Modding FAQ

[misiokles]

You can’t disable, but you have three other alternative ways of creature recruiting

[Yuya]

You cannot disable it but there are alternatives like clicking on the dwelling/clicking on creatures’ icons on the bottom-left of the town screen. I know how much it’s annoying to click by accident on any fort’s creatures and having the game crash. I hope it will get fixed soon.

Is there any tutorial of how to create a town screen? If I design all the town’s buildings and have all the sprites needed, how do I complete the structure node?

[misiokles]

The best way to learn structure nodes is… downloading any existing new town mod and browse jsons. For specific question - ask here.

[Yuya]

I’m asking here because I already did that! I’m actually working with Cathedral Town as a base and fully-replacing the creatures/heroes was funny and easy. However, studying the structure.json didn’t give me any answer as well as the VCMI Wiki.

So how that really works? If I create a Photoshop.psd with a 800x374px resolution (like NWC’s Forge Composition), does the Photoshop’s x & y valors will be coherent with the .json formula?

[misiokles]

Yes, x=0 and y=0 are first pixel in left-top corner of the screen.

[Yuya]

Where can I find information about how to define any building property? For example:

1. If I want my Town’s Special1 building to work the same way as Rampart’s Mystic Pond, what do I need to do? Do I need to change the “id”?

2. If I want my Special2 to work as Castle’s Stables, will it be the “same” manipulation as for my special1?

3. This time, I do not want my Special3 to work the same as an already-existing building. While Castle’s Brotherhood of the Sword gives +2 moral bonus to any defending creatures, I want my Special3 to gives -1 moral to attacking creatures. Is it possible? If it is, how do I do this?

I didn’t found any precise information about that on the VCMI Wiki and I’d really appreciate help on this. Thanks for reading!

[misiokles]

Such information can be found at forum. You can’t because sich features are not implemented. In every town mods special buildings do nothing (despite description).

[Yuya]

That’s sad but I hope special buildings support will be implemented someday. Thanks for your fast answer!

[johnjake]

Hi again!
I’ve found over the net a pack with new custom boat sprites. I’ve wanted to make mod that adds these sprites to the ‘core’ of existing boat graphics of best canoe and allow game to randomly choose these ones in the moment of buiyng. So I’ve wriiten such code:

{
	"core:boat" : {
		"base" : {
			"base" : {
				"visitableFrom" :  "+++", "+-+", "+++" ],
				"mask" :  "VVV", "VAV" ]
			}
		},
		"types" : {
			"evil" : { 
				"templates" : {
					"AB01_.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "AB01_.def", //original h3 evil def
					  "editorAnimation": "avxboat0.def"
					},
					"boat07.def" :
					{ "animation" : "boat07.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat07ed.def"
					},
					"boat10.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat10.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat10ed.def"
					},
					"boat11.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat11.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat11ed.def"
					},
					"boat20.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat20.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat20ed.def"
					},
					"boat0a.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "  ",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat0aed.def"
					},
					"boat0c.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat0c.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat0ced.def"
					},
					"boat0f.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat0f.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat0fed.def"
					},
					"boat0l.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat0l.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat0led.def"
					}	
				}
			},	
			"good" : {
				"templates" : {
					"AB02_.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "AB02_.def", //original h3 good def
					  "editorAnimation": "avxboat1.def"
					},
					"boat00.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat00.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat00ed.def"
					},
					"boat01.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat01.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat01ed.def"
					},
					"boat02.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat02.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat02ed.def"
					},
					"boat04.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat04.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat04ed.def"
					},
					"boat06.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat06.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat06ed.def"
					},
					"boat09.def" : 
					{ "animation" : "boat09.def",
					  "editorAnimation": "boat09ed.def"
	

I want to conform that this is complete code on a function of game i like it can you explain it so that
i edit it and get some different result…? I also want to ask that this code is wirtten in which language
if possibel explain it.

[misiokles]

It’s not any language. There are commands written in json file using object format as described in wiki: https://wiki.vcmi.eu/Object_Format

And yes, I think it is complete code. But VCMI itself is buggy in this area. And VCMI - open source project - is written in C++.

[Macron1]

Few years ago when i still remembered c++, i made commit to allow to add to towns custom boats. But it was considered not good and rejected. So its about five or so years and no custom boats support in towns.

[misiokles]

Is there any possibility to remove BLOCKS_RETALIATION ability from creature via spell, artifacts, skill? I mean, for example Naga’s attack blocks retaliation - I seek a way to temporarily block blocks_retaliation bonus

[AVS]

Is there any possibility to remove BLOCKS_RETALIATION ability from creature via spell, artifacts, skill? I mean, for example Naga’s attack blocks retaliation - I seek a way to temporarily block blocks_retaliation bonus

This is known meta bug. There is no way to remove inherited/propagated bonus (DISPEL and such are explicitly implemented)

[Yuya]

Is it possible to give any visiting hero a specific spell if a specific building is built (such as the grail)?

[AVS]

Probably not.

[Yuya]

I am actually importing my townscreen’s visuals into the game in PNG but the game slows down inside the town (framerate). Is there a way to optimize this or should I just go with .DEF files?

[misiokles]

For now .def is most efficent format.

[Yuya]

In the heroes.JSON format there’s a “tooltip” section where you could have big icon of the specialty when you right click on any heroes’ specialty during a game. I can’t seems to find any informations about how it works. How can I manage to make custom tooltip? Or how can I find a list of already-existing tooltips?

[misiokles]

Someone someday said this tooltip is for hoovering cursor over icon. But I can’t find where tooltip text is shown. Just type there sth like: Creature bonus: Peasant or Skill bonus: Archery or Spell bonus: Slow.

[Yuya]

Gonna try that, thanks! The tooltip is shown when you right-click on any hero specialty (not during the scenario selection but after the game has begun).

EDIT: By the way I have a question about the HD remastered version of Heroes III released in 2015. Is there a reason why we never saw an HD mod that port the remaked visuals?

EDIT2: Is it possible to make a creature uses randomly an adventure icon (.DEF) on the map? It could be useful to add alternate adventure icon but I personally need this for a special creature project.