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 probably the best part of the series in 3D format, as well as the most alive section of the forum.
The game went through a true production 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 have created what I consider to be an important event for the game.
I took on an extremely large task alone: to completely update the quality of the original game interface without globally changing its structure, that is, to improve the 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 mass of content, and deserve to see one more mod, a truly necessary mod.
Classic — this is the vector of preserving the spirit of the classics and the style of 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 plenty 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 pixel dimensions, 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 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 received a new, design-appropriate look, because some originals looked bad when enlarged. This usually concerned small elements. I strove to preserve the original elements, so mostly it's a successful upscale and sometimes forced replacements that look organic.
A group of old visual Nival errors has been fixed. Minor display fixes, including my own.
Other minor visual fixes.
The position of menu scrolls in some categories has been fixed.
Texture coordination after upscales has been improved.
New, absolutely canonical faction crests above buildings.
A background has been added around the stained glass when searching for Asha's Tear.
The excessive yellowness of the interface has been regulated.
Launcher backgrounds have been created from scratch based on images from the internet and in-game screenshots.
The interface scroll sound has been changed to a more pleasant one with a shorter tail, which slightly changed the frequency.
Aimed at modern monitors, but also works on older ones — the difference will be less noticeable but still visible compared to the original.
SIDE-BY-SIDE SCREENSHOT COMPARISON:
⚙️Technical comments 02.11:
release in the first half of November, information will be published soon.
REQUIREMENTS:
HoMM V Tribes of the East 3.1
LAA Patch
All Campaings Remastered
RECOMMENDATIONS:
TotE 3.1 fixes
STABILITY:
The mod is stabilized and does not cause freezes or crashes.
Kingdom mode / global hiring from a number of castles — there is a frame drop when there is a large number of unit buildings in the list, when you own many towns.
The scene is not dynamic and is not very noticeable, especially if you play without a counter.
Based on the context, these drops are tolerable; exiting this section instantly restores the FPS.
INSTALLATION:
Download LEGACY CLASSIC 1.0
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.
The "All Campaings Remastered" mod is adapted for this modification. You need to remove All_сampaigns_data.h5u from the folder and put LEGACY_PATCHED_All_campaignsR_.h5u into UserMods. Nothing in the mod has been touched except files related to the interface (+ a couple of changes and HD campaign icons that I posted separately)
I strongly recommend installing TotE 3.1 fixes by Moonstar into DATA. The modification fixes many broken text positions, the texts themselves, and other errors of the original game.
Patch 2.0 plans (year 27)
Thematic pictures in the interaction menus on the global map (bartender, escape, sphinx, tree of knowledge, victory/defeat, scales, etc.)
Switchable interface tabs (pages): tavern, hiring, hero menu
Buttons in command roses (the roses themselves are made in 1.0)
Cursors
Artifacts
ATB battle log viewing (possibly)
Buff and debuff icons in battle when viewing creatures (fury/soldier's luck/poisoned/stunned/weakened, etc.)
Campaign loading screens in real HD state — we'll consider the possibility
Scrollbar sliders that are part of large scroll textures and were not a separate element (there is a hand-drawn one)
Cosmetic fixes of improved elements.
Discuss with other modders the possibility of implementing an HD font, the specifics of fonts in H5
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1. Spell icons — a very large job. They look acceptable, especially the higher your resolution.
In the last DLC, the developers themselves increased the resolution of the new content. I don't know if I'll take this on, but even if I do, it won't be soon.
2. Stained glass shards for all 8 factions — possible.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:
Mооnst@r for help and information at the beginning of the journey and for the scroll materials from UpdatedInterfaceTextures (I fixed minor Nival flaws and added them to the project)
His explanations at the start allowed me to begin working on the project, where by absorbing the material I was later able to do a lot of work.
Also for other minor fixes, helping others, and contributing to the community as a whole.
Rommy for the huge work on the updated version of the campaign merge pack and fixing various shortcomings.
The build contains minor fixes made by other forum members. Some things I did myself and later came across similar ones on the forum; some of the small things already created by people were included. A number of such micro-decisions were added even before the clear start of work on the mod; unfortunately, a list of absolutely every fix cannot be provided. So thanks to everyone, no offense. After all, as I explained, the name refers to the common heritage of modders, particularly the CIS segment, and I do not claim absolutely every byte of the mod.
There are 123 of them, by the way.
