Heroes of Might and Magic Civ2 & ToT scenarios development
- Thread starter Skuall
- Start date
Been making some more changes to the scenario as I noticed a final area we didn't touch, the Pedia text file. So I've been going through that changing things like risk of nuclear meltdown to "storm damage", missile defense to "magic defense", nukes to "Armageddon spells", and all the wonder references to buildings we've renamed (eg this wonder puts a "captains quarters" in every city instead of "police station"). Not going to bother with the descriptions text file though that has all the paragraphs of stories behind every building, tech and unit. As that's a bridge too far and no usually reads that stuff anyway!
Testing over the last few weeks has been going well and I'm having a lot of fun with my game. Although sadly today I've encountered another big issue that I don't think I'm going to be able to get around. As previously posted here I was successfully able to hexedit the savegame file and remove the scenario flag which then reactivated he throne room and wonder videos which was a wonderful moment and a big problem solved for @Metro Polis and I.
However what I didn't realise until now (after playing a hundred turns or so and noticing that something wasn't right) is that it created a new problem. It appears that when you remove the scenario flag from the save file it then disables events meaning all our special events and unit spawning map objects and rewards stop summoning and working.
So sadly that means we're back to square one where the player has to either pick between having a working throne room castle puzzle and custom wonder videos in 'vanilla mode', or having working events in 'scenario mode'. Because the moment that damn scenario flag is changed in the save file one will work and one won't. I guess I'll just have to tell people in the documentation and scenario intro about the issue and if you 'kind of' want to get best of both worlds, then you could play the game in non-scenario vanilla mode to enjoy the throne room and wonder vids, then once you've built everything save your game as a new scenario and load it up which should bring all the events back to life again and you can go conquer the map treasure challenges. Bit lousy but I don't really know what else can be done. Same problem will be there in ToT too sadly I might add, although I'm guessing in ToT you can possibly trigger video events based on a building being built so maybe a manual workaround can be done for each wonder in that future version at least.
.
Testing over the last few weeks has been going well and I'm having a lot of fun with my game. Although sadly today I've encountered another big issue that I don't think I'm going to be able to get around. As previously posted here I was successfully able to hexedit the savegame file and remove the scenario flag which then reactivated he throne room and wonder videos which was a wonderful moment and a big problem solved for @Metro Polis and I.
However what I didn't realise until now (after playing a hundred turns or so and noticing that something wasn't right) is that it created a new problem. It appears that when you remove the scenario flag from the save file it then disables events meaning all our special events and unit spawning map objects and rewards stop summoning and working.
So sadly that means we're back to square one where the player has to either pick between having a working throne room castle puzzle and custom wonder videos in 'vanilla mode', or having working events in 'scenario mode'. Because the moment that damn scenario flag is changed in the save file one will work and one won't. I guess I'll just have to tell people in the documentation and scenario intro about the issue and if you 'kind of' want to get best of both worlds, then you could play the game in non-scenario vanilla mode to enjoy the throne room and wonder vids, then once you've built everything save your game as a new scenario and load it up which should bring all the events back to life again and you can go conquer the map treasure challenges. Bit lousy but I don't really know what else can be done. Same problem will be there in ToT too sadly I might add, although I'm guessing in ToT you can possibly trigger video events based on a building being built so maybe a manual workaround can be done for each wonder in that future version at least.
.
Another weird bug I've found is that the Barbarian towns I've setup are not building the units as in there's no shields going toward production despite there being a surplus. In the past in games I've played the barbarian cities have still been able to produce units, I could even play as them and build things, so I wonder why the barbs in my test game stay dormant. Oh well not a big issue I guess but I might beef them up a bit more as they're too easy to clear out. Especially when our events are disabled and our spawners aren't making new units either (due to the issue mentioned in previous post). No working spawners and no working cities makes them a pushover.
EDIT: Ah ha! I checked my old notes for my how play as Barbarians in Civ2 video (unreleased) and "cities will sometimes stop producing anything due to the city having a defending unit already and 16 units on it's continent", that must be why!
Anyway other than some of these bugs, things have been going well and I've been having a lot of fun and making some final tuneups. I'm about to have some really crazy work days and then some travel across January (first holiday away in years haha!) so that's going to delay release a bit further but once I'm back they'll be nothing stopping me from finally putting this baby out there! And then releasing all my other remaining stuff too! 2023 will be the year that the backlog is all cleared and the Civ2 scenarios and videos are released!
EDIT: Ah ha! I checked my old notes for my how play as Barbarians in Civ2 video (unreleased) and "cities will sometimes stop producing anything due to the city having a defending unit already and 16 units on it's continent", that must be why!
Anyway other than some of these bugs, things have been going well and I've been having a lot of fun and making some final tuneups. I'm about to have some really crazy work days and then some travel across January (first holiday away in years haha!) so that's going to delay release a bit further but once I'm back they'll be nothing stopping me from finally putting this baby out there! And then releasing all my other remaining stuff too! 2023 will be the year that the backlog is all cleared and the Civ2 scenarios and videos are released!
Last edited:
Well as I'm sure people noticed I've returned from the holiday heh! I had quite the adventure hiking through the mountains, lakes and forests of Tasmania.. amazing place! However work and life has been nuts since my return, so it's really only been over the last few days that I've been able to resume testing and playing the HoMM2 scenario! I've hit a few more bugs, and I've been finding lots more text in the game files needing replacing, but overall things are going well and I'm currently building my Azure super dragon to win the game! So over the weeks to come I'll be finishing some special alternative graphic files for people to choose from (as Metro & I had some different ideas on some things so I want to make sure his ideas are included and it isn't just all my preferences lol), writing up the documentation, making a tour video & some other promotional stuff, and cleaning all the WIP junk out of the scenario folder and packaging it for release!
