Posts from Star Wars mod.

I'm planning to create a small but complete overhaul of Heroes 5, set in the Star Wars universe.

Currently, the plan is to create only one map (the very first scene from Episode IV, the attack on Princess Leia's ship).
Accordingly, there will be two Factions: the Empire and the Rebels.

You might be wondering what I mean by "small but complete." Well, all the content from Heroes 5 that doesn't fit the Star Wars universe will be hidden from the player. The interface and other elements will be redrawn. Plus, I want to slightly change some aspects of the game to better suit the new setting.

Several character models are already ready.
Stormtroopers with shock batons.

The same stormtroopers with blasters.


And here are some more soldiers, something like un-upgraded stormtroopers.

AUTHORS - The stormtrooper model was originally created by a user named DT85 for Jedi Academy, the shock baton and E11 rifle were created by a user named Rooxon, also for Jedi Academy, the head of the un-upgraded stormtrooper was taken from the "army trooper" pack by Vade Parvis, and I ported all of this to Heroes.

And of course, how could we do without Vader?


AUTHORS - The Vader model was originally created by a user named Toshi for the game Jedi Academy, the model of Vader's lightsaber hilt was created by Revan Dark, also for Jedi Academy, and I ported them to Heroes 5.

So, what do you think, is this idea interesting to you?

Of course, I'm not promising that it will be finished very soon. I hope everyone understands that, even with this relatively small amount of work, it will take quite a long time to complete such a project properly.

You can follow the progress of the mod in my VK group. If the idea interests you, or if you are generally interested in my mods, feel free to join. At least I'll know that someone cares and that I'm not doing all this for nothing.
https://vk.com/club40470309
P.S. Sorry for the advertisement if that's a problem.

Will the mod definitely be released? It seems like many people are waiting for it.

I'm really looking forward to this mod. Are you not going to abandon it?

Will the mod definitely be released? Many people seem to be waiting for it.

I can't give any guarantees or promises, but yes, I am still working on this mod. If anything changes, I will let you know.

It's just that, as you can imagine, it's not a project that can be completed in one evening, and unfortunately, I have other, more routine and pressing concerns in life. So, expecting everything to be ready immediately and tomorrow is, well, a bit unrealistic.

If you want to support me, join the VKontakte group; it makes me happy and motivates me, honestly.

As for new materials, I don't have much to show you at the moment.
Here's a rough sketch of the menu background, for example.


And some pieces of the map interior.



And even these things are not yet finished and will be further developed and refined.

It's just that, as you can imagine, it's clearly not a task that can be completed in one evening, and unfortunately, I have other, more routine and pressing concerns in life. So, expecting that everything will be ready all at once and tomorrow is, well, a bit silly.

Well, that's understandable, of course. We know, we've been there, as they say.

I have many questions: 1) Will this be a separate race? 1.1 What racial ability will it have? 1.2 Will it replace an existing race, or will it be a separate race that only works on certain maps? 1.3 Will there be a separate mini-mod with only this race? 2) Will there be separate spells? 3) Will this be a map where you can play as either side? 4) Have you tried extracting textures from the old Star Wars: Battlefront, which is similar to CS? 5) Will there be Master Yoda? 6) When it's ready, will it be possible to record videos about the mod?

Added 4 minutes later

small progress, I reworked all the resources to fit the Star Wars setting, and this time, I created the models myself.

Listed from left to right, with the original resource in parentheses.


Spare parts (wood), computer chips (ore), crystals (mercury)
(those who played the original will remember the first two resources)


Fuel tanks (crystals), batteries (sulfur), medicine (gems)


And the currency of a galaxy far, far away - credits, which, of course, replace gold.


Some examples of icons.

The idea behind this replacement was to make the new resources mostly match the old ones in color, so as not to confuse the player too much.

And the concept of healing potions as artifacts, which I described earlier, has changed a bit. Now, healing potions will not be an artifact, but a resource, consumed to restore creatures after battle, while all sorts of mechanisms, for example, can be restored by consuming spare parts.

7) Are the mines ready for these resources? 7.1 Can they be a separate mini-mod in the .h5u format?

I don't have much time to work on the mod right now, so I'm not making any grand plans or rushing to give promises.

