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| Thread: Heroes 4 The Restoration of Axeoth |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 · «PREV |
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted March 08, 2024 11:33 PM |
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Excellent! Seeing such significant progress in preparing the campaign, I decided to develop it further!
The original Chronicles each had their own menu. And why not do the same for H4 Chronicles?
I developed a trial version of the menu for Warlords Chronicles 1. Only size 800. I don't know how you play, I just want to have large objects close up on the screen.
Here's the link.
new.h4r
Be careful if you already have the new.h4r file so as not to delete it. The file is only for the duration of playing Chronicles, unless someone wants it longer.
So share your opinion. Is it worth doing more? You can also for the Restoration of Erathia and others...
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 09, 2024 05:46 AM |
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baronus said:
Excellent! Seeing such significant progress in preparing the campaign, I decided to develop it further!
The original Chronicles each had their own menu. And why not do the same for H4 Chronicles?
I developed a trial version of the menu for Warlords Chronicles 1. Only size 800. I don't know how you play, I just want to have large objects close up on the screen.
Here's the link.
new.h4r
Be careful if you already have the new.h4r file so as not to delete it. The file is only for the duration of playing Chronicles, unless someone wants it longer.
So share your opinion. Is it worth doing more? You can also for the Restoration of Erathia and others...
Definitely would like to do something like that, but rather than a new main menu for the converted campaigns, the ultimate goal would be to have a new campaign selection menu with its own background for each set of campaigns.
Of course I still have to learn some reverse engineering and then dive into reversing the main menu buttons.. hopefully one day 
A new main menu is still nice though in the absence of a new campaign selection menu.
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted March 09, 2024 06:35 AM |
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Yes simply switching menu with campaign selection is the best solution. But it was naver done in original Heroes. MM only loading screens. Switching new.h4r is primitive but simply and fast solution.
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ZveroBoy
Tavern Dweller
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posted March 09, 2024 06:29 PM |
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Edited by ZveroBoy at 18:36, 09 Mar 2024.
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iliveinabox05 said:
Definitely would like to do something like that, but rather than a new main menu for the converted campaigns, the ultimate goal would be to have a new campaign selection menu with its own background for each set of campaigns.
Of course I still have to learn some reverse engineering and then dive into reversing the main menu buttons.. hopefully one day
A new main menu is still nice though in the absence of a new campaign selection menu.
Hi all.
I am writing through a translator, so I don’t know how accurately you will understand my text,
just try to understand the basic idea.
I got a little acquainted with the ideas and current results of the work
for the project “Restoration of Akseot”
I will express “my opinion” on this matter. (don't kick with your feet 
The very idea of moving h3->h4 is of course great.
The technical implementation of the project is possible, although some details will not be completely consistent.
But I think 90% of the original idea of h3 can be respected.
Now I will move on to the most important details.
1)
It is natural to begin to formulate the final work that
can be presented to users as a ready-made product for use
only needed based on the "Classic Version of 4 Winds of War Heroes"
No mods like "The Equilibris" or similar should be used
for the initial creation of the "Standard".
The initial transfer must be done within "Classic Heroes 4" only.
Having created such a standard, it will of course be possible later
adapt to all existing mods but the "Basic" must be done
only on the classic version of the game.
2)
For correct use of h3 content in h4 environment
first you need to eliminate the “error” that is still present
in the classic version of Heroes 4.
(“technical error” using the “Armageddon” spell).
This can be done without interfering with the executable ("exe" game launch file).
Having achieved this, you can begin to form the basic structure
future product, emphasizing the main thematic direction of the project
for example, “Heroes 4 Axeoth Stories” or otherwise mentioning Axeoth.
3)
Outlining the main idea
you need to create five parts of the project and present them in the game menu as
1. Restoration of Erathia - (need pictures and background)
2. Armageddon's Blade - (need pictures and background)
3. Shadow of Death - (need pictures and background)
4. Heroes IV Chronicles - (need pictures and background)
5. Free scenarios - (pictures are not needed, just individual cards h3->h4)
Having endowed each of the (1-4) parts with a “corresponding” design of the visual background, as well as
all fragments of images that make up each campaign in each individual part.