In the meantime I thought I'd post some more pics to show people some of the map and the faction starting locations I made at the end of 2022 and have been polishing and balancing out since. All land masses are connected by land bridges and there are many dangers lurking in the badlands between each factions homeland ensuring they have 'some' protection from each other to begin with. You'll notice that we've pretty much used all the tricks in the book to heavily pack decoration into every area making it feel more like a HoMM map, and that each faction starts in a different looking area that suits their theme (ie often the kinds of lands they'd occupy in original HoMM maps). Metro & I originally talked about making every single terrain type in the game produce the same amount of resources so that we could create truly different lands for each faction much like how they are in the HoMM games. However I noticed he never got around to doing it years ago, and while I thought about recently doing it myself I realised that I'd be taking away one of the big gameplay strategic parts of the Civ experience which is to find the perfect spots for your cities and give each city a sense of specialness and individuality, whereas if everything is worth the same then all that almost means nothing. Also I've noticed in some MGE scenarios I've played over the years that the AI seems to beeline it straight for grassland slot areas even when there's better custom terrain using other slots so I guess grassland slot hunting is hardcoded into the AI behaviour or something. So I decided for better or worse to try and have a bit of both words (which knowing my luck will probably manage to annoy both the Civ fans & the HoMM fans at the same time lol) and give every factions starting location a decent amount of grassland slots inbetween their factions usual associated terrain and make most of these other terrains similar in resource yield (especially after they've been irrigated).
So lets start with the good guys first!
The Sorceress faction occupy fertile grasslands filled with lakes, rivers and dense magical forests much like in HoMM. The forests will give them a production advantage over other factions but they will eventually inhibit growth as they must be cleared to make more farmland which can take time. The Sorceresses can field multiple flying* units giving them the ability to quickly expand and explore. If they can survive long enough to obtain their extra fast top tier Phoenixes, they may become unstoppable.
Next comes the Knight faction who in HoMM usually occupy similar terrain to the Sorceress, so to make them different in Civ2 I gave them a lot of dirt/plains terrain. Which gives their lands a look of a similar fertile paradise to the Sorcerers but clearly the those naughty humans have been clearing lots of the forests. As in HoMM the Knight's can grow quickly and some of their units are cheaper but they lack some of the special powers and abilities that the other races get (eg flying* creatures). Strong growth and overwhelming numbers of their strongest units like the Crusader will be key to their success.
Lastly comes the Wizard faction who in HoMM2 occupied dry cracked terrain so naturally they do so in our mod too. Wizards players will need to capitalise on the fertile lands around the rivers until they can irrigate the cracked lands. They have access to flying* units and some very powerful units like the mighty titan which has more hitpoints & firepower than most other top tier units. In my test game they were the dominant AI faction.
Next time I'll do the bad guys and neutrals!
Oh and speaking of the neutrals, this little moment made me laugh, heh my enemies have been hypnotized! Nice work @Metro Polis
(* Note flying creatures in this mod do not use the Civ2 flight mechanic which is reserved for magic spells. Instead flying units have increased movement and treat all squares as roads special ability.)
However work and life has been nuts since my return, so it's really only been over the last few days that I've been able to resume testing and playing the HoMM2 scenario! I've hit a few more bugs, and I've been finding lots more text in the game files needing replacing, but overall things are going well and I'm currently building my Azure super dragon to win the game! So over the weeks to come I'll be finishing some special alternative graphic files for people to choose from (as Metro & I had some different ideas on some things so I want to make sure his ideas are included and it isn't just all my preferences lol), writing up the documentation, making a tour video & some other promotional stuff, and cleaning all the WIP junk out of the scenario folder and packaging it for release!In the meantime I thought I'd post some more pics to show people some of the map and the faction starting locations I made at the end of 2022 and have been polishing and balancing out since. All land masses are connected by land bridges and there are many dangers lurking in the badlands between each factions homeland ensuring they have 'some' protection from each other to begin with. You'll notice that we've pretty much used all the tricks in the book to heavily pack decoration into every area making it feel more like a HoMM map, and that each faction starts in a different looking area that suits their theme (ie often the kinds of lands they'd occupy in original HoMM maps). Metro & I originally talked about making every single terrain type in the game produce the same amount of resources so that we could create truly different lands for each faction much like how they are in the HoMM games. However I noticed he never got around to doing it years ago, and while I thought about recently doing it myself I realised that I'd be taking away one of the big gameplay strategic parts of the Civ experience which is to find the perfect spots for your cities and give each city a sense of specialness and individuality, whereas if everything is worth the same then all that almost means nothing. Also I've noticed in some MGE scenarios I've played over the years that the AI seems to beeline it straight for grassland slot areas even when there's better custom terrain using other slots so I guess grassland slot hunting is hardcoded into the AI behaviour or something. So I decided for better or worse to try and have a bit of both words (which knowing my luck will probably manage to annoy both the Civ fans & the HoMM fans at the same time lol) and give every factions starting location a decent amount of grassland slots inbetween their factions usual associated terrain and make most of these other terrains similar in resource yield (especially after they've been irrigated).
So lets start with the good guys first!
