Echo's MM8 Monstrosity Modling v1.0

[GrayFace]

Yes, if there are 50 palettes (the limit in the game), one would be messed up in hardware mode.
[edit] Note that the limitation is removed in MMExt.

[galneon]

I don't think future users of this mod should have to suffer the monotony of manual editing just because I had to, so I've uploaded the fixed skill/HP/SP tables, in accordance with the tables in the OP. Place these in \Data\Tables:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5id4uw9j0 ... Skills.txt
http://www.mediafire.com/file/2dg301aa6 ... _HP_SP.txt

[Echo]

Hey, well done, my apologies for losing them somehow somewhere in the first place :<

I linked this post in the opening edit so it will not go unnoticed.

[Echo]

Okay so inspired by the wonderful work of the fella who merges all three games, I found a few minutes to dig through my modling files and I think I've managed to find or extract all of the changed files to make them easy to access separately. Maybe in the future I'll have time to play around this some more or maybe someone else would like to use just parts of this modling in their game.

Either way, feel free to download these files and use them however you wish. The textures are a bigger resolution than in regular game so they look nicer, but I think you need that hardware acceleration thingie on.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QyMp2 ... BpfGESMZuA

I did not include the file that changes the areas. These are only the assets, the quest, and text files that you can put into your own EnglishT.lod, icons.lod, and bitmaps.lod files as you see fit Pick and choose and all that.

If you want the full package, well, get the full package from the first post

Cheers.

[Meldragora]

Hello Echo and Echo's fans! I just wanted to share the way that I personally was able to get this to work with the choose party mod for MM8, since it required me to install everything in a particular order. On top of the clean install, I first installed Grayface's Patch, then dgvoodoo2 (personal preference because I like using my entire monitor, get it if you want it), the Choose Party mod, then Echos MM8MM, and if you want the rebalanced classes download the modling in parts and copy the text files in it to your Data/Tables folder. Hopefully this helps if anyone else wants to use these together. Note that it will cause starting as a dragon to only be able to pick dragon ability for skills, so I just removed the start as a dragon.lua file (whatever it's called) from Scripts/General. All of these files can be found fairly easily in this forum is you search for them. Happy Modding!

[Belcanzor]

How difficult is add your mods (all of them) to the merge 678?
They're great!

[Echo]

Hey, glad you like the mods

But I have absolutely no idea how they could be added to the merge :< You'd have to ask the Merge wizards, I fear.

[lightbringer23]

I have simply dropped replaced the Merge's map files with Echo's and it worked. The only bug was that the volcanic looking grey soil in Shadowspire looked like normal healthy brown earth. If you can overlook that one visual oddity, then everything else was fantastic.

I will add though, that, of the various dungeon files, only Escaton's Palace and the Naga Vault had changes made to them. (That said, HOLY COW was Escaton's Palace a challenge! I got to discover that Spirit Lash is the new Ring of Fire)

[DaveHer]

I have simply dropped replaced the Merge's map files with Echo's and it worked. The only bug was that the volcanic looking grey soil in Shadowspire looked like normal healthy brown earth. If you can overlook that one visual oddity, then everything else was fantastic.

I will add though, that, of the various dungeon files, only Escaton's Palace and the Naga Vault had changes made to them. (That said, HOLY COW was Escaton's Palace a challenge! I got to discover that Spirit Lash is the new Ring of Fire)

I while back, I made echo's Monstrosity compatible with the merge and upload the mod to the nexus and yes there was the same problem with Shadowspire. So I made a patch to correct that and other bugs. Up loaded the patch to the nexus.
David

[schubi]

Given I'm at that point now, what could cause the game to crash when entering a new area? Stuck at the moment since whenever I try to go into the planes of earth, the loading screen is stuck on like 75%, and game crashes then. I like me some challenges, but that's above my standards.

