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Heroes Community > Heroes 4 - Lands of Axeoth > Thread: New Heroes IV Era! Making new resources!
Thread: New Heroes IV Era! Making new resources! This thread is 9 pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 · «PREV / NEXT»
trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 08, 2017 10:12 PM
Edited by trashid at 22:17, 08 Oct 2017.

@radmutant69: Thanks, your file worked, and I see you didn't have to hex edit the name of the layer! The image could still use some improvements and the photographic look versus the 3d buildings look a bit weird, but it's the best we can do right now. So here's the look, for anyone else wanting to try it out in game, download the radmutant69's file and just put it in the heroes4 data folder. You might want to change the dirt into grass in the name




darkem said:
@trashid What you did to the town screen background is simply amazing. If you are planning on continuing the project, please, let me know. I'd gladly help. I'm pretty good at digital art, especially photo-editing. If you send me all backgrounds for/of one town, Nature/Necropolis for instance, I might try to rework them as you did. Unfortunately I have no copy of Heroes IV right now and that's why I cannot extract background files on my own.

Once again - Congrats! It's awesome!


Thanks, I'm really glad to hear that! Radmutant69 posted the layers, so you can use them. I'll be doing chaos on snow now, let's announce which ones will be working on, so we don't do the same thing. First I'm trying to put the building in the photoshop in their place, so it should be easier to know what we are doing. Once I'm done for the chaos I will post them. Some quick tips: you can study the heroes 3 townscreens and how they used photographs in their work. Also, when putting a sky, try to copy something groundy with it, like i copied it with some mountains in the back. It's rather hard to simulate the look of air in the distance, so this helps. Also some skies in the original backgrounds are out of perspective.

Karmakeld said:
When I edited the townscreens for the HD mod, I simply cut the parts I wanted to add (in most cases it was simply each side, while skies were a different matter), then pasted it, getting either mirrored sides or rough edges. Then I used Photo Gallery (Windows). It has a feature to 'autocorrect' selected areas (not sure if Gimp has this features as well), but what that does, is that it blends the 'two' images into one (often using areas from the existing image. It works surprisingly well, and basically does all the hard work (in this case the smoothening).
But great to see an digital artist voluntiering.


Hah! I was wondering how did you manage to do such a great job!

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 09, 2017 08:15 AM

Great to see like our group growth. More people more content. But as I told maybe something another. New units eg. not only screens. Maybe new city? Conflux or citadel?

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 09, 2017 11:06 AM

How can we make a new city? Or a new unit? Replacing existing stuff is not the best solution.
____________

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 09, 2017 11:51 AM

Why not the best? You can play only one city in one game! Next time next city. So we need a new buildings and units and we have a new city. Simplest way. We have 32 animations of heroes it means 8 factions but we dont have enough women animations for these factions. For special heroes 2 w 8 m so 6 new woman models are needed. We can use special heroes as new faction heroes.

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Karmakeld
Karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted October 09, 2017 10:59 PM
Edited by Karmakeld at 23:33, 09 Oct 2017.

trashid said:


Karmakeld said:
When I edited the townscreens for the HD mod, I simply cut the parts I wanted to add (in most cases it was simply each side, while skies were a different matter), then pasted it, getting either mirrored sides or rough edges. Then I used Photo Gallery (Windows). It has a feature to 'autocorrect' selected areas (not sure if Gimp has this features as well), but what that does, is that it blends the 'two' images into one (often using areas from the existing image. It works surprisingly well, and basically does all the hard work (in this case the smoothening).
But great to see an digital artist voluntiering.


Hah! I was wondering how did you manage to do such a great job!


Great job? Aw, thanks (and now I wondered how you did yours ) But I only found out about the function by coincidence, as I wondered what it meant 'to correct an area'. At first I copy pasted the screen bit by bit in bloody Paint. It was doable, but blending the edges pixel by pixel was a pain and a single image took me a whole day. After I found the function, it only took a few hours to extend each screen.

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 10, 2017 01:43 PM

I didn't know about the tool, it is awesome indeed. But get a Gimp anyway, it's free
____________

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 10, 2017 03:29 PM
Edited by Baronus at 15:29, 10 Oct 2017.

Baronus

Why not simply rescaling? Its only ground. Size may be different. Its not visible.

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 10, 2017 05:15 PM

For two reasons mainly I guess:
- someone who cares will notice
- buildings might not fit with the stretched background eg. building on a steep rock wall

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 10, 2017 07:05 PM

But now the must replace all buildings :-) So how cant fit if they must fit buildings to new backs:-)

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Karmakeld
Karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted October 10, 2017 08:17 PM
Edited by Karmakeld at 20:24, 10 Oct 2017.

