Work in Progress - Conquests of Might and Magic III

tom2050 · Jul 30, 2009

One thing to keep in mind, is that since there are several different animations for each unit, it is always good if the paint program allows you to save the palette (after you have made changes), so that way you can just load that palette into the other animations (since most will have pretty much the same palette colors). Then you can check the PCX and make sure it looks okay, and make any additional changes necessary. This speeds up the time required to do a recoloring by a huge amount. See if GIMP allows you to save/load color palettes, it is very helpful.

Tom

nick0515 · Jul 30, 2009

tom2050 said:
One thing to keep in mind, is that since there are several different animations for each unit, it is always good if the paint program allows you to save the palette (after you have made changes), so that way you can just load that palette into the other animations (since most will have pretty much the same palette colors). Then you can check the PCX and make sure it looks okay, and make any additional changes necessary. This speeds up the time required to do a recoloring by a huge amount. See if GIMP allows you to save/load color palettes, it is very helpful.

Tom

Yes that will save a lot of time if GIMP can do it. Fingers crossed. No time to check at present.

tom2050 · Jul 31, 2009

Just an update on a few of the new recoloured units I have finished thus far. Note, I will start a thread either tomorrow or the next, and provide downloads for a few of these.

Pegasus (Grey) (my recolouring of Kinboat's Pegusus) - Download this here!

Silver Pegasus (my recolouring of Kinboat's Pegusus)

Pheonix/Firebird This is the Pheonix unit done by Snakelover, which was a recolouring of Kinboat's Giant Eagle. I have updated the PCX files (shown below), you can get them here --> View attachment PheonixUpdatedPCX.zip.

Pheonix (my recolouring of Kinboat's Giant Eagle)

I gave this animation a slightly yellow/orange pixelating effect to somewhat display that the bird is on fire.

Next on the list is the Roc and Thunderbird (TB will have lightning bolt animation added into the animation).

Tom

General 666 · Jul 31, 2009

Why you don`t use AnimationShop 3.11 for the gifs ???
http://ftp.jasc.com/pub/en/ani311en.exe

Bye
General 666

tom2050 · Jul 31, 2009

General 666 said:
Why you don`t use AnimationShop 3.11 for the gifs ???
http://ftp.jasc.com/pub/en/ani311en.exe

Bye
General 666

Thank you very much! The quality difference is amazing, and file size was actually smaller for a gif that was 4 times longer.

Much appreciated!

EDIT: Previous gif's deleted and re-uploaded using Jasc AnimShop. Thanks again Gen!

Tom

nick0515 · Jul 31, 2009

Looking good! I may have to play HOMM 3 for a while just before your mod comes out so I can really appreciate the Civ 3 aproximation of that game.

tom2050 · Jul 31, 2009

nick0515 said:
Looking good! I may have to play HOMM 3 for a while just before your mod comes out so I can really appreciate the Civ 3 aproximation of that game.

This may end up having to be something of a Conquests of Might and Magic 3.75

Since in HOMM3 all creatures had to be with a Hero, this may resemble a little of HOMM4 where creatures could venture out without a Hero. If you have ever played the HOMM3 expansion Wake of Gods (free fan made expansion), you should check it out, it adds alot of content to the game. I will most likely include the WoG creatures in this also. This would bring the total unit count in the game to approximately 164.

I believe I have devised a simple way to create creature structures that can be controlled by the player or AI on a map, which will produce a given amount of that creature each week, but this would only be able to be done on the scenarios... I don't see a way of doing so in an epic game.

Also, since HOMM3 had Subterranean (underground) map along with the surface map, I will probably use the Telepad ability in scenarios as to transport the player (or AI) to other map locations which can act as Subterranean locations.

Since my interest has spiked in getting this going, I will give the WW2 mod a break for a while (it has become a massive behemoth anyways) and work on this.

Tom

Grandraem · Jul 31, 2009

Recolours of those units look nice. I might use a couple of them. Thanks for sharing.

nick0515 · Jul 31, 2009

I believe I have devised a simple way to create creature structures that can be controlled by the player or AI on a map, which will produce a given amount of that creature each week, but this would only be able to be done on the scenarios... I don't see a way of doing so in an epic game.

Please elaborate on this? I was trying to think how you might do this but didn't really come up with anything good.

