Posts from “Best map for Heroes of Might and Magic III” (2009).

Dear Zoltan! I was browsing the map some time ago and was surprised to find that the gold golems and the Amulet of Grace in the dungeon near the sea are inaccessible by sea, as I can see from the editor. I checked it in the game as well, and at the time, I thought it was intentional, to make the player want them more. But now, after looking at it again (in light of the bug reports from Barsik13 and Temporar), I realized that if that were the case, you wouldn't have set the number of golems to 45. So, they should be there and obtainable, so you need to fix this as well, although the map is already great anyway!

Dear pHOMM, thank you very much, I have corrected the archive!

Hello participants! I'm happy to announce that two judges have already evaluated the maps, and the final results will be announced soon. So, please be patient, it won't be long now :)

Barsik13, hello! We're glad to see you here!

The New Year is knocking at the door
And with it comes some wild beast:
Soft paws, a whiskered face...
It's a striped Tiger! =)
P.S.: Happy New Year to everyone! (and we eagerly await the decision) =)

when will it be, when will it be?:smile21:

In conclusion, I would like to quote the words of judge Dirty_Player about our Contest:

Thank you very much to all participants for your submissions. I hope we have all learned a lot from this contest, and that the next contest will bring us many excellent works. Play Heroes, create maps, post them in the thread. I try to review and comment on everything.

I would like to join Konstantin’s words and thank everyone for participating, showing interest in the contest, and, of course, for your patience. Until we meet again!

Thank you very much to my fellow participants and the organizers of the contest. It was a great pleasure to take part in it. If a similar contest is held this year, in 2010, I will definitely participate again, and with great pleasure.

P.S. For those who were interested in my map but encountered several critical errors, I would like to remind you that you can find the corrected version of the map in my post from December 22nd.

Sincerely, Zoltan O'Dale.

I reviewed all the maps and the reports on them. =) In my opinion, all the places were awarded fairly. It's a pity that someone, somewhere, didn't pay enough attention or didn't finish their work and didn't make it to a higher position! =) I liked Zoltan ODale's map!
Ivanho has a rather interesting map, "it would be suitable for some kind of mini-tournament" (quote).
I'm afraid of Vanechkin's maps!)) xD It's scary. Symmetry kills, I don't like it)) lol)))
At first, I didn't take the winning map seriously! Well, my first impression was wrong! =)
Good luck with mapmaking! I couldn't participate, unfortunately, and I don't think I would have been much competition anyway. =)
With respect! =)

Thank you all very much for your hard work, patience, and respect.

The evaluation results largely offer an interesting or alternative perspective on certain aspects of the authors' work.

To be honest, I was extremely surprised by some of the conclusions, but I'm not asking the judges to reconsider the contest results, even though I think some of the comments are valid.

I would greatly appreciate it if the esteemed judges would read the entire text.

First.

9 09_pHOMM_unica.h3m
…
5. Plot. There isn't one… 1/10

Excuse me, but HOW??? Especially considering this rating:

7. pHOMM – the "Unica" map
…
The presence of a plot in the map and its interestingness. Interesting! 9 points out of 10.

VDV_forever also gave a score of 9 out of 10 for the plot.

This is very strange to me… Maybe Dirty_Player has a different understanding of what constitutes a plot???

Second. Dirty_Player gave me scores of 7 and 8 for points 1 and 2, respectively, but, excuse me, out of 10! This doesn't seem to match the stated maximum of 15, especially since everyone else rated out of 15. One might think it was a typo, but, you know, it's strange to see the words "The map is quite well-populated, but there are gaps, some empty spaces, which isn't great, but overall it's very good" and then a score of less than half (which is 7 out of 15). It seems to me that the esteemed Dirty may have confused my last map in the list, thinking that the maximum score for points 1 and 2 is 10.