The Sorceress faction occupy fertile grasslands filled with lakes, rivers and dense magical forests much like in HoMM. The forests will give them a production advantage over other factions but they will eventually inhibit growth as they must be cleared to make more farmland which can take time. The Sorceresses can field multiple flying* units giving them the ability to quickly expand and explore. If they can survive long enough to obtain their extra fast top tier Phoenixes, they may become unstoppable.
Next comes the Knight faction who in HoMM usually occupy similar terrain to the Sorceress, so to make them different in Civ2 I gave them a lot of dirt/plains terrain. Which gives their lands a look of a similar fertile paradise to the Sorcerers but clearly the those naughty humans have been clearing lots of the forests. As in HoMM the Knight's can grow quickly and some of their units are cheaper but they lack some of the special powers and abilities that the other races get (eg flying* creatures). Strong growth and overwhelming numbers of their strongest units like the Crusader will be key to their success.
Lastly comes the Wizard faction who in HoMM2 occupied dry cracked terrain so naturally they do so in our mod too. Wizards players will need to capitalise on the fertile lands around the rivers until they can irrigate the cracked lands. They have access to flying* units and some very powerful units like the mighty titan which has more hitpoints & firepower than most other top tier units. In my test game they were the dominant AI faction.
Next time I'll do the bad guys and neutrals!
Oh and speaking of the neutrals, this little moment made me laugh, heh my enemies have been hypnotized! Nice work @Metro Polis
(* Note flying creatures in this mod do not use the Civ2 flight mechanic which is reserved for magic spells. Instead flying units have increased movement and treat all squares as roads special ability.)
Last edited:
Continued...
Next comes the bad guys!
Starting with the powerful Warlock faction, who just like in HoMM2 favour the dark volcanic wastelands. These starting lands give them a harder start than the other factions, so they will need to rely on the fertile river lands while cultivating the volcanic lands. Where the Warlock's really excel is in powerful flying* units, so if they can survive their rough start and establish a good economy then they will be able to quickly expand and overwhelm their neighbours. If they survive long enough to reach the deadliest unit in the game, their mighty Black dragon, the world will be theirs! They also start quite near the legendary Dragon City which if conquered offers great rewards.
Next comes the Barbarian faction, who normally occupied desert, cracked and dirt/plains areas of HoMM2 however since those terrain types are used by other factions and the Barbarian castle screen has more of a cold tundra look I've given them lands that are a mix of cold snow, damp swamp, dirt/plains and grasslands. Similar to the Knights the Barbarians lack flying* units and special abilities, however their lands are quite fertile and their units are cheap, so quick growth and a strong economy will allow them to field large numbers of their strongest units like the Cyclops.
Then comes the last of the original 6 factions, the evil Necromancer faction. The Necromancer's live in the dark swamp regions where many an unfortunate soul has wandered into and never returned. While their castle screen looks more volcanic I felt they'd better suit the swamps on the map due to it's dead trees and graveyards! The Necromancer's starting units are not the strongest however it's lands are quite large so if they can survive long enough to get to their multiple high tier flying* units like the Bone Dragon then they will become a force to be reckoned with.
Lastly comes our special bonus 7th Civ, the Neutrals faction. The Neutrals are an alliance of previously unaligned creatures that the other expanding factions have pushed out of their homelands into the hostile desert regions. While seemingly an odd match-up of creatures they are united in their cause of pushing back against the other factions and reclaiming their homes. The neutrals are in a rather central location on the map meaning they're surrounded by other factions which can make them tough to play as. However if you survive off the fertile rivers & oasis's while you work the lands into something better and start to expand out into the even wilder savage desert lands to the south, then you can build up a large empire that can hold it's ground until you gain access to their deadly flying* top tier Genie unit!
As previously posted, this special 7th bonus faction is heavily inspired by the desert Dervish faction in the utterly brilliant Succession Wars mod for Heroes of Might & Magic 3 that converts HoMM3 into a HoMM2 like experience but also adds cool new factions containing many of the neutral creatures from HoMM2, all with a HoMM2 art style. The Neutrals Anglo Saxon style hero comes from the excellent Palm Kingdoms 2 PC & Mobile game that is very HoMM2 like! Many thanks to both the SW (Dervish castle & village map graphics as well as their gorgeous desert Dervish castle screen graphics for the city window background) and PK2 teams (custom Heroes) for allowing us use of their graphics!
Note: As previously mentioned sadly Civ2 MGE does not allow access to the 7th city castle map graphic slot so they will not appear like this in-game (this will be fixed in a later ToT version) unless you manually swap the Barbarian & Neutrals art slots around.
(* Note flying creatures in this mod do not use the Civ2 flight mechanic which is reserved for magic spells. Instead flying units have increased movement and treat all squares as roads special ability.)
Next comes the bad guys!
Starting with the powerful Warlock faction, who just like in HoMM2 favour the dark volcanic wastelands. These starting lands give them a harder start than the other factions, so they will need to rely on the fertile river lands while cultivating the volcanic lands. Where the Warlock's really excel is in powerful flying* units, so if they can survive their rough start and establish a good economy then they will be able to quickly expand and overwhelm their neighbours. If they survive long enough to reach the deadliest unit in the game, their mighty Black dragon, the world will be theirs! They also start quite near the legendary Dragon City which if conquered offers great rewards.
