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| Thread: Heroes 4 Ultimate - Prerelease liberated |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 09, 2021 09:04 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 21:30, 09 Jun 2021.
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Just checking, this should work with the GOG version of the game, right?
There should be no problems with either GoG or even original disc versions that I'm aware of. That being said, as always, do try and report any issues. Installing the mod does not change the gameplay of your GoG install regardless if it works or not (It should work).
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Since there really are problems with my video card, as well as with the drivers, that's why this situation happens. I can't even switch the OpenGL modes. As well as vertical sync is not available. Can you tell me please which HD mod files I can delete?
I see. An exceptional problem.
Better do the next thing: Uninstall the whole game (copy your savegames and custom maps to other location first, as well as custom brushes if you have any). After uninstall from your system, delete the game folder (deleting the folder is imperative since the uninstaller will not delete the HD mod files).
Then reinstall the game.
Now, extract the mod to a separate folder, and DELETE the following components BEFORE copying to your H4 install directory:
- Delete entire "mods" folder
- Inside "data" folder, delete "res_mod.h4r" file (but nothing else)
- In main folder, delete "DDRAW.dll"
THEN copy the contents of the mod folder into your freshy reinstalled H4.
Seems like work but this is all done in like 5 minutes, minus the install wait.
That should be it to play in non-HD mod, but as always, report any results/screenshots.
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Nevemor
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 09, 2021 09:46 PM |
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YES, now it's works. Thank you so much!
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 09, 2021 10:27 PM |
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NimoStar said:
Sorry but you are incorrect. More explanation:
- Sprites no longer have no retaliation, instead thay have Magic Mirror and Weakness. How is this not a much better highlight?
- Sprites are a fast fragile flyer, Squires are a slow tankie unit. Not comparable.
- Squires are basically the ONLY creature with No Retaliation now. The ability is actually much less used in the mod. How is that not unique?
In vanilla, Sprites depend on No Retaliation to survive their attack - basically, they're Harpies that are more challenging to use. They're a risk/reward unit which Nature depends on to minimize losses early on. Squires start out tankier, but aren't as quick, and they only have a chance for their No Retaliation passive to work - plus it rarely works on tougher creatures.
With your changes, Squires get No Retaliation, making them even tankier and giving them a no-risk attempt at Stunning. I'm not really sure why, they just get flatly better at their role. Sprites meanwhile lose it, taking them from nimble fliers to kamikaze units that won't survive their first attack since they're still just as fragile before. They get Weakness like a Heroes 3 Dragonfly, so maybe you can fill your empty slots with 1-stacks to sprinkle Weakness around? They get Magic Mirror, which is a cool flavor thing, but largely worthless. Who's using magic on Tier 1 units? How are Sprites even surviving long enough to grow a big enough stack to be worth wasting a turn casting on?
I guess I'm confused what the purpose of these changes are. If it's just to shake things up into something new, that's still cool. I guess I thought it was more about taking existing roles and tweaking them.
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- Crossbowmen having Double Shot and NOT no range penalty is only accurate.
- Crusaders lost their Ward for Magic Mirror. Magic Mirror is a niche ability.
Both Ward and No Range Penalty showed up for me as still being present when inspecting the creatures on the strategic map. Maybe I botched the install? I loaded an old save, would that cause it?
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Furthermore in gameplay terms, the old no range penalty ability was too close to the Ballista, making it boring by having two units with the same ability AT consecutive tiers, IN the same faction.
Ballista needs love, but when you make Pikemen mini-griffins that also have Slayer we're right back to "why would you ever buy Ballista."
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- Ballista have slayer at a distance, Pikemen have slayer in melee. This isn't the same thing.
That's splitting hairs! Besides, Pikemen actually displayed Ranged Slayer for me anyway. 
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This isn't random at all, this is deliberately flavorful.
See for example Game of Thrones where ballistae are the only effective weapon against dragons, which makes sense since they are essentially a huge bolt.
And it's not a bad bit of flavor really, but it uses one of those precious ability slots, and the more critical problem is Life Tier 2 is a non-choice. For instance, a Ballista that shot AOE damage rounds like a Cyclops might move the unit more toward being worth buying and still allow it to be flavorful/fantasy-realistic.