Third. Regarding some of the map elements, especially the modified ones. Dirty talks about Necropolises, clouds, and obelisks. The Necropolises were specifically created to create a shadow effect in the dungeon. This is a key feature of both the dungeon itself and the map with the troglodyte heroes (for their stealth; they can also disappear and reappear "passing" through walls, rocks, and passage guards; they are the people of the dungeon). To ensure complete invisibility from the player, the Necropolises are designed in such a way that they are almost impossible to find, and only a very attentive player will notice them. Of course, it's easy to see them in the editor, but please understand that this unique element and its implementation with my tools could only be created in this way. "Moving the Necropolises" suggests that the map was viewed in the editor, but the map is conceived and implemented for gameplay… I would be ashamed to admit that I'm digging around in the editor of the map I'm currently playing, but I'm guilty of it; I sometimes browse it in single-player… in multiplayer, at least, my conscience doesn't allow it. And "glitches" when moving them are easily eliminated by scrolling the map (with any redraw), if that's really necessary; they don't affect the map itself; it's just that no redraw occurs when moving them around in the editor.
There's nothing to say about the obelisks… remove these obelisks from the "city-on-a-cloud" area, and it will immediately look bad. This is a decorative element; the "Order of Lines" is established! I don't want to use the same type of mountains or anything else; I decorated almost all the garrison towers with obelisks; without obelisks, the garrisons will be GRAY… (and the garrisons are needed – according to the plot, this is an impregnable city for the council of mages).
Regarding the piles of gold, comments from vbn: there is a special, unreachable sign for the player near these piles of gold with the following text: "Special location for partisans; assembly ~100 piles of gold will provide a random number of 50-100 thousand; the computer buys heroes and sends them to the player on an unknown day." Those who read this will understand that this is a PROGRAM. I wish you would never have to deal with programming AI in such a harsh way, because I have fully experienced it. I conducted several dozen tests for each of the 4 computers, adding, removing objects, changing the contents and configuration of the computer zones, AND I SUCCEEDED!!! I achieved the behavior I wanted from the computers: the brown computer (elves) diligently collected this gold and, by freeing the heroes, pushed them into the player's zone; the blue computer (troglodytes) diligently moved the heroes behind the walls, attacked the player's weak heroes, and looted mines, etc., and almost never came to the surface; with the demon hero (orange), I struggled the most; I spent about a hundred tests on him, but I forced him to collect demons and pits in an event 1 or 2 times a week (and this cannot be done from the city, because the player could take advantage of this, which is not allowed by the plot). Fortunately, I only spent about 10-13 tests on the blue archmage; he almost immediately started working.

Excuse me, but coding AI in this way is extremely difficult; you can try it yourself and see what it's like… so the piles of gold are my lines of code; otherwise, I wouldn't be able to achieve the goal (the computer arriving on an UNKNOWN day starting from the second week, so that the player doesn't simply bring the entire army to the right place at the right time when replaying the map). You need to look at the bigger picture and test it more than once, and not just in the editor (because after such comments, especially about the lack of a plot, doubts creep in that the map was actually played).

My computers are alive; they don't just stand there waiting to be killed, but at the same time, they don't engage in standard "running and gathering." They implement the plot and the author's clearly defined lines. This is just as unique an element of the map as all the others, although, of course, not all of them may have turned out as smoothly and uniquely, but I worked on all of them all this time until their implementation and behavior pleased me.

Fourth.

09_pHOMM_Unica

The map violates one of the main requirements – the map was made in the WOG editor. The conversion partially eliminated the objects that were created in WOG, but many objects remained with "glitches." Therefore, it's not surprising that, while testing the map, I experienced several crashes.

I state with full responsibility that THIS IS NOT TRUE! I carefully monitored the launch of the map in the correct editor, made backups, etc. The map was never saved in the WOG editor and converted back, NEVER!
I used, as I wrote in my posts and in the thread (on DF2) that I linked, that the map was created using 3 hexadecimal editors: a normal one – WinHex, an editor for H3obj objects (author Sergroj, Sergey Rozhenko; we are still collaborating) – it is exactly the same hex editor; it edits the records of objects in the map – images, properties, etc.; and also my program – it is an interface for hex-editing the surface of the soil, rivers, and roads.
YES! I observed problems when working with such elements, but I fixed them. However, on one of the test computers, crashes occurred; it had Platinum (Complete Collection) installed, and I indicated in the legend that it might not work on it. After all, SOD is recognized as the standard, not Platinum, so I don't think I should compromise on convenience for players. And the latest tests went smoothly. Dear VDV_forever, I can send you the SOD executable that I used for the tests, and you can test/play it again, at least for your own enjoyment.

If you have any more specific comments (e.g., in cell so-and-so, this is not correct, there are errors there), please let me know, and I will either explain the idea or admit the mistake and apologize.

Good luck to everyone. Please don't take my statements as harsh; play and create, as you already said, in HEROES :smile13: :smile19:

It’s surprising that I didn’t come in last!

