Feature requests: General topic

Request any new features here.

HeroesCommunity user "mvassilev" says:

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Would it be possible to add quick combat? When playing H2, that's the thing I miss the most from 3 and 5.

What about throwing artifacts away, and moving them in the inventory without the help of other hero? Sometimes my pockets were really torn by trash items until I reach someone to hand off the goods.

That's a very interesting idea. With an inventory, you could also have a lot more specialized artifacts -- you might have an artifacts that boost your damage against the undead or against flying creatures, and switch between them before each battle!

There's also something to be said for doing the opposite and adding oven more cursed artifacts. One of my favorite moments when playing Heroes II was in a game against UndeadHalfOrc from Celestial Heavens, where I suicided a hero against his main army -- and that hero just happened to be carrying the Fizbin of Misfortune. I would have loved to see his face!

The negative modifier artifacts can be intepreted as "unable to get rid of", with only positive modifier ones available for throwing away. That would make sense.


Some more ideas would include additional dwellings for creatures on the global map, new artifacts, and especially - new synergy artifacts, because the experience of Battle Garb of Anduran shows that it is a cool idea.

And one more thing - the improved map editor, which is really terrible in the original game. I remember some XL maps made by my favourite mapmaker Charlie Watkins - omg, I guess he spent WEEKS making one single map with all these mountains placed in a particular way. The eraser, which erases EVERYTHING instead of the topmost object (which is very unconvenient as well). The objects, which are placeable one over another, but not vice versa. You get it. Though, I don't know about the capabilities of Project Ironfist language.

I as a part of The Succession Wars Mod Team just stick to HMMIII engine due to its relative convenience, but our coding abilities are much more restricted. So keep up all the good work.

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The negative modifier artifacts can be intepreted as "unable to get rid of", with only positive modifier ones available for throwing away. That would make sense.

Brilliant! That should make everyone happy. The game also already has a list of negative artifacts (for the Alchemist Tower). Just adding a "Do you want to throw this away?" to the artifact dialog should be quite simple too. Will do this.

Definitely want the rest of that stuff. There's still some work to do to figure out how to add new adventure map locations though.

Hey, if [s]it bleeds, we can kill it[/s] it is quite easy, it is very cool! I am sure many of the users will be amazed with the new spectra of probabilities not featured anywhere else.

I know it's a bit different, but is it possible to make game playable in higher resolutions, just like H3 HD Mod or Free Heroes?

It would be great to play H2 on a widescreen.

I hate to say it, but that would actually be one of the hardest changes to make. The assumption that this game runs in 640x480 is baked very deeply into the code. Everything you see on the screen is positioned using absolute pixel coordinates.

You will have to write the engine from scratch. PI will look then more like an open-source project rather than a mod, and the team will have to redevelop all the features including AI (which is really weak in an open-source fHeroes currently). It is barely possible with the current turn of events.

I'd stick to 640x480.

Eh, it wouldn't be quite that bad. It would mostly be chasing down a lot of absolute coordinates. Would still be the biggest change we've done, but would probably be doable in under 1000 hours of work.

So, another question. Is it possible to add new factions to the game, and are you going to do that if so?

Also, is it possible to add new factions for every user who will be good enough with the current Project Ironfist tools? Perhaps I will be creating a tiny modification for Heroes 2 in future with a credit to you, adding our new class (The Succession Wars Mod - Gipsy) as a playable one.

Adding new factions has been a big goal from the start. It should be possible, but we haven't done it yet.

Adding a new faction is really two separate tasks -- adding a new hero class, and adding a new town. (Then there's putting new creatures and stuff into that faction, but let's just stick with the bare essentials.)

The assumption that there are 6 factions is encoded into the game in lots of random places. At some places, the game uses hero class ID and faction ID interchangeably. A Knight hero has faction ID 0. A Necromancer has faction ID 5. Clearly, a new faction hero should have ID 6, right? Wrong. That ID is reserved for the Captain of a Knight town. In fact, the game assumes that a castle's captain is (faction ID + 6). That means that either we dig up a lot of code and data dealing with hero IDs, or we use faction ID 12 for the new faction and ID 18 for its captain, leaving a lot of empty space in the middle.

So, there are going to be lots of things to deal with, but I really want it to happen.

Pretty interesting. Well, I think that using ID 12 may be appropriate, because we can't predict what can happen if we replace ID6 with a new class for example. It won't be as neat as arranging the classes, but you can easily guess the spectre of problems which will appear upon adding EVERY new class, because EVERY time all Captains positions in the game data will need to be changed.

So that I suppose using the blank IDs starting from ID12 will be more suitable, because it will allow to add multiple classes (and heck, multiple Captains) in considerable amounts without a vast need of changing the class positions every time.