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Pikemen are also specialized against big enemies .- this isn't even speculation, this is fact. Pikes are the premier anti-cavalry weapon, thus also why formation helps them have unlimited retaliation, which is historically accurate of armed phalanxes (like at Thermopilae).
Well, kinda. Pikes were defensive weapons. A 10-25 foot long weapon can't really be used for offense. If Pikemen always had Defender on, imo that'd be pretty cool/flavorful without being disruptive to balance. The Heroes 4 abstraction of Unlimited Retaliation is far too powerful, and far too good to give to the unit that already blows the other one out of the water.
Besides, Thermopylae was more about the power of GM Tactics. 
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However, Monks still have their Ward AND they have No Melee Penalty. I think you seriously underestimate shooters in general, thinking the ballista is "niche" just belies it. Shooters are not only key in sieges (where in H4 each castle tower gives them an INSANE firepower boost), but they are also key to having lossless fights against the AI, specially if you slow, weaken or swamp them (which given there are more spells to do that now, is easier than ever).
Ballista is great in a defensive siege as you mention. I usually build one Ballista producer in Life games and caravan them to defend my front... not like it matters because the AI never attacks, but hey! Still, I think most would agree it's pretty much garbage the other 99% of the time if only because it's excruciatingly slow.
They're far from the only key to a lossless fight though, at least in Life. With all the various ways of buffing, preventing death, and resurrecting, I usually preferred the faster, tankier, higher-damage Crusaders. Monks are very strong though, and I'd use them if I got Order Magic early for Precision.
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On the other hand, I understand your criticisms aren't actually about balance since you didn't highlight any balance problem with the changes. As I said, for nostalgia's sake, you will have a .json file with all the default abilities.
I elaborated on one example above. Perhaps I just don't understand the big picture you're going for. Is it more about flavor/fantasy realism?
And is this .json file in the pre-release, or just the final?
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I think you just want "equilibrium with better graphics". That's fine. You already got that just by installing the mod. The edited campaigns will also be equilibris compatible.
The graphics changes should be applied to your installed equilibris automatically (except the terrain composite changes). Just try it.
I've always been more of a HotA than WoG guy. You may be right. And I want to say, even if your specific changes aren't to my taste, they're very impressive.
Is the terrain a .dll injection? Actually, do you mind laying out which features do and do not depend on your .exe?
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Right now, all those three requests are covered by skills
- Mana is all five magic secondary skills
- Defense is Combat skill
- Resistance is huh, Resistance skill
The point of those changes in EQ was to make non-Combat builds more viable. So, you're right, but the idea was a good one both to enhance build variety and to help the AI, which makes sorta random choices about its skills.
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(see our conservative friend here)
It's funny because I'm liberal as hell politically, lol.
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 09, 2021 11:30 PM |
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I found the .json file - I assume the H4Patcher reads this and edits the appropriate memory addresses in the vanilla .exe? If I wanted to mess with creature stats (like HP, Speed, etc) is that also hard coded or is that all in the creature tables?
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nostradamus
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 09, 2021 11:57 PM |
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Occasionally crashes for me too(campaign editor),perhaps depends what you click or select,then if trying to open again its an error.I also noticed or encountered that double word in cheat code, with first hero,but when I selected other writing was normal,those are I guess some unavoidable bugs which happen for some theirs own reasons.
Nimo,I have a question,I thought if that ghosts ability from homm 2 can also be made here,even if here is no such ability,life drain is very good idea,but can you make that ghosts actually increase in numbers or duplicate when they beat or win the opponent,with some combination of spells perhaps,I even thought that a mod can be made to resemble homm 1,2 ,3 creatures,objects,background so that a player gets this kind of feeling when playing,I must say there is a vast choice with new objects on disposal.
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 01:33 AM |
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If anyone else just wants the color adjustment for a less oversaturated/washed-out look, it's actually accomplished through changing the HD Mod config.ini.
Install the HD Mod, then pop open the config.ini and change the values
"HueSat" (presumably saturation) and "RgbGamma" (presumably general gamma).
Nimo uses these values and it looks pretty good:
HueSat=30212596
RgbGamma=487
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 10, 2021 04:11 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 05:36, 10 Jun 2021.