Next comes the Barbarian faction, who normally occupied desert, cracked and dirt/plains areas of HoMM2 however since those terrain types are used by other factions and the Barbarian castle screen has more of a cold tundra look I've given them lands that are a mix of cold snow, damp swamp, dirt/plains and grasslands. Similar to the Knights the Barbarians lack flying* units and special abilities, however their lands are quite fertile and their units are cheap, so quick growth and a strong economy will allow them to field large numbers of their strongest units like the Cyclops.
Then comes the last of the original 6 factions, the evil Necromancer faction. The Necromancer's live in the dark swamp regions where many an unfortunate soul has wandered into and never returned. While their castle screen looks more volcanic I felt they'd better suit the swamps on the map due to it's dead trees and graveyards! The Necromancer's starting units are not the strongest however it's lands are quite large so if they can survive long enough to get to their multiple high tier flying* units like the Bone Dragon then they will become a force to be reckoned with.
Lastly comes our special bonus 7th Civ, the Neutrals faction. The Neutrals are an alliance of previously unaligned creatures that the other expanding factions have pushed out of their homelands into the hostile desert regions. While seemingly an odd match-up of creatures they are united in their cause of pushing back against the other factions and reclaiming their homes. The neutrals are in a rather central location on the map meaning they're surrounded by other factions which can make them tough to play as. However if you survive off the fertile rivers & oasis's while you work the lands into something better and start to expand out into the even wilder savage desert lands to the south, then you can build up a large empire that can hold it's ground until you gain access to their deadly flying* top tier Genie unit!
As previously posted, this special 7th bonus faction is heavily inspired by the desert Dervish faction in the utterly brilliant Succession Wars mod for Heroes of Might & Magic 3 that converts HoMM3 into a HoMM2 like experience but also adds cool new factions containing many of the neutral creatures from HoMM2, all with a HoMM2 art style. The Neutrals Anglo Saxon style hero comes from the excellent Palm Kingdoms 2 PC & Mobile game that is very HoMM2 like! Many thanks to both the SW (Dervish castle & village map graphics as well as their gorgeous desert Dervish castle screen graphics for the city window background) and PK2 teams (custom Heroes) for allowing us use of their graphics!
Note: As previously mentioned sadly Civ2 MGE does not allow access to the 7th city castle map graphic slot so they will not appear like this in-game (this will be fixed in a later ToT version) unless you manually swap the Barbarian & Neutrals art slots around.
(* Note flying creatures in this mod do not use the Civ2 flight mechanic which is reserved for magic spells. Instead flying units have increased movement and treat all squares as roads special ability.)
Last edited:
Time for the last thing I wanted to show you guys. Back in the early days when @Metro Polis and I were making this HoMM2 mod together we pretty much had the same ideas for nearly everything, which is why we worked so well together and were able to do so many crazy things to Civ2 fueled by our shared dream of a true total conversion experience. However there were a couple of small areas where we did have different ideas...
Irrigation & farmland:
As a kid playing HoMM I always wanted to work the lands and make farms around the castles so I was eager go in a more 'Civilization like' direction for our mod and have irrigation & farmland around our cities with some HoMM2 cottages, houses & wells added in to still keep the HoMM feel. MetroPolis wanted more of a traditional HoMM look on the map with just some wells and houses giving things a cleaner and less cluttered look.
Unit/creature borders:
I wanted to keep the HoMM2 units as they were and not change them in any way, whereas MetroPolis felt they were getting a bit lost in the map and he always quite liked the bright glowing yellow borders on selected units during the HoMM2 tactical battle screen and decided to replicate that affect on our units painstakingly drawing borders around all of them.
Originally MetroPolis was most gracious and was happy to go in my direction resulting in his ideas almost being lost and forgotten about. However I didn't forget and I recently decided to go digging through our giant PM convo history (100s of messages over 40 pages lol) and I found his old alternative files. Due to the huge amount of changes we'd made over the years since Metro's old files were no longer compatible at all with the current mod, however I decided out of respect for my old co-creator and because I can see (as I'm sure others will) the benefits of his less cluttered map graphics that I would convert his alternative assets over to the latest version of our mod and include them in the release! Ironically there were quite a number of new units we'd added since his old file, so I had to sit there drawing yellow borders around all of them too lol! While my ones remain the defaults these alternative files will sit in a ALT_FILES folder I'm including in the mod where players can also find all the different city background alternatives depending on which faction they choose. Some people may even want to mix and match (eg my units and his farms or visversa) which they are welcome to do! This is pretty much the last update I've got for you guys before release as there isn't much left to do on the mod now, I'm just finishing up documentation and some of the marketing stuff (eg videos and website). Shouldn't be too long now!
Comparison shots, Left = Blake's defaults, Right = Metro's alternatives:
Irrigation & farmland:
As a kid playing HoMM I always wanted to work the lands and make farms around the castles so I was eager go in a more 'Civilization like' direction for our mod and have irrigation & farmland around our cities with some HoMM2 cottages, houses & wells added in to still keep the HoMM feel. MetroPolis wanted more of a traditional HoMM look on the map with just some wells and houses giving things a cleaner and less cluttered look.
Unit/creature borders:
I wanted to keep the HoMM2 units as they were and not change them in any way, whereas MetroPolis felt they were getting a bit lost in the map and he always quite liked the bright glowing yellow borders on selected units during the HoMM2 tactical battle screen and decided to replicate that affect on our units painstakingly drawing borders around all of them.