Never played Wake of Gods, but if I manage to get hold of the original game I'll definitely get that too.

Re heroes carrying the creatures around, the only way I can see to do it would be with an army unit that you could load other creatures into. The army would be the hero and all other units would be immobile. Would make for a strange game though, just large armies smashing hell out of each other. The armies could be set to carry more than 3 units. How many is it in HOMM3, like 7 creatures or something like that.

Anyway however you do it, I'm looking forward to it.

Seeing you do this has made me want to pick up an idea I had a while back. When I was at school I used to play the card game Magic the Gathering. I'd like to make a Magic mod. I know one was started at some point but that was before my time and I think it failed to get off the ground. But I already have like 3 or 4 other mods I want to make and I'm getting very little done on any of them, sigh. Modding just takes so much time and I get bored too quickly. I like thinking up ideas but I find the actual work of modding so tedious sometimes. Anyway I'm glad others have more determination than I do.

DFBATTLER · Jul 31, 2009

*IDEAS*

1) How about for goody huts, we have treasure chests?

2) Also, all new races (Instead of MidEast, Roman/Greek, etc.) like Erathia, AvLee, Deyja, Tatalia, Bracada, etc. This, this and this will help with capitals, leader names, Civilopedia and more. Keep in mind that Nighon has no capital city and AvLee's capital is Pierpont, not Pierpoint (but this has not been confirmed, so you/we have to dig around to find if it's Pierpont or Pierpoint. I believe Pierpont is more likely.)

3) Introduction to the scenario should mention the name of the land, Antagarich.

4) How's this sound: In addition to the new races (should we have Palace?), town-city-metropolis = town without Fort-town with Fort-Photoshopped town with Fort and moat? Meaning for a Kreegan metropolis what you would see is a town from the game of Eeofol that would have had a Fort in it and maybe a Photoshopped moat?

I am looking forward to when this is going to come out, and I am ready to give more ideas.
*subscribes*

nick0515 · Jul 31, 2009

Good ideas DFBATTLER

Another idea for treasure chests would be to do something similar to the MEM scenarios. Would have to be victory points scenarios. But the chests could be flag units worth a certain amount of gold when returned to the capital. would have to be preplaced in scenarios. Hope that makes sense, it's 2:30am and my brain is beginning to slow down. Need more caffine or sleep.

General 666 · Jul 31, 2009

For AnimShop you have to say thank you to Gary Childress. He has posted the link that I spread a lil bit.

But you know how you can say thanks the best way !?! Recolor

.... Recolor

....

To help you ,finding all Fantasy Units here ,I post you my personal "Non-Database Units List" (Spoiler). Subsection Fantasy and Others. It will help you finding "the Rest".

Spoiler :

btw: Tell me which Units you can not find ,Okay ?

Bye
General 666

tom2050 · Jul 31, 2009

nick0515 said:
Please elaborate on this? I was trying to think how you might do this but didn't really come up with anything good.

Since Heroes required the player to build creature structures, which then generated creatures every week (HOMM4 was every day or so IIRC), I was going to implement that into the game in a similar way. Low level creatures (1 and 2) will be directly buildable (since the game will crash if no unit can be built), but the creature structures must be built for other levels (as well as 1 and 2), which will produce a given number of creatures a week.

Going with this idea, I can make a non-playable Civ which (in the scenarios) will always be in locked war with all civ's. I can modify the city graphics to resemble a creature structure building and allow the city no growth. This way the player will have to defeat the guards to take the structure, which will autoproduce the selected unit every week. These cities will not be able to produce the buildings others can using building prerequisites. Of course this is not possible to do in an Epic game, and is scenario dependent.

nick0515 said:
Re heroes carrying the creatures around, the only way I can see to do it would be with an army unit that you could load other creatures into.

Armies are one of the problems. There was a way someone found to 'unload' units from an Army via a method of upgrading the army (and units get forced out). But it did not say if AI will use this properly, or if it just keeps loading/unloading units. I think it was explained that armies that carry more than 1 unit are problematic because the AI does not like to put units in that slow the army down. Since the Army gains 1 speed when a unit joins, it will not know what to do with it (if a fast unit is in army first).

DFBATTLER said:
1) How about for goody huts, we have treasure chests?

