Posts from Walkthroughs for custom maps.

How am I supposed to know the nationality of the users on this forum? The same question could be asked about all countries where English is not spoken.

What principles do you have that make you spend 5 times more time on battles?

I believe that we should play using the tools provided by the game developers. Otherwise, we might reach extremes, such as "a winning strategy has been found, so there's no need to play the battle; let the plugin do everything for us."

Also, misclicks are much more likely during fast battles, especially over a long distance. Few people are capable of clicking in the same sequence without making mistakes thousands of times.

I believe that we should play using the tools provided by the game developers. Otherwise, we might reach extremes, such as "a winning strategy has been found, so there's no need to play the battle; let the plugin do everything for us."

Also, misclicks are much more likely during fast-paced battles, especially over a long distance. Few people are capable of clicking in the same sequence without making mistakes thousands of times.

No plugin will free you from the need to click many times. They don't really do anything special for you.

I believe that we should play using the tools provided by the game developers. Otherwise, we may reach extremes, such as "a winning strategy has been found, so there is no need to play the battle; let the plugin do everything for us."

Also, misclicks are much more likely during accelerated combat, especially over a considerable distance. Few people are capable of clicking in the same sequence without making mistakes thousands of times.

I feel like writing a huge, detailed text that proves you are wrong, but, to potentially save time, I will ask the following first:

Do you play with the HD mod? Do you split units into groups of one using Ctrl or "manually"? Do you exchange items and units between heroes with one click through the HD mod or "manually," spending an extra minute on this process? Do you put on/take off items on a hero using Alt or "manually"? If the answer to the first question is "yes," then you are already using "tools not provided by the game developers."

You can come up with different arguments for or against them. However, after trying some things, it becomes difficult to do without them. Just as in life, we can no longer do without a phone and the internet. Similarly, in Heroes, I can no longer imagine playing without the HD mod, instant hero excavation, the Oracle, the Prospector, and the Sod-Sp. If I were to imagine that all of this disappeared and I had to play in a small window, manually separate each unit, and dig for 30 minutes for each hero... No, thank you).

I'm playing without the HD mod, of course. The question of saving time doesn't apply here – if you want to save time, then there's no point in spending it on Heroes at all; there are much more useful things to do.

Nasos, are you planning to try out the new Paragon? It will be for HD+ with SoD_SP enabled. In general, I partly understand Nasos; when I used to play shooters, I would only move using the arrow keys, not WASD or ESDF. Accordingly, all other options were also tailored for arrow keys – reloading with Enter, selecting weapons with the mouse wheel, etc. But it was a matter of habit, not a matter of principle. This still reminded me of some fighting game players choosing to use old-school controllers instead of new ones.

Nasos, are you planning to try out the new Paragon? It will be for HD+ with SoD_SP enabled.

I'm starting to doubt that Rins will ever finish it.))
And will it be impossible to play without HD+?

I'm starting to doubt that Rins will ever finish it)).
And will it be impossible to play without HD+?

It's impossible without HDmod+SOD_SP. Absolutely. And I think that it will eventually be released, because the map has a VK group and there is a lot of activity there.

Added 1 minute ago

You can come up with different arguments for or against something. However, after trying some things, it's hard to do without them. Just as in life, we can no longer do without a phone and the internet. So too in Heroes, I can no longer imagine playing without the HD mod, instant hero digging, the Oracle, the Prospector, SOD_SP. If I were to imagine now that all of this would disappear and I would have to play in a small window, manually separate each unit, and dig each hero for 30 minutes... No, thank you.

By the way, what is the Oracle? I've heard a lot about it, but I've never used it

I play without the HD mod, of course. The question of saving time is irrelevant here – if you want to save time, there's no point in spending it on Heroes at all; there are much more useful things to do.

Okay, you've forced my hand.

Let's start with the obvious: Heroes was released 20 years ago. Back then, there were no platforms to support games with the ability to release patches and instantly fix bugs like Steam. So, if you released a game and then found a bug in it, or came up with a great feature shortly after release, the only way to add them was to create a new version of the game, and no one would do that just to fix a couple of bugs. Obviously, NWC had other thoughts and concerns at the time, which is why they decided to end Heroes 3 on the SOD version, then released Heroes 4, and then went completely bankrupt in 2003. Unfortunately, when you're developing a game on behalf of an entire company, you need to think not so much about making the game great, but about making it popular and profitable so that the company can stay afloat.