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YES, now it's works. Thank you so much!
You are welcome.
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Now for Boho:
Well, first off, you already admitted you only want the look in the change, so I was right, but for the sake of it, lets justify the changes
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In vanilla, Sprites depend on No Retaliation to survive their attack - basically, they're Harpies that are more challenging to use. They're a risk/reward unit which Nature depends on to minimize losses early on. Squires start out tankier, but aren't as quick, and they only have a chance for their No Retaliation passive to work - plus it rarely works on tougher creatures.
With your changes, Squires get No Retaliation, making them even tankier and giving them a no-risk attempt at Stunning. I'm not really sure why, they just get flatly better at their role. Sprites meanwhile lose it, taking them from nimble fliers to kamikaze units that won't survive their first attack since they're still just as fragile before. They get Weakness like a Heroes 3 Dragonfly, so maybe you can fill your empty slots with 1-stacks to sprinkle Weakness around? They get Magic Mirror, which is a cool flavor thing, but largely worthless. Who's using magic on Tier 1 units? How are Sprites even surviving long enough to grow a big enough stack to be worth wasting a turn casting on?
Tier 1 units in H4 are nearly useless late game. Nearly all tier 1 units got significantly buffed. You think Squires are stronger for having No Melee Retaliation?
Boy do I have news:
- Dwarves have double strike. 100% more offensive damage.
- Halflings are stealth (JRR Tolkien lore, he invented them).
- Wolves have Death Ward.
- And so on and so forth...
Sprites lose no melee retaliation, lets see what they get in return:
- Skeletal, +100% ranged defense.
- Weakness, -25% damage to each enemy creature attacked.
- Magic Mirror, returning all hostile spells to the caster.
I'd say that's a damn good deal for sprites. Plus now summoning them is actually useful (instead of only using Leprechaun). I would say Sprites are the most powerful level 1 creature now. They get a free spell per turn!
Sprites used to be killable very easily specially by ranged attacks, while at the same time they don't pack nearly a strong punch to be relevant. Now in late game, you can still use them as free spellcasting.
Magic Mirror is absolutely useful. Even if the opponent will not cast spells in Sprites directly, they will reflect mass spells and spells cast by other creature's attacks and retaliations (of which are many). Unicorns will blind themselves, for instance.
No retaliation isn't a big deal in this case. Just attack the enemy with something else first so that it absorbs the retaliation.
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Well, kinda. Pikes were defensive weapons. A 10-25 foot long weapon can't really be used for offense. If Pikemen always had Defender on, imo that'd be pretty cool/flavorful without being disruptive to balance. The Heroes 4 abstraction of Unlimited Retaliation is far too powerful, and far too good to give to the unit that already blows the other one out of the water.
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Ballista needs love, but when you make Pikemen mini-griffins that also have Slayer we're right back to "why would you ever buy Ballista."
Your adoration of Pikemen is quite unfounded. I would say Ballista can easily destroy pikemen with the bare minimum of tactics. Cast Slow on the pikemen and the ballista will eat them raw.
Unlimited retaliation! Bah! What's it good for on a level 2 creature? Nine times out of ten a level 4 creature can kill the stack with a single attack. Unlimited retaliation is powerful on Griffins because they are a powerful and mobile level 3 on themselves. Nobody has to gang up on pikemen and attack them with many stacks to kill them.
Indeed, you are the first person I have ever seen that, of all creatures in the game, believes the slow and ponderous pikeman is "OP".
Ask any H3 player: They will tell you the basics that slow creatures are bad, fast creatures are good, and ranged creatures are BEST. Pikeman is a slow, non-ranged creature. Same as lvl1 Flail guy. Ballista may be slow to move, but it doesn't NEED to move, since it can shoot with no range or obstacle penalty from any point. What is the most OP shooter, nay, Creature, of all H3? Sharpshooter. What is its ability? No range penalty. See here equivalent cost of Sharpshooters absolutely massacring Grand Elves, widely considered the best faction-available shooter in the game. Court adjourned.
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Both Ward and No Range Penalty showed up for me as still being present when inspecting the creatures on the strategic map. Maybe I botched the install? I loaded an old save, would that cause it?
I said both Ward and No Melee Penalty are on Monks. Unlike crusaders, that only have Magic Mirror, and lose their previous Ward.
