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| Thread: Special Terrains |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 · NEXT» |
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Sokoro
Tavern Dweller
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posted July 16, 2017 10:00 AM |
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Special Terrains
In Heroes 4 there is several special terrain types.
Magic Plains, Field of Life, Enchanted Stone, Cursed Ground, Scorched Earth, Magic Garden, Field of Glory.
What is purpose of these? Anything else than just asthetic on adventure map? Too sad they do not change asthetic in combat screen. Do they affect gameplay in any way?
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 10:45 AM |
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It's probably one of the unfinished features in the game. As far as I know these have no effect at all.
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TheUnknown
Known Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 10:47 AM |
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Sokoro said:
Too sad they do not change asthetic in combat screen.
I agree 
I think that they don't even affect the gameplay.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 10:58 AM |
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Edited by Baronus at 11:05, 16 Jul 2017.
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I think terrain boosting spells special type. If its "of life" power of life spells is bigger. etc. But spell power in HIV is hidden. So we dont know if it works. Maybe it not works because HIV is unfinished as many latest NWC games. But I think that magical ground conception from HIII was the same in HIV.
You can try eg. nature. Summon pixies on nature ground and on normal. Its the same number of pixies? Or maybe mana cost is lower?
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 11:34 AM |
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It looks good...
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 01:09 PM |
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radmutant69 said:
It looks good...
Radmutant, how did you produce that combat screen?
I've just re-tested all the special terrain types and only Scorched Earth and Cursed Ground appear as Volcanic terrain in combat, all the others will just appear as 'normal'.
I've never noticed any of them having any ingame effect, but it would make sense it might've been a planned feature as in H3.
Verriker has a theory that those special terrain types might've been added as special terrain types specifically designed for the discarded Unity campaign. This could make sense, and could also explain why they have no 'special effect'. But that's merely speculations, there's no documentation to confirm this.
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 03:41 PM |
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I simply added it as grass terrain variant by renaming the bloody stuff. I was just curious how it looks ingame. This usually works but eg. the 'Field of Life' looks very bad, filled with black rectangles.
Edit: this could be usable for some campaign makers if they give a modded h4r file with their campaign. I think.
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 04:58 PM |
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radmutant69 said:
I simply added it as grass terrain variant by renaming the bloody stuff. I was just curious how it looks ingame. This usually works but eg. the 'Field of Life' looks very bad, filled with black rectangles.
Edit: this could be usable for some campaign makers if they give a modded h4r file with their campaign. I think.
I'd love to use it in my campaign, and I'm pretty sure our team would find use of it, in the Unity campaign, eh Baronus 
Perhaps you could share the ones that looks good? Just as individual h4d/layer files (non packed), that would be great.
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 05:15 PM |
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Just extract the terrain files and rename one of the 'magic' or 'special' files to terrain.grass.1.2.lay/h4d (or dirt or snow or what you want). It's quiet easy.
It looks only the field of life has that glitch but I didn't tested it in too much combinations.
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted July 16, 2017 06:51 PM |
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Sokoro/Baronus - the files are actually packed in game as Terrain->Magic->(alignment), so it seems very obvious they were intended as magical terrain. There's also 2 Special terrain types - personal_combat and tactical, have to check out those two.
Radmutant, ok I tried it with the Cursed Terrain and it worked  .
I found that each terrain type seems to be set up of two layers, so changing either, will also leave a mix of grass/cursed terrain on the adventure map and not only in combat, this also explains why e.g. Field of Glory (which is otherwise displayed purely as grass, is also suddenly a mix of grass/cursed ground in combat).
I do find it interesting, but in my optic, the dream scenario would be to add the possibilty of game actually reading the adventure terrain type and display it during combat, rather than by replacing any of the existing ones.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 17, 2017 11:35 AM |
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It can be useful for single campaign for other may by another. If its only layer its simply to made. No shadow and rectangle. Its simply raw format and can by done by irfan and copy paste. And try combat obstacles txt table in game. Maybe is editable and executable?
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted July 17, 2017 05:22 PM |
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I'm pretty sure it's a single layer, no shadows.
But not sure if the format is the exact same, though. Namerutan's tool currently doesn't recognize the terrain format and I can't view images with ResEdit. Will need to try editing it.
