Work in Progress - Conquests of Might and Magic III

Please, please put the spells you convert in the database Tom. They will be invaluable for Fantasy Modders!

I will, as I have started putting the recolourations in the database as well. To be honest, I completely forgot about the database when I started doing recolours, as I have never put anything there before... but there are many spells in HoMM, so I'm sure many of those spells will be useful across the board.

Tom
 
I found some arcane oddball solution online after going through many others, and now for some reason Poser has not crashed anymore to date, hopefully it will last.Tom

Glad to hear it!:)

Wow, your Meteor Shower spell looks much cooler than the Meteor Swarm spell I created for my mod. I'll stick with mine though, as I put so much time into making it.:) But yours is definitely awesome.
 
Glad that I was able to help out! I'm happy those links have saved you many hours of tedious screencaps and frustration. :P

Many of the maps I found online where from 3D0, but there are indeed many fan-made compilations that have been attempted to be put together. I just looked at the map, and it is a Wake Of Gods Map (a very excellent fan-made expansion, still deciding on if to incorporate it into this mod). Very detailed also, I haven't started making the map yet, but this will come in handy and I will use it.

Yep, it's got In the Wake of Gods written on it, but it hasn't really got anything to do with that expansion. WoG doesn't really follow the "proper" Heroes storyline, although that map is based on commentaries and directions from the NWC world developers. It was actually made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of H3's release (that long already?).

Though there are many official maps of each continent, there is unfortunately not a single official full world map for the planet of Enroth. The calendar one I believe is the closest you can get.

As far as the Vori goes, they were partially in one scenario of HoMM3, but there seems to not be very much information about them (although I would have to look a little more than I already did a while back). I was thinking about adding them into the mod, but without alot of graphics and creature lines, city names, etc... too much would be missing.

Vori is a bit of a mystery, true - they are in Heroes Chronicles, but are only represented by the Rampart (AvLee), not an all-original faction as they should have been. There were many details given in MM8, though, probably enough to get a faction out of them with a little imagination and speculation. We know from MM8 that Frost Giants dwell there, and you could fill two more tiers with Snow Elves and Snow Elves with a mount (like the Rampart), so you just need to think up four creatures, like Wisps or Mammoths, to fill the blanks.

City names aren't too much trouble; we know there's one Vori town named Seelie, and the rest can just be invented at will. The main problem, I think, would be getting a decent graphic for the town itself, but you guys are obviously talented enough to work through that. :)

I don't believe Enroth or Jadame was used in Heroes 3. I may make a map that includes them though, as well as a map of only Antagarich. I have not started either yet, but one question we were looking at earlier was trying to find a map where specific cities were, of course I don't think one exists. So if I create a map, it's likely the cities may just be randomly placed, or randomly named, unless I can locate something that may help.

That is a bit of a problem when inventing fanmaps for Antagarich and Enroth because many towns are so abundant and randomly named that some just have to be ignored. Jadame is much easier because it hasn't been in a Heroes game and all of its town and city positions and names are 100% defined.

I can give you a few links to some of NWC's "bonus lore" which indicates the position of several cities. Tatalia, Eeofol and Erathia have many, many named cities with definite positions on the map, while the other nations get a bit more vague. This is probably just semantics though and I realise that the main thing for now is getting the modding done :).

On a side note, if you'd like any details or texts for the Civopedia, I'll be happy to oblige! There are a lot of little pieces of Heroes III lore you could fit into descriptions and things there. Thanks a lot for the warm welcome and best of luck with the modding! Looking forward to playing it!
 
Roland Ironfist Welcome indeed! It looks like you are going to be a great asset to Tom in constructing this most excellent mod. I only wish I could contribute similarly, but I know very little about Heroes 3 other than that I enjoyed playing it greatly when it first came out.

May I ask how you know so much about it? Is there a big fan community around the 'lore'? Have novels or comics been written about the Heroes world? Is the game based on something prior like a D&D game or a novel?