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Is the terrain a .dll injection? Actually, do you mind laying out which features do and do not depend on your .exe?
The only feature which doesn't depend on the .exe is the HD wrapper and its settings. The terrain is locked inside the .h4r along with the tables and extra objects.
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what is the purpose
The purpose is both novelty, "realism" and balance. There was a number of unused and underused abilities. And there was a nuimber of bad mechanics like Crossbowmen having no range penalty while in reality they are short range. It is also to increase the usability of lvl-1 creatures in the late game, where in H4, they would be mostly useless.
I am open to balance/ability suggestions which are grounded in provable inequalities, exploits, or are otherwise not sell, but "pikemen OP" or "having the THREE very important and relevant in nearly every combat abilities of Skeletal, Weakness and Magic Mirror is extremely worse than just having no melee retaliation thus Sprites are useless now!") is far from a solid argument as far as knowledge of the game concerns. This just seems like "anything different is bad because it's not the same as before", instead of judging the game on its own merits. As said, nothing prevents you from playing previous things you already believe should never, ever change. Other people liked the abilities and, as mentioned, I had never met someone that believes that pikemen are such superior. Not only that, pikemen initiative is near abysmally low at 3, so that nearly every creature including ranged can act before them. Ballista movement is 15, and Pikeman one is 19, so it's not like Pikeman is much faster.
There are some creatures which I doubt are balanced. These are mostly:
- Devils. Devils now summon Goblin Knights which have very useful abilities like Bind. Devils also have attack at a distance and Fear. This may be a bit too much...
- Magi. Magi cast Aging (always) and Hypnotize (Percent chance) on melee attack, however their damage is insignificant and they are very slow and frail. What worries me the most is that Magi got an indirect boost with Raise Skeleton being bumped up a level. Now they can summon like twice as many skeletons as before. This may prove problematic.
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Pikemen actually displayed Ranged Slayer for me anyway.
I checked the code and they are Melee slayers. The icon I made and they are correctly using, is also for melee and different from the ranged slayer one I also had to make. But you are right in that the description was botched on my part. You see, this ability didn't exist/was unused, so I improperly copy-pasted part of the text.
Next version should fix this very minor mistake in the table of creature ability descriptions. Good eye there 
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PS: Just to put this to rest, I tested pikemen against an equivalent weekly growth of Ballistae. No hero to help ballistae, everything in auto-combat, no tactics. Just four default stacks vs four default stacks.
Despite being significantly outnumbered and with two stacks of pikement starting in a step forward position, Ballistae destroyed Pikemen with nearly no losses, confirming what I knew all along... (That ballistae rule and pikemen suck, based on very simple heuristic analysis about the superiority of penaltyless ranged attacks vs slow melee creatures)
The equivalent Ballistae destroyed their equal weekly pikemen with a near 8:1 advantage in comparative unit losses.
The pikemen should consider themselves lucky in this scenario: They died an honorable death. The rerun of the same test wasn't nearly so kind for them. Fortune is a cruel mistress indeed.
So, will you now play the ULTIMATE mod instead of "equilibris"?
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Galaad
Hero of Order
Li mort as morz, li vif as vis
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posted June 10, 2021 12:18 PM |
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NimoStar said:
So, will you now play the ULTIMATE mod
I will certainly give it a shot 
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 03:53 PM |
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Edited by thGryphn at 16:20, 10 Jun 2021.
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I just tried to install to give it a go, but there seems to be a file conflict with the GOG version I have (Complete edition): conflicting file is "current.aop" in the Data folder.
I made a backup of the original file and used the one from the mod and it works 
EDIT: I'm curious about some options. What does "Cold CPU" or "Single Core" do? Are the upscaling options any useful?
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 06:08 PM |
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Edited by boho at 18:09, 10 Jun 2021.
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NimoStar said:
Well, first off, you already admitted you only want the look in the change
Well, no, what I really want is HD+ (or ideally HotA) for Heroes 4. From your mod, I like the graphics and potentially the campaign/map changes.
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I would say Ballista can easily destroy pikemen with the bare minimum of tactics.
Well duh. But it's not about fighting Ballista with Pikemen (clearly a horrible idea), it's about deciding which one to incorporate into your army.
