[MOD] LEGACY CLASSIC 1.0 Quality improvement of the standard interface for HoMM V 3.1 90% Auto-translated

Exactly 20 years ago — May 19, 2006 — the official premiere of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic V took place in the CIS.
You can have different opinions about this installment, but it's worth admitting that these are still the same Heroes, and probably the best 3D installment of the series, as well as the most alive part of the forum.
The game went through a true development hell and a real battle with the publisher Ubisoft, and despite everything, it is a powerful hit of nostalgia and the era of 2000s games.

In honor of this big anniversary in our Russian-speaking community, I created what I consider to be an important event for the game.
I single-handedly took on an extremely large task: to completely renew the quality of the original game interface without globally changing its structure, that is, to improve quality while preserving the UI concept.
The project was given the name Legacy Classic.

Legacy — this is the fact of legacy; players kept the game alive with mods, created a ton of content, and deserve to see one more mod, a truly necessary mod.

Classic — this is the vector of preserving the spirit of classic style and the original.

Since the amount of work for one person is simply colossal, the modification will be released in stages, in the form of large patches.
Nival's archives have a bit of everything — chaos, unnecessary files, errors, and connections of one element to several places, etc.

And today, on the anniversary day in the CIS, I am glad to present you information about the first patch.

LARGE-SCALE UPSCALE:
Almost the entire main UI has been upscaled to new sizes, with the same style as in 2006.
Some small elements have been finished or redrawn from scratch, some have been replaced with new ones that visually fit the design solution.
Buttons, backgrounds, tooltips, and rendering elements have been updated for all sections in all modes (including campaigns) and options, except for connecting to Ubisoft servers for obvious reasons.
Hero and town portraits, as well as various interface icons, have been increased in size. Some interface elements have gained a new visual that fits the design, because some originals looked bad when enlarged. This usually concerned small elements. I aimed to preserve the original elements, so mostly it's a successful upscale, with occasional forced replacements that look organic.
A group of old Nival visual errors has been fixed. Minor display fixes, including my fix for troop numbers on the tooltip. Fixed the position of scrolls in the network mode/movie viewing mode menu. In the original, they shift to the left.
New, absolutely canonical faction crests above buildings.
The excessive yellowness of the interface has been regulated.
Launcher backgrounds at startup have been created from scratch.

For owners of old resolutions, the experience will still be new. The interface will look sharp and textured compared to the original.
For owners of 2K monitors and above, this will be a new gaming experience with even more noticeable quality that is pleasing to the eye.

Now you can choose the vibe of your favorite faction, drop it into the mod folder, and you'll have a launcher background and polished loading screens on the common signature gray background, as is customary in the game, with the faction you like. The concept art of faction top-tier creatures by Nival was used as a base, with some fitting details corrected/drawn in

This idea has implementation issues; loading screens work somewhat specifically in scenarios (and dialog scroll textures too, by the way), so I had to abandon it.

SIDE BY SIDE COMPARISON IN SCREENSHOTS:

https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=6f4470ba-6a55-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=65c0ad00-6a56-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=d345ef98-6a56-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=0c76980c-6a58-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=aedf97a0-6a59-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=7a0231ea-6a5a-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=352479f6-6a5b-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=798d0022-6a5b-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=20500f3a-6a5c-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d
https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/juxtapose/latest/embed/index.html?uid=d1b286a6-8f3a-11f1-ba1b-0e6f42328d7d

⚙️Technical comments 10.10:
1. Release readiness 90%. Working on assembling files into a single group.
2. Deciding finally whether to make changes to the font for sharpness, at least where it hurts the most — text on buttons. If not, it will go to 2.0

REQUIREMENTS:
HoMM V Tribes of the East 3.1
LAA Patch
Icons Resolution Overhau

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Animated Main Menu
TotE 3.1 fixes
All Campaings Remastered

STABILITY:
The mod is stabilized and does not cause freezes or crashes.
The kingdom mode / global hiring from a number of towns — cuts FPS, no more than half. The scene is not dynamic, not critical, especially if you play without a counter.
Based on the context, these decreases are tolerable; exiting this section instantly restores FPS.

INSTALLATION:

1. Download LEGACY CLASSIC 1.0

2. Put the archive into the UserMods folder. Put the «For Launcher» folder into the game folder. You can also copy the desired splasha2.bmp into it

3. If you plan to play with the mod on all campaigns «All Campaings Remastered», you need to download the adapted version and remove the regular one.
   The adapted mod goes into UserMods. The essence of the mod is unchanged; only the necessary files related to the interface have been adapted, plus the position has been slightly fixed and the quality of campaigns improved.

For a quality experience, I recommend installing all these mods; their necessity is indisputable.

2.0 Plans (in '27)

1. Thematic pictures in the interaction menu on the global map (bartender, escape, sphinx, tree of knowledge, scales, etc.)

2. Switchable interface tabs (pages): tavern, hiring, hero menu

3. Buttons in command roses (the roses themselves are done in 1.0)

4. Cursors

5. Artifacts

6. Battle view scale (possibly)

Spell and magic icons — a very large job. They look acceptable, especially the higher your resolution. In the last DLC, the developers themselves increased the quality of new content. I don't know if I'll take this on, but even if I do, it won't be soon.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

Mооnst@r for help and information at the beginning of the journey and for the materials of the UpdatedInterfaceTextures scrolls (I fixed minor Nival flaws and added them to the project)
His explanation allowed me to start working on the project, where, absorbing the material, I was later able to do a lot of work.

Vindafler for the materials of the Icons Resolution Overhaul mod, which improves the quality of creature icons. This method uses only game resources, editing xdb, which I used in a number of other cases. 
Rommy for his campaign merge pack and a number of fixes
And overall, to everyone for participating in the life of Heroes V modding

Hello everyone!

Thanks for the comments and well wishes.

I've added screenshots for you to see.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to release the first patch by the end of the month. It is quite large and will cover all the main things that players need.

Question for those who know the structure: how can I remove the darkening of the background in some scenes? (opening settings during combat/viewing hero data when selecting in duel mode/mission results)

I would like to get rid of it in these places because the textures are already reasonably optimized + mip maps have not been set up, but there is an FPS drop. Even though these are practically static scenes, this isn't good.

Yes, thanks, this works in general, though it's not always possible to find the background that way; it feels like it's bound differently. In any case, I figured out that it's not about the backgrounds after all, but rather that the interface has gained new weight and it's clear how the game reacts to it. I'm optimizing where possible, and overall the FPS drop only remains in the Kingdom menu in the hire and hero summoning mode (does anyone use the Kingdom?) and in the Arena hero view menu. In other places, I've restored it. 
PS: So, the FPS drop is noticeable only in the creature hiring mode — either through the Kingdom or through the Castle, provided there are several Castles and further development in dwellings.
This drop is fixed, about half, and such a static screen as hiring doesn't ruin the game.