Originally MetroPolis was most gracious and was happy to go in my direction resulting in his ideas almost being lost and forgotten about. However I didn't forget and I recently decided to go digging through our giant PM convo history (100s of messages over 40 pages lol) and I found his old alternative files. Due to the huge amount of changes we'd made over the years since Metro's old files were no longer compatible at all with the current mod, however I decided out of respect for my old co-creator and because I can see (as I'm sure others will) the benefits of his less cluttered map graphics that I would convert his alternative assets over to the latest version of our mod and include them in the release! Ironically there were quite a number of new units we'd added since his old file, so I had to sit there drawing yellow borders around all of them too lol! While my ones remain the defaults these alternative files will sit in a ALT_FILES folder I'm including in the mod where players can also find all the different city background alternatives depending on which faction they choose. Some people may even want to mix and match (eg my units and his farms or visversa) which they are welcome to do! This is pretty much the last update I've got for you guys before release as there isn't much left to do on the mod now, I'm just finishing up documentation and some of the marketing stuff (eg videos and website). Shouldn't be too long now!
Comparison shots, Left = Blake's defaults, Right = Metro's alternatives:
Last edited:
Metro Polis
Warlord
Looks both awesome, champ. We pulled off things I can't even remember now how we achieved them back then..
Hey everyone.. Just thought I'd let you know that I've been very busy on my mod projects lately and the time is finally almost here.. in the next few days (assuming I get through & recover from some minor surgery without any troubles) the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod for Civ2 MGE will be released! I'll also put up some teasers below of some bonus content I've been working on too...
New promotional shot for the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod (similar to old one but more populated with creatures and cities).
Promotional shot for the up and coming Heroes of Might & Magic 1 Addon ModMod (many changes have been made to the HoMM2 mod to make it HoMM1 style).
Early graphical test/teaser shot of a future Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod Test of Time Conversion (with full custom HoMM2 ToT GUI, working neutral 7th city style, more terrain variants, and large building Civilopedia images).
New promotional shot for the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod (similar to old one but more populated with creatures and cities).
Promotional shot for the up and coming Heroes of Might & Magic 1 Addon ModMod (many changes have been made to the HoMM2 mod to make it HoMM1 style).
Early graphical test/teaser shot of a future Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod Test of Time Conversion (with full custom HoMM2 ToT GUI, working neutral 7th city style, more terrain variants, and large building Civilopedia images).
Last edited:
St. Leo
Chieftain
Looks gorgeous!
Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
Absolute madlad just casually swoops in with a three-for-one deal 
Metro Polis
Warlord
Finally!
DONE! After 4 years the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 Mod has been released!!!
Release thread with downloads:
Tour video:
youtu.be/g1V7_hjmjD0?list=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY
Release thread with downloads:
Heroes of Might and Magic 2 Scenario Mod (& HoMM1 Addon) - Release Thread
I didn't know anything about Civilization before 1997. Soon after I got my first computer in summer of 1997, my brother went to the stores and bought 2 games: Civilization II and Heroes of Might and Magic II. The reason he picked them was because both game received many awards, such as Game of...
forums.civfanatics.com
Tour video:
youtu.be/g1V7_hjmjD0?list=PLZqnaGtTZxFbq3F5R6lqzyVvYzg9tRBPY
Last edited:
Oh @St. Leo your like just reminded me to tell you that I gave your good old Dual Europe scenario a quick plug around the 03:30 mark in the vid since until now it was the only Civ2 scenario out there with HoMM stuff in it! When I eventually finally get my huge main Civ2 tour video out (that this HoMM video references a few times) I'll be covering plenty of your other great scenarios too mate.
Man how has it already been 6mths lol! Guess I better get that Heroes of Might & Magic 1 Addon released soon lol! It's all done and I'm just finishing up the bug testing and documentation on it so it should be ready very soon.
But for now let's talk about what this HoMM1 themed addon changes in the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod.
Years ago I talked with @Metro Polis about doing a special Heroes of Might & Magic 1 addon for our HoMM2 mod that converts most of the graphics to HoMM1 style. We sort of laughed it off as something I'll probably never get to, however late last year when I was 'in the zone' finishing up the HoMM2 mod I decided to go for it and do the HoMM1 addon too. As previously posted in this thread I started with the hardest job and imported and converted the HoMM1 towns and castles into Civ2 which was quite the challenge as the original assets are more than 3x the height & 2x the width of the Civ2 city sprite box meaning a lot of downsizing and repainting is requiring if you want that sharp 'pixel perfect' look instead of a blurred/stretched auto downsize. I converted all the original HoMM2 towns and castles into our mod waaaaaay back in 2019 so I was super rusty with these tricks and it's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with the final result.
Next I imported all of Heroes of Might & Magic 1's units into the game. HoMM1 only has 4 factions versus HoMM2's 6 factions so I thought about removing the extra ones but it would have mucked up a lot of the scenario's balancing and needed a new map designed which I felt was a bridge too far for a small addon that most people probably won't play. So apologies to HoMM1 purists haha, you'll still be a seeing some HoMM2 stuff in your game (grayed out below for display purposes).
