Posts from Modding

In short, after struggling for an evening, I finally managed to find a solution:
1) Go to the material properties.
2) In the AlphaMode line, set it to AM_OVERLAY.
3) In the Priority line, set it to 224.

and voila, we are no longer bothered by overexposure.

P.S. But I encountered a small glitch in only one place - on the background of the small smoke of the dwarf city at a certain camera angle. Basically, this is already a minor issue. But, ideally, this method needs to be tested.

Not bad, but I found a small flaw - with AM_OVERLAY, the model "shines through," but you can only see parts of the same model through it! If you look at the owl from behind, you can see its legs :D

In principle, you could create an effect with such an owl for the map, but use the old effect in battle, or create a special owl without legs for the map.

I took the liberty of making some minor edits to your Heroes of Might and Magic mod for the Dwarves:
1) Removed all duplicate files (flags, etc.) and added links to the original files.
2) Eliminated the "dirty face" effect on the global map and the pale appearance in the hero information window (the lighting was applied incorrectly in the game).
3) Edited some elements and textures.
4) Reduced the archive size by almost 4 times.
5) Removed the color highlights of the player's color on weapons, some heads, and owls.

I'm uploading the files in parts so you can download them directly from the site. You need to rename them to .pak or .h5u and combine them into one archive.





Although, in my opinion, it would be nice to change the models for the female Dwarves. Based on the artwork, the Shaman and Daughters of the Earth models for Ibby and Inga, and the Daughters of the Sky models for Svea, would suit them well, but I don't know if they can be placed on a mammoth.

There's also a glitch with the head, but that's entirely my fault:D The problem is that the head doesn't react to lighting, and in complete darkness, it shines))))) But as far as I know, this is the only option (or you'd have to redo the model meshes, but I can only mess up the lighting of normal models).

I remember that I used to be able to view models, animations, and textures directly in the editor, separately from the map (there was a button like "edit" when clicking on the resource address in its input field, like with the file names and descriptions of the map, but I'm not sure). Now, in the map editor, I can only change the contents of XDB files, and even then, it's worse than I can do in a simple text editor, and I can't view models with animations, no matter how hard I try - there just isn't a button for it, not even in the context menus.

It's been a few years since I last modded, my hardware has changed, and I've switched to Windows 10, so it might be due to missing plugins or drivers. If you have any ideas about what might be the problem, please let me know.

However, the new hero completely lacks the effects of the Cave Spawn, and I don't remember which file to look for them in and how to add them.

Also, the hero uses the same "cast" animation for all spells, even though I also gave him the "buff" animation.

I also couldn't find the icons for the alternate upgrades of the Inferno creatures in the game files - on the ATB scale and everywhere where the hero icon is used, he now looks like a "Cave Lord" (the regular upgrade).

In the map editor, go to Resource -> Select Tables.

It seems you haven't specified the links to the animation effects.

Effects for an object are specified separately for each animation (idle00/cast/death, etc.) in the tag.

Here's the AnimSet for Cave Spawn, since you used their model:
Characters\Creatures\Inferno\AlternativeUpgrade\T6 _Pit_Spawn-arena.xdb

Here's the idle00 animation:
Characters\Creatures\Inferno\AlternativeUpgrade\T6 _Pit_Spawn-arena-idle00.xdb

And here's how the idle00 animation effect is specified:


(no spaces in the tag, the forum doesn't let me insert it correctly)

You can find the icons for alt. upgrades here:
UI\H5A2\Icons\Creatures\Inferno_second_upd

Unfortunately, this is a feature of the Inferno heroes. The "buff" animation is only used for the "Soul Eater" ability; for all other spells, "cast" is used.

The problem is that in the AnimSet, I gave links specifically to the animations of the Cave Spawn, and there really is a link to the effects there. That is, I gave the hero the rangeattack animation, but I specified the link to the original attack01 animation of the Spawn. I set the idle animation to idle00 of the Spawn, and they have an aura effect on the sword there, but the hero, with a link in the AnimSet to the same idle00 animation, which already has the effect specified, has no effects, although it should. I think I'll create my own xdb files for each animation and see if that helps.

Is this the very top panel? I only have the "File", "Edit", "View", "Tools", and "Help" menus there. And none of them have a "Resource" menu. Can you show me on a screenshot? Maybe I'm not looking in the right place.

Yes, I already found them by digging through other files of the Cavern Ogre, although there are only full-size icons there, unfortunately, there are no 64x64 icons. But still, thank you.

The essence of the problem turned out to be much simpler and more stupid than I thought. I just extracted the xdb files of the Cavern Ogre animations to edit and rename them, and immediately see that the effect tag is empty. This means that the Cavern Ogre should not have any effects at all. I go to the editor, select the Cavern Ogre, and look at their AnimSet. It turns out that the third-level Cavern Ogres have two xdb files for each animation - one set in _(AnimSet), next to the Cavern Ogre's AnimSet itself, and another set in Characters, and the effects are only specified in the second set of animations. I found the animations that are in the AnimSets right away and decided that they are the ones used in the game, but in reality, the developers just created a bunch of extra files that simply duplicate other files.

I once stumbled upon a strange model on a website, seemingly Chinese, that offered "free" stolen models from games.

This was a Ubi project for China, but the Chinese developers reworked a lot of things based on Nival's developments and added a lot of cool content of their own.