Heroes of Might and Magic Civ2 & ToT scenarios development

[Metro Polis]

And the sea-based city improvements of course, too. And you're right, some power plants are redundant. AS far as I can see you've got 19 improvements, right? This looks really cool.

 

[Blake00]

I just had a look.. there's 21.. so you're 2 short in the picture..

Hmm you switched the superhighways graphics for roads right? so thats 1 down.. which leaves 1 mystery one we can't see yet we know its there.. sewers maybe?

 

[Metro Polis]

Nah, the superhighways is Stonehenge. I think it's the airport and the Waterfall (Aqueduct). Maybe they are hidden behind trees.
Well, there are 33 possible city improvements, didn't I tell there was about dozen missing?

 

[Civinator]

May be a little bit late, as many graphics for Civ 2 are now done in a good quality, but here are the links to tom2050´s Civ 3 HOMM graphics used in his Civ 3 HOMM mod. These Civ 3 units have pcx Civilopedia graphics, that could easily be transformed to bmp or gif graphics with PSP or any other graphics editor. The spells and resources could be animated -but only for Civ 2 ToT and TOTPP - with Mercator´s Sprite Tool, too:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/gold-city-icon-graphics.16451/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/99-prop-units-for-mods-and-scenarios.17101/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/61-prop-units-for-scenarios.17021/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/monolith-portal-teleport-24-pack.17003/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/mega-spell-pack-part-1.15025/

 

[Blake00]

Wow Thanks @Civinator ! That's really cool.

I was originally toying with converting out HoMM2 scenario into a HoMM3 one later however it would be no match for what Tom made so there's probably not much point haha!

That's also very cool that his animating HoMM3 Civ3 terrain and unit sprites could be fed into Merc's ToT sprite editor too.

Someone could make one hell of HoMM3 scenario for ToT using that stuff.

BTW We're making good progress with this HoMM2 scenario. As well as the previously mentioned unit and world graphics all finished, we've now got custom building graphics in the city sky view, custom leaders for diplomacy, and in the last 24hrs Metro & I have been playing around with even the videos. We're bouncing around ideas now for some small HoMM2 themed wonder videos. We're replaced all the wonders with HoMM 2 artifacts so a mod of the ToT fantasy video where a book opens up and reveals the icon might work nicely.

 

[Civinator]

Per example the attack animation of the Bioterminator in my Civ 2 ToT SciFi mod shows an animation of a spell created by tom2050:

Spoiler :

 

[Blake00]

Per example the attack animation of the Bioterminator in my Civ 2 ToT SciFi mod shows an animation of a spell created by tom2050:

haha yeah that's the gas cloud around a Lich's range attack in HoMM3 haha. I loved using that attack.

 

[Blake00]

2023 EDIT: The Civ2 HoMM2 mod project between MetroPolis & myself continued in this thread for 4 years until it's final release in 2023!
https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...-tot-scenarios-development.6127/post-16516652

Original post:

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Progress pictures time!

@Metro Polis & I have finished replacing all of the 42 Civ2 Leader pictures with HoMM2 hero portraits. Converting their faces into the limitations of the Civ2 palette has been a challenge but the final results are pretty good!

Here's some of the imported leaders (light blue is transparent in-game):

Here is a in-game Diplomacy screenshot (note we'll probably be telling people to disable 'Heralds' as having a Zulu, a Roman or some big Russian guy dancing away in front of our leaders doesn't really suit the theme haha).

Meanwhile Metro & I decided to 'go where no Civ2 scenario maker has gone before' (at least we don't think anyone has) and replace all of the Civ2's cutscene videos. As previously mentioned We're using HoMM2 artefacts as the Wonders so we're going to make some for of cool video that leads to a book or scrool showing what it does using HoMM2 icons of course.

Here's some test shots of Metro's awesome wonder video work (note: titles won't match video as we're testing using the slot 1 Pyramids wonder)

And last of all here's a new in-game world shot where I've been playing around testing our World decoration. For a game that doesn't have anywhere near as many map objects as HoMM does I think we've done a pretty good job at squeezing as many map decorations into the scenario as possible haha!

 

[Blake00]

Also one other thing.. Metro made the observation that my civ 2 seems to be hiding a number of buildings in city sky view. He's definitely right as I just went to a seaside city where I've built all the water related buildings yet I could only see one of them. As I view different cities I can see entire buildings disappear (not move) that I know are there as they're in the building list.

@Civinator @Knighttime do either of you know if there's some stupid memory saving setting somewhere in the Civ2 config files that tells it to reduce viewable buildings in city sky view so peoples 386's didn't explode back in the day lol?

 

[Civinator]

For answering this Civ 2 question Knighttime and all the other Civ 2 veterans of the Scenario League are much better suited than me.

 

[Knighttime]

I believe the city view was entirely "removed" in Test of Time, however TheNamelessOne found that it was actually only disabled and the code was still present, so he was able to add a TOTPP patch that reactivates it. I don't know about any specific limitations placed on this in MGE or prior versions, though, sorry.

