MOD: Armageddon's Blade Auto-translated

Thank you very much for the answer!

Please tell me, if it's not too much trouble.

Is there a way to recolor such Glows to the desired color without jumping through hoops?

Unfortunately, I don't know of any such methods.

For me, it was usually like this: if the effect's color can be repainted, then good. If it turns out the effect's color in the files is black-and-white... then we pack up our rods... there's nothing to do here 😅

So, the Conflux city for the adventure map is almost finished; all that remains is to Photoshop the orc landscape into green tones. Zobr (Alexey) is posting cool models of creatures with a marine theme. Many of these creatures he posted reference the Horn of the Abyss mod from Heroes 3. There are oceanids (Tier 1), priestesses of the seas (Tier 5), and even an analogue/replacement for sailors (Tier 2). Against this background, I started thinking about the concept of a marine city. Personally, I imagine it like this: a city is located in a giant whirlpool, and a beautiful (pointed) castle rises upwards on a huge rock. In Heroes 5, all cities are centered around the main building, and then you look around the city in a circle. So this option perfectly matches what I imagine, especially since we already have 2 cities that don't protrude outwards but go inwards (Dwarves and Inferno). I tried to make a neural network create something that I imagine, and this is what I got: In Heroes 5, there are no neutral factions; a faction is either good or evil. So, if the Conflux is a 200% good faction, then the marine city will be evil. Because of this, I am planning the following name: Abyss. And who will create such cities in the ocean? That's right! The artifact "Horn of the Abyss" will form the whirlpool and fix it so that the whirlpool does not dissipate.

Stylized colored portals - class

How does this play?

In case you didn't understand how I'm adding Paladins when there are already Paladins in the game.

Well, here it is. Tier 6 for humans now branches into two paths.
One path is offensive: Knight —> Cavalier —> Champion
The second path is defensive (or as I call it, the "box")
Knight —> Paladin —> Crusader

The cavalry goes on the attack, while the infantry stay behind to guard the archers, monks, and others. For these foot Paladins, the "commander aura" and "bravery aura" abilities are very helpful, and let's not forget the laying on of hands. So this unit will be great at taking hits and supporting allied troops.

The reference to Heroes 2 has been made, I am satisfied

So I already had the Conflux creature lineup ready, all that was left was to sort out the Tier 6 elementals (two of them were missing).

But then Alexey(Zobr) dropped a lot of good content, and in the end it "led" me astray =)

I sat down to work on the architecture of another faction:

And as a result, we have this creature lineup for the future faction.

Faction "Abyss".
Town "The Abyss" — an underwater city.
Main population consists of lizardmen (second and third tiers).
Supreme power lies with the Nagas (fifth and sixth tiers).
Strongest creatures are Leviathan --> Fangarm --> Deepgarm

All the models presented below are the result of the work of Alexey Pankov (Zobr).

But since he released them into the public domain and allowed their use, I formed the "Abyss" faction for my mod.

And I decided to record the upgraded versions. I haven't recorded the non-upgraded and alternative ones yet.

I recalculated how many new creatures have been added since the last time I counted)))) Back then it was around 50... and now it's 90!

To be honest, I didn't fully believe it would be possible to visualize it correctly, but it worked out after all — and even very well!

Whirlpool attack! Always kills at least 1 creature, damage is dealt in an area of 4 tiles (2x2) at 100% damage.

Created the "Captain" class.
And of course, who could be the first captain?
Absolutely certain, without a moment's doubt, it's Docent!
A reference to the Legend!

Since I usually post most of the active screenshots and text in Discord, a bit less on VK, and even less here, I decided to share some info from other platforms here as well.

Info from VK:

A big post about big events, for fans of my mod. This summer I worked on the creatures of the sea faction "Abyss" (thanks to Alexey Pankov/Zobr) for the models. And in the fall I started working on the new "Captain" and "Sorceress" classes for this faction.
I planned to release a new patch in October. But I see that I underestimated the amount of work. I did make the central perk for the Abyss faction (though I had to sacrifice the Forest Fury perk).

Nevertheless, I haven't touched the skill wheel for about 3-4 years and forgot that each perk needs to be tied to a hero class that can receive it. Accordingly, all the perks highlighted with a yellow circle will need to be assigned to the Captain and Sorceress classes, otherwise they simply won't appear during leveling. I also need to re-photoshop the skill wheel for Captains and Sorceresses. And configure the info highlight buttons for skills.

I added 16 new heroes, the technical aspect for them is complete, but the icons still need to be worked on — searching, cropping, working with outlines and the alpha channel.
For now, I've connected the Captains and Sorceresses to the human faction so they don't float around in "nowhere" and are available for hire. I suspect the work on all this will drag on until December. But there's nothing to be done about it — there are so many changes that it's not the same as adding 2 new creatures.

But for now: Rock and Stone brothers! Might and Magic heroes!

Info from Discord (I was asked how I envision the racial skill of the Conflux faction):

I envisioned the racial ability as elemental rifts. It's a mark on the arena floor that gives random bonuses to your creatures within a 20-30% range and random debuffs to enemy ones.

1. At the basic level, the hero has access to 1 mark of 2x2 cells

2. at the advanced level, 2 marks of 2x2 cells

3. and at the expert level, 2 marks of 2x2 cells and 1 mark of 3x3 cells

4. with the pendant of mastery, 2 marks of 2x2 cells and 2 marks of 3x3 cells

And also a special building in town where you can customize some of the bonuses to your liking. That is, not all bonuses are random — as you study the racial ability, some bonuses can be configured (like the minis for mages) where you choose for resources which bonus will be applied. Let's say a cell gives 4 bonuses. First, with the basic racial skill, all bonuses are random; at advanced, you can choose one of the four yourself; at expert, you can choose 2 bonuses out of 4 yourself, and the other 2 will still be random. Same with debuffs — in the special building you configure both buffs and debuffs right away.

And accordingly, these bonuses apply to creatures standing on these marks (rifts). Essentially, visually on the arena it looks like the demon summoning mark on the ground, except I imagine it as a swirl of mana on the ground, a blue-purple flat one. You can picture it as that pattern on the ground that appears when Erls teleport, just moving slower and smoother.

By the way, after I had fantasized all this up back then, I discovered a year later a YouTube video showing that in Heroes 6, the dwarves have something similar with marks on the ground. Though I never got around to playing Heroes 6, so I'm not sure — maybe that video got something wrong. Someday I'll get around to playing through Heroes 6 and Heroes 7, but not right now)))

Info from YouTube (discussion of the Abyss faction and the Swamp/Fortress faction in Heroes 3):

My concept is that lizardmen are the main bulk of the Abyss town. But within it, they can't advance beyond lower-tier warriors (infantry and archers) due to the peculiarities of their social order.
So those with greater ambitions leave for the swamps and become "heroes" there — beastmasters (tamers), masters of animals. Overall, in Heroes 3 that's how it was in terms of specializations — the lizardmen heroes there were all creature specialists. But for the "Swamp," of course, you need gorgons, basilisks, serpents, and other beasts — those models don't exist as of today.

And again, in Heroes 3, Tier 2 had lizardman shooters, but in my mod they'll have to be replaced with something (because in the Swamp, lizardmen will only be heroes)... I have some ideas about mosquito shooters or something similar.