The formula "ID + 6" is not that optimistic, but still it is the best solution I suppose. Say, if someone will be up to add a 13th class (I doubt if this will ever happen, but still), he/she will have to pick ID19 for it, for all classes, both hero and captain, will be going by subsequent sextets.

Yep. This issue should be easy to work around, but there are a lot of weird things like it.

What about new campaigns? Do you plan to leave PI as a platform for modding, or create a standalone add-on for HMMII?

A new campaign was a big part of the original vision for Project Ironfist. We have a master plan for the campaign on the wiki ( http://projectironfist.pbworks.com/w/page/54099853/Missions ). There's a lot of work to do to get there though. The campaign features three new factions. We currently have 0 of them.

It's already good that you have the screenplay. You can create some placeholder graphics until you will be able to find an artist, actually. Like taken from other games, or recolored old ones.

Yep. Art's hardly the only bottlekneck though.

For example, a lot of the points in the design space for a good level one creature are already taken. We've had trouble coming up with a good way to make the Kobold unique.

Well, IIRC Kivo made that Kobold for you. It is unused in the SW Mod (we've got that face for the Lizardmen), so perhaps you could discuss this with him.

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Kobold-292205487

I think the one in the game is actually the version that Alex (kittens2) made. Kivo's is still not animated. We did have a discussion on the Ironfist mailing list a while back, but did not find a good proposal.

Hello,

Nice to see a mod for Heroes 2, this project seem ambitious and seem to have great possibilities. Heroes 2 is really a great game.

I made some suggestions on the Free Heroes2 forum (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fheroes2/), the two projects are great and I want both ;-)

I am not a programmer, the most I would do would be to modify data in an xml file, but I have some ideas and tweaks for the game, and I'll post them in this topic.

Perhaps it would be also possible to correct some bugs in Heroes 2, as you can change the source code?

Also, ironfist.exe doesn't run on my system (see my post in Bug Reports).

Greetings.

Yep, we can fix all kinds of bugs. I've found Heroes II (outside of multiplayer) quite stable, but you can still find weird bugs if you dig deep enough (ever tried winning a battle with no creatures remaining except ones raised with Resurrect?). Anything in particular you'd like to see fixed?

We've also fixed some non-bug gameplay issues, such abusing hit-and-run attacks.

Hello,

The fix for hero movement points is great.

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ever tried winning a battle with no creatures remaining except ones raised with Resurrect?

I've never been in such a desperate position ;-)

No need to dig deep enough ;-)
An example of a bug that can appear quite often.

Bug: 2 bone dragons stacks.

http://speedy.sh/xXJZq/0800-bug-2-bone-dragons-stacks.GM1

Launch HEROES2W.EXE
Load "0800 bug 2 bone dragons stacks.GM1"

Roxana hero attack Hilltop castle.

Hexagons rows from top to bottom A, B, C, D, etc.
Hexagon number in a row 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.
So the Power liches are A1, the Bone dragons are C1-2, etc.

Power liches shoot Wolves.
Vampire lords attack Orc chiefs A11.
Bone dragons attack Wolves H10-11.
Skeletons move E4.

Power liches skip.
Roxana cast Animate Dead on Bone dragons.
Vampire lords attack Orc chiefs.
Bone dragons attack Wolves.
Skeletons move H7.

Power liches skip.

Wolves attack Bone dragons.
Wolves have Moral.
Wolves attack Skeletons G7-8.

Roxana cast Animate Dead on Bone dragons.
Vampire lords attack Orc chiefs.
Bone dragons attack Wolves G9-10.

Roxana cast Animate Dead on Bone dragons.
Vampire lords attack Orc chiefs.

Medusas attack Bone dragon.

Bone dragons retaliate and kill Medusas.

Bone dragons attack Wolves without moving.

Then bug.

Bone dragons move to H7-8 and there is now 2 Bone dragons stacks, Bone dragons attack Wolves.

Roxana select the Animate Dead spell, remark: you can cast the spell on H7, on H8 and on G9, but not on G10.

Roxana cast Animate Dead on Bone dragons.
Vampire lords attack Orc chiefs.

Bone dragons attack Wolves G9 to G8.

Sometimes the game crash the first attack, sometimes you can cast Animate Dead several times before the game crash.

Window message: HEROES2W.EXE stopped working - close program.

This bug never happened to you?

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Anything in particular you'd like to see fixed?

Coming soon ;-)

Wow, that's a new one to me. I did win a battle once in the demo version of Heroes V because a similar bug hit and effectively doubled my army. I feel really bad for my opponent.