander at least follow the TRUNC [ Level / Tier ] format, as jumps in bonus stats occur every 5 levels as you would assume for Tier 5 creatures. For a stat value of 10 this means you should see a jump in that value every 10 levels (as you need two 5% jumps to get an increase on a base value of 10 by +1).

However, if you make the table, you'll see that at level 30 and 60, the increase happens one step too soon, the jump should occur at level 35 and 65 instead. This is what I noticed ingame with the base Gorgon ATT bonus as well as Lich and Power Lich DEF bonus:

Level 01: +0
Level 05: +1
Level 10: +1
Level 15: +2
Level 20: +2
Level 25: +3
Level 30: +4
Level 35: +4
Level 40: +4
Level 45: +5
Level 50: +5
Level 55: +6
Level 60: +7

The two bolded values are oddballs in this otherwise structured list, they're too high by 1 point at those levels. Similar effects may occur with other creature specialists, I didn't go into detail on those yet. I'll see if I can analyse those too in a bit more detail.

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Markham
Markham

Tavern Dweller
posted August 04, 2016 01:02 AM

Hi! My first post.

@nik312 I confirm the HotA bug reported by Maurice. The creature specialists' bonus is always calculated from unupgraded creatures.
In normal HoMM3, there is no such bug - the bonus for upgraded creatures is calculated from upgraded creature's base ATT and DEF.
Tested with level 30 Ignatius and Galthran.

@Maurice The tables of creature specialist bonuses have already been calculated by Hellburn and Dragonthan:
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39057
the link in the first post of that thread (found by searching "specialists" in this forum).
As can be seen, the bonuses are different for unupgraded and upgraded creatures, since they were found for original HoMM3.

The formula for the creature specialists is given in the file "Tribute to Strategists":
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=27539
the link in the first post of that thread, page 22 of the file.
"A/D_new = RoundUp {A/D_base * [1 + 0.05 * RoundDown (Hero level / Unit level)]}"

The rounding issue for Gorgons and Liches is not discussed there. I would guess this is because of "HoMM3 rounding".
What I mean is:
* in mathematics, rounding up means finding the smallest integer that exceeds or equals your number,
* in HoMM3, rounding up means finding the smallest integer that exceeds your number.
This is similar to the armorer bug in damage calculations.
http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=11801&PID=238146#focus
csamri: "... in heroes 3, rounding down means the largest integer below your number. ..."

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phoenix4ever
phoenix4ever


Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
posted August 04, 2016 08:13 AM
Edited by phoenix4ever at 08:22, 04 Aug 2016.

@Maurice regarding Alkin and Moandor the values are probably just rounded up for some reason, I bet you would find other specialists where the same thing happens at other levels.
But one thing surprised me in a test:
Sorsha, Catherine and Roland all specialise in swordsmen so you would assume they get the same bonus right?, they don't. Sorsha and Catherine gets +4 att & +5 def, but Roland gets +5 att & +5 defense at level 30...

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Maurice
Maurice

Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
posted August 04, 2016 10:03 AM
Edited by Maurice at 10:16, 04 Aug 2016.

Hey Markham, thanks for your contribution! . I will check those links for sure, as I didn't see them before now.

Phoenix, I didn't check special campaign Heroes as I didn't realise that there were creature specialists among those.

Edit: The google doc with all the stats is one I've seen before but then with regards to some other stats. The formula stated there is indeed the one I also found.

It's interesting to see a difference between H3 SoD and H3 HotA; I did all my checks with HotA, so it's going to be interesting to see if it's indeed different in H3 SoD. Will check tonight if I have time.
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Popcioslav
Popcioslav


Hired Hero
The best H4 unit
posted August 11, 2016 04:32 PM
Edited by Popcioslav at 19:25, 11 Aug 2016.

Okay, hi everyone! Popcioslav here. Pardon my broken Engrish.
Kinda' new to this site, despite playing every game in the series including this expansion. Decided to share my overall thoughts both regarding HotA, in the past, in the present and what should happen in the future as well as reply to some of the people here.

First thing being of course how much awesome and high quality this expansion is. I know it's impossible to actually make dreams of Heroes fan come true, but HotA does deliver.

