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| Thread: Mod for enabling all starting heroes? |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 06:35 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 19:35, 27 Sep 2018.
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Mod for enabling all starting heroes?
Maps can enable all campaign heroes in the dialogues options, but you still can't choose them as starting heroes (probably their codes aren't included on "staring hero" lists)
Could anyone make a mod that simply allowed you to choose any map-enabled hero in the hero and town selection screen?
There are even campaign heroes that would be balanced, for example:
Roland - Specialty: Swordmen
There is nothing notable about him except his appearance in campaigns, and that his specialty is semi-bugged, he DOES NOT give bonuses to swordsmen, only crusaders.
Has Armorer instead of Offense unlike other Crusader specialists.
Catherine the Knight - Specialty: Swordsmen
Catherine is an exact copy of Sorsha. (Except for her sexy 90's 3D portrait, of course)
Boragus - Specialty: Ogres
Just a normal hero, another hero of the same class already has Ogres as specialty but he this one has a different starting skill (Tactics, not Resistance)
Kilgor the Barbarian - Specialty: Behemoths. Behemoths and ancient behemoths under Kilgor's command receive +5 Attack, +5 Defense and +10 Damage.
...his specialty is strong, but still he can't compare with Crag Hack's bonus. Behemoths are only available late game so he also would be running at a disadvantage during most of the match, and even at the end he would only be upgrading a single stack (and doesn't give +1 speed).
Mutare / Mutare Drake - Specialty: All dragons receive +5 Att, +5 Def.
Again apparently a pretty strong specialty, but you will still probably have an army with only a single dragon stack. This can get potentially very powerful if you somehow have an all-dragon army or Dragongeddon strategy, but still probably is in the level of a very circumstantial Armorer or Offense specialty.
It also starts with the terribly bad skill Estates (Why does a Dragon have Estates? Oh I get it, the hoard.)
Adrienne the Witch - Starts with expert Fire Magic.
This isn't even a real specialty, it's just two extra secondary skills to fire magic. The kicker? Fire Magic is often considered the worst kind of magic in the game, only notable in usability for Berserk and Armageddon (Which adrienne doesn't start being able to learn since they require advanced and expert Wisdom; and her town, Fortress, only gets spells up to level three). It doesn't even have mobility spells like Fly, Town Portal, Dimension Door; neither does it have powerful combat abilities like Clone, Mass Dispel; and it doesn't have Haste, Slow nor Prayer. Even for some strange design reason, Fortress can't get Curse in the mage guild (you would think REPTILIAN AZTEC WITCHES would be apt at curses, death rippling, and animating the dead, but can't even learn any). Which means only thing you can Mass-cast is Bloodlust, which... sort of sucks.
Xeron - Specialty: Devils and arch devils receive +4 attack, +2 defense, and +1 Speed.
Inferno and Devils are considered generally weak, and this is not even an exception. This specialty is weaker than even similar ones like the Dragon specialty and the Behemoth specialty. Guess H3 hates Inferno - but hey, at least they get +1 speed :V
Lord Haart the Knight - Specialty: Estates
The only one which can be selected sometimes,
"Even though the knight Lord Haart is not usually available to play in the expansions, a bug exists where he will appear on any map where the mapmaker has in some way edited the Heroes tab under Map Specifications in the Map Editor. In these cases Lord Haart will replace Sir Mullich in the starting hero selection but both heroes will be purchaseable from taverns in game. Lord Haart is still not available to place as a wandering hero or in a prison within the Map Editor itself. Nor is it possible to change the properties of this hero as he does not appear in the Heroes tab. Even after undoing any changes to the Heroes tab in the editor, Lord Haart remains and Sir Mullich is unchoosable as a starting hero. "
This is pretty possible because Sir Mullich is the overpowered one, while Lord Haart isn't (it takes over 20 levels until his specialty is better than "+350 gold"). Unfortunately this doesn't work in random maps. Sir Mullich is normally banned.
[Note: He ONLY appears if you enabled the Death Knight Lord Haart at any point while editing the map]
So as you see, most disabled/campaign heroes could be perfectly balanced as playable as initials... With the exceptions of Gelu the Ranger, Dracon the Wizard, and possibly Lord Haart the Death Knight. The first two can upgrade simple creatures to powerful neutrals. The third one makes atronger an already overpowered sixth level creature, of an already overpowered and often banned town.
But all the rest seem to be fine, and it would be nice to be able to choose them as starting heroes.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 06:48 PM |
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Very interesting thread and I have had a lot of the same thoughts.
Regarding Catherine, Roland and Boragus kinda boring, but perfectly fine except for the Roland bug. (I think I was the one that discovered that, I was the first one to post it in the wiki at the least.)
Kilgor, Mutare and Undead Lord Haart I find overpowered, their specials are too strong.
Xeron is fine, I guess.
Adrienne is also fine, in my game she only has advanced Fire Magic, but I also boosted Fire Magic.
Living Lord Haart is absolutely fine, Sir Mullich on the other hand is not!
I also really wish the 17th or 18th or 19th hero could be selected from the start.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 06:59 PM |
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Kilgor and Mutare specials look intimidating on paper, but I suspect they are not so strong in practice, because their bonuses are specific and not general. It would probably wise to have a few playtest matches to see if they are unbalanced.
Also, if such mod gets made, those heroes (deemed not unbalanced) should be enabled on random maps.
