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| Thread: The Swords of Night and Day (re-released as an Era 2.4 mod) |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 · NEXT» |
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 03:47 AM |
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The Swords of Night and Day (re-released as an Era 2.4 mod)
Aeons ago, Devoron made Holes in the Night, through which he summoned creatures of dark matter, to do his evil will.
At first, since their matter does not interact with normal creatures, they are harmless. Slowly, over the years they accrete shells of normal matter.
Thus has arrived the reign of Megathon the Destroyer, the first and oldest of these, who feeds on the bodies of men and turns their souls into Wraiths and Vampires. Only the undying will of Fnord the Great prevents him - so far - from crossing the great river.
Fnord cast mighty runes in the course of the river, henceforth known as Silver Rune the Swift, so that sunlight or moonlight reflected off its ripples dispells dark magic.
Its shores sparkle with magic as its currents weave the runes.
However, while free men still live north of the river, Megathon rules the south, and has made it a wasteland, with a Dead Zone to mark the edge of his territory. Also, on moonless nights he sends his Wraiths north to seize men and fly them back to his slave pens, to await their grim fate.
Morrolan the Bold, Lord of Woodshire, has grown weary of losing citizens to the Wraiths, and has decided to lead all his warriors and mages south, to find a way through the Dead Zone and attempt to defeat Megathon in his lair, leaving only untrained youths behind. Should he fail, there will be but one last, faint hope: to journey to the Sun and Moon and bring back the Swords of Night and Day!
Or so the story goes.
(Re-released for Era 2 as a self-extracting file to be extracted in a Heroes 3-Era 2 folder.)
(A sequel, Swords of Night and Day II - The Ice King, or Hidden Spells, is also there.)
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 05:00 AM |
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Very nice work, I tried only 2 turns before going to bed, will continue tomorrow. I noticed that you also use human dead turn as I used in Alexander and ToP , but then I found that passing directly the action to AI (using OxFea turn code or yours) looks more fluent (after first turn messages are displayed). Or maybe you want the human to split differently his troops, then it makes sense.
The behemot ate a lot in his young years.
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fred79
Disgraceful
Undefeatable Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 08:23 AM |
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cool stuff. the ideas and pics bring the necronomicon lore to mind.
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 01:25 PM |
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Thanks for the comments. The map was written under WoG 3.58f, when I didn't know a way to end a turn automatically. There is nothing which needs to be done after reading the messages in the first turn, so an automatic end-turn would make sense on that day, but I didn't think of it for the Era conversion.
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master_learn
Legendary Hero
walking to the library
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posted January 17, 2013 01:52 PM |
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JimV,thank you for your mod,which you created and converted to Era!
Do I need to place the third file era.dll from the link you provided and to put it in a folder?
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"I heard the latest HD version disables playing Heroes. Please reconsider."-Salamandre
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 02:04 PM |
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Thank you, Master_L. The era.dll file is for Era 2.41, which fixed (thanks to Bersy) the slight glitch that when you drop artifacts under Era 2.4 and below, the drop menu shows their original DEF's from the WoG folder instead of new ones from the current mod.
That glitch appeared in Hidden Spells (in which you must drop artifacts during the game), but does not appear in SND, so the new dll is not needed for SND - but does not hurt. As far as I know, 2.41 is the latest version (until 2.5 or some other newer version is released by Bersy).
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 05:19 PM |
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Maze Mapping
Players will have to negotiate a maze, which is randomly generated in 6 columns and 10 rows at the start of the game. The 60 cells of the maze are then randomly distributed over a lightning-bolt shape, with four exits, two at the northeast tip of the shape and two at the southwest tip of the shape. (These exits are on the top edge/right side and bottom edge/left side of the 6x10 maze.)
In the good (bad?) old days, players had to map each level of a game (e.g., Wizardry) with pencil and paper. I recommend this same process for getting through the maze.
A player will start at the Lighting Bolt icon, in the center of the LB shape, and somewhere in the middle of the 6x10 maze. Starting from that cell, I map as shown below:
In that example, I was lucky to find the top exit in a few moves, but the bottom exit took much longer. Once you have a map of the maze, it is easy to get in and out of it.
It can be difficult sometimes to see whether you have moved to a new cell or hit a wall and bounced back. If you don't hear the teleport sound, you have not moved to a new cell.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 08:20 PM |
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Hmm the bull fight: some confusing infos in battle log (3% death stare when info on Jalery/Vames and growing/decreasing for not clear reasons, distance it seems), I did the battle for 20+ rounds, bull was at 200 HP, then his death stare worked. With only shoots we can't kill him, need to go melee, but how?!
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 08:38 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 20:43, 17 Jan 2013.
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The Death Stare chance changes randomly each round, with the value for the round shown in the scroll window. Even with the EA:B value set to zero, a Mighty Gorgon has a small chance of Death Stare, so the value displayed in the scroll window will never be zero. The plan was of course to only do a melee strike a few times during the battle, and only when the DS chance is very low.
I save the bull for last, after fighting the crow and the poison frogs. Without the bonuses from the latter two, it would be very difficult to defeat the bull.
Even with a low chance of DS, sometimes the bull does one. I have done several battles with the bull in several playtests, and my winning percentage is about 80% (not 100%).
It might help to get one or two bonuses from the Arena before fighting the bull, but I have never tried that. I always do the three farms first, and then go to the Arena. It might not be possible to get an Arena bonus without the prize for the bull.
P.S. I added OxFEA's end-turn to the Day One script today.
P.P.S. It is (barely) possible to win even after one Death Stare occurs. (Leora will revive one dead character if the other one survives the battle.)