(Click to expand)
After that all that was left to finish the conversion of the game world was terrain! I was a little bit worried how I'd go as Metropolis did all the terrain conversion work for our HoMM2 mod but I've done so much terrain work in my other mods over the years since that I figured I'd go okay and sure enough it's gone pretty well. Most terrains and special resources have been replaced with HoMM1 equivalents although I left the hills, mountains and coasts as they are as that's a lot of extra work for pretty minor differences. Things still didn't look different enough so I decided to build up a new forest set and studied how Metro did his in 2019. Basically he took a similar autumn forest set from Civ2 (from the Master of Magic scenario) and pasted HoMM2 autumn trees over the top until you could barely see the Civ2 forest underneath but because it was still there it created the illusion of a dense forest look (without him having to paste hundreds of HoMM2 trees on top of one another). So I went hunting and found a nice pine tree forest (in Captain Nemo's Nemoland terrain tile set) and covered them in pine trees from HoMM1. Ironically both HoMM1 & HoMM2 use both tree types anyway so perhaps in the later Test of Time version I'll use the extra terrain slots to have both forest types in the game, but for now they illustrate the visual difference between the HoMM2 and HoMM1 addon nicely. Here's some comparison shots below showing the new terrain, units and cities in game...
(Click to expand)
With the game world sorted I decided to throw in a few of the usual extra bells and whistles too and look at messing with the cutscenes, main menu, and GUI...
Heroes of Might & Magic 1 doesn't have many cutscenes so I've left most of our HoMM2 themed videos files (eg wonders, dragon launch, diplomacy heralds, and high council advisors) as they were however I couldn't resist changing the intro and death videos as HoMM1's intro has lots of nostalgic goodness and it's guillotine death sequence was perfect for your death in Civ2 as well. The scenes take a quality hit due to Civ2's lower video quality but nevertheless they play nicely in the game and I may do higher resolution & quality conversions for a Test of Time version one day.
Naturally I could't resist designing a nice big and colourful 1080P HoMM1 themed Civ2 main menu replacement similar to what I did for the HoMM2 mod. All start new game window images have been replaced too.
(Click to expand)
Of course if I'm going to replace the intro DLL images then I'm obviously going to replace all the advisor ones too. Once again I was very hampered by HoMM1's lack of cutscenes so I had to use a lot of in-game shots of castles and battles to get the job done. I probably should have darkened them a bit more for readability but man I love these images haha.
(Click to expand)
Lastly I've replaced all city screen backgrounds, city buildings and those with a keen eye looking at the last few pictures will have also noticed that I've done a new custom GUI using the gold jewels and snake wood theme from HoMM1's GUI too. So here's a big promotional shot showing all that off too.
(Click to expand)
For those that want to see it all in action I do a quick tour of the HoMM1 addon at the 35:45 mark of my original Heroes of Might & Magic 2 tour video here...
Finally those wondering about the aforementioned enhanced HoMM2 mod Test of Time conversion work, well my priority at the moment is to finish and release the last of my planned MGE mods and videos first, however I have done some more preliminary work. As previously posted I've already converted the custom GUI over to ToT, Gaeptit has kindly helped me with the scenario files conversion work, and I recently converted the city buildings across. This was quite a bit of work as I did the original city buildings in 2019 so I had to find all the source images again or make my own new ones and take zero shortcuts this time due to doing them in much high resolutions however the results speak for themselves and the higher res higher colour city buildings in ToT look gooooood.
Original MGE building icons:
New ToT building icons:
And some of the big ToT Civilopedia building images:
But for now let's talk about what this HoMM1 themed addon changes in the Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod.
Years ago I talked with @Metro Polis about doing a special Heroes of Might & Magic 1 addon for our HoMM2 mod that converts most of the graphics to HoMM1 style. We sort of laughed it off as something I'll probably never get to, however late last year when I was 'in the zone' finishing up the HoMM2 mod I decided to go for it and do the HoMM1 addon too. As previously posted in this thread I started with the hardest job and imported and converted the HoMM1 towns and castles into Civ2 which was quite the challenge as the original assets are more than 3x the height & 2x the width of the Civ2 city sprite box meaning a lot of downsizing and repainting is requiring if you want that sharp 'pixel perfect' look instead of a blurred/stretched auto downsize. I converted all the original HoMM2 towns and castles into our mod waaaaaay back in 2019 so I was super rusty with these tricks and it's not perfect but I'm pretty happy with the final result.
Next I imported all of Heroes of Might & Magic 1's units into the game. HoMM1 only has 4 factions versus HoMM2's 6 factions so I thought about removing the extra ones but it would have mucked up a lot of the scenario's balancing and needed a new map designed which I felt was a bridge too far for a small addon that most people probably won't play. So apologies to HoMM1 purists haha, you'll still be a seeing some HoMM2 stuff in your game (grayed out below for display purposes).
(Click to expand)
After that all that was left to finish the conversion of the game world was terrain! I was a little bit worried how I'd go as Metropolis did all the terrain conversion work for our HoMM2 mod but I've done so much terrain work in my other mods over the years since that I figured I'd go okay and sure enough it's gone pretty well. Most terrains and special resources have been replaced with HoMM1 equivalents although I left the hills, mountains and coasts as they are as that's a lot of extra work for pretty minor differences. Things still didn't look different enough so I decided to build up a new forest set and studied how Metro did his in 2019. Basically he took a similar autumn forest set from Civ2 (from the Master of Magic scenario) and pasted HoMM2 autumn trees over the top until you could barely see the Civ2 forest underneath but because it was still there it created the illusion of a dense forest look (without him having to paste hundreds of HoMM2 trees on top of one another). So I went hunting and found a nice pine tree forest (in Captain Nemo's Nemoland terrain tile set) and covered them in pine trees from HoMM1. Ironically both HoMM1 & HoMM2 use both tree types anyway so perhaps in the later Test of Time version I'll use the extra terrain slots to have both forest types in the game, but for now they illustrate the visual difference between the HoMM2 and HoMM1 addon nicely. Here's some comparison shots below showing the new terrain, units and cities in game...
