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| Thread: The hidden jewels of Data-Mining: Abilities that could have been |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted February 06, 2013 02:00 PM |
bonus applied by Elvin on 06 Feb 2013. |
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The hidden jewels of Data-Mining: Abilities that could have been
It is commonly known, that during the development of a game many changes appear. Some ideas are left out, some new are created and some can change their original purpose.
Heroes VI is no exception in this manner. But as it was the case in the past, some of the ideas that did not make it into the final game have left their trace in some more or less hidden corners of the games data.
When extracting icons for your website, I came across some of these leftovers and thought to myself "This could be a good base for a nice topic". And That is Exactly what I'm going to do. I Would like to dedicate this topic to all people who would like to speculate about what could have been, share what they have found and think is interesting, Or just share their opinion.
My OP will focuse on the field that of Abilities, mostly hero abilities, since there is lot of hint in the files, and it is a field that is the target of many discussions. Ofcource I do not know if the images were supposed to be for hero abilities or creature abilities. It might be even so, that thy are used somewhere and I just missed them.
(Note all images I am about to share are in the game data and can be easily accessed by anyone who has basic modding tools)
So, let us start.
Peple who fallowed the developement off the game know, that soma abilities were announced, but later left out. Such abilities Vision or Tactics 3. Other abilties were not announced, but they were hinted on artworks. Many people who saw the Kappa artwork for the first time, thought that it could have an abilty connected to its tongue. Not only the artwork, but also the ability icon titled Coiling Tongue hints, that atleast at some point of the developement, this was really the case. What was this ability suppose to do? Why was it left out? The Kappa is a rather strong core creature on its own, would it be to strong if it had this abilitie?
  
But apart from abilities we knew about, or suspected, there are traces of other abilities. And this is where our topic starts to get interesting.
I will start with magic abilities, and later focuse on might abilities to give the post some structure.
The magic system of Heroes VI is very different for the older ones. While some people might like it, and other not, I think most people will agree that there is one problem with it: the spells are just to few. But in the date files we can see that some more could have been in developement.
Let us now lookk at individual magic schools
Light
Light magic with its 9 active abilities is one of the smaler schools in the game right now. But apart from Prime magic, it has the most Tier 3 abilities (5) together with Earth. It is not a surprise then that there are almost no leftovers from this school. It looks like Light spells did not have such a hard time passing through. The only interesting icon is titled "Pain reflection(Retribution 3)" but I'm not going to upload it, since you can see it in the celestialheavens skill summary application.
Dark
With 12 active spells is dark the most numerous elemental magic school. But unlike Light magic we can see some interesting icons in the data files. The one I would like to present you carries the name "Invoke shadow". It was most likely supposed to be a creature ability, but it also could have been a spell similar to Phantom forces or Shadow image from DoC.
Prime
Prime magic has the basic problem that its tab is full, there is just no more space for an additional ability. But still, there are some prime abilities, that could have been spells. The interesting part is, that all of them ("Soul Syphon", "Spell Steal" and "Time Jump") actually are spells in the CCG spin-off Duel of champions. And they are not the only ones. Few more spells that I am going to talk about have recieved their incarnation in DoC
 
Earth
Earth magic has 10 basic spells in Heroes VI sofar, but it also has 3 unused ability icons. Two of them ("Dust to Dust" and "Silken Armor") have a strong necromantic feeling. Could they be faction special spells? I'll get to this topic in the end. The third one is named simply "Improved armor", it also has a mass version. This spell could just be an older version of the Stone skin spell, but it coul as well be something totaly different.
   
Water
Water is one of the smaller spell schools with only 8 active spells. But we can see some nice option to fill its lines. Heroes V players will remember "Deep freez". Other interesting options are "Ice weapon" or "Refreshing spring". Both are examples of spells who made it into DoC, but not into Heroes VI. Ice Weapons even have mass version. Also it seams that at some point there was, or was supposed to be, a "Quicksand" spell in the water school.
    
Fire
Fire, with its 10 spells, does not look it would need any new ones, but this school is one of the most interesting ones. With icons named "Blazing gates", "Fire Blossom" and "Idol of Fire" I really am interested in, what were they suppose to be. Abilities for crearues? Heroes? Could the Blazing gates be a special spell for siege defences? Could the Fire Blossom or Idol of Fire act as obsticals that would deal fire damage? Or was the Fire blossom a form of a "land mine" spell?
  