Answering questions:
1) The mod will feature only two factions: the Empire and the Rebels, but for now, they will differ only in appearance. The skill tree will also be shared, most likely something very close to the "Knight" class, but adjusted to fit the lore. I don't plan to create separate mini-mods adding creatures and factions from Star Wars into the world of Ashan.
2) There won't be any new spells for now, if that was the question.
3) I really hope so, and I really hope it will be three maps: Tantive and two small reworked maps from the original Heroes. But this is not a certainty, and most likely it won't be available right away.
4) Yes, I tried, but in the mod, I only use models for which I can obtain permission to use directly from the author, that is, most often, models from other mods, and also some of my own.
5) No.
6) Well, it would be great if you mentioned where the mod came from, who the author is, and provided a link to the original thread, but you can also do it without. In any case, I don't see any way for me or anyone else to prevent you from making videos. It's just that, at the moment, there isn't anything that would warrant making videos, so the whole conversation is premature.
7) Not yet. 7.1 I'm not sure I understood correctly, do you need a mini-mod with only Star Wars resources? In principle, I can upload it, even right now, but is it worth it? It's a very small fragment of an unfinished work, and there are still some minor problems with the icons that I won't be able to fix right now.

Added 1 hour 27 minutes ago
By the way, so that I don't show up here "empty-handed," I'll post a screenshot of a nice little thing I'm currently finishing, I clarify that this is not yet a completely finished thing.


The Stormtrooper is still from DT85, and the weapon is taken from the "High Quality Blasters" mod for KotOR and slightly modified, the author of this mod is Sithspecter.

Thank you, I've learned everything I wanted to know, and I don't have any further questions for now. Regarding mines: in my opinion, this type of mod (replacing in-game objects on the map) is quite unusual (perhaps due to its rarity), and I enjoy collecting all sorts of unusual mods for Heroes.

In general, here are the latest updates on the mod's progress, including changes to the plans and overall concept, as well as an estimated completion date, based on the most optimistic projections.
There's a lot of text, and not all of it is interesting or useful, but I haven't written anything here in a while, so I'm just sharing ideas and explaining what's happening now. I apologize for wasting your time if anything.))

First, I've recently written to many mod authors for various games, asking if I could use their models in my mod. In almost every case, I received permission to use the materials, so I've accumulated a fairly large collection of resources for my mod, and I'm very grateful to these talented people. Of course, all of this will still need to be adapted for Heroes 5, but this work is nothing compared to creating everything from scratch. In terms of progress, that's basically it, because for the past few months, I've only had enough free time to correspond with the authors and experiment with scripts.

Second, the concept of the mod has changed slightly. It was decided to abandon the story map from Tantive 4 and simply adapt about half of the "native" Heroes maps to the Star Wars setting. There will be many heroes now, and the mod will include many characters from the original films (Luke, Han, Vader, Boba Fett), as well as characters from the expanded universe (Thrawn, Kyle Katarn, Kir Krenos, Captain Rex). The races are still planned to be only two (Empire, Rebels), and they will differ only in skins for now. That is, the creatures and abilities will be approximately the same.

Third, all this nonsense with the city-inventory and "re-dressing" creatures has been scrapped. Everything with creatures and the city will be approximately the same as in the original game. I also decided to abandon the idea of resurrecting troops for resources; the "medical supplies" resource will be replaced with something else.

Fourth, it has been roughly decided which creatures will be in the armies of the races, and there will be 10 of them in total (plus an upgrade and an alternative upgrade). The upgrade will, in most cases, be geared towards ranged combat, and the alternative towards melee combat. How will balance be achieved if you can assemble a full army of archers, and what chances will archers have if melee troops actually reach them?
All archers except the heavy ones will have the Maneuver ability (from centaurs) and Counterattack. All melee troops will have the Large Shield ability (reducing damage from archers by half), plus they will generally be more durable than archers. I think that, plus adjusting the overall balance, it will be possible to achieve an interesting gameplay format in which it will be interesting to play with a full army of archers or against a full army of archers. In addition, considering the range of troops, the player will be able to assemble the army that he needs at the moment. For example, a player wants to use slow, clumsy, but strong and powerful archers in conjunction with fast, agile, but weak melee warriors, or vice versa. Here, there should be room for some tactical diversity. In the original Heroes 5, I was always bothered by the fact that in the final stages of development, it was almost always clear what the army of a particular race would look like. In this mod, I will try to slightly correct this and add more functional diversity to the creatures.

