HoMM III RoE/AB/SoD/Complete Intro

[ThunderTitan]

On ur HDD, in the Data folder. Hmm... I might test it myself.

[berntie]

I have investigated the issue little further. What I found out is:

- There are really .vid files in the data subdir of the heroes directory after you install complete.
- There is also a .vid file in heroes3/data on the game CD (CD 2 of the 3DO Complete Edition). I don't know why I missed that when I first searched for the intro. Shame on me.
- I managed to extract the .smk and .bik files from the .vid files with a program called VIDMan by a guy called Miguel Angel Horna.
- I managed to play the .smk files with The RAD video tools. None of them was the AB intro.
- I failed to play the .bik files, though.

The pages of Miguel Horna seem to contain a lot of technical information on Heroes. Unfortunately, my Spanish is a little rusty and I couldn't find an English version. Maybe someone could tell us what he says?

Anyway, if somebody could have a look at the .bik files, then it would be pretty sure that there's no AB intro with Complete.

[ThunderTitan]

Hmmm, if that's actually the intro movie of AB maybe you could rename it as intro of Roe, so it could play when you start H3 Complete. Just a thought

Didn't work. The game just crashed imediatly.

[Kareeah Indaga]

Hmmm, if that's actually the intro movie of AB maybe you could rename it as intro of Roe, so it could play when you start H3 Complete. Just a thought

Didn't work. The game just crashed imediatly.

I tried it and just got a bunch of error messages, then the RoE intro played.

But there is something of a half-solution available. I found out some time ago that Archangel Castle has screen captures of the AB intro. The pictures are small and it isn’t quite the same as the real thing (no sound or moving pictures), but it’s better than nothing.

[Pol]

Did anyone tried classical resedit?

That's heroes II-IV lod manager.

How big is AB video (Alas whatabout to consider uploading it somewhere for us owneres of Complete?)

.bik files cannot be played because library which provides such function for the game is ancient and furthermore is beta version. For others Bink tools (alias RAD tools, SmackPlayer) will do it.

[Ya5MieL]

h3ab_ahd.vid does not contain intro movie.
It simply contains 7 short campaign .bik "movies" which can easily be identified by their name:

C1AB7.bik (AB-armageddons blade)
C1DB2.bik (DB-dragon blood)
C1DS1.bik (DS-dragon slayer)
C1FL3.bik (FL-festival of life)
C1FW.bik (FW-fire witch)
C1PF2.bik (PW-forgot the name of that last campaign with christian but thats it)

[Ya5MieL]

OK, ive done more research and now im 100% sure that ab intro movie ISNT on the H3 complete cd-s

However, i managed to extract original intro movie, and its size (when unpacked) is humongous 340MB! (this means even if someone puts AB movie online it will be huge), unless its compressed, coded...

If i manage to find my old armagedon's blade CD (which i doubt since i havent seen it for a while), im pretty sure i could extract the AB intro file, too

Just one more interesting thing,.. when all movie files in h3complete are decompressed they take more than 13 GB of space LOL

[Pol]

I think, that too much space. I will look at them when I get home however.

* Of course if you didn't convert all smk+bik to avi ;)
* No AB intro movie is not in Complete.
* But it's here its frame :D
* Thanks for you effort ;)

[Ya5MieL]

Ye, lol i know that they are actualy much smaller if converted to any other format but it was funny since i extracted every single file without knowing how big they are gona get, until i got the warning (low space on HDD
Im gona convert this to divx or sumthing just to get the picture of how big would Ab one be (even tho i think its shorter and thus smaller

[ThunderTitan]

Well you culd always leave it in it's original form, and we can just use the game to play it.

[Pol]

Well you culd always leave it in it's original form, and we can just use the game to play it.

Agreed!

[Ya5MieL]

Actualy,.. cant leave it unchanged...

Unchanged, its just a part of one greater file (around 300 megs again) that has every single movie, and single movie cant be separated from others in that form, so you are still stuck with 300 meg file, out of which 290 you dont need),..

Ill take a look at that issue over the weekend when i get home (where my cd-s are). If i find the AB cd, ill put the AB movie online (after checking am i allowed to do that

[Pol]

No, no, no. When you will use resedit (seek for link in one of my previous post) you may just get out the exact one video file. So desired bik or smk movie.

[Ya5MieL]

Yes, but if you want to play it ingame, it needs to be put back in the file...
and it cant be put back in unless its in its pure 340MB form
Not to mention that that file is on the cd so puting it back may be a problem )
So unless you are making a modified version of heroes3 cd, i dont think theres a way to play the file ingame.

Of course, i only started doing this today so i may overlooked something here and there

Anyway, im trying the diferent codecs to make the file smaller , so far ive managed to resize the original heroes movie to 80MB without losing quality. (which means AB one would be like 50 since its smaller if memory serves)
Im going to try few more codecs.

And i DO have nuf server space, as long as you ppl have good enuf connection to download that in reasonable time )

[Pol]

Not exactly the video file can be moved from cd to game data folder and it will be used. (That's recommended method for WoG btw)

The resedit can not only get files out but also put them in. It's LOD file manager so no problem.

smk and bik are pretty good. DivX however can be better.

Hmm, well ...with resedit anyone can put the video file back - just it's enough to put the video file somewhere exactly as you extracted it.

Yes, I have good connection.... - at least, I'm happy with it, it's not so much in fact. Just cable ls.

[Ya5MieL]

thats exactly what i was saying

If i put the file online exactly the same as i extracted it (so the lod managers can put them back to file, its over 300 mb

ye, its 300MB . smk file (uncompressed avi of it is 1,5 gigs, compressed makes 80MB), and it is a single file (not all movies)

But if it turns out that i cant find the cd, then all of this is pointless anyway lol ..

[Pol]

Uh, so big? No wonder that they won't packed it to Complete version.

I thought, that here is not even need to use lod manager to put the file in. Once extracted it can be put into data folder and, if with proper name, will be recognized and automatically used by game. (That's feature is especially cool for testing new portraits, and crt files...)

Eh, luck with finding it

[Khaelo]

The AB intro movie is on the AB CD in "Heroes3/DATA/Heroes3.vid". It's called "H3X1intr" and is provided in both .smk and .bik formats. I extracted the .smk version from the CD using MM7View. (Yes, yes, wrong game...but MM7View lets you play movies before extracting them which ResEdit does not -- that makes it much easier to check all the files ). The regular intro is on the AB CD as well.

The Windows folder-view says that H3Intro is 65,603 KB and that H3X1inter is 30,511 KB. They're still in Smacker Video format. I converted the AB intro into an .avi, and it transformed into a 1,000,000+ KB monster which threatened to eat my hard drive and wouldn't even play very well! Even at 30 MB, it's a bit heavy for easy transport. How would I go about compressing it? I have RAD Video Tools, if that helps.

Of course, what I'd really like to know is how Roland manages to go sprinting about in the woods wearing full plate mail.

[Kareeah Indaga]

Of course, what I'd really like to know is how Roland manages to go sprinting about in the woods wearing full plate mail.

Magic.

Or perhaps the spirit of vengeance has given him plate mail related superpowers. Whichever you prefer.

[ThunderTitan]

Of course, what I'd really like to know is how Roland manages to go sprinting about in the woods wearing full plate mail.

Mithril of course. Light as leather, strong as Adamant.