Air
Air is the school with the least spells. Only 6 are not much when compared to other schools, but it is also the school with many interesting leftovers. Just have a look at icons such as "Fog Veil", again a spell that made it into DoC. Tornado sound like a nice crowd control spell. Just imagine if it could push small creatures one space away from target space. Bye-bye turtle formations. The last three icons are not spells most likely. I have no idea what "Dynasty" could be, but the two "Father sky" abilities (gift and protection) seam to interact with the Father skies Wrath" ability that is in the game.
    
Might abilities
Might is somehow equal to magic in Heroes VI so there must be some interesting might abilities aswell. Sone of the like "Armor Crush", "Offensive formation", "Defensive formation" or "Disarm" sound like basic abilities that should not have been lefout. Others like "Bravehearth" or "Slow and Steady" just sound so interesting that I can't stop thinking what they could do. Was Slow and Steady supposed to prevent efects that reduced movement, but at the same time forbid to increas it in any way? Not a good idea when fighting with a stronghold hero, but when facing sanctuary it would be a lifesaver.
     
The final part
Many players are disapointed that every faction in the game has the same abilities, with only few magic school chainging. But maybe this was not always the case. I spouke about two earth spells that had this strong necropolis feeling, "Dust to Dust" and "Silken Armor". But there are also some might abilities that have the same feeling. Like "Bonewall", "Demonic Resilience" or a silly icon called "Reserves[Sanctuary]". These all could have been abilites just for their factions.
  
We know now that we can't expect any huge changes in the skill system, but I think just expanding it, and introducing some of these spells and abilities, that could have already been in the making, would help to freshen the game up.
Shades of Darkness is comming, and even if it is not likely, there coudl be a small chance that some of these icons will get an ability atached to it, and be more then just leftovers.
p.s. Sorry for any errors in grammar. I'll try to correct them slowly :-).
Other Icons posted in this topic:
Water breath, Conquer mine, Haunted mine, Ignite mine, Golden shield of Elrath
    
