Modding suggestions

  1. I’m very excited for simultaneously turns. I’d like the option to disable it after ‘x’ weeks has passed. Or on player contact. Turns should still be on a timer, of course, if chosen.

  2. Option to allow to watch other player’s combat. Like in Age of Wonder. Casual gameplay.

  3. Option to take control of the AI in tactical combat against other players in 1v1 games. Casual gameplay.

  4. Chess clock like in HDmod, but with the option to allow the game to force a battle in process to revert to quick combat results if the timer runs out when the current player is in tactical battle. It’ll help make turn time consistent. Otherwise, if time goes to zero you can stay in tactical battle without any trade off. Imagine having 2 min turns, and you attack on the last second in your turn. The other player will now have to wait maybe 4 mins instead of just 2 mins. Not very consistant turn time.

  5. Adjustable turn time in any digits. Say if I want 1.30 min turns I can have that.

  6. Option to allow razing towns. Great mechanic for shortening a game and thus ending it faster. Rebuilding towns shouldn’t be allowed. The point is to draw the game to a conclusion, not prolong it. Also, you probably shouldn’t have to manually raze every single building, turn by turn. It should just take a week, or so, to allow to give time to save it. But the game could automatically destroy a certain number of buildings per turn. It’s just a simpler mechanic this way. A level hero requirement would probably be a bad thing. It would just limit the usefulness of a low level hero. Better some combined creature strength level then. A low level hero could buy that from the town he took.

  7. Option to add magical terrain to random generated maps.

  8. Allow option to have a difference in map size between the land and the underground. Imagine a XL map with a small underground. The two maps wouldn’t align perfectly, but I don’t see why it couldn’t work.

  9. Allow option for plains. Plains are small/medium areas outside the normal map. So another map/world connected by portals to the normal map. A plain could for example be out in space. So the water would be stars now. Or a very magical plain. Water could be something magical. The whole theme could change from plain to plain.

  10. Selectable, secondary victory conditions for random maps. I’m sure people could think of some fun possibilities.

  11. Weather. Like, rain, snow, moving sun shadows. Maybe not all possible on the engine, though.

Some of my ideas are just quick brain storm ideas. :slight_smile:

My top wish as well. Building the same lineup year by year becomes … boring to say the least. Also, strategic potential of different building paths is huge. One lineup for small, fast maps, other for slower bigger maps. Strategic choices based on available resources or oponent type.
Haveing all possible upgrades ala H5 is stupid and removes any strategic decision makeing. It just adds bunch of creatures to town.
Also, I dont see any problem with “oponent had built different dwelings than I did” scenario. Just destroy what doesnt fit your lineup and build dwelings that you need again. While we are at that, town destroying and converting (ala H6) is a must. And not at all like in Wog where it take days, weeks for such an action.
Anyway, alternative building paths should be available for moders to implement them via mods.
Thanks.

2 and 3 I never thought about exactly in this way for Heroes, but had them like wishes for other games. Would be so nice to have them in VCMI.

I want to ask, what is about boats?
I didn’t find any mention of boats or AB01_ - AB01.Def in config files.
Do they now totally hardcoded?
Or is this some TXT in h3sprite.lod, which lists available boats?
I ask because I want to add some additional boats to game (only cosmetic change).

How about an option for see-through-able fog? Black fog = as now. You cannot see through it. Light fog = you can see the landscape beneath it, but enemy heroes.

But with this option on many other things must also change with it.

*The standard visibility range of heroes must be farther than before.

*Watch towers view range must also be farther than before relative to a hero’s sight range.

*The ‘Scout ability bonus’ must be farther.

*Flagged buildings would give sight.

Maybe more thing that I forgot. It could be pretty cool on large maps, at least.

Fog of war is a thing to be explored. Transparent fog will be not interesting to game with.

As for scout ability, I think, if it will increase with hero level (like some other skills), it can become more powerful for strong hero.

Actually, I think that having an adventure map spell that could regrow shroud for your enemy’s vision would be more interesting and more heroes than my fog suggestion. I’m kinda starting to not like my own suggestion about an alternative fog option. I do really like how the shroud already works. But a Cover of Darkness spell could potentially be interesting in play if balanced and non-spammable. Single use spell scroll - or expensive in spell points.

I think the Chinese Font Mod has some problem.The numbers, Punctuation(, . ! ? :)and English words should be smaller (1-byte)

Yeah, you’re not the only one who thinks so: bugs.vcmi.eu/view.php?id=1420#c4061
Short version: will try to fix for next release.

Now there is Darkness ability, that helps hero spread fog.
I think artifact for Darkness also can be made (not tried yet)

On fog:

What if the shroud were to regrow - but regrow slowly as a transparent fog instead? This would not mean you being able to see further into the shroud because heroes would have the standard sight radius. So it’s compatible in that sense with other original elements.

Additions to this mechanic could be:

  1. Being able to set up sentry wards (gives sight like an outpost) but it can be destroyed by contact with any enemy hero.

Thoughts?


New brainstorm ideas: More control over quick combat.

Brainstorm thoughts on this:

-Being able to select what spells your heroes may/should use out of your available spells.
-Basic tactic. Like, stand back and protect archers/cast spells.
-Use no mana (this is already an WoG option).