2pHOMM:
I offer my deepest apologies. The fact is that I checked the map last and during the pre-New Year rush. Therefore, I assessed it from memory, thinking that the first two points would receive a maximum of 10 points. I also didn't notice the events that appear on day 111, revealing the legend itself. If it's critical, I can correct my scores (although this won't affect the distribution of prize places...). The map is unique and original. But I believe that this is not the right path. :(

I also noticed an error that I incorrectly calculated Zoltan's scores in my assessments (problems with arithmetic :( ), but Vitaly corrected me.

Personally, I liked Zoltan's map the most. But critical bugs are very bad.

Congratulations to the winner! Very good work, fully meeting the conditions of the competition. I would also like to note that the winning map was tested very thoroughly, which is very good! Take an example from him in this regard! ;)

Thank you very much to my colleagues and the organizers!
Heroes of Might and Magic Online, don't be upset! Many geniuses remained misunderstood for a long time! As an offline player, I would like to add that we all, when participating in a tournament, definitely look at the map in the editor. Without this, it is simply impossible to even think about winning in offline mode.

Thank you all very much. I am very happy that I won, as this is my first map uploaded to the internet. I will definitely participate in the next contest. Sincerely, VOVLAD

Thanks to everyone, and thanks to those who supported me. Even though I'm in last place, I'll try to make better maps. I'll take all the mistakes into account. And I'll be eagerly awaiting the next contest.

Greetings to the judges, participants, and observers of the Competition!

I would like to clarify my participation:

As soon as I learned about the portal www.forum.heroesworld.ru, I immediately registered (September 10, 2009), and very quickly found a wonderful open Map Competition and, without hesitation, decided to participate.

To be honest, I didn't prepare for the Competition; instead, I used my maps that I created in 2008. Therefore, I couldn't receive high scores for most criteria, because the purpose of their creation was different, not for a competition. Of course, now I regret it, because I could have designed an interesting series of quests in 1.5 months.

Initially, I mistakenly submitted the map "Fortuna" of size (corksink00012.h3m) to this Competition, but I immediately replaced it with "LeSTeR can do anything!" of size [M] (corksink00006.h3m). The map name in the Competition Participants Table was not changed.

The description for the map "LeSTeR can do anything!" (corksink00006.h3m) was not included in the narrative of the game itself, but it does exist:
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If you approach the task of this map carelessly - "The computer will acknowledge your victory," then it is enough to free one of the prisoners of the Red Hero and immediately bring the "Armageddon's Blade" to LeSTeRburg. But I recommend taking it more seriously; the map features living characters! Therefore: 1) you must free both prisoners of the Red Hero; 2) you must take revenge on the Dark Sorcerers for the humiliation of the prisoners in slavery and destroy the spies (Blue and Green) located behind the Red Hero's lines (especially since they pose a potential threat, as each has the "Armageddon's Blade"); 3) you need to find the Grail, because there is a PROMISE made to yourself: "LeSTeR can do anything!"; 4) it is better to banish the Dark Sorcerers from the country forever (that is, capture all cities of the Blue and Green Heroes without exception)...
My secret tactic at the "Impossible" level: a rapid march to the Scorpion Island; using all Heroes "to the fullest" - this includes LeSTeR and Fakir Z (this kind fellow is happy to have animals obediently serving him, and I send him to the Island first; there will be too many conquered animals and other units, so I send 3-4 ships on the expedition). Timely deployment of military cordons in strategic directions is extremely important! First, I set up a strong guard of 2 fully equipped heroes on the Island, then, after capturing cities from one of the opponents, I set up a barrier at his last city, I do the same with the other opponent, and at the same time, I remove the guard from the Island and strengthen the barriers. After that, you can go to the Dungeon.
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The judges fairly gave the scores. But to the question "Why is there such a cluster of monsters in the center of the map?" I will answer: the monsters inhabit the so-called Scorpion Island, as it is an outpost that is considered a strategic point on the map and a tactical barrier (the faster your Hero sails to the island and the higher his Diplomacy, the faster he will "gather" troops and create a barrier against intrusion into his lands). By the way, computer Heroes quite quickly devastate the Scorpion Island; you just need to be inattentive.

Unfortunately, not all judges noticed the changed biographies of the Heroes and that each of them has their own mission on the map.

Nevertheless, I am very glad that this portal exists and that there are organizers of such Competitions as this one. My respect to all judges, participants, and observers!

P.S. For those who want to evaluate my mapmaking, I recommend the map "Clouds" of size [XL] http://corksink.narod.ru/all/02game/rargame/corksink00007.rar


P.S.P.S. It seems that I noticed the need to take competitions more seriously a little late.