[Phantogram]

Same here, played for two weeks, really love the mod, managed to get to level 140 and decided to finally go to plane of earth. Crashes at loading

Log; https://pastebin.com/eVH2KHRk

[Eksekk]

I have another issue, how do you deal with overpowered cyclops? A group of 5-6 cyclops kills my 24 lvl party in literally several seconds. I can always run around them and call meteors, or just armageddon the entire map, but these tactics feel cheap and won't be applicable for Cyclops Larder. I suppose I could use Day of Protection, but it's so expensive... :c

[Phantogram]

I have another issue, how do you deal with overpowered cyclops? A group of 5-6 cyclops kills my 24 lvl party in literally several seconds. I can always run around them and call meteors, or just armageddon the entire map, but these tactics feel cheap and won't be applicable for Cyclops Larder. I suppose I could use Day of Protection, but it's so expensive... :c

You need to get stronger, that's about it. Had this problem too, decided to level up as much as possible and now (with buff/protection spells) I can take them on without any of my characters taking major damage.

Same here, played for two weeks, really love the mod, managed to get to level 140 and decided to finally go to plane of earth. Crashes at loading

Log; https://pastebin.com/eVH2KHRk

Found a temporary fix - replaced .lod files from original GOG, cleared out the plane of earth and then restored the modified .lod files. Could not get heart of earth any other way.

[Echo]

Yikes. I put in the modling files (converted ones from the Nexus) into my merge install and quite some oofs

First, Shadowspire was blue xD All the ground textures got mad, the palette was defective. Maybe it's just for me and I did something wrong, idk, but whatever the case, I fixed that (will upload the updated bitmaps file once I'm done checking it for other issues and cleaning up the palettes).

The bigger issue is that it seems whatever changes between MM8 and Merge causes some textures to draw from a different file. I don't know if it's just me here, but Ironsand has islands with forest dirt (edges are bright though which makes them look extra shit). And the Plane of Fire is... a bright cheery desert, lol. This might be a bigger problem since it's probably somewhere in the files that I have edited with the GrayFace magical software ages ago.

Basically: be warned, the modling seems to work okay-ish if you use the Nexus version (thanks for converting it in my absence!), but some visual stuff is jank as heck, lol. I don't know if I can fix the plane of fire and Ironsand. And gods know what else is borked, lol, Ravenshore/Alvar/Shadowspire are alright after I de-blued it, but harumpf. No idea what to do about these yet.




And as for the above problem with Cyclops - ye, gotta go get stronger elsewhere. I made this modification to increase the game's difficulty and encourage slower, more thorough gameplay Probably can't bum rush it like you can in vanilla

[cthscr]

First, Shadowspire was blue xD All the ground textures got mad, the palette was defective.

Ugh, Rodril reordered palettes in the wrong order back in times - from MM6 to MM8, therefore all the bitmaps have another palette id (that's why all *unchanged* MM8 bitmaps are copied into mmmerge.bitmaps.lod as well). I hope one day they [MM8 palettes] will be reverted back. Will require to rearrange all palettes in SFT.txt though so will need some work and is bug-provoking.

The bigger issue is that it seems whatever changes between MM8 and Merge causes some textures to draw from a different file.

*.bitmaps.lod has priority over bitmaps.lod - see GrayFace's "Custom lods" text.
Default MM8 lods are left untouched (and sometimes non-used, like with bitmaps.lod) now, to prevent breaking things with GrayFace's patch lods.

[Echo]

The bigger issue is that it seems whatever changes between MM8 and Merge causes some textures to draw from a different file.

*.bitmaps.lod has priority over bitmaps.lod - see GrayFace's "Custom lods" text.
Default MM8 lods are left untouched (and sometimes non-used, like with bitmaps.lod) now, to prevent breaking things with GrayFace's patch lods.

The second issue isn't about palettes though, the textures load correctly just they're not the right texture for the area. Fire lakes in Plane of Fire are desert sands for instance I can deal with palette mess (almost done reorganizing the mm8.bitmaps to be like it used to be in my modling with some forgotten textures I found in my files included) but that won't help with my modified area files - that's where the texture jumble must sit and it's likely I won't be able to fix it. I don't believe I ever purposefully attempted to change which textures load where when I was editing the areas, I just added crap to them to create gameplay chaos All visual stuff I'd only done in bitmaps.lod and icons.lod. Might've broken a sprite or two in sprites.lod during failed experiments, but that was it.