(Click to expand)
With the game world sorted I decided to throw in a few of the usual extra bells and whistles too and look at messing with the cutscenes, main menu, and GUI...
Heroes of Might & Magic 1 doesn't have many cutscenes so I've left most of our HoMM2 themed videos files (eg wonders, dragon launch, diplomacy heralds, and high council advisors) as they were however I couldn't resist changing the intro and death videos as HoMM1's intro has lots of nostalgic goodness and it's guillotine death sequence was perfect for your death in Civ2 as well. The scenes take a quality hit due to Civ2's lower video quality but nevertheless they play nicely in the game and I may do higher resolution & quality conversions for a Test of Time version one day.
Naturally I could't resist designing a nice big and colourful 1080P HoMM1 themed Civ2 main menu replacement similar to what I did for the HoMM2 mod. All start new game window images have been replaced too.
(Click to expand)
Of course if I'm going to replace the intro DLL images then I'm obviously going to replace all the advisor ones too. Once again I was very hampered by HoMM1's lack of cutscenes so I had to use a lot of in-game shots of castles and battles to get the job done. I probably should have darkened them a bit more for readability but man I love these images haha.
(Click to expand)
Lastly I've replaced all city screen backgrounds, city buildings and those with a keen eye looking at the last few pictures will have also noticed that I've done a new custom GUI using the gold jewels and snake wood theme from HoMM1's GUI too. So here's a big promotional shot showing all that off too.
(Click to expand)
For those that want to see it all in action I do a quick tour of the HoMM1 addon at the 35:45 mark of my original Heroes of Might & Magic 2 tour video here...
Finally those wondering about the aforementioned enhanced HoMM2 mod Test of Time conversion work, well my priority at the moment is to finish and release the last of my planned MGE mods and videos first, however I have done some more preliminary work. As previously posted I've already converted the custom GUI over to ToT, Gaeptit has kindly helped me with the scenario files conversion work, and I recently converted the city buildings across. This was quite a bit of work as I did the original city buildings in 2019 so I had to find all the source images again or make my own new ones and take zero shortcuts this time due to doing them in much high resolutions however the results speak for themselves and the higher res higher colour city buildings in ToT look gooooood.
Original MGE building icons:
New ToT building icons:
And some of the big ToT Civilopedia building images:
Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
There are few motivators as strong as "it'll never happen".
Last edited:
Hey guys, working on a bug fix update for the HoMM2 mod as while finishing up a my other mods I ran into various bugs/issues that compelled me to back check my previously completed mods including this one for the same bugs and figured I'd better fix them!
So far I've fixed a nasty labels.txt crash (in some versions of Civ2), stopped empire splitting, removed BC/AD turn dates, and added some new GUI/Interactivity sounds. However there's one more issue I need help on..
Back in 2019 when @Metro Polis setup the tech tree and gifted the Industrialization and Electronics tech slots to 2 of our factions to give them the 5th & 6th city graphic type slots, he warned me of a slightly unfortunate side effect where those 2 factions would have a slight research speed disadvantage in the early game due to having one extra tech and sure enough in my test games I did notice those factions falling behind a bit. However while working on my SMAC Merger project I faced a similar situation and realised that if I gifted an unused 'deadweight' tech to the other 5 factions that would ensure all factions start with the same amount of techs each. So I figured I'd better come back to this project and see if I can do the same. I really struggled with tech tree stuff so it's already turning my brain inside out trying to make these fixes and I really don't want to accidentally screw up Metro's lovely custom tech tree he built up as he took out most of these techs for a good reason!
So I'm looking at all the unused tech slots in our scenario to see if there are 5 I can use for these 'deadweight' faction techs. Below is a list of all the unused techs, as all other tech slots not listed (including the extras on the end of usual tech list) are already being used by our mod. I've already crossed out the ones I know affect Goodies, Barbarians and Pirates, along with Railroad as we use those slots for decoration. However I know there are more that affect the game in different ways eg ones that result in all barracks disappearing or some other special event happening which I'd want to avoid. Although one side affect is that I think Fusion Power makes Nuclear plants safe and we do use Nuclear plants in our scenario (whoops lol) so if I use that as one of the 5 I want then that kills 2 birds with 1 stone and fixes that oversight lol. So now I think I just need 4 tech slots. So if you guys can recommend 4 techs to me from the below list that you're sure are nothing more than dead weight and do absolutely nothing then I'll use them.