Most image transformations can be done using
services for creating or improving and enlarging images based on artificial intelligence
they will bear the features of the original graphics, which will serve as continuity
transformation h3->h4
No ["reverse engineering"] is needed to distribute the five main parts of the project.
In the original game, the "New Game" menu item already has five slots for
replacing the main parts in them and you need to put in the transformed five parts.
No rearrangement of the main menu buttons is required. This has happened more than once
was done previously in pirated additions to Heroes 4 produced in Russia.
The campaign replacement system works perfectly. The pirates just did everything in a hurry
therefore, their assemblies have huge mistakes, almost complete absence of a connected plot
and sometimes impassable maps.
But the idea of creating add-ons is the same. And also great as a h3->h4 project.
Why you need to stick to the classics when assembling a Project.
Because the possible interest of users is initially tied to the style
and the plot of the classic h3 environment, which guarantees increased attention to the created product.
Classic Heroes 4 is a complete product recognizable all over the world, guaranteeing
a certain stability in the game is their main strength, despite all the screams and noise.
Here's my take on the Project in a nutshell. And what it will be, of course, is up to the authors to decide.
In any case, the project is very interesting. I'm glad it exists.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 10, 2024 04:46 AM |
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ZveroBoy said:
1)
It is natural to begin to formulate the final work that
can be presented to users as a ready-made product for use
only needed based on the "Classic Version of 4 Winds of War Heroes"
No mods like "The Equilibris" or similar should be used
for the initial creation of the "Standard".
The initial transfer must be done within "Classic Heroes 4" only.
Having created such a standard, it will of course be possible later
adapt to all existing mods but the "Basic" must be done
only on the classic version of the game.
It has always been my philosophy to start with WoW compatible maps first, and then extend them with any mods When we finally get to a modded version of these things, they will be separate from the WoW map download links.
ZveroBoy said:
2)
For correct use of h3 content in h4 environment
first you need to eliminate the “error” that is still present
in the classic version of Heroes 4.
(“technical error” using the “Armageddon” spell).
This can be done without interfering with the executable ("exe" game launch file).
Having achieved this, you can begin to form the basic structure
future product, emphasizing the main thematic direction of the project
for example, “Heroes 4 Axeoth Stories” or otherwise mentioning Axeoth.
Not sure what you're saying here. Might need to try a different translation haha
ZveroBoy said:
No ["reverse engineering"] is needed to distribute the five main parts of the project.
In the original game, the "New Game" menu item already has five slots for
replacing the main parts in them and you need to put in the transformed five parts.
No rearrangement of the main menu buttons is required. This has happened more than once
was done previously in pirated additions to Heroes 4 produced in Russia.
The campaign replacement system works perfectly. The pirates just did everything in a hurry
therefore, their assemblies have huge mistakes, almost complete absence of a connected plot
and sometimes impassable maps.
But the idea of creating add-ons is the same. And also great as a h3->h4 project.
There are only 3 slots in the New Game menu that can be used without any reversing / exe hacking: H4 Campaigns, Gathering Storm campaigns, and Winds of War campaigns.
I guess you could also probably replace the tutorial with a single campaign.
The other issue with overriding the game campaigns is that there isn't enough space for all of the conversions. Folks would need to use multiple new.h4r files to replace and override campaign assets. This is something that I did want to do originally, but it would be so much better to be able to add new entries to the New Game menu for new sets of campaigns.
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ZveroBoy
Tavern Dweller
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posted March 10, 2024 08:04 AM |
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iliveinabox05 said:
Not sure what you're saying here. Might need to try a different translation haha
Let me explain what I meant by point (2)
don’t go into details (this translation is not accurate) try to understand the essence
There is an annoying technical bug in Classic Heroes 4 (an oversight by the developers)
(when using the Armageddon spell, the hero does not spend mana, but 12 units should be taken away)
This is a terrible mistake that nullifies the game balance of classic heroes
Having received the Armageddon spell, any hero has infinite mathematical
advantage over enemies and further play on the map does not make sense.
The developers should have fixed this, but they didn’t have time due to the collapse.
Dalai (possibly being a programmer) creating Equilibris solved this problem by finding an error in the code of the "exe" file
and based on this he made all subsequent modifications of the game. He could have simply fixed the error by creating a patch.
