Heroes of Might and Magic Civ2 & ToT scenarios development

[Metro Polis]

Well, I started out with MGE and tried out TOT once, but only briefly for the Star Trek Mod. It was a lot of unsatiesfying work with the sprites files. I never worked with it again, so I'd rather prefer MGE, too. Maybe I started out with the wrong palette, I used to play Heroes II in HD modus five years ago and still worked with TOT, I really can't remember. But now at least I know what I have to do and why it worked so badly with the graphics posted above.

 

[Metro Polis]

I got it now, I used an upload website to put it online and then copy the URL (abload.de) to post it as a picture and not as a file. And I think that website turns every picture to png (which I never remember to have used once) and multi-bit version. And now it all messed up, when I tried to transorm it back into 8bit. I have to start anew and copy things right out of the game itself. Then it should work fine enough. Do you have a Heroes II savegame, which displays a lot of the terrains? Because I only have a vanilla version of HoMM2 right here and would have to play the maps in order to unveil the terrains.

 

[Blake00]

You played Heroes II in HD??? I thought only Heroes 3 had a fan patch that allowed HD play?? If there's a Heroes 1 or 2 HD patch I need to know about it haha!

Hmm I have a Heroes 2 install via D-Fend Dosbox which I think I setup to give the game to a friend as I actually haven't played Heroes 2 in 20 years haha. I usually backup all my savegames so I'll see if I've got the ones from 20 years ago.

EDIT: Here we go! Here's my main campaign final mission saves from good old 1997 (wow haha) which contain every race and terrain so they should be good. Heh if you look at the beach next to the black lava terrain the dithering actually looks similar to Civ 2s haha.

Also I've got good pallet conversion stuff in paint shop pro (better than win paint haha) so I'll take a look at your pngs to see if I can rescue them.

.

 

[Blake00]

Success! I was able to convert your 2 world shots to each of the different Civ2 pallets. And I also converted your units to the units pallet with no glitches. See attached files!

 

[Metro Polis]

Now that's really cool, man. I can start working with that now. If I need your help in converting again, I'll let you know.

 

[Blake00]

Now that's really cool, man. I can start working with that now. If I need your help in converting again, I'll let you know.

Yeah send anything H2 graphics you want converted my way. If something doesn't convert well I've got good RGB colour adjustment tools I can used to manipulate a better conversion. Eg some of the C&C stuff I've been converting looked terrible so I can to really mess around with them to get a good conversion.

Did you see my post above the pictures one with the H2 save games? How the hell were you playing Heroes 2 in HD haha?

 

[Metro Polis]

Does it work the same with these screenshots? Because if it does, things will proceed very fast. And what kind of picture do you prefer, png?

 

[Blake00]

Does it work the same with these screenshots? Because if it does, things will proceed very fast. And what kind of picture do you prefer, png?

Well that is original HoMM2 graphics it may not convert so well as I think your other pngs were already converted to civs pallet before that website messed with them. But I'll go give it shot.

PNG is probably better for CivFanatics as their poor server is storing all this cr*p in our convo haha!

 

[Blake00]

SUCCESS!!!

They converted very well in the end! The yellow sand in the deserts and the light coloured waves in the water both took a bit of a hit but pretty much everything else converted beautifully into Civ2's pallet. I might see if I can get a better result out of the sandy deserts in another file.

Oh and I realised that the Terrain 1 pallet is identical to the Terrain 2 pallet so I didn't need to send you those T2 copies before sorry. Won't do that anymore. But I've checked the cities & units files DO have slightly different pallets to the terrain files.

I'm guessing you're gonna take cities from that website and not from this but juuuuust in case I've attached a city pallet conversion too.

 

[Blake00]

Can I recommend we get rid of that green bush on the 'brown dirt' tile? It gets too repetitive. Better off with something basic.

I've tried some alternative conversions of the desert but they don't look all that great so probably best to stick with the default conversion in my last post.

LEFT = Default conversion (same as last post)
MIDDLE = More orange
RIGHT = More yellow

 

[Metro Polis]

Okay, I will have some shots and post them all, and then we can decide on the one which fits best. Meanwhile you can look on the website for resources/buildings you want to include for each terrain.

 

[Blake00]

Yeah sure! Although it's bed time in Australia so I'll get on to that tomorrow as I've got the day off work.

Are these choices replacements for the Civ special resources? If so that will mean I need to decide on 2 per terrain type..

If I'm not mistaken there's 8 terrain types in HoMM2 (Dirt, grass, rocky, sandy, volcanic, swamp, snow, water) meaning I'll need to come up with 16 special resources. There's 6 resources (wood, ore, crystal, gems, sulfur, merc) in HoMM2 so I'll need to slot them into the most appropriate terrains and then come up with 10 more from other random HoMM 2 buildings.. should be a fun task for tomorrow haha!

Let me know if I'm forgetting something and I need more than that.

 

[Metro Polis]

It doesn't have to be ressources only, could be nice buildings too, a volcano for example, just like in the uploaded picture.