I already got Gimp, as it allows for ora import

Baronus, you can scale between 800x600 -> 1024x768. 1280x1024 must have some altered display (I can't select this, so I can't view it).
Townscreen images are 1280x825, I asume they auto scale to fit resolutions along with the buildings, as there's only 1 image of each townscreen in the h4r file.
But try scaling to 1920x870 or 1920x963 - proportions are quite different (much wider), so you can't just scale it without cutting either edges or top/bottom - and don't say you wouldn't notice it, if there was no sky , that's why it had to be made manually.
Tbh. I don't know if Equi scaled the layout (buildings), but it seems they only moved a few ones, where needed, like trashid's example. You can see example here: I believe they only moved the Training Grounds.
Might Snow HD with buildings
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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 10, 2017 08:41 PM

But proportion of sky? Or ground? :-) But if they dont move buildings it may be small problem. But only small.

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 12, 2017 01:57 PM
Edited by trashid at 14:00, 12 Oct 2017.

For some of you guys this was propably obvious, but I had to see this to get how it works.
While putting layout files together I stumbled upon how the game places the buildings on the townscreen.
I thought it was like in h3 with xy numbers put somewhere, but it is much simpler here:


The whitish-gray area is the full size of the caravan image.
So it puts the image on the townscreen according to its image dimensions.
The background color is normally black, I changed it for no good reason.

__

I still struggle with putting the townscreen into the game.
The radmutant69's file works propably because it is a singular image. And I would like to put multiple layers into the game.
Here is my h4d file with layers:
link

It doesn't work propably becuase it has the 'frame 01' name instead of 'background'.
But when I change it using NimoStar's technique, it corrupts the file.

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 12, 2017 02:38 PM
Edited by trashid at 18:53, 12 Oct 2017.

Here are layouts for all the alignments, put into psd file. You can put any of the backgrounds underneath. The file should open in gimp with no problems.




File link

I hope the hosting site doesn't pose any problems.

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radmutant69
radmutant69


Promising
Known Hero
posted October 12, 2017 04:36 PM
Edited by radmutant69 at 16:57, 12 Oct 2017.

trashid said:

I still struggle with putting the townscreen into the game.
The radmutant69's file works propably because it is a singular image. And I would like to put multiple layers into the game.
Here is my h4d file with layers:
link

It doesn't work propably becuase it has the 'frame 01' name instead of 'background'.
But when I change it using NimoStar's technique, it corrupts the file.


I think maybe you forgot to change the 2 bytes right before the "frame 001" (09 00 in hex). You have to change it to 0A 00 because "background" is 10 characters long (0A in hex).
There's no other problem with your file. When I did it the screen worked as well.

check this

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 12, 2017 06:12 PM
Edited by trashid at 18:54, 12 Oct 2017.

I have done this with 2 different hex editors, and the game (and the program) crashes when trying to show the screen. Your file indeed works, so I don't know. But thanks for the help.

Edit: I have updated the previous post and now all townscreen layouts are there.

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Baronus
Baronus


Legendary Hero
posted October 12, 2017 07:37 PM

I saw this values and end and I dont kniw what it means.
Alternative way;
Try copy paste. Save as indexed tga and raw by irfan and copy paste palete and picture.

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radmutant69
radmutant69


Promising
Known Hero
posted October 12, 2017 09:26 PM
Edited by radmutant69 at 21:29, 12 Oct 2017.

...or just compare your file with mine in a hex editor and try to find the differences. Perhaps your hex editor does something wrong (for example it may overwrite some bytes after frame name instead of just inserting the new data.)

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trashid
trashid


Famous Hero
posted October 12, 2017 09:46 PM

Yes, indeed it worked thank you! I am pretty new to hex editing so forgive me, I have heard inserting new information breaks the reading of the code, so I did not do it. Comparing your code to mine, I had to add 00, because my file did not have enough of them. I guess this is what you all meant adding the extra byte Thanks again for the patience!

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Karmakeld
Karmakeld


Responsible
Supreme Hero
posted October 13, 2017 07:14 PM

Trashid, thanks for sharing the info.
Objects are read in a similar way, although I find it a bit harder to understand where it reads the edge, compared to the townscreens, but this might help us getting better understanding of objects as well.
Also you're not the only one new to this, but sharing each of our discoveries will hopefully benefit us all

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NimoStar
NimoStar


Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
posted October 18, 2017 05:27 AM
Edited by NimoStar at 05:42, 18 Oct 2017.

I am into a project to replace all six cities (again) with new lineups.

The lineups are done.

The name of the project is "H4: The Dark Realms"

Each new faction has an unique 100% new townscreen with their own buildings.

Problem is, my ability to do it is less than professional (I was surprised to see, most images on the internet have WILDLY diferring styles and lighting, that shows when compositing them, even after HEAVY editing on my part), so some people may be bummed by the graphics I guess :V

This took me way more time than expected, and only 4 buildings yet, far from perfect, too...
But well, it's something.


***

As for trashid import problem:

I have found the following prerequisites to make it work:
- You must trim areas outside 1280x825. Areas outside visible may destroy import.
- Check names of all layers. Layer names should not deviate from standard practice in normal files.
- You MUST NOT save the file in any way which isn't "exporting as .ora". If you save as XCF gimp file, THEN export, the exported image will NOT be able to be imported back.

If you did this you have to start from "scratch" with the original untouched exported image.

PS: THough I now see it was just bad hex editing :v
____________
Never changing = never improving

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