That's an excellent idea, since in HOMM3 TC's gave either gold or exp. It would go along that route well. With expansionist ability it usually gives good things over bad, perhaps that would be the best route to go.

DFBATTLER said:
2) Also, all new races (Instead of MidEast, Roman/Greek, etc.) like Erathia, AvLee, Deyja, Tatalia, Bracada, etc. This, this and this will help with capitals, leader names, Civilopedia and more.

Although HOMM3 simply labeled everything as just Castle, Inferno, Tower, etc.. it would probably be more interesting to go with the actual names as you mentioned. I haven't thought about that yet, but that makes good sense, and I will use the race names instead.

DFBATTLER said:
3) Introduction to the scenario should mention the name of the land, Antagarich.

Antagarich, Enroth it is. I'm making a way to be able to somewhat have a storyline be told in the scenarios at certain points in the game. I believe it is possible to do in a controlled manner, but will have to test it a bit further to be sure.

DFBATTLER said:
4) How's this sound: In addition to the new races (should we have Palace?), town-city-metropolis = town without Fort-town with Fort-Photoshopped town with Fort and moat? Meaning for a Kreegan metropolis what you would see is a town from the game of Eeofol that would have had a Fort in it and maybe a Photoshopped moat?
.

I had planned on using the Fort, Citadel, Castle arrangement (for city size names), but to get true benefit, player would have to build Fort (to get Walls), Citadel (add moat, arrow tower-defense, and production increase), and/or Castle (additional benefits as well).
I will have to photoshop the towns in from HOMM3, and then I can add in the different types of moats each city had (Tower used landmine moats e.g.). But I need to make sure New World Computing doesn't mind, although I think they went under in 2002 or 3, so I guess Ubisoft now holds all rights.

Tom

tom2050 · Jul 31, 2009

nick0515 said:
Good ideas DFBATTLER

Another idea for treasure chests would be to do something similar to the MEM scenarios. Would have to be victory points scenarios. But the chests could be flag units worth a certain amount of gold when returned to the capital. would have to be preplaced in scenarios. Hope that makes sense, it's 2:30am and my brain is beginning to slow down. Need more caffine or sleep.

That's a good idea too, plus since there is the treasure chest unit, that could be used perfectly for what you are talking about!

General 666 said:
For AnimShop you have to say thank you to Gary Childress. He has posted the link that I spread a lil bit.
But you know how you can say thanks the best way !?! Recolor .... Recolor .... Recolor ....

To help you ,finding all Fantasy Units here ,I post you my personal "Non-Database Units List" (Spoiler). Subsection Fantasy and Others. It will help you finding "the Rest".

Thank you for the list, and don't worry I have many recolorings to do! My first attempt at doing an All-White Pegasus turned out not looking too good, but the Silver looked good, I may try again using a different method to get the All-White looking right.
So far my list of to-do recolorings is:
Gremlins (90% done, 3 recolorings)
Serpent Flies (need to resize, recolor an existing graphic)
Centaur (2 recolorings)
BowSkink (1 recoloring already completed, not shown)
Golems (using EarthElemental graphic, 8 recolorings)
Harpy (1 new recoloring possibly)
Beholder (1 recoloring)
Naga Graphics (several recolorings)
Waywatcher (several recolorings)
Minotaur (1 recoloring)
Unicorn (possibly 2 recolorings)
Wyvern (1 recoloring)
Elohim/Archangel (1 recoloring)
I may have to do some Dragon versions as well.

Once these are done, I will go from there... don't want to overextend myself though

Tom

nick0515 · Jul 31, 2009

tom2050 said:
Since Heroes required the player to build creature structures, which then generated creatures every week (HOMM4 was every day or so IIRC), I was going to implement that into the game in a similar way. Low level creatures (1 and 2) will be directly buildable (since the game will crash if no unit can be built), but the creature structures must be built for other levels (as well as 1 and 2), which will produce a given number of creatures a week.

So how many turns will a week be? Seven or more?

Going with this idea, I can make a non-playable Civ which (in the scenarios) will always be in locked war with all civ's. I can modify the city graphics to resemble a creature structure building and allow the city no growth. This way the player will have to defeat the guards to take the structure, which will autoproduce the selected unit every week. These cities will not be able to produce the buildings others can using building prerequisites. Of course this is not possible to do in an Epic game, and is scenario dependent.

