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Thread: Dark Knights Mod | This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · NEXT» |
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Arstahd
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 23, 2006 02:54 AM |
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Edited by Arstahd at 03:01, 23 Jun 2006.
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Dark Knights Mod
This mod replaces the graphics of the Necromancer's Wight and Wraith with those of dark knights. Stats have been tweaked some, but abilities have not been changed. The Blood Knight, like the Wight has none, and the Dread Knight has the Wraith's Harm Touch.
The neutral Death Knight (with Deadly Strike) has been remade into a Tier 7 neutral creature, the Doom Reaper, using Wraith-like graphics. The unused Black Knight makes an appearance as a Revenant, the Doom Reaper's downgrade, using the stock Wight graphics.
Everything should work properly to my knowledge. All relevant texts have been edited, Necro transformation should work, creatures will appear correctly from random spawn points on maps.
The Stats:
Blood Knight:
Dread Knight:
Doom Reaper:
And the download link:
Dark Knights Mod
The mod is in PAK format, just copy to the Data folder to use.
Enjoy!
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Ma_trix
Adventuring Hero
Carpe Diem
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posted June 23, 2006 02:03 PM |
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Really great work!
You've changed death knight's helemt's horns to wings - it looks really cool.
My suggestion is to differentiate statistics of those four creatures. Maby small rise in doom reaper's damage and/or speed/initiative. And IMHO small rise in dread knight's initiative would be nice.
What are prizes for those creatures? Maby it could be done to 'install' them into necropolis instead of wraith and bone dragon? I think if reaper would be a bit strongered up (strenghtened up?) it could replace dragon very succesfully.
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God2
Adventuring Hero
Your benevolent deity
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posted June 23, 2006 02:25 PM |
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Edited by God2 at 14:37, 23 Jun 2006.
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<3 Arstahd.
Great! I've been doing this myself, but changed tiers instead, so the Knight would keep their IMBA abilities. Your solution is much better.
Thanks a lot!
EDIT: On second thought, I just noticed that you've made the Wraiths into neutral creatures. Still a nice mod, but I would like them to replace the boring old dragons.
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www.shoryuken.com
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PopeRatzinger
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 24, 2006 12:59 AM |
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Congrats, Arstahd
First of all, hi all. (First post.)
Please read, friends.
I had tried modding the whole DK / Wraith situation and must thank Arstahd for the great mod. First I had used the old DK mod that was around a few weeks ago, but, as they were, those knights were too powerful to be generated and used by a player. The new DK "deadly strike" ability replaces the good old double damage from H3 with the immensely-unbalancing, Heroes2-like, ludicrously-unreal capacity of killing a haffastack o´monsters with a single blow from a single knight. With 62 Archdevils in your hands, you´d see half of them die from mysterious simultaneous heart attacks after one of them being scratched in the shanks by one DK. Ridiculous.
Yet I agree this scary ability fits a neutral unit, and I love what you Arstahd did to turn the Wraith into a 7th tier critter, armed with such power. Due to its more "mystical/ghostly" type, one could imagine it as a cool herald of death, and interpret its attacks as not exactly a strict scythe-to-the-face slaughter, but rather as an immaterial soul harvesting that eventually gets luckier.
The choice of exchanging graphics and such also made the new wraith-in-DK-clothing very believable, and making the ´upgraded` unit wear the black armor was the coolest thing ever (I´ve tried to do it, but failed).
There is only one thing I am uncomfortable with, and if you agree perhaps you could help, because I´ve modded before, but couldn´t get nearly as deep as you did in H5.
Fact is, your efforts didn´t alter the ´stats` of the tier 6 in Necro town, which was reasonably considered weak by many many players. If the DK deadly strike was indeed too much for the town, the wraith-newDK´s dispelling power alone is too little.
So I suggest:
- Could the regular cursing attack ability be added to the BloodKnight/DreadKnight´s stats?
- Could the DreadKnight maybe carry a permanent +2 bonus to its Luck (+2 is ok: luck is not straight double damage anymore) as to try and match their old DeathBlow double damage? I think it would fix the problem and bring us back to the good old days.
and:
- Since the Reaper is now a neutral badass unit, why not make it truly fearsome by giving it a nicer version of the ability our old dragons had (a -2 to the enemies´ morale), and adding a little more to its damage OR giving it the "No Retaliation" ability?
waiting for the reply,
Ratzy
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Arstahd
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 24, 2006 01:35 AM |
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Quote:
There is only one thing I am uncomfortable with, and if you agree perhaps you could help, because I´ve modded before, but couldn´t get nearly as deep as you did in H5.
Fact is, your efforts didn´t alter the ´stats` of the tier 6 in Necro town, which was reasonably considered weak by many many players. If the DK deadly strike was indeed too much for the town, the wraith-newDK´s dispelling power alone is too little.
