Campaign intro animations and dialogs in Heroes 3 Complete

[NeXaR]

Here I am again with our translation project (yeah yeah I know it's not WoG-related, but knowledge of the WoG team members sure could help). We're almost done with the translation, but there are some details that could use some tweaks.

Well, I think this question should have a quick answer, either because it can't be done or because it is already done in some way in WoG.

Here, in Spain, Armageddon's Blade and Shadow of Death never came translated. Restoration of Erathia came, however, but the old and now re-edited H3 Complete comes in perfect English. But we do have the old RoE in spanish.

What we need: we want to use the original spanish audio for prologues/epilogues in RoE campaigns in H3 Complete, but those files are inside the SND file of the CD. Is there a way to "route" the game to files placed in other place for some videos? I mean, reading audio for AB/SoD campaigns from the CD as it is and the RoE's from another SND file en the install\data folder for example.

I actually found the TXT file that shows the "name" of the animations/dialogs in the campaign editor, but no clues of where the game obtain the info to where to find the SND file. I guess we can go on with English audio, as we will have to do with AB & SoD campaigns, but it would be better if we can change the RoE's.

Or maybe, just maybe, it can be done the HoMM5 way (I mean, placing in Data folder a SND file which contains the spanish files with updated timestamp, so the game takes automatically the newest version of the file, just as H5 mods work)?

Thanks in advance for your time and hope you can help us.

[Pol]

Quite easy, move the snd file from the cd to your game data directory. Edit it with, for example resedit - exchange the video/dialogue or whatever files and watch the result.

The file in the data directory will be always used, if present, primarily over any other. And it's actually h3 way.

[NeXaR]

So, as there is already an Heroes3.snd file in installdir\data (but with other files inside it, however), if I put those audio files inside it, it would work?

Amazing, a Thousand Thanks!!!

I will definitely suggest my team to credit this forum for the help!

[Pol]

Ok. So I'm assuming that you did it successfully.

Glad that helped

[NeXaR]

Well, indeed it is working. But for final patch "weight" purposes...

Do you know of any method to insert files on the fly in the snd file (like I can do with the LODEDT utility for files inside the LODs)?

Or a way to enable H3 to read files from a snd file appart from the defaults?

[Pol]

That's a good question. In WoG here is such way, you can do a small patch and then run it in installer - however for classic homm3 you will need to do it in some other manner even that I think that here is sure possibility to cusomizing wog installer for your need. Unfortunately this will rely on someone with bigger knowledge than me.

[NeXaR]

OK, thanks anyway.

[NeXaR]

Well, one more question: I tried to do the same thing with game Intro video (this one does not read the video and audio separately) and this method either doesn't work or I'm missing something. I have inserted the H3INTRO SMK & BIK files (EDIT: error, i had only inserted the SMK one) in the VIDEO.VID file in data folder, but H3 still read the file within the VID in the CD. Is any other file required to pack with H3INTRO in the same VID file in order to make it work?

[Pol]

These files have different names.

On the cd it's called Heroes3.vid and on your disk it will be VIDEO.VID. So just moving content of one to another will not work.

But it should works if you will extract the required files from Heroes3.vid and put them freely into the game data folder.

[NeXaR]

I made it work inserting BOTH files (.bik & .smk) into the VIDEO.VID file. It seems that the game does not care about what file are them inside of. The only problem was that, BIK and SMK files are needed, not only SMK. Thanks for your help, Pol.

One last thought:
You think that if we achieve good result with the project, is any possibility to have UBI check it out and maybe earn the Seal of Approval like the H5 Fan Manual? And even having UBI's FTP hosting the patch?

PD: I guess no, but hope is last thing lost

[Pol]

I made it work inserting BOTH files

Even better, quite nice that it working, I didn't know it.

PD: I guess no, but hope is last thing lost

Chance is here, that can be said.