zz Advanced Flight, 4,-2, no, no, 3, 4 ; AFl
zz Bronze Working, 6,-1, no, no, 0, 4 ; Bro
zz Chivalry, 6,-2, no, no, 1, 0 ; Chi
zz Combined Arms, 5,-1, no, no, 3, 0 ; CA
zz Combustion, 5,-1, no, no, 2, 4 ; Cmb
zz Computers, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 4 ; Cmp
zz Conscription, 1, 0, no, no, 2, 0 ; Csc
zz Electricity, 4, 0, no, no, 2, 4 ; E1
zz Engineering, 4, 0, no, no, 0, 4 ; Eng
zz Environmentalism, 3, 1, no, no, 3, 2 ; Env
zz Espionage, 3,-1, no, no, 3, 0 ; Esp
zz Explosives, 5, 0, no, no, 2, 4 ; Exp
zz Feudalism, 4,-1, no, no, 0, 0 ; Feu
zz Flight, 4,-1, no, no, 2, 4 ; Fli
zz Fusion Power, 3, 0, no, no, 3, 3 ; FP
zz Genetic Engineering,3, 2, no, no, 3, 3 ; Gen
zz Gunpowder, 8,-2, no, no, 1, 0 ; Gun
zz Iron Working, 5,-1, no, no, 0, 4 ; Iro
zz The Laser, 4, 0, no, no, 3, 3 ; Las
zz Leadership, 5,-1, no, no, 1, 0 ; Ldr
zz Magnetism, 4,-1, no, no, 1, 3 ; Mag
zz Mathematics, 6,-1, no, no, 0, 3 ; Mat
zz Mobile Warfare, 8,-1, no, no, 3, 0 ; Mob
zz Monotheism, 5, 1, no, no, 1, 2 ; MT
zz Plastics, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 4 ; Pla
zz Polytheism, 4, 0, no, no, 0, 2 ; PT
zz Railroad, 6, 0, no, no, 2, 1 ; RR
zz Space Flight, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 3 ; SFl
zz Stealth, 3,-2, no, no, 3, 0 ; Sth
zz Steam Engine, 4,-1, no, no, 2, 3 ; SE
zz Superconductor, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 3 ; Sup
zz Tactics, 6,-1, no, no, 2, 0 ; Tac
So far I've fixed a nasty labels.txt crash (in some versions of Civ2), stopped empire splitting, removed BC/AD turn dates, and added some new GUI/Interactivity sounds. However there's one more issue I need help on..
Back in 2019 when @Metro Polis setup the tech tree and gifted the Industrialization and Electronics tech slots to 2 of our factions to give them the 5th & 6th city graphic type slots, he warned me of a slightly unfortunate side effect where those 2 factions would have a slight research speed disadvantage in the early game due to having one extra tech and sure enough in my test games I did notice those factions falling behind a bit. However while working on my SMAC Merger project I faced a similar situation and realised that if I gifted an unused 'deadweight' tech to the other 5 factions that would ensure all factions start with the same amount of techs each. So I figured I'd better come back to this project and see if I can do the same. I really struggled with tech tree stuff so it's already turning my brain inside out trying to make these fixes and I really don't want to accidentally screw up Metro's lovely custom tech tree he built up as he took out most of these techs for a good reason!
So I'm looking at all the unused tech slots in our scenario to see if there are 5 I can use for these 'deadweight' faction techs. Below is a list of all the unused techs, as all other tech slots not listed (including the extras on the end of usual tech list) are already being used by our mod. I've already crossed out the ones I know affect Goodies, Barbarians and Pirates, along with Railroad as we use those slots for decoration. However I know there are more that affect the game in different ways eg ones that result in all barracks disappearing or some other special event happening which I'd want to avoid. Although one side affect is that I think Fusion Power makes Nuclear plants safe and we do use Nuclear plants in our scenario (whoops lol) so if I use that as one of the 5 I want then that kills 2 birds with 1 stone and fixes that oversight lol. So now I think I just need 4 tech slots. So if you guys can recommend 4 techs to me from the below list that you're sure are nothing more than dead weight and do absolutely nothing then I'll use them.
zz Advanced Flight, 4,-2, no, no, 3, 4 ; AFl
zz Bronze Working, 6,-1, no, no, 0, 4 ; Bro
zz Combined Arms, 5,-1, no, no, 3, 0 ; CA
zz Combustion, 5,-1, no, no, 2, 4 ; Cmb
zz Computers, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 4 ; Cmp
zz Electricity, 4, 0, no, no, 2, 4 ; E1
zz Engineering, 4, 0, no, no, 0, 4 ; Eng
zz Environmentalism, 3, 1, no, no, 3, 2 ; Env
zz Espionage, 3,-1, no, no, 3, 0 ; Esp
zz Explosives, 5, 0, no, no, 2, 4 ; Exp
zz Feudalism, 4,-1, no, no, 0, 0 ; Feu
zz Flight, 4,-1, no, no, 2, 4 ; Fli
zz Fusion Power, 3, 0, no, no, 3, 3 ; FP
zz Genetic Engineering,3, 2, no, no, 3, 3 ; Gen
zz Iron Working, 5,-1, no, no, 0, 4 ; Iro
zz The Laser, 4, 0, no, no, 3, 3 ; Las
zz Magnetism, 4,-1, no, no, 1, 3 ; Mag
zz Mathematics, 6,-1, no, no, 0, 3 ; Mat
zz Monotheism, 5, 1, no, no, 1, 2 ; MT
zz Plastics, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 4 ; Pla
zz Railroad, 6, 0, no, no, 2, 1 ; RR
zz Space Flight, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 3 ; SFl
zz Stealth, 3,-2, no, no, 3, 0 ; Sth
zz Steam Engine, 4,-1, no, no, 2, 3 ; SE
zz Superconductor, 4, 1, no, no, 3, 3 ; Sup
Bronze Working
Combined Arms
Combustion
Computers
Engineering
Genetic Engineering
The Laser
Mathematics
Space Flight
Stealth
Steam Engine
Superconductor
shall be ok for you to use :
Combined Arms
Combustion
Computers
Engineering
Genetic Engineering
The Laser
Mathematics
Space Flight
Stealth
Steam Engine
Superconductor
shall be ok for you to use :
