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| Thread: [HotA] Chosing Specialties in the Map Editor | |
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 10:06 AM |
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Poll Question:
[HotA] Chosing Specialties in the Map Editor
I have suggested this in the proper thread a couple of times and I have been ignored but not persuaded, so I decided to lobby for my position.
I think that for user made maps it would be a significative improvement to be able to choose the specialty of heroes. Just imagine the increment in difficulty if mapmakers could give all AI opponents one Logistics, one Offense, one Armorer, one Resistance, one Intelligence, one Sorcery and two important spell specialists and those were the only heroes available for AI to hire.
So I am asking the community, should mapmakers be able to choose the specialties in the editor?
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revolut1oN
Famous Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 11:03 AM |
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I think it would be interesting. But why would a sorcery specialist be a good idea? The skill is crap.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 12:13 PM |
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revolut1oN said:
I think it would be interesting. But why would a sorcery specialist be a good idea? The skill is crap.
It was just an example and because it's a magic skill. Archery and Artillery would be much better but then there would be just might heroes or magic heroes with might specialties (that works for Battle Mages but probably not for Wizards and Warlocks).
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted June 25, 2017 12:25 PM |
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revolut1oN said:
I think it would be interesting. But why would a sorcery specialist be a good idea? The skill is crap.
For user made maps it can be deadly, if you use the chain of events giving experience up to level 6000. There are a few sod maps doing that, especially from chinese mapmakers.
However what is being asked here will never happen, hota team made it clear that their main goal is to improve standard gameplay, not user made maps with wog-like options.
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 12:30 PM |
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Salamandre said:
However what is being asked here will never happen, hota team made it clear that their main goal is to improve standard gameplay, not user made maps with wog-like options.
That's why I decided to lobby for it, maybe if enough people 'sign the petition' they change their minds.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted June 25, 2017 12:34 PM |
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You know very well they wont -they don't even read such proposals. Opening the possibility of hacks will make their mod unstable (like wog is) and will represent more work for them.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted June 25, 2017 01:11 PM |
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What do you mean with "Minningless"? The word doesn't exist in the English language and I don't know what you really wanted to say with it.
Anyway, I think setting specialties would be a nice thing, but I think it's embedded a bit too rough in the current code to make this work as well as we might want to have it.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 01:37 PM |
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Maurice said:
What do you mean with "Minningless"?
Ops, it's a misspelling, I wanted to say Meaningless: if someone feels that would have no effect on how maps can be created.
Maurice said:
Anyway, I think setting specialties would be a nice thing, but I think it's embedded a bit too rough in the current code to make this work as well as we might want to have it.
As far as I know you know some Assembly, what is way more then I do, but from my knowledge of ERM the specialty is a property of the object hero, so probably doesn't need that much coding and knowing they created the Scouting specialty makes me believe they know how to do it. What I proposed in the suggestions thread was to have a dropdown list in the Hero Screen allowing to choose between the already existent specialties. I don't think this would require much coding but I do see a point on not wanting to do it and that is about keeping standart gameplay versus giving mapmakers more control.
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 02:31 PM |
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bloodsucker said:
[...]they created the Scouting specialty makes me believe they know how to do it. [...]
Scouting (and learning) specialty already exists in SoD, but no hero has it enabled by default.
In any case, what you're asking is certainly possible, but requires several pieces of coding (add map editor edits, change how game loads the map, change how game loads saves) which is not trivial.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 02:44 PM |
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RoseKavalier said:
Scouting (and learning) specialty already exists in SoD, but no hero has it enabled by default.
In any case, what you're asking is certainly possible, but requires several pieces of coding (add map editor edits, change how game loads the map, change how game loads saves) which is not trivial.
Ops, my bad. So maybe it's not just a question of points of view but really heavily time consuming work they didn't found the time to do.
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Ghost
Undefeatable Hero
Therefore I am
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posted June 25, 2017 03:09 PM |
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revolut1oN said:
I think it would be interesting. But why would a sorcery specialist be a good idea? The skill is crap.
Armaggedon over 8000 dmg, and implosion over 10000 dmg in HotA random maps. In only 3lvl immune and red orb against scout, I use a scout sometimes. Play with Sandro  You just don't know about Heroes games. Play H4 then, dmgs are a little, what a peace!
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Fight MWMs - stand teach
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted June 25, 2017 07:13 PM |
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bloodsucker said:
As far as I know you know some Assembly, what is way more then I do, but from my knowledge of ERM the specialty is a property of the object hero, so probably doesn't need that much coding ...
I've never really examined ERM coding, but I did try to look at the assembly code (and 0xFEA once linked to the disassembled code, so I downloaded that too, to speed up the interpretation). I learned a lot from it and I remember Phoenix4Ever once asking something about the Hero Speciality as well. However, I couldn't really spot where the connection is between the Hero and its speciality. It's not in the regular data table that holds all the other Hero stuff, like starting army and starting stats and the like. Note that this not only pertains to the actual skill, but also the image shown with the Hero and the like.
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 08:45 PM |
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Maurice said:
However, I couldn't really spot where the connection is between the Hero and its speciality. It's not in the regular data table that holds all the other Hero stuff, like starting army and starting stats and the like. Note that this not only pertains to the actual skill, but also the image shown with the Hero and the like.
In SoD 3.2, specialties are in table at [0x679C80].
I wrote down 34 references to this table (e.g. 0x4B8AF1) and it's done through hero ID, Orrin = 0, Mullich = 0x90, ...
For specialty icons, text and right-click description you have 7 sections handling each of the various cases. (e.g. 0x4E1F21) Also works through hero ID.
So if you want to give Kyrre Archery specialty, you can trick the game by telling it to look up hero ID = 0 (Orrin) instead of Kyrre's.
Or if you want personal mod, do what Phoenix did, edit the specialty table itself and modify the specialty icons/text.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted June 25, 2017 09:15 PM |
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Yes I did manage to change some specialities and the text of them, I never really bothered with the speciality icons, they ideally should be changed too of course.
Don't know how HotA Crew made new specialities though.
One special I almost find cheating is Luna's Fire Wall, it is very good in human hands, but AI will never cast Fire Wall.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted June 25, 2017 09:17 PM |
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I'll have to check out that reference. The way you point at it seems to be runtime in memory, while I check the source code within the executable (yes, I know I have to lower the address by 400000 to get the proper location in the executable, it's just that some stuff is only added during runtime).
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The last Reasonable Steward of Good Game Design and a Responsible Hero of HC. - Verriker
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 09:24 PM |
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The table seems to be fixed at 0x678420, but the game never seems to reference directly to 0x678420, instead it goes through the pointer I wrote.
If you count 678420 references, you'll find only one.
2 of these references I couldn't figure when they are called, which is why I wrote 34 earlier.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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bloodsucker
Legendary Hero
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posted June 25, 2017 11:06 PM |
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Wow, the chinese invaded the thread since I last visited it.
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