Ballista have eight movement (if you aren't using Equilibris). Eight. Using them can easily halve your overland speed. As I mentioned, they're great once they're actually in combat, but moving around the map doing that whole PVE adventure bit that's 90% of Heroes 4 because the AI can't play the game? Forget it.
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Court adjourned.
I'd be shocked if ballista made it to their court date on time, unless the court was nextdoor to a caravan.
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The purpose is both novelty, "realism" and balance.
This is like a setup to one of those "three pick two" jokes. 
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So, will you now play the ULTIMATE mod instead of "equilibris"?
It sucks that it has to be an either/or choice. Well, it doesn't literally HAVE to be. Not sure what the drama is there, has Equilibris changed the offsets bad enough to make it incompatible, or have they just not made the offsets public and no one went through the Equilibris .exe to find them?
Anyway, to answer your question, since it has to be an either/or choice, I've gotta stick with Equilibris. It might as well be a canonical patch for me at this point - basically as close as Heroes 4 has come to an HD+/HotA thusfar. I've got a cloned install for Ultimate though and am definitely looking forward to your campaign reworks.
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iliveinabox05
Honorable
Famous Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 06:20 PM |
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boho said:
It sucks that it has to be an either/or choice. Well, it doesn't literally HAVE to be. Not sure what the drama is there, has Equilibris changed the offsets bad enough to make it incompatible, or have they just not made the offsets public and no one went through the Equilibris .exe to find them?
It's mostly that someone would need to take their time to find the same offsets in the equi exe. Admittedly that wouldn't be terribly difficult to do, since you should be able to go to the offset in heroes4.exe in a hex editor, and then search for that same byte code in the equi exe, but maybe it's different there and so harder to find.
I'm personally most interested in the heroes4.exe 3.0 version (GoG Complete). It gets a bit messy modding on top of a mod, so I feel like using an unmodified heroes4.exe to start with is best.
Also have to remember that there is only one sometimes-active member left for Equilibris who has access to the Equi dll code and everything else, so it's almost better to just start over (and I'm an Equilibris team member).
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 10, 2021 06:29 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 20:43, 10 Jun 2021.
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since you should be able to go to the offset in heroes4.exe in a hex editor, and then search for that same byte code in the equi exe, but maybe it's different there and so harder to find.
There are some additional problems. Some parts of the exe aren't actually overwritten by the Equilibris code, but they are used for memory keeping of their extra features.
So, while H4 creature plugin doesn't directly overwrite equilibris used HEXES, they do utilize equilibris used MEMORY LOCATIONS, which leads to a crash after combat if you combine the two. This is what makes me think the conflicting equilibris feature is the memory allocated to calculating/displaying their "experience after combat display", which normal H4 doesn't have.
In any case, as you say, it's pretty hopeless as not even Equilibris forum members really know how Equilibris works - and I, too, am one with access to their private forums. That is why there has been no further development for 15 years, nor is it likely to ever be.
If someone can compatibilize it is RoseKavalier, possibly by trial and error by changing the locations from his plugin, but he reportedly isn't interested in supporting, much less having to dance around, the messy, unprofessional and obsolete (his contention, not mine) methods of the Equilibris edits.
That would be fine by me ultimately, I understand he doesn't want any extra work. I just the development on the plugin continues with more features than just creature abilities, like the ability to add spells to creatures or the ability to change the effects of secondary skills.
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conflicting file is "current.aop" in the Data folder.
I made a backup of the original file and used the one from the mod and it works
Current.aop is a default campaign editor only file, so not sure what's up with that. The game .exe doesnt even read it.
But well, weird GoG stuff I guess, I was thinking current.aop doesn't need to be included at all.
So, the actual release won't have it, and problem solved.
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Ballista have eight movement
Ballista have FIFTEEN movement in my mod, which is suppossed to be the point?
15 vs 19 is not even that much of a difference.
So, you are complaining now that the Ballistae you wanted buffed got buffed, or what? Seriously I don't get the point of using default H4 mistakes for criticizing my mod correcting the very mistakes you point out.
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I'd be shocked if ballista made it to their court date on time, unless the court was nextdoor to a caravan.
