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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 20, 2016 05:36 AM |
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Water Mod Thread
Water Mod
Introduction:
Water mod is intended for creating a Heroess 3 related multiplayer interactive experience. The goal is to fine tune elements as to create a competitive game that relies on high amount of interaction.
While some people may feel that is not what heroes is about, the inspiration of this mod is based on my early experiences on multiplayer of Heroes 2 and Heroes 3. As it was before learning to abuse chaining and hero teleportation, and before the onslaught of closed maps and closed/rich random templates online.
I used to play in way more open maps which where full of towns. To have a clear example of what Iīm talking about take a look at Free for all map in the original CD of classic H3. A map that I played a lot with friends, and is built for this kind of experience.
Installation and usability:
Water Mod uses the Era 2 engine for scripting. It requires Heroes 3 Era 2 to work properly.
To install the Water Mod, just do it as with any other ERA Mod. Place it on the mod folder of heroes 3 and then enable it with the ERA mod manager.
While itīs not required to play. I highly recommend using the HD MOD for heroes. I canīt imagine playing without it anymore.
Water Mod is not compatible with most mods outside of Wog and quicker animations.
Maps included in the Water mod should not be Wogified.
Links:
Link to Era II. Era II Thread
Link to HD MOD. HD MOD HOMEPAGE
Link to Waterd Mod. Version 0.06 Waterd Mod 006
It contains two folders one called Water Mod and one called documentation The documentation folder just contains current documentation I have for the game (which will be improved with each version).
The second folder is the most important, called Water Mod. You need to add this folder to the Mods folder to be able to enable it. It contains the maps used for the Water Mod.
Current features:
 New Magic guild system: Spells do not longer are placed randomly in mage guilds. Now mage guilds are cheaper but come with no spells and players must pay resources to add spells to the mage guild. Different factions have different prices.
Memory Magic: Now heroes can only use each spell once per combat. (With the exception of Magic arrow).
Spellpower improved: Now Spellpower affects more effects, including the values of buffs and debuffs.
New Expert magic: Now Expert magic gives you access to mass enchantments, but enchantments cost x5 the regular spells. However heroes with expert magic can cast the spell as a single target during combat if so they desire.
Loyal heroes: Defeated heroes do not abandon the player and are still available at the tavern.
Hero chaining removed: When heroes meet, the one with more movement reduce itīs movement to match the hero with less movement. This prevent chain abuse and creatures travel at normal speed.
Automated army comparision: Players can Compare army with other heroes based on the gold value of the army, by simply right clicking on them.
Planned Features:
Improved information: I want to maximize the amount of information the game feedbacks to the players. Like the automatic army comparision feature. Other examples include accurate descriptions of spells, abilities and objects.
Improved interface: Right now some of the features are implemented just enough to be functional in a very crude way. It is planned for them to be more visually pleasant and easier to use.
Nullify hero teleportation abuse: Right now players can teleport heroes around the map by surrendering and then immediately buying the hero at any castle. It is intended for such action to be penalized in some way.
New adventure spells: I intend to create new adventure spells that help scouting and guarding mines.
Support for both custom maps and RMG templates: I intend there to be more than one map and for the mod to be playable in RMG templates customized to fit the water mod design goals.
Autobattles: Add an option where battle vs non players are automated while battle vs players are non automated.
Customized game screen and interface to fit Water Mod mood.
Improved AI: While this is intended to be a multiplayer experience the truth of it is that a lot of people want to practice alone. I wish to improve AI behavior at least on custom maps where I have some ideas. I donīt know if it will be possible to improve AI on Random maps.
Time bank clocks: Timers with timebanks.
Ability to change the limit for heroes adventuring on the map below 8.
Desired features that I lack the skills to implement:
I name these because I already had some players ask me to implement some of these features, that I also want, but I just canīt.
-Shroud to reveal static objects: Ideally for this kind of game there should be a fog of war. If you donīt know what it is, it means that the map is always revealed to the players under fog of war, when it comes to static objects like terrain and indestructible objects, but non static objects like enemy units remain invisible.
Sadly because I lack the skills to do such drastic change players are forced to remember the layouts of known terrain and make movement planning of known terrain just covered in shroud harder.
-Minimap visible during opponent turn replay: Sometimes itīs hard to track where opponent turn is happening because the minimap shuts off during opponent turn replay. I wish to change that but I donīt see any possible way in the future.