Thank you for providing Tom with the website for those excellent spell gifs, I can't wait to use the units that Tom makes with them.

Nick

EDIT: Actually Tom would you like some help converting the 70 spells? If you explain the process you use to convert them I'd be happy to help out. I've done a little bit of work editing 2D unit pcx's. I think I would be able to do this too. Though with the speed you seem to be able to do modding you've probably already converted them all :lol:
 
Glad to hear it!:)

Wow, your Meteor Shower spell looks much cooler than the Meteor Swarm spell I created for my mod. I'll stick with mine though, as I put so much time into making it.:) But yours is definitely awesome.

Thanks, but I can't take the credit, since it's a graphic conversion :) Making a animated spell graphic from scratch would be quite difficult IMO without having a horde of resources and programs to choose from (as well as the knowledge of how to use them all).

Roland Ironfist said:
Yep, it's got In the Wake of Gods written on it, but it hasn't really got anything to do with that expansion. WoG doesn't really follow the "proper" Heroes storyline, although that map is based on commentaries and directions from the NWC world developers. It was actually made to celebrate the tenth anniversary of H3's release (that long already?).

Though there are many official maps of each continent, there is unfortunately not a single official full world map for the planet of Enroth. The calendar one I believe is the closest you can get.

Other fan-made world maps have often had Antagarich either further north or much more west than it shows on that map. Of course they often only had to guess at many things and go from written sources. H3 almost seems older than 10 years to me for some reason, maybe it's just me and my quickly growing age :)

Roland Ironfist said:
Vori is a bit of a mystery, true - they are in Heroes Chronicles, but are only represented by the Rampart (AvLee), not an all-original faction as they should have been. There were many details given in MM8, though, probably enough to get a faction out of them with a little imagination and speculation. We know from MM8 that Frost Giants dwell there, and you could fill two more tiers with Snow Elves and Snow Elves with a mount (like the Rampart), so you just need to think up four creatures, like Wisps or Mammoths, to fill the blanks.

City names aren't too much trouble; we know there's one Vori town named Seelie, and the rest can just be invented at will. The main problem, I think, would be getting a decent graphic for the town itself, but you guys are obviously talented enough to work through that.

It would be interesting... once the base of the mod is done and released, I will continue releasing scenarios (since Heroes has a huge amount of them) and also welcome others to do the same if they choose to make one, and will add them all to the main thread for download. Perhaps adding them later (in a patch or something) could work, giving time to work out everything and create the graphics (that are similar in style to the originals).

Roland Ironfist said:
On a side note, if you'd like any details or texts for the Civopedia, I'll be happy to oblige! There are a lot of little pieces of Heroes III lore you could fit into descriptions and things there.

There is plenty of space in the Civilopedia, although I have a portion of it done, the complete reworking of it has not been done. It may be the last thing on the to-do list, so I don't have to constantly have to remember to update things that may get changed.

nick0515 said:
EDIT: Actually Tom would you like some help converting the 70 spells? If you explain the process you use to convert them I'd be happy to help out. I've done a little bit of work editing 2D unit pcx's. I think I would be able to do this too. Though with the speed you seem to be able to do modding you've probably already converted them all :lol:.

If only you had asked yesterday! There are only about 15 left to finish.

I may need to find someone to help with a couple oddballs, in which some strange side-effects have appeared after using FLICster to export the FXM file to a FLC. Viewing the FXM file these side effects do not exist, only after exported to a FLC, and it is not a palette problem I'm 99.9% sure. Hmm, Vuldacon is quite excellent in these types of things, where is he?

ability_Regenerating-SideEffect.gif<--- horizontal side-effects created during the FLICster export process from FXM to FLC. Any help on fixing this would be appreciated. I'm not sure if it's on my end, since none others have had this issue, or if it's something with FLICster.

FXM and PCX files View attachment 227950

Please let me know of solution if any is found.