Well I did increase the stats. Defense, Speed, Health, Damage, all were given a small bump up with only a point of Attack being lowered in exchange. The originals were rather lame, but unless other aspects of Necro are nerfed to compensate, there is only so much that can be done without overpowering the faction. I gave them a bit more range and staying power to make them better suited for an assault role, charging into the enemy ahead of the slower troops. they are not a "Great" unit, but I've been happy with their performance so far. If you want to change the stats yourself it's really quite easy. They are found in the .xdb files in the GameMechanics folder of the mod.
Quote:
So I suggest:
- Could the regular cursing attack ability be added to the BloodKnight/DreadKnight´s stats?
- Could the DreadKnight maybe carry a permanent +2 bonus to its Luck (+2 is ok: luck is not straight double damage anymore) as to try and match their old DeathBlow double damage? I think it would fix the problem and bring us back to the good old days.
and:
- Since the Reaper is now a neutral badass unit, why not make it truly fearsome by giving it a nicer version of the ability our old dragons had (a -2 to the enemies´ morale), and adding a little more to its damage OR giving it the "No Retaliation" ability?
Balance concerns aside, technical limitations prevent any of these suggestions at this time. Abilities are hard coded for the most part and can't be changed yet. The stuff that I did with Harm Touch was only possible because both the Wraith and the Death Knight had code for it(even though it was not enabled in the DK's case).
I'm glad that you enjoy the mod, thanks for praise.
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PopeRatzinger
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 24, 2006 06:58 AM |
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Quote:
Well I did increase the stats. Defense, Speed, Health, Damage, all were given a small bump up with only a point of Attack being lowered in exchange. The originals were rather lame, but unless other aspects of Necro are nerfed to compensate, there is only so much that can be done without overpowering the faction. I gave them a bit more range and staying power to make them better suited for an assault role, charging into the enemy ahead of the slower troops. they are not a "Great" unit, but I've been happy with their performance so far. If you want to change the stats yourself it's really quite easy. They are found in the .xdb files in the GameMechanics folder of the mod.
Indeed it´s true. I had seen the increasing you did before, but forgotten about it. Probably because personally I´d pump them up a bit more myself, in case I couldn´t get them to have the abilities I suggested. Anyway thanks for the tip on altering the stats, although I already knew the procedure. It´s that ability-granting mumbo-jumbo I´m still cracking... probably using bits of hard-coding from other critters... copy/pasting...
By the way, congrats again for giving the new 7th tier DoomReaper the Wight´s look, not the Wraith´s. The upgradeddy Wraith looks like a graveyard had sex with a night club. I´d be whining in the thread by now.
Quote:
Balance concerns aside, technical limitations prevent any of these suggestions at this time. Abilities are hard coded for the most part and can't be changed yet. The stuff that I did with Harm Touch was only possible because both the Wraith and the Death Knight had code for it(even though it was not enabled in the DK's case).
I´m still studying these spell mechanics codings for creatures. They are in GameMechanics\Spell, where you have both Combat_Spells and Creature_Abilities. Looking at the codings on creatures like Djinn and Zombies gives you something to work with, I wonder. I was mixing-copy-pasting them while trying to resign myself to pumping up Wights/Wraiths: I was trying to make their attack an automatic bless-dispeller (such as the Dragonfly´s in H3), and transform his ability in something more useful. Then they´d be good.
Well keep in touch. If you get any results from what I just said, please share. I´ll do the same.
Cheers,
Ratz
PS: I know it´s not for this thread, but... is anyone interested in two ridiculously simple mods I just made? They were so easy I´m embarrassed. If so where should I post them?
1- One switches pictures between inferno heroes Nymus and Nebiros. Nymus has the best special (the Gating one) but has horns the size of a moose´s and is so butt ugly, and Nebiros´ armor looks so cool I decided to switch them.
2- The best (imho) sylvan hero, Vinrael, who has the experience special 'Battle-hardened', is normally uncapable of acquiring Counterspell, since he comes with one of the Enlightenment skill slots already taken by the Intelligence ability. As we know, Counterspell needs all three Enlightenment slots invested in Arcane Intuition, Know Your Enemy, and Arcane Exaltation (which is finally the prerequisite for buying Counterspell in the Sorcery panel). This mod makes him start with Arcane Intuition instead of Intelligence.
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PopeRatzinger
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 24, 2006 07:10 AM |
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By the way, did you enable the possibility of a Week of the DoomReaper? Of for the knights? Can´t miss on that, or we will seldom see the 7th tier at all, and also the Necro town will never double 6th tier production...
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Arstahd
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 24, 2006 08:04 AM |
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Quote:
By the way, did you enable the possibility of a Week of the DoomReaper? Of for the knights? Can´t miss on that, or we will seldom see the 7th tier at all, and also the Necro town will never double 6th tier production...