There are more terrains in Civ2 than in HoMM2: desert, prairie, grass, forest, hills, mountains, tundra, artic, swamp, jungle, ocean - 11, so you could reuse terrains with completely new resources or have different-looking forests or mountains. And there are no ressources on grasslands, it only uses the shield tile to indicate a resource there (well a green shield in the original version, clover in mine). That leaves us 20 little pics for ressources plus the one for the grass, totaling 21 extra graphics.

Not to mention those for mining (which I would say would be enough to use a simple mine pic with all kind of HOMM ressources around it - there's one in the file uploaded). I wouldn't place every single ressource all over the map, that looks awkward. But instead try to form a more interesting landscape by using buildings or whatever you find). We need some for the airports, irrigation, farmland and fortress, too. Either we use them in the game

Here comes the first impression (some of which could be used as ressources), I reduced the size of your converted picture to 66% and then transormed it into tiles. Single trees can be rearranged to look like a HoMM2 forest.

 

[Metro Polis]

I doesn't work with the png files (see inbox message), they get reconverted to 32bit as soon as I make changes and save it anew. When I simply copy them into the terrain.gif or terrain.bmp, the colours get messed up (bmp256) or the game crashes right from the start (gif). And I don't know anything about converting it to the right pallet, never tried and lack the software.

 

[Blake00]

Oh I know there's more types in Civ, I just figured you'd be using them for all those different coloured mountains but you've probably got something better in mind to pull that trick off haha.

So okay I'll put together a list of 2 special resources per HoMM2 terrain type (substituting forest for grassland since that has 2 specials) and then recommend a couple of bonus 'pretty things' for each terrain type should there be space.

Yeah it sounds like paintbrush is messing you around as I don't think it support custom palettes so even if you save as 8 bit it still wont match Civ 2's pallet as Civ and Doom and lots of those old 256 colour games actually use custom 8 bit palettes instead of the windows standard 256 colours. When I loaded your png above it had a full 24 bit palette and not the civ 2 one. I'll go read your messages now!

EDIT: Oooooooh I just found the perfect tool for getting terrain decoration thats not on that awesome website you gave me. I just got the Heroes 2 map editor working in dosbox and when you click on the decoration button for each terrain type you get the full list nicely categorised under its terrain type! I was gonna say they'd be perfect for grabbing thanks to the blue background but it looks like they're all downsized as not as nicely as we can in paint so maybe not so good for cutting out but still great for helping us make selections/decisions.

 

[Blake00]

Alrighty then, lets get this party started!!!

I'm finding a few things on the might and magic wiki site which aren't on the other site too.

Let me know if you think a few things should be changed or switched around. All the bonus decorations are optional as I'm guessing they'll be no where near enough tiles for all this haha. Anyway here are my ideas..

Grassland
Shields
No special resources of course however it has the shield. I liked that little green 4 leaf clover thingo you did in your original pic so I'm thinking either that or maybe one of these guys. Either a tree, or the little lake or 1 of the flower arrangements would look nice scattered across of the grassland where a shield normally is.

(Click to enlarge, also pre-converted to civ2 palette)

Bonus Decoration
Use more stuff from above pic, or The Oracle, or Faerie ring, or Xanadu
or or


Forest
Resource 1 - Wood Mill


Resource 2 - Pixie Dust
or

Bonus Decoration
Tree of Knowledge, or other tree types from the game (there's a number of different tree types)



Swamp
Resource 1 - Bone Dust (Couldn't think of anything better)


Resource 2 - Tree of Dead (Couldn't think of anything better)

(Click to enlarge, also pre-converted to civ2 palette)

Bonus Decoration
Use more stuff from above pic, or campfire, or gypsy camp, or tomb.
or or


Hills
Obviously there's different types in H2 so I'm not sure how you're going to handle that just yet so for now it'll treat it as 1 terrain. I'm thinking use the standard grey mountains tile graphics from HoMM2?
Resource 1 - Ore

(Click to enlarge, also pre-converted to civ2 palette)

Resource 2 - Coal
Re-colour ore cart above to black

Bonus Decoration
Dragon city



Mountains
Use the white snowy mountain terrain from HoMM2?
Resource 1 - Gold


Resource 2 - Lookout Tower


Bonus Decoration
Air Elemental Magic (could be used as a resource)



Volcanic
Resource 1 - Sulfur


Resource 2 - Pool of lava
(use the one you've already made)

Bonus Decoration
Fire Elemental Magic (could be used as a resource)



Water
Resource 1 - Fishing Platform


Resource 2 - Mermaid Scales
(Something is wrong with their image, will need to rip our own I think)


Bonus Decoration
Ship wrecks (crop the land out and just have a rock)
or

It's a pity the coast tiles aren't bigger as it would have been fun to stick ships in them.

SPLITTING POST DUE TO 30 IMAGE LIMIT.

 

[Blake00]

SPLITTING POST DUE TO 30 IMAGE LIMIT.