 

[Blake00]

I believe the city view was entirely "removed" in Test of Time, however TheNamelessOne found that it was actually only disabled and the code was still present, so he was able to add a TOTPP patch that reactivates it. I don't know about any specific limitations placed on this in MGE or prior versions, though, sorry.

That's good to know as Metro is working on a ToT conversion of this HoMM scenario. When I was playing ToT serious a few months ago I turned back on the throne room and wonder videos with ToTPP however I didn't find anything to turn back on city view. I need to look into that!

 

[Knighttime]

The TOTPP launcher lists it as "City view" under -- Features / Modifications --. But there isn't a button labeled "View" on the city screen anymore, that didn't get added back. You can only access it by pressing 'v' while the city screen is open.

 

[Blake00]

Time for a well overdue project update! @Metro Polis has been travelling and I've been recovering from some surgery but plenty of progress has been made in the last couple of months and we're pretty much finished now and just doing final touch ups and play testing.

Throne Room:
Metro has replaced the entire throne room with HoMM2 castle screens broken up into puzzle pieces. As each area is upgraded you'll go through several castle types. So if you choose to upgrade one particular area a few times it will lead to some rather funny results and mixed matches lol. While we would have loved to have done a castle with individual buildings being built (similar to what Tom did with his HoMM3 Civ3 mod) the positioning of objects in the throne room is hard coded and not something we can access to tamper with. So castle image puzzle pieces was the best we could do!

Diplomacy Herald Videos:
Metro has successfully replaced and tested all of Civ2's heralds with video animations of top tier HoMM2 units (eg Dragons, Titans, Crusaders, Phoenixes etc). They look awesome and its a real thrill when the leader you're talking to gets angry and the creature does its attack animation!! I might post an example video of this here soon...

Genie for our 7th neutral faction

Happy HoMM2 Warlock Herald:

Angry HoMM2 Warlock Herald haha:

New intro video and title screen graphics:
Metro replaced the Civ2 intro with a short piece from HoMM2's intro and I've replaced all the DLL graphics in the main menu screen and start on customized world images. Once again we suffered from severe size limitations of the original Civ 2 DLL image files so the colours aren't too brilliant in some images sadly! Also we don't know of any way to change the brown main menu background either!

Intro Video

Main Menu Screen

Wonder Videos:
Metro has also completely finished all of his wonder video conversions. These are really impressive and use a number of different videos (mostly from HoMM2) such as a Dragon breathing fire or a camera pass in a medieval library while HoMM2 music plays all leading to a frozen image with the details of our custom wonders all in the actual video! I might post an example video of this here soon as well...

Screenshots from new wonder videos...

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Thank the Maker, I'd been fretting this had stalled literally last night.

 

[Blake00]

Last time I promised videos so here they are!

This is a actual in-game video that shows one of our custom Herald video characters in action. Here I insult the Warlock faction leader Archibald and his black dragon breaths fire!

This is a simulated in-game video showing off a handful of the awesome custom Wonder videos @Metro Polis made! In actual in-game the videos look a little grainier due to Civ2's 8bit colour palette.

 

[Metro Polis]

EDIT: Sorry, wrong thread.

 

[Blake00]

Time for another update!

@Metro Polis has finished his final changes plus playtesting and is happy with things. All that's left to do is my map creation, my playtest game and documentation writing then this baby should be good to go!

In these final stages we've been finding a few little left over things in Civ2 to convert to HoMM2 style for extra immersion.

Victory Sequence:
I came up with an idea to replace the Civ2 military victory guillotine sequence (where you see all the enemy leaders faces getting the chop lol) with the HoMM1 death guillotine sequence. Once again I was heavily restricted by the image size inside of the DLL file and the view perspective is a bit off however its quite fun watching the blade come down on our custom HoMM2 leaders hehe.

For the final victory image I decided to go with Archibald and the dragon which thankfully the DLL size limitations weren't too bad so it converted beautifully.
(in-game shot)

Death Video:
Civ2 uses a small video of a underground tomb for its death/failure sequence. It's start & end bits with the text couldn't be changed sadly but I asked Metro to make one last custom video for our mod to replace the tomb video part. For this we naturally used the HoMM2 death/failure video sequence of you hanging in a cage as well as the HoMM2 addon intro video of the dark bloody battlefield of bodies.

Custom City Screens:
I've recently been playing around with custom city screen background for my mods and decided it would be fun to make up a transparent HoMM2 city screen for each of the 6 factions. These are completely optional to players of the scenario and Metro has also included a nice plain wooden style city background if people prefer something simpler. Here's the Human Knight background (being tested on the wrong faction haha). You can also see some of the other work we've done such as custom citizens (using HoMM2 hero faces), ToT fantasy scenario resource icons, custom HoMM2 style buildings, and of course as we've previously shown you if players click on the view button they'll get treated to a gorgeous custom city sky view with HoMM2 buildings that Metro made.