The ballista shot all of your 79 picks to the jury before they even reached the premises, so what's your point.
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as close as Heroes 4 has come to an HD+/HotA thusfa
Funny because equilibris itself doesn't have any HD functionality...
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. I've got a cloned install for Ultimate though and am definitely looking forward to your campaign reworks.
That's completely unnecessary as I said. Ultimate can be put in the same folder without any gameplay conflicts/alterations with either normal H4 or the very unofficial Equilibris.
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I will certainly give it a shot
Glad to see a man of culture 
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EDIT: I'm curious about some options. What does "Cold CPU" or "Single Core" do? Are the upscaling options any useful?
Cold CPU reduces the power usage in your PC, I have overheating CPU problems, so I ship this as on by defult, also good for laptop power savings.
Single core is just that, if you have a multi CPU system, only one of them is used for rendering.
All of my HD settings are just "suggestions" though, people are free to tamper with them at their wish and at their system's properties.
The Scaling options are definitely useful to improve the look of map (both combat and adventure) a bit futher, but they are also performance hungry, so I considered them mostly unnecessary for shipment and thus have them disabled by default. People will find it easier to upgrade their settings from a reasonable base, than to downgrade them if they are too high by default and it makes their PCs lag.
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 07:02 PM |
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I experimented a bit on the Upscaling and Interpolation options. By far, the best is to turn off all Upscaling but use the Lanczos interpolation method.
CPU options didn't make much difference for me but I have a desktop. May be relevant for laptop owners, especially if it's not high-end.
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 09:04 PM |
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So, while H4 creature plugin doesn't directly overwrite equilibris used HEXES, they do utilize equilibris used MEMORY LOCATIONS, which leads to a crash after combat if you combine the two.
If someone can compatibilize it it's RoseKavalier by trial and error by changing the locations from his plugin, but he reportedly isn't interested in supporting, much less having to dance around, the messy, unprofessional and obsolete (his contention, not mine) methods of the Equilibris edits.
For some context, when it comes to bytecode and assembly I'm just familiar enough to fix savegames and ruin .exes, so this might sound naive. Since H4MS is already patching the .exe to enable .dll injection, what's stopping it from throwing 100k on the end to store its own variables in? And I don't ask as a means of saying "RoseKavalier, you better do this!" I ask because thanks to H4MS being open source, maybe I could figure it out.
Surely nobody thinks it's too risky to do that because Equilibris might release an update that causes a collision. We're more likely to see a Heroes 4 update from Ubisoft before Equilibris. Sadly we're probably just as likely for Equilibris to go open source as Heroes 4. Not like I'm sure it'd do much good anyway since, quite rightfully, nobody wants to come anywhere near assembly these days.
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Ballista have FIFTEEN movement in my mod, which is suppossed to be the point?
Ah OK, I'm mistaken. They show 8 Move in the recruitment window, but when actually recruited, get updated to 15.
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Funny because equilibris itself doesn't have any HD functionality...
It's an unfortunate name since there's a big difference between the HD Mod and HD+. HD is the OpenGL wrapper, HD+ is a bevy of other QoL features (like a turn queue, improved UI, hotkeys, etc). I'm honestly not sure how HD+ is accomplished programmatically, but my guess is it's the wrapper rendering the new stuff?
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boho
Hired Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 09:09 PM |
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thGryphn said:
I experimented a bit on the Upscaling and Interpolation options. By far, the best is to turn off all Upscaling but use the Lanczos interpolation method.
CPU options didn't make much difference for me but I have a desktop. May be relevant for laptop owners, especially if it's not high-end.
I also found Lanczos + No Scaling to be the best option for me, which is interesting since Heroes 3 seems to hit its sweet spot at 2x Scaling + Bilinear.
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 10, 2021 09:20 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 03:41, 11 Jun 2021.
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Ah OK, I'm mistaken. They show 8 Move in the recruitment window, but when actually recruited, get updated to 15.
Well, I can see your error now.
That's because it's combat movement vs map movement.
Map movement is recalculated from a non linear equation, so that units that are slow in combat aren't actyually so slow in the map-
EQ ballistae are 11/16, default/Ultimate ballistae are 8/15 (I hadn't actually changed it, but still my confusion thus where you said they had only 8 MAP movement).