[Echo]

Druid Circlet quest adjusted for the Merge: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1swjT0h ... sp=sharing
(visit Poundlin Deerhunter in Ravenshore)

Bitmaps adjusted for the Merge: https://drive.google.com/file/d/18iCZvm ... ezIh-/view

They're definitely not perfect, some textures are a bit wild, but if you're looking for some refreshment and upscaled ground textures, feel free to get it and feel refreshed



Depicting the issue with textures, Shadowspire is also scuffed:
without Modling's Games.lod:
with Modling's Games.lod:

Additionally quick look shows me some of the "traveling peasants" are actually hostile in cities. They chill out after resting though so it's not a huge issue. The textures though, kinda bad lmao.

Oh well, maybe one day I'll redo it and actually find a way to place chests instead of dropping items on the ground. I don't think it's worth salvaging these files, tbh, they were so very random and experimental I'm glad some folks enjoyed playing with them though! Worthwhile effort just for that And since it inspired a MM7 addition, I'll have fun with that instead

[lightbringer23]

Using the DLL from the latest (2.5.7) Grayface MM8 patch solves all these crashes. Below preserved for the record.

-----------------------------------------------

Hi Echo. Just thought I'd drop you a line about the Modling and the current Merge build.

I'm experiencing consistent CTDs when trying to enter Ravage Roaming (had one with Ravenshore, too, but it resolved mysteriously). I don't have a CTD when I restore the mm8.games.lod from the Merge main package. I also tried using the "original" games.lod (renamed to mm8.games.lod) from your Modling -- a known good that I used with an older Merge build to complete the whole Merge game. Also CTD.

I'm checking with the Merge team to see what might have changed in the Merge since 06/2021 to cause this, but for now it appears the Modling isn't compatible with the current Merge

UPDATE: ErrorLog.txt reports MM8Patch.dll is causing the crash. Looks like it's not the Merge per se, but the latest MM8 patch 2.5.6 that is included in the Merge. I'll head over to Greyface's thread and ping him.

UPDATE update: The latest merge was including an older patch dll, so Grayface's fix to this issue wasn't occurring. I think he has a new patch version coming out that will fix it for good, so we should be all squared away soon.

[lightbringer23]

Ignore the below solution, just make sure you're using the 2.5.7 Grayface MM8 patch dll. It solves the crashes without ini edits.
--------------------------------------------------------

If anyone is experiencing crashes on loading maps in the Modling, check your version of MM8patch.dll. R-click, properties, details tab.

If it isn't at least 2.5.6, acquire the dll from Grayface's latest MM8 patch without installing it to your merge directory (install it to a dummy directory). Replace your MM8patch.dll with the latest version.

Then you can follow the instructions from the Merge install page.
Add the following line to MM8.ini under Settings:
DisableHooks=44D96C,44DD9A,4541C9,47DA26,47DAA8,497A69

This is just a temporary workaround, and disables one of Grayface's neat features -- if you don't grab an artifact before its zone reloads, it isn't lost forever. Once you load into the crashing map and save, consider "commenting out" the Disable Hooks line by adding a semicolon to the front. That way you only use it when necessary.

[Echo]

Eek, errors!

Well, as usual I drop by here randomly every few months just to see what the community's cooking up. Sorry the Modling's delivering a headache again. Last I touched it I remade it entirely as the Merge Convergence thing and since that remake also includes dungeons and decorations, I think of it as just Modling 2.0 (with better textures too). Only that monster hostility in MM7 part issue pooped on my party there, but maybe one day I'll have time to dig in and fix it

Everything else is just improved from this one so for anyone interested in just playing the MM8 portion with my difficulty changes I'd recommend using the other files (links to both in my signature).

Though I know you lightbringer23 in particular know of the other project and if you simply prefer the old Modling all power to you Just throught I'd mention it here in case someone new was snooping around.