Tom
 
Thanks, but I can't take the credit, since it's a graphic conversion :) Making a animated spell graphic from scratch would be quite difficult IMO without having a horde of resources and programs to choose from (as well as the knowledge of how to use them all).

I didn't make mine from scratch either. It was a C&P from one meteor made into 4, and colour conversion. I don't have the resources or know-how to create a meteor with a nice looking trail of flame behind it. I still have no clue how to create flame or smoke effects in Poser, despite trying to find tutorials on it.:(
 
Sorry my offer came too late. Sounds like you didn't really need me anyway Tom. Probably would have taken you longer to teach me how to do it than to just do them all yourself anyway.

Is there a tutorial for converting gifs to Civ 3 units?

Hope Vuldacon or someone else with his kinda experience can help you with the weird side effects.

Will it look weird in game that all these spells only have one direction?
 
Sorry my offer came too late. Sounds like you didn't really need me anyway Tom. Probably would have taken you longer to teach me how to do it than to just do them all yourself anyway.

Is there a tutorial for converting gifs to Civ 3 units?

Hope Vuldacon or someone else with his kinda experience can help you with the weird side effects.

Will it look weird in game that all these spells only have one direction?

It's somewhat mostly a cut and paste type of thing. The easiest way to split a gif into seperate frames is to use a site like www.gifexplode.com/. Then I use a downloader to grab all the .png's from that site. Flicster can create the appropriate PCX storyboard, then you just copy and paste each gif frame into the storyboard, but there are other things that need to be done to make sure the gif frame goes in correctly, and to create the palette. I can recolour a unit faster than I can do this, because it's a bit more time consuming copy and pasting 20+ frames.

Since all the spells have only one direction, certain ones such as Magic Arrow may look a bit strange, but most are somewhat area oriented, or not really direction specific spells, so I have tested about 20 in game and they all look pretty dang good to be honest. It's especially cool with the Armageddon Spell (which was a 200x200 graphic, so it covers a wide area in game) and some of the other Fireball Spells.

But with the Magic Arrow (and others such as Ice Bolt, etc), I may try to see if I can somehow make them with multiple directions, to make it look more normal.

Speaking of spells, I'm wondering if HoMM4 has spells (in Gif format) that can be converted for use in Civ3? If there are gifs on the site Roland Ironfist gave (I haven't checked), but these could be useful also for other fantasy modders if converted.

Tom
 
It's somewhat mostly a cut and paste type of thing. The easiest way to split a gif into seperate frames is to use a site like www.gifexplode.com/. Then I use a downloader to grab all the .png's from that site. Flicster can create the appropriate PCX storyboard, then you just copy and paste each gif frame into the storyboard, but there are other things that need to be done to make sure the gif frame goes in correctly, and to create the palette. I can recolour a unit faster than I can do this, because it's a bit more time consuming copy and pasting 20+ frames.

Why you don`t use AnimationShop for getting the single frames ? It will work much quicker and handy ...:)

btw: I have DLed you storyboard ,and will take a look.
 
tom2050,

I was just wondering if you've converted the 'Death Cloud' spell from that website (the one with the skull in the middle of a green cloud)? I downloaded the .gif and was going to try to convert it to a useable unit in the future (as a replacement for my 'Cloudkill' spell, because this looks cooler), but if you've already done it I was hoping that you could upload it for me to save me the trouble. If you haven't done that one I'll convert it at some point, but at the moment I want to finish some units I've been working on.

Keep up the good work!:) It's exciting to have a fantasy mod on the go like this.
 
Why you don`t use AnimationShop for getting the single frames ? It will work much quicker and handy ...:)

btw: I have DLed you storyboard ,and will take a look.

Thank You. I will wait to hear from you, if it is indeed some type of issue with FLICster I may make a thread to get feedback from others to try to figure out what may be causing it.

Downloading all the single frames with a program called Orbit from the website that explodes the gif into single frames is pretty quick and easy, although doing so in AnimationShop is likely just as quick.