-Initiative bar: Specially for less experienced players is hard to keep track of how the turn order will play out. Even experienced players can have problems when wait has been used. It would be great to have an initiative bar similar as the ones used in VCMI or later heroes. But I donīt see any way to make that possible in the future.
-Battle vs neutral simulation: Ideally I wish people could CTRL click a neutral so they can see a result of a battle simulation of autocombat between his army and the neutral army. But I canīt figure out how to make it possible.
-Battlefield size reduction. I think the battlefield is unnecesarily big and I wish it was Heroes 2 size. Sadly changing that is beyond my capabilities.
-Password protected games :
While HD+ Has this feature, HD+ is not compatible with ERA. Unless HD+ starts to be compatible with era, this feature wonīt be possible.
 Design philosophy:
Here are the core design philosophies I have when designing entertainment that are going to constitute the core philosophy behind this mod.
 Minimalistic approach: Is hard to think a minimalistic approach is reasonable in a game like heroes 3, but that is my goal, I want to remove undesired elements and make things as simple as possible. I want for things to be intuitive, and ask frequently to myselfdo I need this spell, skill, faction, unit, etc in the game? And be biased to answer No, and remove it. Iīm the opposite of wanting MORE AND BIGGER, I want less and smaller, and more clear.
However I understand that a lot of spells, units , factions and elements are too ingrained in the atmosphere of the game and that will have weight in my decisions.
Focused test of skill: I want to test economy management and army positioning, I also like mindgames. I donīt like to test knowledge, understanding of the AI, memory, math or similar skills and will try to help gamers to overcome those barriers as easy as I can.
Reduce gameplay time: I want games to be short as possible. Realistically in heroes, games have to be measure in hours of gametime, but I will try to to reduce as much needed to finish a game without sacrificing too much of the integrity of the game.
My goal is to have the average game last 2 hours with. And I think Itīs possible to achieve that.
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 20, 2016 05:39 AM |
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Post Reserved to keep updated working features.
 Scripting
 Feature Magic guild
Status: Incomplete
Objectives: Create a user friendly menu to add spells to the magic guilds.
Problems: Right now the menu system is very bland and annoying to use. Ideally it would use a Custom dialogue with a lot of information about the spells and graphical hints. I've seen some custom dialogs on the Phoenix mod that look great and would serve as a basis. Sadly I donīt understand well the inner workings of custom dialogs or have the photoshop skills, to achieve the desire result.
Another problem is that AI canīt add spells to magic guilds so Iīm trying to find out if i can make a script where every-time the AI builds a magic guild it adds random spells.
 UI
Feature Army power feedback
Status: Incomplete
Objectives: Make it simpler for people to understand the relative values of the armies.
Problems: Right now my Army script only works with heroes, I want to implement it also for Castles and Neutrals.
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 20, 2016 05:41 AM |
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Post reserved for FAQ
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robizeratul
Known Hero
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posted September 20, 2016 02:55 PM |
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After being gone for months I come back and this is the first thing I see!
Damn, I am excited for this! Hope you continue working on it, it's really,really interesting! Checking it out now
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 21, 2016 12:53 AM |
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I have 3 testers right now but nobody wants yet to play with other humans, LOL, Iīm understimating how much people prefer to play vs AI to test ground, so I will work on improving AI, iīm going to cheat though, and create a quick second version of the map to give AI certain advantages that hopefully will make it play more like a human.
Long term i plan to do it all scripted, so you donīt need to use 2 maps, but the demands of my very small pool of testers require inmediate action. ASAP I will upload a Single player version for those that also want to try out the features but want to do it vs a heartless enemy  .
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 21, 2016 03:35 AM |
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When you are like "Let me script this in 15 minutes" And you take 4 hours debugging it.
If I woulda know that variables DO NOT RESET when you leave a map. (You need to reset the Game). Now I know...
Anyway, The good news is that version 0.02 Is ready for download.
Fixed some bugs, improved the UI and the most important feature I added a new Map where the AI plays better than in the normal map. (The most important feature is that it can get spells from the mage guilds).
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yogi
Promising
Famous Hero
of picnics
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posted September 21, 2016 07:52 AM |
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 21, 2016 06:34 PM |
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I'm not a creative person and Waterd is my Alias on the internet. Here I'm pollo because this it was the nickname I had for the first years of the internet. But on most sites Iīm waterd and most people know me as waterd online.
If you have any suggestion for a mod name, you are welcome.
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yogi
Promising
Famous Hero
of picnics
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posted September 21, 2016 11:59 PM |
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted September 22, 2016 02:18 AM |
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Pollo2002 said:
If you have any suggestion for a mod name, you are welcome.