As for additional tools like the HD mod and the Sod_SP plugin, they were developed by Heroes fans purely out of enthusiasm, with community support. The features that these tools add are a natural progression of the game in terms of convenience, which the developers at the time didn't come up with simply because of limited resources and time. The desire to make a process more convenient is perfectly normal; if you need to transfer money to someone who lives in Vladivostok, you'll do it with one click through online banking, or will you go to the Russian Post because "you need to use tools that were created 150 years ago"?

Why are you focusing specifically on the developers of SoD, which was released in its "bare" form 20 years ago, is unclear. Okay, if you found out that baratorch, who is developing the HD mod, or RoseKavalier, who is developing SoD_SP, suddenly turned out to be the developers of the game, would that make you feel better? Or if the developers who no longer work at NWC looked at the HD mod and Sod_SP and said, "Cool, it's a shame we didn't think of this 20 years ago," would you then start using these tools?

Regarding simplifying the combat part, I think that in the process of battles, as in any business, there are two components: creative and mechanical. Finding a winning strategy in battle is a creative process that requires human experience and understanding of the game, and therefore it is unlikely that it is possible to write a plugin that will find a winning strategy by simply trying out different options, as there are too many of them. But the process of going through a battle with knowledge of the strategy is a mechanical process, reduced to repeating monotonous actions, which consist of clicking on the screen in a certain area, and SoD_SP is designed to make this process more convenient and faster, because any person monotonous, repetitive actions cause boredom.

If I have a task: "kill one archdevil with 10,000 crystal dragons through quicksand," then I would rather write a plugin that will win this battle for me, because the task of writing such a plugin is creative in itself, requiring an understanding of many aspects of coding, and it is definitely more interesting than the task of "performing a cycle of clicks on the screen in a certain sequence N times," where N is large enough, and deadly boredom sets in after the 50th time. And your statement seems strange and illogical to me: "Well, playing Heroes is useless in itself, so you need to stretch it out so that it lasts even longer and is even more boring." I don't think playing Heroes is a useless activity, nor do I think any activity in which you can find room for creativity is useless, even if it doesn't
bring you material benefits.

What other argument do you have? You claim that with the high animation speed in SoD_SP, the likelihood of misclicking is greater, even though you have never used it. This is not true, because misclicks, in my opinion, occur from boredom and monotonous actions, and this happens sooner the slower your battle speed is. But even if this is not the case for you, and you misclick for another reason, nothing prevents you from setting the standard battle speed directly in the battle; this option is available.

I wouldn't write all this text if you just said, "I play the original SoD because I'm a fan of the archaic," but you said it as if you were a truth-teller, implying: "I play the original SoD without the HD mod and SoD_SP, making my game 10 times more inconvenient, and I believe that everyone else should do the same." That's why I wrote this post; I think anyone who reads it should see that you are wrong.

Obi, I have a feeling that it's practically impossible to convince someone who fundamentally plays Heroes without the HD mod about anything (whether it's a game-related or life-related issue). :smile15:

It's impossible to play without HDmod+SOD_SP. Absolutely impossible.

Honestly, I don't understand why. It always seemed to me that SOD_SP is just a module for comfort, not for changing the gameplay, and everything that is possible in SOD_SP should be reproducible in the original game.

By the way, what is the Oracle? I've heard a lot about it, but I've never used it.

It's a program that analyzes a hero's skill tree. It's very convenient to sometimes see how to get the desired combination of skills faster.

Obi, I have a feeling that it's practically impossible to convince someone who stubbornly plays Heroes without the HD mod on any issue (gaming or life-related). :smile15:

Honestly, I don't understand why. It always seemed to me that SoD_SP is just a module for comfort, not for changing the gameplay, and everything that is possible in SoD_SP should be reproducible in the original game.

A program that analyzes the hero's skill tree. It's very convenient to sometimes see how to get the desired combination of skills faster.

Well, my job is to try), I realized a long time ago that some people cannot be changed, but sometimes I want to hear what a person will say in response to your arguments.