Grandraem said:
I was just wondering if you've converted the 'Death Cloud' spell from that website (the one with the skull in the middle of a green cloud)? I downloaded the .gif and was going to try to convert it to a useable unit in the future (as a replacement for my 'Cloudkill' spell, because this looks cooler), but if you've already done it I was hoping that you could upload it for me to save me the trouble. If you haven't done that one I'll convert it at some point, but at the moment I want to finish some units I've been working on.

Keep up the good work! It's exciting to have a fantasy mod on the go like this.

I'm finishing up all the PCX and unit32's now, I may not post every single one immediately (after all, something has to be kept to look forward to for a new mod :)), but I will post quite a few (after all, I think there are close to 75 of them). I may start doing some other conversions as well, so I'll post once I get some done.

EDIT: Preview of Pheonix
Phoenix.gif
There are some artifacts in the preview, but I threw this together very quickly, so it is not sized correctly for game use and is just to show.

Tom
 
Hey Tom that Phoenix looks great!

Can I put in a similar to request Grandraem for one particular spell. The Spell is Counterstrike and I have an immediate use for it in the MTG mod I'm trying to develope. I tried to convert the gif myself and got as far as creating a storyboard but I couldn't get it to load in Flicster or Civ3FlcEdit. I tried various methods but nothing worked.

How do you convert a .bmp story board to a flic? Everything I tried was wrong.

Cheers

Nick
 
I may not post every single one immediately (after all, something has to be kept to look forward to for a new mod :)), Tom

Thanks again. The 'Death Cloud' is the only one I need, but even with that one I have a perfectly fine poisonous green gas right now (just without the cool looking skull inside), so if you want to save it for just your mod that's perfectly fine.:) I understand about keeping some things to look forward too. Now that my mod is getting closer to completion I've started not releasing some of the graphics I've created.

Phoenix looks nice. I await to see how it turns out.:)
 
Thanks again. The 'Death Cloud' is the only one I need, but even with that one I have a perfectly fine poisonous green gas right now (just without the cool looking skull inside), so if you want to save it for just your mod that's perfectly fine.:) I understand about keeping some things to look forward too. Now that my mod is getting closer to completion I've started not releasing some of the graphics I've created.

Phoenix looks nice. I await to see how it turns out.:)

Same goes for my request, if you're inlcined to keep the spell for your mod's release, which will be fairly soon anyway at the rate you are progressing, I completely understand.

Can't say that I have anything else to use though. I want it for the Magic card Wall or Swords.

Cheers

Nick
 
tom2050... The Cause of the Streeks was that the Images were too close to the Right Frame. Flicster will streek images that are too close to that Right Frame.

Here is the corrected Flc with frame size set at 100 x 100 ... the original was 94 x 95.
I did not change anything other than the frame Size and I copied and pasted the Original Images onto the New Storyboard, making sure the images would be in the same place as the original. The Original had different offsets but the new images should show in the same position.

Use larger Frames to avoid the streeks in Flicster... generally best to allow 3 Pixels of blank space between the images and that Right Frame. All other Frames could touch the images without problems...just one of those "glitches" to avoid :)
 

Attachments

Roland Ironfist Welcome indeed! It looks like you are going to be a great asset to Tom in constructing this most excellent mod. I only wish I could contribute similarly, but I know very little about Heroes 3 other than that I enjoyed playing it greatly when it first came out.

May I ask how you know so much about it? Is there a big fan community around the 'lore'? Have novels or comics been written about the Heroes world? Is the game based on something prior like a D&D game or a novel?

Thank you for providing Tom with the website for those excellent spell gifs, I can't wait to use the units that Tom makes with them.

Ahh many apologies for the late reply, I only now noticed your kind welcome.

There is no dedicated forum centred around lore, but the people at the Celestial Heavens fansite are extremely knowledgeable about everything to do with the series, including the plot (they even have dialog transcripts). From reading their posts I learned a lot about the storyline.

