Graveyards in the ocean - SW Bugs found

hey guys,

Big fan of your project and hope to do a tour video on it in the near future for my retro gaming youtube channel. While I've mucked about a bit with your mod over the years I haven't played any serious games until recently and sure enough I'm having an absolutely blast!!! The care and dedication you've put into every little thing is so obvious and I really like your extra units for each faction and the new factions made in HoMM2 style.

I'm such of a fan of your work infact that 2 years ago I was going to ask your permission to use some of your custom units for my Heroes of Might & Magic 2 mod for Civilization 2 however I didn't end up asking as we hit Civ2's unit limit and ran out of room for extra units haha (although if I ever convert it to Civ2 Test of Time one day that will have a higher unit limit opening up slots for more cool stuff). I did get Sir Albe's help back in 2018/19ish with getting all the HoMM2 town names you guys extracted for my project though so thank you again for that help. If all goes well I'll finally be releasing my mod in the next few months!!

Anyway I know the SW project is in limbo atm with everything going on in the world but I just thought I'd let you know that I noticed something strange while playing the good old HoMM1 campaign (thank you so much for including HoMM1 content!!!) mission 2 Archipelago islands in that there's a floating graveyard in the ocean! Also the AI's seem to be completely ingoring using boats whereas in the original the AI would be sailing on to your door step in like week 2 haha. I think harbours are more expensive now so maybe that's why the AI isn't bothering. Not sure! I'll have to build one myself and see if they steal it from me!

You are more than welcome Blake01
I will investigate this floating graveyard later today, but I wonder why it hasn't been reported sooner.

Edit: I just checked and it was a mistake of course. The floating graveyard has now been removed

Sir Albe wrote:

You are more than welcome Blake01
I will investigate this floating graveyard later today, but I wonder why it hasn't been reported sooner.

Edit: I just checked and it was a mistake of course. The floating graveyard has now been removed

Awesome! I'll let you know if I see anything else weird. Having so much fun playing these HoMM1 maps.

It's funny.. speaking of HoMM1 I was just replying to your colleague Orzie over at Heroes Community on how it's a dream of mine to play an enhanced modern HD resolutions supporting version of HoMM1 and I was drooling over your Succession Wars HoMM1 mod April fools picture a few years ago. I know something like that will never happen so I was thrilled when I saw you guys had imported the HoMM1 campaign maps into SW as I think this is as close as I can get to that dream haha. I'm one of those weird people who still loves HoMM1's original graphics though so just for fun I'm making some HoMM1 HD mock screenshots up atm that are inspired by the fHeroes2 project's HD appearance.



Oh and regarding my Civilization 2 HoMM2 mod I mentioned.. because Civilization 2 has a 7 Civ capacity limit we wanted to fill up we were stuck wondering what to do with our 7th Civ since there's only 6 in HoMM2. Naturally we stuck all the HoMM2 neutral units in the 7th slot (along with some custom heroes from the Palm Kingdom's 2 project) however the castle image issue remained. Like I said above my Civ2 HoMM2 mod team colleague Metropolis and I are big fans of your work, so much like with the extra units ideas we also talked about asking your permission to use one of your extra custom addon towns (either Desert Dervish or Swamp Witch) however once again we were hit by an annoying Civ2 limit that stops us using a 7th city image so we didn't end up asking you guys for permission (hence why the picture below just recycles the Barbarian castle & village for the 7th Neutral Civ). Once again though the enhanced Test of Time version of Civ2 doesn't have the 6 city graphics limit so if we do end up converting our mod to Test of Time in the future would it be okay if we used some of your SW work? Naturally you, Orzie and the SW project (as a link so people check out your work) would be fully credited as contributor in our mod author documentation next to Metro and I. In fact I think you might already be in there due to helping me with the town names haha. While I don't expect my mod to played by many (as who cares about a 25 year old Civ game these days haha) but I do promote my project on a great many sites so its essentially free advertising for you guys too.

If the answer if yes I'm curious if you guys have made town graphics (when no castle is built yet) for your 2 extra factions yet? As I noticed they're not in 0.8.1. If not then I can try to cook something up. Although I'm not a brilliant pixel artist so while I can do pretty good stuff at the smaller Civ2 size the big full HoMM3 sized assets would likely expose my skill limitations, but I'm willing to try haha!

Blake01 wrote:

[...] would it be okay if we used some of your SW work? [...]

I recall Orzie pointing out that the new graphics made for H3SW must first be used on a release of H3SW for undefined delay (I would personally consider 3+ months)
So, maybe an answer a few months after the next release.

GodRage wrote:

Blake01 wrote:

[...] would it be okay if we used some of your SW work? [...]

I recall Orzie pointing out that the new graphics made for H3SW must first be used on a release of H3SW for undefined delay (I would personally consider 3+ months)
So, maybe an answer a few months after the next release.