Brillient! Who cares about the Epic game. I don't think you should worry about making an Epic game at all. Just make lots of scenarios.

Armies are one of the problems. There was a way someone found to 'unload' units from an Army via a method of upgrading the army (and units get forced out). But it did not say if AI will use this properly, or if it just keeps loading/unloading units. I think it was explained that armies that carry more than 1 unit are problematic because the AI does not like to put units in that slow the army down. Since the Army gains 1 speed when a unit joins, it will not know what to do with it (if a fast unit is in army first).

I didn't know there a was way to get units unloaded from an army. I'd be very surprised if they AI used it well, though I guess upgrading is something they can do (I assume). I also didn't realise that the AI has trouble using armies in terms of what units to load into them. Sounds like too much trouble I guess.

nick0515 · Jul 31, 2009

That's a good idea too, plus since there is the treasure chest unit, that could be used perfectly for what you are talking about!

I'm planning to do this in my own Fantasy scenario. I guess the goody huts idea might be better though becuase then you can simulate getting exp as well as gold. Can you set the amount of gold goody huts give or is it always 25. I suspect it can't be changed. Similarly you can only have a single amount of gold for returning flag units to a capital, but you can choose that single amount.

Sorry this is OT, but does anyone here play Magic The Gathering? I think I'm going to make that mod. Did some work on it last night. Once I've put some more stuff together I'll start a thread like this one to get peoples ideas and opinions. Like this project there will be quite a few aspects of the game that will be hard or impossible to create in Civ 3. Will be a challenge.

Nick

DFBATTLER · Aug 1, 2009

nick0515 said:
Good ideas DFBATTLER

tom2050 said:
Antagarich, Enroth it is. I'm making a way to be able to somewhat have a storyline be told in the scenarios at certain points in the game. I believe it is possible to do in a controlled manner, but will have to test it a bit further to be sure.

As I believe, Civ = rebuilding history, so a storyline may not work as well as predicted. Scroll down for a similar suggestion:

tom2050 said:
Thank you for the list, and don't worry I have many recolorings to do! My first attempt at doing an All-White Pegasus turned out not looking too good, but the Silver looked good, I may try again using a different method to get the All-White looking right.
So far my list of to-do recolorings is:
Gremlins (90% done, 3 recolorings)
Serpent Flies (need to resize, recolor an existing graphic)
Centaur (2 recolorings)
BowSkink (1 recoloring already completed, not shown)
Golems (using EarthElemental graphic, 8 recolorings)
Harpy (1 new recoloring possibly)
Beholder (1 recoloring)
Naga Graphics (several recolorings)
Waywatcher (several recolorings)
Minotaur (1 recoloring)
Unicorn (possibly 2 recolorings)
Wyvern (1 recoloring)
Elohim/Archangel (1 recoloring)
I may have to do some Dragon versions as well.

Once these are done, I will go from there... don't want to overextend myself though

Tom

SWEET

Another idea (Beware this may take 48-480 hours of work):

Spoiler :

tom2050 · Aug 1, 2009

nick0515 said:
I didn't know there a was way to get units unloaded from an army. I'd be very surprised if they AI used it well, though I guess upgrading is something they can do (I assume). I also didn't realise that the AI has trouble using armies in terms of what units to load into them. Sounds like too much trouble I guess.

The link was just recently posted somewhere by Civinator I believe, I had no idea about it either til just the other day. If the AI uses it in a smart manner, it would be an incredible thing, but I'm just dreaming if I expect that

nick0515 said:
So how many turns will a week be? Seven or more?

Not sure how to work it yet, in days I don't think there is a way to specify 7 days per week in the editor. Perhaps in the labels.txt file this can be specified, I can't remember.

nick0515 said:
Sorry this is OT, but does anyone here play Magic The Gathering?

I've dwelled in it a bit, but it's been so long I'm completely unfamiliar with all the nuances of it anymore. Sounds interesting though... keep me updated.

DFBATTLER said:
As I believe, Civ = rebuilding history, so a storyline may not work as well as predicted.

It would probably be more work than it is worth. It would have to involve Tutorial.txt file, which could be updated to periodically display certain messages at very limited times. But most all info can be given at scenario start, so it probably won't go anywhere, or find very limited use.