 

[Metro Polis]

Sorry, wrong thread.

 

[Blake00]

Sorry, wrong thread.

Wrong thread my ass, you're just bumping this thread to subtly telling me to get off my ass and finish this project hahaha. You sneaky politicians are all the same.

Well then I guess I better post an update here! And since this will be the 100th post in this thread I'd better make it a good one haha!

Firstly I want to say apologies to everyone sitting around waiting. The delay in release is 100% my fault and not Metropolis's, as I've been busy working on my Red Alert 2 Siege of New York Civ2 Scenario project these last few months. However that and my other projects are now pretty much almost at a nearly complete stage where I'm happy to step back from them and get back to finishing this one and releasing it!

So in the meantime there's still a few new things that I can post about here.

Units:
I've had a few requests on various sites to post about units! So I thought I'd do up a diagram showing a breakdown of all the factions and their units!

Important things of note:

• HoMM2 has 6 faction slots and Civ2 has 7 slots, so Metro & I thought it would be fun to make the 7th Civ2 faction a HoMM2 neutral faction that controls many of the games neutral units (similar to the Conflux Elemental addon race in HoMM3). Sadly there are only 6 city graphic slots in Civ2MGE so they've been given Barbarian graphics.
• The neutral 7th faction's units are not quite as strong as the 6 main faction's units however they are playable for those that want an extra challenge.
• Heroes are special leader units that can work the land, colonise cities and even fight enemies themselves if needed due to having a number of special abilities. They're no match for mid to late game units though so protect them!
• The rather fun HoMM2 styled fan game on PC & mobiles called Palm Kingdoms 2 has a number of alternative hero graphics (that match perfectly to HoMM2's likely due to being repaints) we were able to use for the neutral faction (Saxon hero) and the uprising leaders (alt Barbarian hero).
• There are 6 unit tiers and each tier class has set attack and defense values across the 6 factions for balancing (as previously stated the 7th faction units are a bit weaker). However fear not, they do have a full variety of different special abilities giving each race unique advantages and disadvantages at different stages of the game. Some of these special abilities are as follows:
  • Flying units (eg Roc, Griffin, Phoenix etc) treat all squares like alpine troops (1/3 move taken) making them faster than all other units on all terrain but weaker in attack if they've already moved (we debated over using actual Civ2 flying fighter & helicopter unit types but agreed it was more trouble than its worth).
  • Fast moving 4 legged horse/beast non-flying units (eg Cavalry, Unicorn, Boar, Wolf, Centaur etc) get 2 moves instead of 1. So they're not as fast as flying but they can still attack at full strength after moving "charge!!!!".
  • Slow but sturdy strong units (eg Pikemen, Golem, Dwarf, Zombie etc) with have a 1.5x defensive ability against these fast charging units.
  • Sadly Civ2 doesn't support range attacks like later Civ games do however HoMM2 range units (eg Archer, Elves, Halfling etc) have been given a 2x sight radius to spot enemies.
  • The only true Civ2 air units in the game are cruise & nuke missile slots which we've used for cool magic spells (eg Magic Arrow, Lightning bolt & Armageddon).
  • So because of the above we can now give 2x air defense ability to units famous for magic resistance (eg Dragons) allowing them to survive longer against such attacks (if I can find all the game's references to "Air" and replace with "Magic" I will!).
• All factions get access to a number of important shared units such a ships, siege, trade, diplomacy and magical attack units. Even with the best units in the game taking walled cities is not a walk in the park if you don't use siege assistance and much like in original HoMM2 our flying units cannot cross the ocean without ships!
• Those with a keen eye will also notice several special fortress unit buildings (Dragon City, Xanadu, & City of the Dead). These are special event based buildings that spawn on the map at the start of the game and can summon dangerous creatures (eg ghosts & dragons) while offering great rewards if you can destroy them.

NOTE: The above configurations is WIP and may be subject to change after final beta testing is complete.

City Buildings Update:
I've also made some small changes to a couple of Metro's awesome city sky view buildings. I've painted a side wall onto the city walls (not easy as it didn't exist in HoMM2!) and made the walls longer (yes the perspective is still wrong but at least it blends in a little better than the original now). I've also reduced the sea platforms and added a boat unit image we didn't end up using as a tip of the hat to when new ships appeared in the city screen in original HoMM2. Oh and I re-coloured all the splash effects to Civ2 water colours instead of HoMM2s.

.

And finally here's a full list of our city building conversions. Metro likes having the original Civ2 building names bracketed in the titles to avoid confusion and I quite like it too as it's nice for once not having to go to the civilopedia to see what a custom scenario building does haha. However if lots of people don't like it and feel it breaks immersion then we can easily remove them. Nearly every building in the list is from HoMM2 castle screens and very few had to be made up which was good!