Posts from AltNCF - Alternative NCF

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to cram several hundred (800 or so?) creatures into the game?
Just like HotA wasn't intended to completely replace WOG, but rather to do it more qualitatively, meaning no one said, "Here, we'll have the same number of towns, creatures, and an eighth level, just like in WOG, but better," but people simply created a global mod with new content, as they envision it. The same applies here – if it's just 50 creatures, but they're cool, they can definitely compete with eight hundred miscellaneous NCF creatures, in my opinion. There's no point in immediately aiming for a huge and unnecessary amount and then getting frustrated because of the difficulty of the task.

For me, this is just preparation for more complex things that are planned for the future.

Specifically?)) what kind of things are you talking about?

I suppose that a few exceptional players might be able to complete this task in 3 hours, but I'm 100% sure that neither you nor I are among them.

It's a full-fledged game. You can modify the heroes endlessly, but they won't become perfect. And if you embed all the necessary gameplay elements in the code from the beginning, then no mods will be needed. True, this project, due to its duration, will most likely drive me to an early grave, but it's worth a try.

Why? Doing it relatively quickly is not the prerogative of unique individuals; it's a normal phenomenon for those who know how to use the program. If you don't get distracted, it will work out.

Oh, damn. You don't understand that you can't just take a model from ZBrush and use it in a game?

Look. ZBrush, like any 3D sculpting program, operates with a very large number of polygons with a very dense mesh. For example, when I sculpted a glove, I had about 4-5 million polygons. This is necessary for sculpting, but the game (especially Heroes) will go crazy if you feed it that. There's a good chance that Max will also go crazy. Therefore, the process of retopology is needed. What is it? Retopology is changing the mesh, reducing the number of polygons, and then projecting the high-polygon sculpt onto this new mesh. This creates a normal map. Based on it, programs like Substance Painter draw textures, but there's still a lot of manual work involved.

You can't create a model suitable for a game in 3 hours, and you can't create a game of the format and size of Heroes 5 alone in 3 years.

I didn't limit myself to three years. I think I'll live another ten years, maybe fifteen. There's a chance.

@Phoenix 2100, in NCF there are quite a few creatures that differ only in texture... it would be good to individualize their appearance by replacing the standard models of weapons, heads, etc.

Do you mean the original NCF? Honestly, I only skimmed through the creatures there, and that was four years ago, so I just don't remember what they are, what they look like, etc.
I still need to think a bit more and look for solutions, because a primitive way of attaching model pieces to bones, moving them in space, etc., is a last resort, if there's really nothing else to do.

The one that exists at the moment.