Water polo?
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Gravorce
Adventuring Hero
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posted September 22, 2016 01:26 PM |
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Salamandre said:
Pollo2002 said:
If you have any suggestion for a mod name, you are welcome.
Water polo?
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 23, 2016 04:28 AM |
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Ok Iīm close to finishing vesion 003.
But Iīm here to comment on what is possible coming in version 004 that is gonna be so big that I'm gonna jump 10 numbers and make it version 010 if I go forward with it.
I think itīs the best design decision. However is gonna alienate some heroes players.
And I guess the amount of interest can affect where I lean.
Have in mind though that personally I think the the hardcore heroes players will not be very interested in my mod anyway as the skills and gameplay required is totally different to what they have been doing for years. My target is people that only played heroes very casually, never played heroes or played heroes multiplayer outside of the competive field.
However I think some old time heroes players may be interested in my mod, and the following changes I'm sure will sack the possibilities of many of them even giving it a shot.
The design decision is two big parts.
1. Change hero movement:
What I would be doing?.
A) Reduce the movement of heroes around 25%
B) Make the movement numbers closer to represent half a step and a full step.
C) Reduce the impact in the speed of heroes based on the slowest unit in the army around 20-30%
What are the benefits of doing that?.
The purpose of reducing movement speed is to be able to make it easier for players to visualize and think about their moves.
To understand what Iīm talking about imagine a game like chess played in a 8x8 board with pieces moving 1 or 2 squares, and another game like chess , this one played in a 400x400 board with pieces moving between 50 and 100 spaces. Clearly the first one is more elegant and is easier to visualize and think about.
This translates to Heroes, by making the number smaller the game become more comfortable to visualize, plan or think about.
The purpose of B is similar to A. Right now heroes can move around 13,7 movements, which is slightly harder to understand than just 13 movements or 13.5
However this will not improve things that much since some terrains will consume like 1.25 movement instead of 1 and things will get mesier quicker, however it doesnīt mean that in general is not an improvement.
C is just to make not so important what is your slowest army. Right now itīs such a big deal that there is too much incentive to not use slow troops. Speed is already too good in heroes, giving initiative in battle and movement, it also allows your hero to travel fast.
Additionally with a smaller spread it will be quicker and visualize the distance between heroes and think about it.
If this is so good why you donīt reduce the numbers even further?
One is because there are too many mechanics that I would have to change to do so, from changing the size of objects to altering the amount of vision, so adjust to reduced speeds. I figured out that around 25% speed reduction, do not demand such changes, but further will inevitably do so.
The problem?
The problem to ex Heroes 3 players, is that I will be stepping on their intuitions hard, thinks that they imbued for years.
2. Attack and defense values:
What I would be doing?
A) Have a Base attack and defense value for all units of 10.
What are the benefits of doing that?
Similar to movement, is very hard for people not used to heroes to understand the value of each unit, there is too much math involved. Most strategies games have Damage and life (and maybe armor) and that is.
Attack and defense makes it harder to understand the value of units.
By rounding it up to 10, itīs going to be more clear where every unit stand stat wise.
Still units will have deviations from 10 in case they are supposed to be stronger or weaker to physical damage.
A side benefit of doing this is that since XP is based on HP, now XP gains are going to be more accurately representative of the strenghts of the units, unlike now where an Archangel gives 250 XP, Similar to 13 Zombies. Which makes no sense.
If this is so good why you donīt eliminate attack and defense as a stat?
Too many mechanics are attached to it. And actually is a very nice concept to add attack and Defense values to the base attack and defense values. Maybe I wished it would be similar to heroes 2 where each point of attack increments damage by 10%, since it would be easier to grasp.
Sadly I donīt know how to change that or if its even possible. Also even if it were possible being unable to increment damage by say 25% itīs problematic.
The problem?
The problem to ex Heroes 3 players, is that I will be stepping on their intuitions EXTREMELY hard, and basically convert the game in a different game where previous knowledge intuitos and understandings will be worthless.
So what do you think?
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 23, 2016 06:56 AM |
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For those semi purists (purist wouldnīt be in a wog subforum ) that would think i want to change the game too much, What Iīm tring to make is my vision of what heroes 4 should look like. So while Is true I donīt want heroes 3.... I want a heroes game.
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Pollo2002
Famous Hero
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posted September 26, 2016 05:08 AM |
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Version 003 released, fixed bugs and added some general UI improvements and added some ui mods that work well with this mod.
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