I do think Cove fits the overall atmosphere of the game. I do love the campaigns and despite not being able to finish the second one, the third is still considered by me to be one of my favorites, together with some of the stuff in Heroes 4. The writing is pretty neat and honestly, Docent Picolan did great job not only with my music, but also sound effects

The thing I spend most of my free time on was strangely enough, Map Editor. Newly added objects with each patch helps this expansion stay fresh and also as one of the best ways to play Heroes 3. I've worked on one map even more than a year and people seem to like it weirdly enough:
http://www.maps4heroes.com/forum/opinions.php?map_id=1349&game=3
(speaking of, is there any way to send a map to the HotA creators so they could include them in normal game without downloading? I have lots of free time and I would love to make new maps for these awesome creators)

I have difficulties now with playing vanilla given how much of the stuff got fixed here.

Too bad we will possibly never get another town - even if I've seen Forge in making and I'm still eagerly waiting, it's safe to say HotA already did it's job. Too bad it will be mostly known for some people to 'just some mod', rather than high quality unnoficial fanmade expansion.



However there are few things that need adressing.

@ArchDruid
ArchDruid said:

HotA IMO doesn't need any more balancing. Anyone, who complain about unbalance: What do you want, 9 towns which are totally the same?
It's good to have different factions to play with and make the whole game a bit easier or more difficult, depending on who did you choose.

ArchDruid said:

Different factions, different difficulties! That's why this game is so perfect.  

No. Just no.

You don't seem to get an issue. Yes, variaty is important.
No one's bashing the game for being too varied.

But you can still make the game varied, give different faction different experience and still keep it balanced enough so it's not experience ruining.

Biggest problem with Heroes 3 as many people pointed it out is that your army, strategy etc. didn't even matter at some points. You've got a certain spell? You won. You've got a certain skill? You won. You've got on certain unit? You won.

It changes this entire huge and magical game into a checklist. Credit given when needed, at least other games in the franchise, whatever you agree that they've lost something or not, didn't have a loopholes that made the game broken. Heroes 3 for all the praise from fans, sadly did.

This is why, even though HotA focuses more on adding than changing, I wish it did indeed do something to the balance of the game. I don't even mean that 'they nerf everything that was broken'. As many pointed that out, even just making useless skills viable, would make the game more varied, there would be more ways to deal with these black holes of the game design.

That being said, I know community of M&M series well and no matter what you do, there always will be complaints from people saying that 'Changing somethin in the original Heroes 3 - even if for better - is a sin.



One another thing I would love to see improved is the AI. It's bad. Like really bad. I don't mean that because I've played this game on any difficulty as a child, but because just like with some bigger balance issues, it's something that could be easily fixed I feel. No really, just make it so AI doesn't have some fetish or something for swimming and portal travelling.

'AI really likes to swim'


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Safewood
Safewood

Tavern Dweller
posted August 17, 2016 07:05 AM
Edited by Safewood at 07:45, 17 Aug 2016.

I read somewhere that the HotA team reverse-engineered the game, but I'm wondering how much can be changed. Would it be possible to make a server-client model, where everything but player input is server-sided? The server is the host, while the players are the clients. That way, players can't modify the game or check the map.

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Warmonger
Warmonger


Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
posted August 17, 2016 08:22 AM
Edited by Warmonger at 08:23, 17 Aug 2016.

Safewood said:
I read somewhere that the HotA team reverse-engineered the game, but I'm wondering how much can be changed. Would it be possible to make a server-client model, where everything but player input is server-sided? The server is the host, while the players are the clients. That way, players can't modify the game or check the map.

I think you misunderstood "reverse engineering" by far.

Client-server model is what VCMI has, only because it was written from scratch like that.
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hippox89
hippox89


Famous Hero
posted August 17, 2016 09:08 AM

Safewood said:
I read somewhere that the HotA team reverse-engineered the game, but I'm wondering how much can be changed. Would it be possible to make a server-client model, where everything but player input is server-sided? The server is the host, while the players are the clients. That way, players can't modify the game or check the map.


Use HD mod with HD+. Turn on password protection and type a strong password when creating a map. The map generated will be encrypted for all players. This will at least go a long way of solving your issue.

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Safewood
Safewood

Tavern Dweller
posted August 17, 2016 09:10 AM
Edited by Safewood at 09:19, 17 Aug 2016.

Warmonger said:
Client-server model is what VCMI has, only because it was written from scratch like that.

It's been years since I last visited this site and had completely forgot about VCMI. Is it going to have a client-server model, or does it already have it?

hippox89 said:
Use HD mod with HD+. Turn on password protection and type a strong password when creating a map. The map generated will be encrypted for all players. This will at least go a long way of solving your issue.

True, except for all the other modifications you can do that would be virtually impossible to catch with save games, such as hero invites, creatures in combat, etc.

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