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 08:42 PM |
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The problem is that the bull, while having lower speed, attacks first sometimes, so the death stare info previously displayed changed surely.
I got Vames killed in this way, when previous was 3%. Also it looks like the distance affects the chance too, I swear I saw it while moving the mage around to check reason.
Also the bull heals himself sometimes, so if we wait for lower death stare chance, he gets all HP back.
What confuses me is that death stare chance is displayed in our creatures info (Iona like), thus I believed first it is our chance, not the bull one. Would not be easier at each round start, to display with IF:L bull chance? (ok probably not, it stays 20 seconds on screen, too long)
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 08:55 PM |
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Edited by JimV at 21:06, 17 Jan 2013.
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Checking the script, I see that the % changes at the end of the bull's turn:
!?BG1&190/v37>-1; reset DS at end of bull's turn (better than BR)
!!BG:N?v1; stack
!!FU&v1<21:E; exit if not bull
I originally made the change at the start of a new round (!?BR), but decided during testing that this works better. I can't remember the details (this was done in May of 2011), but I guess it was because I would only try to hit the bull after it had moved, and it is possible to get a BR trigger between BG0 and BG1.
So after the bull moves, one must move the mouse to get a new mouse hint trigger.
P.S. The Death Stare % always applies to the bull. I assumed (badly) that this would be clear from the "with fire in its eyes" hint text. What I should have done and will now do is change the scroll text to say "(Bull Death Stare x%)". (I did have two other play-testers, neither of whom mentioned this issue - I blame them.)
P.P.S. Changed - and thanks for the comments.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 09:05 PM |
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Ok, thanks. You said you return to universities to get bonuses: they say I need 30 xp (not clear, who? hero or creatures?)
I did the crow quest, hero got 1 XP, creatures nothing. I am not sure how it works.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 09:14 PM |
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Remember what the peasants at the Thatched Hut said:
"... a giant crow is eating our corn! Get rid of it for us and we will give you our grandfather's old bow ..." (You have to go back to the hut to get it.) (This and the poison arrows from the farm to the east will make defeating the bull much easier.)
The Experience Points (EP) apply to both characters, and are shown in the Hero Screen as the last three digits of Leora's experience, as mentioned in the README. There are different levels for fighting training and magic training. After reaching a level and getting training at an academy, visit it again (spacebar) and it will tell you what EP are needed for the next level.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 09:15 PM |
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Quote:
the value displayed in the scroll window will never be zero.
Argh, my nerves...Bull killed Vames with 0% death stare chance
I have the golden bow already, second fight was the bull, just exploring around, I found him first.
Hopefully I have turbo wog mod enabled, I recommend to everyone for this fight.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 09:37 PM |
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That was a another mis-recollection on my part. I thought I always added 3 to the EA:B percentage because in tests I think I recall that I found that a MG set at zero (or even negative) still has a small chance of doing a Death Stare. But the script does not add 3%. Still it is very unlucky even at 3%. In my play-test of the Era version, I hit the bull about three times without getting Death-Stared. I am beginning to wonder if there is another mod which affects the chances (probably not).
Thanks for all the comments. I got very few from my play-testers in 2011. Good play-testers are hard to find.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 09:44 PM |
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Got the bull with poison arrows. I think player should be forced to get the arrows before the bull or he will get probably mad in that fight.
As usual, all mods disabled except the one I play.
Nice flashing frogs. 
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 10:01 PM |
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I have to make a strange report. I just updated the map with a script change to add 3% to the displayed DS value and did a quick play-test before uploading. I got a crash at the end of day one twice in a row, so I have taken out the OxFEA end-turn (when I added it this morning I did one game start without a crash).
In my bull battle test I hit the bull when it had 8% (old 5%), 8%, and 11% chance of a Death Stare, and survived them. (Theoretically that should be the case 75% of the time.)
Maybe the crashes were due to something else, but I have never seen these crashes before adding the end-turn UN:C/SN:E commands.
I don't like to force a player to follow a set course, but I will try to think of a hint comment to add. Something like "You might need poisoned arrows to face the bull."
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 10:08 PM |
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To add OxFea pass turn, I added TM99 to the game, to be sure it occurs after every thing else (timers and PI, did not have GE, I see your map has one even with number before, maybe this is?)). I then tested Alexander's start about 5 times, now you worry me.
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Era II mods and utilities
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JimV
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted January 17, 2013 10:46 PM |
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My usage was:
!?TM2&v2392=1/v2395=3; Day 1, Green
... (did several things, added UN:C and SN:E at end)
!?TM2&v2392=1/v2395=0; Day 1, Red
... (make Red AI attack Green human)
The crash occurred after the start of Red's turn, but before the attack.
As I said, it worked the first time I tested it, but something caused crashes the next two times I started the game. Since removing the end-turn commands I have started a couple times without a crash.
I will update my comments on this issue if I ever see the crash without the end-turn commands or learn anything else.
I should also mention that I added the same commands to a timer in BattlePoker II and have not seen a crash in that game. My guess is that a specific sequence of commands (and perhaps other conditions) might be required.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted January 17, 2013 11:06 PM |
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Probably not relevant, have you tried to make red attack green without timer (just AI command in instructions) and see if still crashes? It may be possible that UN:C conflicts somehow with a timer. Not that your map needs it, but I am worried now that I use it in two maps.
Edit: I see that AI needs daily timers anyway. I was curious if OxFea codes can crash the game if nothing is scripted between the command and day 2.
Game receives UN:C command to end turn but it has not processed all TM2 triggers yet (even if all of remaining are set to AI, it still has to read them, no?)
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Era II mods and utilities
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