Possibly the "roland bug" can be adressed by simply chaging his specialty icon and description to be "Crusaders" and not swordmen. When that is done I think it fine - specially because nobody uses unupgraded swordsmen, given that only upgraded crusaders have the double strike ability.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 07:05 PM |
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The Roland bug is very easy to fix, it requires changing 1 single byte in exe. I can tell you how, if you are interested?
One thing I could never get to work, is changing the specialty icons, I really wish I could do that. 
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 07:16 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 19:16, 27 Sep 2018.
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Tell if you want, I can easily edit if you say which byte it is, but as I said, the Roland bug is what bothers me the least :V
If it is by .exe editing, I think it would be easy to make Mutare, Mutare Drake, Kilgor and Undead Haart specialties more in line with the Xeron one, and thus more clearly balanced.
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 07:25 PM |
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Go to 279be4 and change the 07 -> 06, what this does is change his special from Crusaders to Swordsmen. (and Crusaders)
Yeah good idea, I actually changed some of them myself, I even changed some classes, skills and specials of those campaign heroes, like made Boragus in to a Battle Mage and the first Lightning Bolt specialist for example. 
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted September 27, 2018 07:34 PM |
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phoenix4ever said:
One thing I could never get to work, is changing the specialty icons, I really wish I could do that.
surely a means is to edit the frames as appropriate in UN32.def or UN44.def, that should make all the difference cheers lol
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 07:36 PM |
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Yes I tried that, but it did'nt work, dont know if it's because I play HotA. (and HD Mod)
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted September 27, 2018 07:39 PM |
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For sure don't change any frames order in those defs, you will mess the entire game and specialties assignment. Hex change if want to switch specialties icons, the only way.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 07:41 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 19:43, 27 Sep 2018.
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Quote:
Yeah good idea, I actually changed some of them myself, I even changed some classes, skills and specials of those campaign heroes, like made Boragus in to a Battle Mage and the first Lightning Bolt specialist for example.
Seeing as we already had two Ogres specialists, I can't blame you :V
Maybe we could do something like that to Swordman specialists as well.
Too bad I only know how to mod H4 :V
Does anyone know if the "starting-able" heroes are in the .exe, or in some kind of external Tables file?
BTW, I think Lord Hart is just a map editor bug. Someone once said that if the map editor had Lord Hart (Knight) listed, he could be re-enabled. It seems to be this way, because although thelazy Wiki says that "it gets enabled permanently if you enable any special hero", I have tested this and it isn't the case. If you enable non-Haart heroes, the Knight version is still disabled and Sir Mullich still appears in the Castle selection.
Quote:
I also really wish the 17th or 18th or 19th hero could be selected from the start.
What does this mean exactly, that there is a hardcap for 16 selectable heroes per faction?
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 07:54 PM |
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NimoStar said:
What does this mean exactly, that there is a hardcap for 16 selectable heroes per faction?
It's means that if you enable more than the standard 16 heroes for a faction, you can't select one of the heroes if you have 17 or 2 if have 18. I guess the game is set up to display a maximum of 16 heroes per faction. BUT you can get them if you choose random starting hero and they can appear in taverns like normal.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 07:59 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 19:59, 27 Sep 2018.
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Hm. This would mean Sir Mullich could still be your starting hero as "random" even with Lord Haart enabled, probably.
Ah, that may be because of a single-byte lenght, that is why 16 is the limit.
But originally all factions had exactly 16 heroes. Maybe there is a way to change it in the .exe
But dubious to find it looking blindly at 2,668,000 characters 
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 27, 2018 08:03 PM |
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Yeah it would be awesome if that 16 hero maximum limit could be raised, but I have no idea how. 
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 27, 2018 08:10 PM |
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Which adds the question: What determines exactly which heroes get displayed as starting ones, which not, and in what order?
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verriker
Honorable
Legendary Hero
We don't need another 'eroes
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posted September 27, 2018 09:37 PM |
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phoenix4ever said:
Yes I tried that, but it did'nt work, dont know if it's because I play HotA. (and HD Mod)
yeah for sure might be a HotA or other addon thing, I do not care if the African countries guy has a WoG on the brain or what but Feanor has confirmed it is one man, one icon in original game, thus those should be the files cheers lol
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted September 27, 2018 10:18 PM |
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted September 28, 2018 01:56 AM |
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SO in short nobody here knows how to do it? :/
HotA people must know given they made new staring ones...
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted September 28, 2018 05:25 AM |
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Current code has a 16 heroes limit... this was previously stated by baratorch not too long ago.
Why all this fuss over selecting heroes that barely matter for random maps? Anyhow, a dirty hack can probably get around it by pointing to a custom list with more than 16 heroes and a different counter than -1 ~ 15... and maybe a few extra things.
Memory editing the list is pretty straight forward. More later.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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phoenix4ever
Legendary Hero
Heroes is love, Heroes is life
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posted September 28, 2018 07:38 AM |
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RK not everyone plays random maps.
If anyone can figure it out it's you, you have proven that time and time again. If you can somehow figure out how to break that 16 hero limit, you deserve twice the red stars you already got.
Sir Mullich at Rampart huh, he does'nt deserve to be at the hero selection screen at all. 
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted September 28, 2018 08:08 PM |
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More Starting Heroes
Test the plugin release (just scroll down to Download section, code available in matching repository) with SoD.
What works:
What doesn't work:
HDmod quick hero selection still tries to read from the original hero list so you will get a bunch of Orrins.
It could be fixed but the fastest way is to rewrite the entire function myself. Can't be bothered rn.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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