Storm winds III, Ice armor II, Havoc, Stunning blow
   
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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Elvin
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Endless Revival
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posted February 06, 2013 02:29 PM |
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Thanks for unearthing those  When I saw the extracted ability icons I got curious as there were more than a few that I did not recognize. As for those I do know:
Tactics III was supposed to let you see opponent's placement before starting the battle. That would have been plain crazy for chargers
Reserves would allow you to summon in the battlefield units that you left out during tactics phase. Such a waste, I really liked the idea.
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H5 is still alive and kicking, join us in the Duel Map discord server!
Map also hosted on Moddb
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Hermes
Famous Hero
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posted February 06, 2013 02:48 PM |
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Wow, what a great topic! Thank you for sharing this. Makes me realise just how incomplete the game actually is. Still love it, but would not it be great with all this additional abilities? I would pay lot more then 35 bucks for it!
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted February 06, 2013 02:53 PM |
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Avonu
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Embracing light and darkness
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posted February 06, 2013 02:54 PM |
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Edited by Avonu at 15:00, 06 Feb 2013.
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IIRC from some interviews Battle Formations were suppose to be used by your stacks. Some ideas were that units have synergy - if you put them close to themselves, they get bonus - something like Praetorian when he defend other units. But as many other ideas this one was scrapped.
And we still don't know, how skill trees were like before VIPs turned them down and Black Hole gave us current skill system. 
BTW - you missed few others icons (Avatar of Chaos, Mines).
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted February 06, 2013 02:56 PM |
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I know
There are a lot more. over 30 other icons I could not find a match for, or were just remakes of other icons. These are those I found interesting.
You are free to add those you know and you think are interesting. I'm actualy thinking about adding some more like the "Golden Shield of Elrath"
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 06, 2013 03:00 PM |
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Nice finds & thoughts, Dave
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted February 06, 2013 03:18 PM |
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The "Coiling Tongue" ability can be seen here (pay attention to this Kappa).
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Avonu
Responsible
Supreme Hero
Embracing light and darkness
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posted February 06, 2013 03:43 PM |
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Quote:
You are free to add those you know and you think are interesting.
If you just posted this topic few months ago... as for today, I'm sick of this game, "spaghetti" in game and text files and misleading translation (you know this pain, don't you?).
Anyway there are five Mines icons over all: Ignite (Sabotage) and Plunderer are known but the three others are: Flood, Conquer and Haunted.
Flood (which looks very close to Ignite) probably turned mine off permantly (something like Sawmill in Stronghold Mission 1, when you could burn it to the ground).
Conquer - well, it probably was Area of Control countermeassure, so you didn't have to conquer fort/city itself.
Haunted - whoever played HoMM2 should know, how this skill/spell should work.
Just my opinion about them.
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted February 06, 2013 04:52 PM |
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It's not usual for me to correct you Avonu, but when I have the oportunity I just can't resist.
The "Flood Mine" Icon you posted is actually the one used for Sabotage. It is a Realm ability and has the realm frame around it.
The third unused icon is the "Ignite mine" which uses the same image but has a Fire magic frame.
Also.. when I'm at posting new icons.. one I think is interesting
Golden shield of Elrath
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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xerox
Promising
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 06, 2013 05:19 PM |
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now I want racial skills in the skill trees...
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blob2
Undefeatable Hero
Blob-Ohmos the Second
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posted February 06, 2013 06:26 PM |
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Edited by blob2 at 18:27, 06 Feb 2013.
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It's very interesting, but also makes one sad that some nice ideas were left out.
I just hope there are no lost Green and Gold Dragon models somewhere... 
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Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
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posted February 06, 2013 08:26 PM |
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Now that I'm back at home, I see there were some "faction abilities" that got cut off...what a shame
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alcibiades
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
of Gold Dragons
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posted February 07, 2013 06:58 AM |
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Interesting thread. Even if some have been posted elsewhere or are similar to ones already in the game, it might be valuable if someone made a collection somewhere of all unused icons known. Such a tool can be valuable for modders (in case anybody should decide at some point to try to make something meaningful out of Heroes 6 skilltree).
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What will happen now?
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Miru
Supreme Hero
A leaf in the river of time
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posted February 07, 2013 09:33 AM |
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Yeah I already did this, noted it in two threads, and emailed them to Elvin
I was going to upload all of the images for skills for the site, but I found that the skills included in the .orcs included everything they have ever drawn, and finding the images actually used in game was a bit of a pain.
There is a lot of stuff in those .orcs, Ive looked through almost every folder. Most of it is stupid text files with useless gibberish. It is taunting because they have bits of the codes related to the skills, but the actual damage formulas (what I was looking for) are not there.
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I wish I were employed by a stupendous paragraph, with capitalized English words and expressions.
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Dave_Jame
Promising
Legendary Hero
I'm Faceless, not Brainless.
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posted February 07, 2013 10:11 AM |
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And that is why I'm right now re-writing all the spell descriprion directly from the game. I just leave an X where the formulas is going to be.
It also has the advantage that I can correct the bad formulation Avonu was talking about.
Oh and Miru, I have all the icons sorted out if you want to use them just PM me your mail... Also If you would like the artifact icons, we have them all on Heroes-Centrum. Texts are in Czech so you have to extract them yourself:-) (Or just use DD artefact topic he made for Elvin's turnament)
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I'm just a Mirror of your self.
We see, we look, we gather, we store, we teach.
We are many, and you can be one of us.
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Maurice
Hero of Order
Part of the furniture
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posted February 07, 2013 10:31 AM |
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You say that "Dust to Dust" sounds like a Necromancer spell, but I would say it's actually anti-Necromancer. To me it sounds like a spell designed to specifically harm undead (and nothing else), by having their bones fall to dust. I guess they scrapped the idea because the spell was too narrow in its focus while also competing with other destructive spells.
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BlueLore
Adventuring Hero
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posted February 07, 2013 11:18 AM |
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sounds really interesting
The idol of fire was most likely going to be a stronghold only fire spell,since the stronghold has already similar spells for air and earth(and since the orcs are heavily aligned to fire through their demonic origin and even have a creature in its lineup which deals fire damage,it would have made sense for them to have such an ability)
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SepSpring
Known Hero
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posted February 07, 2013 10:08 PM |
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Storm Winds III
All small enemy creatures are scattered away by Storm Winds.
Used to be an inaccessible part of the Air Magic school in the Internal Private Closed Beta.
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Abvgd
Hired Hero
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posted February 08, 2013 12:50 AM |
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Edited by Abvgd at 00:54, 08 Feb 2013.
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Thank you, Dave_Jame, for this thread!
Here is my little contribute:
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru] [/URL]
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru] [/URL]
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru] [/URL]
Ice Armor 2:
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru][/URL]
Опустошение (sorry, don't remember what was the english variant of it):
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru][/URL]
Оглушающий удар (sorry, don't remember what was the english variant of it):
[URL=http://www.radikal.ru][/URL]
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