There are indeed some novels written for the series - three actually - but none of the three are connected to the world of Enroth. The Heroes series is based on a predecessor, the Might and Magic RPGs created by Jon Van Caneghem, and takes place on planets in the same universe - there's an awful lot more backstory and history to the series than the glimpse we get in H3 :) Heroes 1 introduced the world of Enroth but three of the later Might and Magic RPGs (6, 7 and 8) also take place in that world.

As for comics, there are several fanmade ones, nothing official though. Unfortunately, Ubisoft decided to totally reboot the storyline when they took over, throwing the classic storyline in the bin, so no more "official" games are set in those worlds. :( A pity.

It's my pleasure to help out in any way, and thank you again for your kind words!

@tom2050 - Unfortunately, I am afraid I haven't been able to find any .gif files of the Heroes IV spells anywhere, but I can point you to a great program which might help you extract graphics from H4, if needed.
 
Can I put in a similar to request Grandraem for one particular spell. The Spell is Counterstrike and I have an immediate use for it in the MTG mod I'm trying to develope. I tried to convert the gif myself and got as far as creating a storyboard but I couldn't get it to load in Flicster or Civ3FlcEdit. I tried various methods but nothing worked.

How do you convert a .bmp story board to a flic? Everything I tried was wrong.

When you create a Storyboard with Flicster, it makes it into an Indexed PCX file. With this, you need to copy and paste the frames into that Storyboard (With Photoshop, I change it to an RGB, and make sure the Pixel Aspect Ratio is set to Square to avoid pixel smearing). Once copied and pasted into the storyboard, you can Index the Storyboard again to get the Color Palette, Color Palette should probably have a Magnenta Color taking up first two rows since these have no shadows), and only 160 Spell Colors to avoid the bottom four rows (No Civ Colors), so 192 Colors total.

Then save and you can open the FXM file back up from Flicster and export as a FLC.

I will upload counterstrike and poison in a couple hours... not sure if I should make a new Spell Thread or something of the sort, so I may just post them here in this thread for now.

DFBATTLER said:
Going quite nicely I see?

Yes, it's going nicely, not enough time on my hands though!

General 666 said:
Sorry Tom. Same result on my side. Will pm Vuldacon to make him aware of your help request...

Thank You for looking at it... Appreciated.

Grandraem said:
Thanks again. The 'Death Cloud' is the only one I need, but even with that one I have a perfectly fine poisonous green gas right now (just without the cool looking skull inside), so if you want to save it for just your mod that's perfectly fine. I understand about keeping some things to look forward too. Now that my mod is getting closer to completion I've started not releasing some of the graphics I've created.

I will release Death Cloud and Counterstrike in a couple hours here, I'm still not done finishing many of the others up for their PCX but I can complete those 2.

The Phoenix BTW was not made by me, but is a conversion.

Vuldacon said:
I will take a Look at the ability Regenerating Storyboard.

tom2050... The Cause of the Streeks was that the Images were too close to the Right Frame. Flicster will streek images that are too close to that Right Frame.

Here is the corrected Flc with frame size set at 100 x 100 ... the original was 94 x 95.
I did not change anything other than the frame Size and I copied and pasted the Original Images onto the New Storyboard, making sure the images would be in the same place as the original. The Original had different offsets but the new images should show in the same position.

Use larger Frames to avoid the streeks in Flicster... generally best to allow 3 Pixels of blank space between the images and that Right Frame. All other Frames could touch the images without problems...just one of those "glitches" to avoid

First, thank you very much. I guess it's one of those simple things that I probably would have never figured out :) I can avoid that from now on. Thanks for your time and the info on that!

Roland Ironfist said:
@tom2050 - Unfortunately, I am afraid I haven't been able to find any .gif files of the Heroes IV spells anywhere, but I can point you to a great program which might help you extract graphics from H4, if needed.

I found the Resource Explorer, the pain was finding the Image Extractor which was only located on a Russian site for download (might have been the same one you put a link to earlier).

Tom
 
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