So, here is the range of troops, using the Empire as an example.
Here, the idea of a new division of troops from Heroes 6-7 into "core," "elite," and "champions" will be implemented. For example, all "core" creatures will be of the same level, but with different bonuses, and all "core" buildings will be available for construction from the very beginning, and the player will have to decide for himself which army to start building.
Core
1 Scouts (weak, fast, agile soldiers)
2 Stormtroopers (average)
3 Heavy Stormtroopers (slow, clumsy, strong, with high damage)
4 Stealth Stormtroopers (can become invisible)
or 5 Probe Droids (mechanisms, can repair mechanisms)
Elite
5 Stormtroopers with jetpacks (flying units)
6 Stormtroopers with flamethrowers (melee combat: dragon's breath, ranged: casts fireball)
or 6 Large Droids - Dark Stormtroopers (large creature, mechanism)
Champions
7 Officers on AT-ST (large creature, increases the morale of surrounding allies, casts support spells)
or 7 Red Guards (cast offensive spells such as lightning and/or curse, their upgrade, Dark Guards, are armed with lightsabers)

The "or" implies that there will be two buildings available for construction, but in each city, you can only build one of them. I think I've figured out how to implement this.

Fifth, there is still an idea to bring the hero onto the battlefield as a creature, i.e., each hero has a "heroic" creature in his army. Roughly speaking, for Vader, it's Vader, etc. This creature cannot be transferred to another hero; it participates in the battle on an equal footing with everyone else, but it is resurrected after the battle if it was killed in it. In this case, his transport-headquarters stands in the "heroic" place. But I am increasingly inclined to abandon this idea and leave everything as it is in the original. I would appreciate your opinion on whether this idea should be implemented. But you need to understand that if it is implemented, then the maximum number of stackable creatures in the castle will have to be limited to 6, because one stack will always be occupied by the hero creature.

Finally, I wrote that I will approximately determine the time when all this will be ready. Let's say, based on the most optimistic projections, it will be somewhere around the new year.

I think it's better not to overcomplicate things with hero units; without complex scripts, you won't get very far. But overall, it's nice to see the progress.

Hero units can be turned into combat machines; for example, you could position Vader as a ballista and have him throw various objects at the enemy. Instead of a tent, you could place that thing from Star Wars Battlefront (the very old one, on the CS engine) – a round object that beeps when you stand near it and heal. And in place of the tent, you could put a similar object from the same game that restored ammunition (a square object that gave grenades and ammunition for heavy weapons like grenade launchers).

*Imagined Vader throwing various objects.*

*Imagined Vader throwing various objects*

or maybe hitting with lightning, but in general, some object appears, for example, a beam from a ship, Vader raises his hand like a titan from the mages, and the beam flies towards the opponent.

Yes, there will be no hero units; we had to abandon these plans due to the complexity and impracticality of implementation, and it would also significantly shift the gameplay away from the familiar hero-based gameplay. In general, all heroes will be ordinary heroes. Making a hero a combat machine would also be a rather strange decision. Besides the fact that it would look at least strange, it is also difficult to implement. We must not forget that in Heroes 5, combat machines are universal for all heroes and factions. So, Vader would be throwing different items for all heroes. In addition, a skill tree for controlling machines would look very comical. Controlling Vader? Triple Vader throw? Fiery Vader? Well, you get the idea. In general, to be honest, the mod development is currently in a state of stagnation. At the moment, almost all of the basic creatures, some of the elite and champion units, and several heroes for the Empire faction have been practically completed. The interface has been almost completely changed (by the way, I also changed the game's font). However, things like skill icons, the city screen, buildings on the map, and many other things, I haven't even touched yet. The old deadline of releasing the mod by the new year is definitely not feasible. And in general, to be honest, this task is quite difficult, and there is a chance that I will not be able to handle it in the end, but it is still too early to declare the mod "clinically dead." It is still slightly "twitching," so we will "hang in there." It is very possible that the mod will be released in parts, and then "we'll see how it goes."

You've already done the hardest part. There's not much left. I hope you'll return to development.

Will it be possible to test this mod soon?

Currently, the mod is more dead than alive. There is a high chance that I will not finish this project. I apologize if I gave anyone false hope, but you have to understand that modding is a complex and, ultimately, voluntary endeavor. So, you can understand why a person might no longer have the strength to work on a particular project.