DFBATTLER said:
Another idea (Beware this may take 48-480 hours of work):

Spoiler :

Why don't you release five.biq files? Like so:

COMM3-Antagarich.biq (mod + Antagarich map)

COMM3-Enroth.biq (mod + Enroth map)

COMM3-Antagarich+cities.biq (mod + Antagarich map + cities already placed [see if you can find this somewhere])

COMM3-Enroth+cities.biq (mod + Enroth map + cities already placed)

COMM3-Mod.biq (mod + random map)

^ File names can be changed but this is my suggestion. What do you think?

As far as specific cities go, I'm not sure if there is a map showing where they are at. In HOMM3, the city names were randomly selected and placed for the most part, so no help there. Some of the other Might and Magic games may have locations specified, but I'll have to search online for info.

Since HOMM3 had SO MANY scenarios and maps, there is no way I can do them all... so I may likely set up a large map that contains many scenarios in one (that are all related). Restoration of Erathia, e.g., had several different maps to it, but it's possible to combine these all into 1 Civ3 map.

If I can find city placements I can make city maps. I'll do a random Enroth and Antagarich maps for Epic though. Good idea I must say, it would be great to create a city map...

Steadwick in Civ 3, guarded by a Griffin and Royal Griffin. Terrain has yet to be modified at this point.

Another problem I ran into was that there are only 5 culture groups, but around 10 Heroes Civ's... so I thought I wouldn't be able to show different city graphics for them all... but I realized that in Civ3 you can indeed show up to 20 different city graphics.. (although some minor/major possible limitations regarding the tech tree and advances, so it cannot be used in many/most circumstances) but works for the scenarios... so I got lucky there

Epic game may be a problem with this regard though.

Tom

nick0515 · Aug 1, 2009

tom2050 said:
Another problem I ran into was that there are only 5 culture groups, but around 10 Heroes Civ's... so I thought I wouldn't be able to show different city graphics for them all... but I realized that in Civ3 you can indeed show up to 20 different city graphics.. (although some minor/major possible limitations regarding the tech tree and advances, so it cannot be used in many/most circumstances) but works for the scenarios... so I got lucky there Epic game may be a problem with this regard though.

Tom

The screen shot looks great!!!

I take it from the above that you are going to restrict different Civs to different eras so that civs with the same culture group can have different graphics for cities, buildings etc thereby creating up to 20 culture groups at the cost of a much smaller tech tree. This is what I am planning to do in my fantasy scenario. Do you know if it has been done before? I was kinda hoping it was a new and exciting idea, but more than likely others have come up with it before, and obviously you have too. If it has been done before that at least means it works as I haven't tested it yet. I was very happy when I thought of it because many of the scenarios I want to build don't require big tech tress anyway, especially my fantasy scenario (not the MTG one).

I've dwelled in it a bit, but it's been so long I'm completely unfamiliar with all the nuances of it anymore. Sounds interesting though... keep me updated.

I'll start a thread once I've got more of my ideas formatted, probably quite soon. I'm going to make a test scenario with just one of the five Magic colours (white) and see how it plays. I'm also planning to use the original artwork from the cards for Civilopedia and building graphics. Do you think I'll get in trouble for that, re copyright law? This is off topic again so I want post more on this subject.

Seems like you are getting a lot done on this project very fast. It's motivating me to do the same.

Nick

DFBATTLER · Aug 1, 2009

tom2050 said:
As far as specific cities go, I'm not sure if there is a map showing where they are at. In HOMM3, the city names were randomly selected and placed for the most part, so no help there. Some of the other Might and Magic games may have locations specified, but I'll have to search online for info.

Since HOMM3 had SO MANY scenarios and maps, there is no way I can do them all... so I may likely set up a large map that contains many scenarios in one (that are all related). Restoration of Erathia, e.g., had several different maps to it, but it's possible to combine these all into 1 Civ3 map.

If I can find city placements I can make city maps. I'll do a random Enroth and Antagarich maps for Epic though. Good idea I must say, it would be great to create a city map...

Steadwick in Civ 3, guarded by a Griffin and Royal Griffin. Terrain has yet to be modified at this point.
View attachment 223037

I guess you could just place the start locations where the capitals of the factions would be. Great screenie though, photoshopped Castle town is :goodjob:

Work in Progress - Conquests of Might and Magic III

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