As you can see, map movement isn't proportional directly to combat movement. So you can take ballistas with no fear of being immobile (mostly).
As is also evident from this, Equilibris Ballistae only have a single +1 map movement (16 vs 15) in comparison.
I did give ballistae +1 defense which only shows up once recruited. Not sure why this happens, but it's a bug with the table readings that also happened in Greatest Mod and I found no way to fix thus far: Some stats in recruitment windows can be outdated compared to the actual ones. At least, tho, I could see this doesn't happen in the creature portal.
Maybe I should change the icon to show the difference between map and combat movement more intuitively. No game version has thus far done this.
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As for the code, you can actually look for it on GitHub. But the problem I suspect is the place of the hooks, however, be my guest (or RoseKavalier's guest, as it was).
https://github.com/RoseKavalier/H4MS
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thGryphn
Promising
Famous Hero
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posted June 10, 2021 09:41 PM |
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Edited by thGryphn at 21:42, 10 Jun 2021.
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NimoStar said:
Maybe I should change the icon to show the difference between map and combat movement more intuitively.
This would be neat.
Edit: You made the Titans berserkers. 
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 10, 2021 09:48 PM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 03:41, 11 Jun 2021.
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Well, titans were OP as anyone who plays Order knows, there was no competition from Mech Dragons.
I figured, since Titans are ranged, being berserkers isn't actually so bad for them, since they can hardly hurt themselves unlike the actual original lvl1 berserkers suicide charging the first unit in their path.
Actually, I played the entire order campaign of Emilia Nighthaven with the change and still handely won so I definitely know THAT change is balanced (if perhaps not to everyone's taste).
PS: Do check out their totally rad melee lightning, though  
PS2: Berseker was also chosen as a throwback to H3 titans since Berserker ability makes titans immune to all forms of fear (close to H3 mind spell immunity because they were constructs)
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RoseKavalier
Admirable
Supreme Hero
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posted June 11, 2021 04:53 AM |
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boho said:
I found the .json file - I assume the H4Patcher reads this and edits the appropriate memory addresses in the vanilla .exe? If I wanted to mess with creature stats (like HP, Speed, etc) is that also hard coded or is that all in the creature tables?
For what it's worth, the releases don't match the repository code. I was having an issue which I couldn't figure when last I looked at this and never found the time to resolve it... which means it's still the original release.
The new system is supposed to be able to connect to the editor as well, and adds simili hex editing via json... in other words you write your changes to a json and h4ms takes care of making the necessary modifications. This way you can quickly turn on/off patches and the system can take a look at potentially conflicting patches and warn users about them.
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Finally, modding on top of a mod is not a great idea - ERA/WoG interaction is a prime example in my book but the difference being Bersy has full access to WoG source, whereas whatever the Equi team did is allegedly lost to time. In the long run, it's easier to just re-implement than dancing around it, which also happens to give you greater flexibility.
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My Let's Plays: Metataxer's Revenge - The Empire of The World 2
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 11, 2021 07:08 AM |
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Edited by NimoStar at 07:10, 11 Jun 2021.
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Well, I haven't looked that deep into the code, but yes, take into account the repository is 5 months from last change whereas the actual release is 2019.
However, what I really don't understand is why would this, being just creature abilities for now, have to get hooked into the map editor.
...the map editor doesn't do anything with creature abilities, can't even look at them...
🤔 (possibly missing thinking emoji due to obsolete forum software)
Or is this just for possible future features while not having any current utility?
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Ah, I forgot to answer to Nostradamus (I think) ghosts requests.
Well, firstly, I can't program that.
Secondly, to grow ghost numbers in combat would be absolutely insanely overpowered. Sure, it was cool for H2 where ghosts were neutrals essentially impossible to get for any player, but on H4, it's not doable without removing ghosts as a faction unit. Imagine the possibility of getting great amount of ghosts without even a hero. Getting unlimited ghosts from just one fighting crap spawned monthly units. Necromancy is already hard enough to balance as it is (specially with life draining units which makes amassing critical numbers easier).
But for some crazy mod just based on cool factor, sure, why not. However, despite our friend here not knowing the difference between map and combat movement and thus believing Pikemen are OP, H4 Ultimate actually is balanced
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