Rocky/Cracked
Not sure what to do about the rocky mountains that come with this climate. They look cool so it would be nice to get them in the game but I'm not sure the best way to go about it. For now I'll just focus on the cracked terrain.
Resource 1 - Crystals

(Click to enlarge, NOT pre-converted to civ2 palette until we decide on best conversion colour)

Resource 2 - Oil
Take from above pic.

Bonus Decoration
Witches hut, or Troll bridge
or


Sandy Desert
Resource 1 - Oasis
(just replace civ 2's desert oasis haha easy)


Resource 2 - Gems

(Click to enlarge, NOT pre-converted to civ2 palette until we decide on best conversion colour)

Bonus Decoration
Sphinx, or Pyramid, or City of the Damned
or or


Dirt/Plains
Resource 1 - Windmill


Resource 2 - The Arena


Bonus Decoration
Earth Elemental Magic (could be used as a resource), or Gazebo, or Standing Stones
or or


Snow
Resource 1 - Mercury Lab
(I love how there's a special snow version of it so we gotta use that haha)

(Click to enlarge, also pre-converted to civ2 palette)

Resource 2 - Obelisk
Take special snow version from above pic.

Bonus Decoration
Water Elemental Magic (could be used as a resource), or Lean To, or Frozen Lake (above pic)
or


Coasts/Beach
What you did before was good although it'll need dithering otherwise it looks weird next to the other terrains.

There is an actual beach terrain/climate zone in HoMM2 but its got no special/unique buildings and I'd rather save the slots it takes for other cool sh*t. We can see enough beach in the cool coastal terrain you made last time anyway haha.


Roads
Maybe make them fatter to have more of a HoMM2 look and as a fun extra maybe put little horse stable next to the road in one of the road junction graphic tiles for wow factor.



Rivers
I liked the ones you used last time. Maybe like with the roads insert a lovely waterwheel on one of the junction tiles for wow factor.



Railroads
Rename to Enhanced Roads using a shiny/sparkling golden version of regular road textures like in master of magic. Unless you're planning on blocking railroad tech and substituting their tiles for something else cool.



Irrigation
I've got something in mind for this.. just need to find it in my files. I'll also check the ones you gave me to see if there's anything better.


Farmland
Use a converted copy of the nice farmland tile in ToT midgard/fantasy scenario. I may play with its colours too.


Mines
Take one of the HoMM2 mines and remove the resource type and maybe have an empty train cart or something else to give it a generic look.



Fortress
Not sure yet. Maybe use the H2 fort but make some adjustments so it doesn't hide all the unit.



Airbase
Will need something for those flying units you've allocated in the units file. There's no eagles nest in HoMM2 but we could make one pretty easily. Eg combing a mountain terrain with the eagles nest used in the sky world of the Midgard/Fantasy ToT scenario.


Village/Goodie Huts
I think what you previously did with Treasure chest works fine.

 

[Metro Polis]

Great stuff, I'm going to work on the terrain1 and terrain2 basics, so you can think about the ressources and bonus items a little bit more and choose whichever you like. Actually we can make them all working and place them in the same file, so if you get sick of one design you can just copy others in those places requested by the game.

 

[Metro Polis]

Oh, about the roads: I would not ecommend to have them fat at all, simply because the road finally lies over everything there is: the terrain, the resources, simply everything. And you know how many roads are built in Civ, you won't see anything more on the long run. You have to keep them actually as thin as possible. There is however a way to introduce them instead of railroads right at the beginning of a scenario, so it will fit graphically - but allow you infinte moves. We have to think about that again, I don't like the railroads. Actually if you want to have them that way I'll recommend to use them like the forest, hills and mountains - as a terrain of it's own.

 

[Blake00]

Great stuff, I'm going to work on the terrain1 and terrain2 basics, so you can think about the ressources and bonus items a little bit more and choose whichever you like. Actually we can make them all working and place them in the same file, so if you get sick of one design you can just copy others in those places requested by the game.

Oh, about the roads: I would recommend to have them fat at all, simply because the road finally lies over everything there is: the terrain, the resources, simply everything. And you know how many roads are built in Civ, you won't see anything more on the long run. You have to keep them actually as thin as possible. There is however a way to introduce them instead of railroads right at the beginning of a scenario, so it will fit graphically - but allow you infinte moves. We have to think about that again, I don't like the railroads. Actually if you want to have them that way I'll recommend to use them like the forest, hills and mountains - as a terrain of it's own.

No worries mate. Yeah it's hard for me to make decisions without seeing how things look (after shrinking and colour conversion) in a prototype so yeah it's probably best if I let you do your thing first haha!

Yeah sorry I realised that after posting and walking away from the computer haha whoops. Roads overlap everything so definitely don't want them fatter haha. I'm okay with us sacrificing railroads to gain more tiles for fun custom stuff. Having instant moves in a medieval fantasy scenario doesn't feel right anyway hey haha.