G0ldiel
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 attitudes toward this installment, but it's worth admitting that these are still the same Heroes, and it's likely the best Heroes game in 3D format, as well as the most alive part of the forum.
The game went through a true production hell and a real battle with the publisher Ubisoft, and despite everything, it's a powerful hit of nostalgia and the era of 2000s games.
In honor of this big anniversary in our Russian-speaking space, I created what I consider an important event for the game.
I single-handedly took on an extremely large-scale task: to completely refresh 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 heritage; 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 design.
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 everything — chaos, unnecessary files, errors, and connections of one element to multiple places, etc.
And today, on the anniversary day in the CIS, I'm glad to present you information about the first patch.
Large-scale upscale:
Practically the entire main UI has been upscaled to new sizes, with the same style as in 2006.
Some small elements have been touched up or redrawn from scratch, some have been replaced with new ones that visually match the designers' solution.
Buttons, backgrounds, 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, various icons. Some have gained a new but design-appropriate look, since they looked bad when enlarged.
It's important to understand that much depended on how the images were originally drawn.
Also, a small group of old visual glitches has been fixed.
Several community materials were used, as well as my own visual solutions.
New, absolutely canonical faction crests above buildings.
Launcher backgrounds at startup and loading screens for maps outside scenarios were created from scratch.
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 branded gray background, as is customary in the game, with the faction you like. The concept art of faction tier 7 creatures from Nival was used as a base, with some fitting details corrected/added.
Recommendation: Preferred race image at game launch (LEGACY CLASSIC 1.0) + Animated menu of preferred race + Loading screen with the T7 creature of preferred race (LEGACY CLASSIC 2.0)
Game experience: for owners of old resolutions, the experience will still feel new. The interface will look sharper in any case, like a neater and fresher version of the original interface.
For owners of 2K monitors and above, this will be a new game experience with more noticeable quality that's pleasing to the eye. After all, it will simply become more readable.
Some elements may receive visual updates just to show more depth on the texture. For example, menu scrolls.
Optimization: When increasing texture multipliers, of course you have to account for the engine and the game's age, so as not to turn the game into a slideshow or significantly increase latency.
Most elements received 2x and 4x increases, according to the logic of the elements. In some cases, I allowed myself to increase smaller objects by 6x if they were too small icons.
Acknowledgments:
Mооnst@r for help and information at the beginning of the journey and for the materials of the UpdatedInterfaceTextures mod (interaction menu scrolls currently in the project)
His explanation allowed me to start working on the project, where by absorbing the material I was able to do a lot of work later on.
Vindafler for the materials of the Icons Resolution Overhaul mod, which improves the quality of creature icons. This method uses only the game's resources and helped apply a similar solution in a number of cases. There's no point in doing this with mini-mods.
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 23.08:
1. The plans to release a version solo by summer were overestimated, but at the moment everything intended for the patch is ready.
A few things remain to be checked for errors. I've sketched out a plan for patch 2.0.
2. The mod will be shipped together with the Campaign Remake — I didn't touch the mod itself, but there's UI there that I changed, and this way it'll be simpler.
3. Mod requirements — Tribes of the East 3.1 and the absence of other global graphical mods specifically in the interface category that affect menus, tables, and buttons.
If these are new elements — the skill wheel, race tables, detailed hero descriptions — that's fine.
Loading screen with a T7 creature of your choice:
Due to the patch binding, maps open with the screen corresponding to the DLC on which the map was released. For example, "Iron Throne" always opens with the Arkat dragon screen, knight maps — with the Griffin image, etc. To bring everything to a single screen and start using this feature, you need to move, open, and re-save in the editor all maps created on the H5/Hammers of Fate patches. Only after that will the screen of the latest patch — Tribes of the East — be displayed and the feature will work. This change will likely be in mod version 2.0
Stability:
Kingdom mode / global hiring from a number of castles (not to be confused with single hiring in a castle) — FPS drop with an increasing number of castles (noticeable after 4)
This is related to the increased quality of icons. The game finds it very hard to render everything; the more castles and settlements are available, the greater the FPS drop.
Changes to the approach to Tribes of the East icons (128 appeared specifically in this expansion) don't change the weather much.
Given the context, these decreases are tolerable, and exiting this section instantly restores FPS.
Otherwise, everything is stable and optimized where possible, although this is definitely not the end of optimization.
Стой, где очерчен мелом круг! Как мне приятен твой испуг!