Regarding the new Paragon, if I understand correctly, the main reason is as follows: originally, the standard editor has 8 types of two-way and one-way monoliths, in the WoG editor, each monolith is defined by a subtype, which is a number from 0 to 7. Theoretically, you can make more monoliths by choosing an arbitrary object, declaring it a monolith, and assigning it a subtype of 8 or more, but in the original SoD, the monolith system bugs out in this case and starts to work incorrectly. SoD_SP fixes this bug, allowing you to create a maximum of 255 monoliths. The author of the Paragon, as I understand it, needed more monoliths to implement all the ideas.

I myself am currently facing a problem while developing an XL map: I've only reached the part where the player will finally be given blindness, and I only have 7-8 heroes left for all the remaining battles (there are initially 56 enemy heroes). I will have to, as I understand it, resort to cheesing: create operator heroes who will "hatch" other heroes from prisons, and they will have to teleport to the right city, and without additional one-way monoliths, it will be impossible to manage.

Obi, I have a feeling that it's practically impossible to convince someone who stubbornly plays Heroes without the HD mod on any issue (gaming or life-related). :smile15:

To be honest, I don't understand why. It always seemed to me that SOD_SP is just a module for comfort, not a change to the gameplay, and everything that is possible in SOD_SP should be reproducible in the original.

A program that analyzes the hero's skill tree. It's very convenient to sometimes see how to get the desired combination of skills faster.

SOD SP, starting from a certain point, became associated with the extended map editor. Now, that editor has features that cannot be implemented in the original and do not work without SOD SP. For example, setting up guards and rewards in creature banks.

Added 8 minutes later
I've been looking at the new editor. The fine-tuning of monster joining is especially interesting. I think a lot of interesting things can be made from this, similar to how diplomacy was implemented in offline tournaments

I wouldn't have written this whole wall of text if you had just said, "I play the original SoD because I'm a fan of the archaic," but you said it as if you were stating a truth, implying: "I play the original SoD without the HD mod and SoD_SP, making my game 10 times more inconvenient, and I think everyone else should do the same." That's why I wrote this post; I think it should be obvious to anyone who reads it that you're wrong.

Maybe you shouldn't attribute your own words to your opponents and play mind reader.
In none of my posts did I urge anyone to play "10 times more inconveniently" or claim that everyone else should do the same. My opinion is just my opinion; if someone disagrees with it, I'm not forcing it on anyone.
You, young man, asked me to explain my motives, and I tried to do so. That's all.

Added 5 minutes ago

Obi, I have a feeling that it's practically impossible to convince a person who stubbornly plays Heroes without the HD mod on any issue (gaming or life).

As if a person playing with HD, and practically any person, can be convinced of anything.
People are very stubborn creatures.

Added 12 hours 29 minutes ago

Why you focus specifically on the developers of SoD, which was released in its "bare" form 20 years ago, is unclear. Okay, if you found out that baratorch, who is developing the HD mod, or RoseKavalier, who is developing SoD_SP, suddenly turned out to be the developers of the game, would that make you feel better? Or if the developers, who haven't worked at NWC for a long time, looked at the HD mod and Sod_SP and said, "Cool, it's a shame we didn't think of this 20 years ago," would you then start using these tools?

Let's consider an analogy with a bicycle. Why do people ride mechanical devices in their "bare" form, which were invented 200 years ago? After all, there are more convenient devices. Would it occur to you to ask a cyclist a question like, "Why are you attached to this outdated mechanism, because its developers simply didn't have enough time/money/technology and knowledge to come up with something more perfect? Switch to a Segway – you don't have to pedal there"?

Added 31 minutes ago
I'll add that some of the features of HD, such as the instant buyout of the desired hero, are hard to call anything but cheating. Many will disagree, saying that buying out a hero is just a matter of time. So, why bother, for example, with generating convenient starting saves or the morale of 3 stacks in a row dropping, without which the battle cannot be won – because the desired event will happen sooner or later anyway, so let's just draw the desired layout in some plugin.

I'm starting to doubt that Rins will ever finish it))
And will it be impossible to play without HD+?

Rins himself sometimes doubts it too. But only sometimes.

Yes, it will be practically impossible without the HD mod and SoD_SP.
The key feature for me was the ability to create non-recruitable heroes - i.e., if a hero loses a battle, he cannot be re-hired. I also used a couple of other new features, although in general I am skeptical of such unconventional things.