All good mate. I found their official content usage request thread and asked there instead. I did notice the delay rule there but thought perhaps if I offered to make the town graphic for them it might grant me special permission bypass that rule haha. However in the end it turned out they'd already made it and Sir Albe and Orzie very kindly gave me a copy with permission to use it without waiting.

However ironically the way I'm going with my projects they'll probably release a new version with that Dervish town graphic in it before I even get to use it anyway haha. As discussed over in my Civ scenario search and rescue thread I'm currently buried in a huge Civilization 2 scenario preservation project and kind people keep donating hundreds of lost scenarios for me to process. Once that project is eventually over I can get back to finishing my mod projects including my HoMM2 Civ2 mod. And then once they're released I can think about doing enhanced versions of all my mods for Civ2 Test of Time which is where I'll finally be able to use the dervish town graphics for my 7th Civ slot.

Oh BTW @Sir Albe , I've found another bug on this same map mate.. not too far from that floating graveyard ironically.

Can't access the top right corner of the landmass. In original HoMM1 you could walk through the tiny gap in the trees but the trees collision detection / impassible tile cells must be defined slightly differently in HoMM3 so it's completely blocked. I'll just have to boat it around the trees I guess lol.

Blake01 wrote:

Oh BTW @Sir Albe , I've found another bug on this same map mate.. not too far from that floating graveyard ironically.

Can't access the top right corner of the landmass. In original HoMM1 you could walk through the tiny gap in the trees but the trees collision detection / impassible tile cells must be defined slightly differently in HoMM3 so it's completely blocked. I'll just have to boat it around the trees I guess lol.

Thanks for the bug report, however this time it has already been fixed for the upcoming version

Hey guys, am now playing your 'HoMM1 Campaign Map 4 - Free For All' in SW (so much fun!!! )and have encountered some more blocked passages that were traversable in the original HoMM1. I'll let you know if I find more as I haven't really got out of the swamps yet.

2 blockages


1 blockage

Hi Blake

Glad to hear you still enjoy H3SW and the H1 campaigns )

I can't find a easy way to check these myself, so I will take your word for it and fix these for the next release

Sir Albe wrote:

Hi Blake

Glad to hear you still enjoy H3SW and the H1 campaigns )

I can't find a easy way to check these myself, so I will take your word for it and fix these for the next release

Oh yes, I'm having an absolute blast. Your work had given me a lot of fun and good times. It also helps fuel me to work on my HoMM2 Civ2 mod. Every time I feel like I'm struggling to get the motivation to work more on it, I go take a break to play your stuff and that gets me going again!

I recently played the map in original HoMM1 and still have my save so I was able to check each of these as I didn't want to give you incorrect information. I can send you screenshots showing that they're traversable gaps in the original if you need.

Also do you have any map recommendations for players wanting to play a big game your Witch and Dervish factions? I want to play a game as them. Yes I can select them on most maps but of course they then get plonked into a starting position that was built for one of the other factions. If there's a map where you guys made changes to make it good for the new factions allowing for the best experience I'm all ears.

I was also trying to find a super map where all 8 factions are going at it but didn't have any luck finding one...

.

Thanks for the kind offer, but I don't need to see the screenshots - I have trust in my fellow HoMM fans

H1 campaign maps are difficult to check as there are no easy way to skip missions (no cheat codes that skips the current map), so I am glad you checked them for us

Regarding the 8 factions map I believe the best I can offer is the "Realms of Chaos" map, which sees each player as one of the eight factions of H3SW. There is even an allied version, if that is more your style

Sir Albe wrote:

Thanks for the kind offer, but I don't need to see the screenshots - I have trust in my fellow HoMM fans

H1 campaign maps are difficult to check as there are no easy way to skip missions (no cheat codes that skips the current map), so I am glad you checked them for us

Regarding the 8 factions map I believe the best I can offer is the "Realms of Chaos" map, which sees each player as one of the eight factions of H3SW. There is even an allied version, if that is more your style

Ahh of course.. I forgot about there being no level cheat. Well if you ever need test savegames, I've got plenty for HoMM1 as I go back to the campaign every 5-10 years haha.

Thanks! I had a quick look at that one the other day and thought there was only 4 or 5 castles meaning the rest of the 8 factions would die but now I see there's an underground 2nd map with the rest of the castles! Excellent, I'm going to have fun with that!

*starts singing "graveyards in the ocean" to the tune of Running In The 90s*

Finally finishing my game of 'HoMM1 Campaign Map 4 - Free For All' in SW and have found one more bug. The bigger town has cut off the path to the obelisk.

SW


HoMM1

Thanks for the report Blake
I fixed it immediately for the upcoming release and speaking of release, the beta testing phase is about to begin..

Awesome! Can't wait!