Didn't think of that. Well, since only the graphics were swapped, the "week of" should still work. Week of the Wight should spawn Blood Knights, Week of the Death Knight, Doom Reapers, etc... Revenants I guess are kinda screwed since Black Knights were never part of the mix. I'll look into adding them for the next revision.
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OnionKnight
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 24, 2006 03:45 PM |
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Won't these kind of mods cause some crazy stuff in multiplayer? AFAIK multiplayer doesn't have the "pure" option like Quake 3 where it only allows the host's files to be used.
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Ma_trix
Adventuring Hero
Carpe Diem
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posted June 24, 2006 10:48 PM |
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If there is any difference in multiplayer player's games' versions or mods used, the check sum is different ant UBI.COM ERROR is shown - you can't play with a preson that have even one mod less/more/different that you have.
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sfidanza
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted June 25, 2006 06:33 PM |
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I've added this mod to the mod page:
http://www.heroesofmightandmagic.com/heroes5/mods_and_fixes.shtml
Arstahd, feel free to add comments here if any info is not correct.
You can update the link in your first post if you want. And of course you can send me any updated version of the mod: submit (at) heroesofmightandmagic6.com
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DreadKnight666
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 06, 2006 10:05 PM |
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Arstahd HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
I've downloaded your modification, and I'd love to say I love it but...I CAN'T GET THE THING TO WORK!!!!!!!!!! I've got Winrar and I went through the whole reading and extracting of the files and for some strange reason it just won't work. Any suggestions apart from buying asprin in bulk?
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted July 06, 2006 10:32 PM |
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You will not need to extract the files. You will simply download the .pak file that contributes the mod, and then you will put it in the data folder besides the other .pak files (data.pak etc). The thing should work, then.
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Arstahd
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 07, 2006 01:19 AM |
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Edited by Arstahd at 01:28, 07 Jul 2006.
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Quote: I've downloaded your modification, and I'd love to say I love it but...I CAN'T GET THE THING TO WORK!!!!!!!!!! I've got Winrar and I went through the whole reading and extracting of the files and for some strange reason it just won't work. Any suggestions apart from buying asprin in bulk?
It seems that PAK files are being saved as ZIP files when you try to download them. Try renaming the extention from ZIP to PAK, that should work.
Anyone know why this happens? I guess that one way around the problem would be to zip the PAK file itself before hosting it. You would then need to un-zip it but no need for renaming.
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DreadKnight666
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 07, 2006 07:37 AM |
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Thanks
Thanks guys I'll give it try, and one quick question, how high (in your opinion) were the creators of the game when they replaced the Knights with the ghost of Christmas future?
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sfidanza
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted July 07, 2006 12:41 PM |
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Quote: It seems that PAK files are being saved as ZIP files when you try to download them. Try renaming the extention from ZIP to PAK, that should work.
Anyone know why this happens? I guess that one way around the problem would be to zip the PAK file itself before hosting it. You would then need to un-zip it but no need for renaming.
It works with Firefox. It seems the .zip auto-renaming is happening with IE.
The problem then is that some systems are configured to hide the .zip extension (like DreadKnight666's), and changing it back to .pak requires first changing that system option. Which many people don't know about.
Zipping the .pak file, as you suggest, should work.
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K4M_
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 08, 2006 06:23 PM |
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You see... I found Black Knight files in data.pak, the original data file of Homm5. What made me anxious is the fact, that there's no avatar (icon in statistics window) of the Knight. Actually there is an icon, that originally belongs to... a peasant! Pleasa check it. You are good at doing mods, so tell me what could I do to have the icons of Black Knight in my game without replacing Wights and Wrights.
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Arstahd
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 08, 2006 08:05 PM |
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Edited by Arstahd at 20:08, 08 Jul 2006.
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Quote: You see... I found Black Knight files in data.pak, the original data file of Homm5. What made me anxious is the fact, that there's no avatar (icon in statistics window) of the Knight. Actually there is an icon, that originally belongs to... a peasant! Pleasa check it. You are good at doing mods, so tell me what could I do to have the icons of Black Knight in my game without replacing Wights and Wrights.
It's pretty easy. You can use the icons that I made for the Dark Knights mod (edit the .xdb file in CreatureVisuals to point to the new icons). Other than that, the BK is a complete creature. To see it in game you only need to add them to a map or add them to the random monster lists in MapObjects/_(AdvMapSharedGroup)/Monsters.
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K4M_
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 09, 2006 12:11 AM |
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I did it! Thanks for your advice. I made some kind of mod - this one adds your icon to original black knight! Oh, I've got another question or rather a request, Arstahd.
You have made a cool unit - The Doom Reaper, which is based on traditional Wright. Is it possible to make it additional unit without deleting original Wright? If it is, could you try to make so? I'm convinced it would be popular mod. What do you reckon?
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DreadKnight666
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 10, 2006 06:15 AM |
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Just out of curiosity Arstahd, what made you decide to make this mod?
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