Also, to explain with an example with a common issue with using quick combat:

If you use quick combat and your army is composed of fx. dendroid soldiers (slow) and silver pegasuses (fast) and you’re attacking dendroid soldiers (again slow) then your silver pegasuses will take the blunt of the attack, because they’ll reach the enemy first.

Of course, a smarter battle AI in general could also change the outcome of this example.

The point is just that quick combat speeds up the game, but it’s inconsistent and mostly very bad to use if not a total victory.

Other thing related: Suppose an option for quick combat to be based on calculations based on basic numbers and values and not on tactical combat that is the AI vs the AI just calculated really fast. In theory, such an system would not suffer from stupid AI, at least. And it’d be very consistent and fair.

But heroes 3 is probably just too complicated for such a simplification of quick combat.
**


On SIM turns:

I hope that manual battle will not force other players to wait until it’s finished. Two or more players should be able to be in combat at the same time against wandering creatures.


While you wait for your turn:

-Being able to change the move path on your heroes for quick movement when you get your time back.

-Arrange artifacts on heroes. *Takes effect on your turn.

-Sell resources (takes effect when you get your turn)


(more of)I want to see:

Light sources. Light by objects to create atmosphere.
Day/morning and night/evening cycle.

Fireworks

fredd79.deviantart.com/art/H3-fi … -400495531


**
On Spells**

Being able to put a limit on specific spells, per combat.

I propose to give possibility to modders to create new CREATURE_TYPE values.

I mean now it’s UNDEAD, DRAGON_NATURE, SIEGE_MACHINE, NON_LIVING and maybe something else.
I think it will be good to add some other values, used only for immunities or hero/artifact bonuses limiters.

Like for resolving magogs hurting demons (not only from Inferno), to add DEMON_NATURE.
Or for robots/cyborg/droids and MECHANISM.
Or some racial values like IS_ELF, IS_DWARF, IS_ORC
Or conversion values like CONVERTS_TO_WEREWOLF to distinguish creatures that can be converted through SPECIAL_UPGRADE ability to some other monster.

Maybe some config with list of these values is needed when new types can be added.

As I understand, now VCMI don’t support tavern videos changing for new/standard towns.
On DF2 there is a new mod with tavern videos for 9 standard towns:
forum.df2.ru/index.php?s=&showto … t&p=619384

It would be cool, if tavern video could be set for towns

I’ve played some time in VCMI 0.94, and I must say, that system of heroes appearing in taverns must be changed.
Now in hero classes json we have list of towns with value of appearing of faction heroes. Towns not set here get zero chance of appearing.
This means that if you have some new towns, heroes of new town will not appear in other new towns. Because otherwise new towns need “depends” block with them all, and need classes jsons edited to have other new towns.
So VCMI launcher and modding system will not allow new towns to cooperate.
User will have to download mods, and then manually write new towns to them, making them unable to be turned off.
I think this could be solved by changing default value of appearance in town from “0” to “1” or “2”.

If VCMI could somehow attract a talented sound engineer then I’d really like to have all those nasty low quality background sounds reworked. Background sounds are a category of sounds in Heroes 3. Like, the sound played on a new day called ‘NEWDAY’. These sounds are filled with noise/static because of a very low quality conversion. Non-background sound files and music files are of a higher quality and thus do not have this quality issue. Perhaps the HotA crew might do something about it in the future.

Example:

Clip of NEWDAY (shortened)

Turn off all other sounds on your PC and turn up the volume. This noise/static in actually entangled through the whole original file, but it’s easier to hear at the end.

By the way, I have idea of KAMIKAZE ability.
When unit with this ability is commanded to attack enemy creature, death animation is played instead of attack animation, and enemy hit points are lowered as said in ability

“kamikaze” : {“type” : “KAMIKAZE”, “val”: 30}

Val will mean - how much hitpoints will enemy stack loose if 1 unit-kamikaze goes boom.
This ability also will be useful if working with ATTACKS_ALL_ADJACENT ability.

As an example, these flying zerg bats from StarCraft or dwarf bombers from Wacraft 2 can be used. Or some sort of self-booming droids.

REQUEST IF IT IS NOT ALREADY DONE

The Ability To Create More Than One Underground Level.

Example of what I mean.

  • Heavens (in the Sky)
  • Surface
  • Underground
  • Lower Underground Level
  • Shadow Realm
  • Realm Of Hell

Is This Even Possible For Heroes 3?, I Know That HOMM6 has this on a campaign Level

This has been proposed many times, though never in detail. Search old topics, there are more questions than answers.

I don’t know if it has been proposed/requested earlier…

I’d like to propose making hero secondary skills modable with the possibility to add new ones. Everyone knows that skills like Eagle Eye or First Aid stink, therefore it would be nice to enhance them a bit to be more useful :slight_smile:

Furtheremore, adding something new would also be cool. A few new skills that come into mind:

  • Something similar to Estates but with resources instead
  • Something similar to Resistance/Armourer but weakening spell power instead of damage (like golem’s abilities)
  • Skill granting +1,+2,+3 speed to units

Sorry guys for oftop, but I can’t figure where the two swords graphics (wog-creature experience) are located. Browsed all lods, is nowhere to find. So my last hope is that you have them somewhere and can upload them for me. :unamused:

Thanks.