I could point iLiVeInAbOx05 to this tread, he analysed some of the terrain types for his map generator tool, he might have a better understanding of how and where those files are read.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted July 19, 2017 06:29 PM |
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Unfortunately the only thing I know about the terrains are their codes used in the map files. Namerutan had a good understanding of their format and location in the .h4r / .h4d files.
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Baronus
Legendary Hero
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posted July 19, 2017 06:47 PM |
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I saw it and its to hard. Of course its raw too. If Resedit makers dont read it for us is very hard. Its random generated if you paint as you see. We must first read easiest defs. Terrain is last thing. Difficuly and no priority to paint new one. Changing grass to another grass? Obstacles rather are more important.
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted July 19, 2017 10:19 PM |
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iliveinabox05 said:
Unfortunately the only thing I know about the terrains are their codes used in the map files. Namerutan had a good understanding of their format and location in the .h4r / .h4d files.
Well I can tell you where they're located in the h4r file -> simply in folder names Terrain, each terrain type has 2 images, but Namerutan's tool can't yet export them, so I don't know the format, even if Baronus is certain is raw. Didn't you document the codes somewhere? Perhaps there's a path between each terrain type, that could be extended?? It also seems obvious the table.combat_obstacles needs to be edited, but perhaps this is just too complex, to even bother looking into...?
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted July 20, 2017 08:04 AM |
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There is also a file named 'transition.Transitions.h4d'. This is what contains the transitions between terrain types. You should look into it, maybe it can be useful too?
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted August 22, 2017 02:43 PM |
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I went through old Equilibris updates a few days ago, and noticed they had posted an image where they had used the terrain type from Haven's town combat screen (similar to stone road). Could simply be the same method Radmutant used, as I didn't say if it was replaced or added.
With my success with Portraits I think I'll give the terrain types a try. We know the game regocnizes and reads the special terrain types, so I guess it's a matter of editing the tables files, to add the extra ones instead of replacing.
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radmutant69
Promising
Known Hero
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posted August 24, 2017 08:59 PM |
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Karmakeld said:
We know the game regocnizes and reads the special terrain types, so I guess it's a matter of editing the tables files, to add the extra ones instead of replacing.
Nope. I tried it already, but it don't works. It seems the special terrains have everything in the tables what the other terrains have. The game just don't use them correctly for some reason. I think it's an exe problem as usually all things about H4...
There are also some unused terrain keywords in the list in the exe. I tried to use those instead of the originals but they crashes the game.
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Karmakeld
Responsible
Supreme Hero
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posted August 24, 2017 09:21 PM |
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radmutant69 said:
Karmakeld said:
We know the game regocnizes and reads the special terrain types, so I guess it's a matter of editing the tables files, to add the extra ones instead of replacing.
Nope. I tried it already, but it don't works. It seems the special terrains have everything in the tables what the other terrains have. The game just don't use them correctly for some reason. I think it's an exe problem as usually all things about H4...
There are also some unused terrain keywords in the list in the exe. I tried to use those instead of the originals but they crashes the game.
Okay, thanks for the info. Compared to adding new portraits, I believe you're right that it would require exe editing.
It seems there's a bunch of unused keywords in the game, sadly I think the only useable/easy ones to change are artifacts and spells.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted August 26, 2017 12:59 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 01:04, 26 Aug 2017.
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I replaced some terrains in my mod by renaming the files and changing them inside, but I don't remember much any more...
Basically each terrain file seems to have two sections inside. This is viewable by hex editing.
Notice the following:
Some terrains have roughly double the data as others.
What I think is "missing" is the data for the second part, AKA, the combat appearance of the terrain (why they look "default")
I have filled this second part with the data from other terrains and changed it that way.
The adventure map is still the same but now these special terrains have a different combat appearance (taken from other terrain)
The ones I have changed are Magic Plains (Magic.All, apparently intended to boost all magics) and Enchanted Stones (magic.order , it's quite ugly :V)
Start of first section:
Start of second section:
Only rough guessing, I did this long ago. Check files carefully.
So it is not the .exe
The files are wrong and can be fixed.
(well... something is the .exe to be fair: No terrain actually has any effect in combat. Don't sweat it, they don't change Magic. Only possibility of terrain influence in combat -besides different obstacles- is native creature terrain giving extra movement as in H3, I haven't checked that actually... but better players should already know. It works on adventure map, that's sure.)
You are welcome 
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