(correcting Armageddon) for the classic version, for which thousands of players around the world would be grateful
to the world. But he didn’t do this and decided to create Equilibris (actually a completely different game) which later
led to a split in the gaming community. Since not all players approved of the changes carried out by Dalai's team
Almost all of the changes they have made are controversial and cannot be argued as necessary.
For example, what they did with the Poison spell. In their case, the poison is just a “runny nose” that goes away on its own
after 15 moves - it's funny. A creature or hero must die from real poison and save them from this
Only the magic of Life can. There is no doubt that Equilibris was written “on its own” for some players. This is an opinion
People who understand the game well have expressed this more than once. I don't want to argue about the advantages and
disadvantages of this mod endless topic. We have what we have. I'm not saying that everything in Equilibris is bad, I respect the
work and the work done teams, but I almost never use Equilibris for games.
So let's return to Armageddon.
I am not a programmer, but I think that there are at least two ways to fix (the Armageddon error)
without interfering with the (exe) file. Although of course I could be wrong. So for sure from the beginning
the developers did not plan that there would be an error in the use of the Armageddon spell, therefore
they wrote the same spell execution script for him, the same as for everyone else who
work correctly. The error is most likely tied to the keyword of the spell specifically to the word (Armageddon) in
program code since it is this that causes the entire sequence of actions necessary for processing
spell trigger scenario. What follows from this?
Perhaps we can eliminate the error by eliminating the keyword from the script. Specifically (Armageddon).
How to do it? You need to replace the keyword with an error with a keyword without an error in the resource files that
we can edit like tables. There are two options here.
The first is when we will have to sacrifice one of the spells that works correctly.
The second is when we can use reserved inactive spells.
Let's consider the first option (Sacrifice with a working spell). Details.
The spells table contains a list of all spells with keywords.
For example, take the “Speed” spell Chaos Magic and change its keyword (haste) to (armageddon)
and for the “Armageddon” Chaos Magic spell we change the keyword (armageddon) to (haste) and don’t touch anything else in the table. Now the program, referring to the keyword (armageddon) in the program code, will go into
resource files and will find there a line with the keyword (armageddon) on which the characteristics hang
Spells Speed. But for the program code it doesn’t matter; it will work the spell like this
as if in front of him there really was a scenario for the Armageddon spell. In the end you will see
that when performing the "Speed" spell (with the characteristics of the Armageddon spell), the hero's mana no longer was wasted. And when performing the Armageddon spell (with the characteristics of the Speed spell), the hero began to waste manna (-12 units). However, this is only the beginning of a chain of actions
for executing spell scripts. And now we need to reconnect all the elements related to Armageddon
on the keyword (haste) and this is a picture, animation and sound (perhaps something else, for example, the damage properties of units. Everything related needs to be found).
in the resource file we will have to process the elements
(Layers, sound, actor_sequence, animation, combat_actor and possibly others)
And the same thing needs to be done with the keyword (armageddon) by attaching all the elements to it
spell script (haste). By replacing all the necessary elements and packing the resource file, we get
classic heroes in which there is no error with the use of the "Armageddon" spell, but there is an error with the use
spell "Speed" (it also will not waste the hero's mana), but this is already a complete trifle for which
you can close your eyes compared to the endless Armageddon which is a disaster for the heroes 4
All this is difficult to do, but I think it is possible.
Now the second option. (Reserved unused spell)
We do the same thing, only instead of casting a working spell
error for a reserved inactive spell, for example "kreegan fire"
which is not used in the game. And for the keyword (kreegan fire) we attach
all the elements of Armageddon. However, in this case we must find a way
enable a reserved spell.
I myself have not done all these actions with the resource file since I do not have the skill
such work. I just suggested an idea.
Perhaps someone could try to use it to test my assumption.
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baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted March 12, 2024 09:59 AM |
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I think that ,words' like arneggeddon are only links to txt.spell.table... So other links give only other cell. All other is the same.
And Eqi team repair it probably used dll. So you can get only full equi or nothing. Modding is hard work and H4 is hard especially....
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted March 15, 2024 01:16 AM |
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ZveroBoy said:
I myself have not done all these actions with the resource file since I do not have the skill
such work. I just suggested an idea.
Perhaps someone could try to use it to test my assumption.
For resource editing you don't need to know the inner workings of the resource files. You just need the H4 Resource Editor
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