Might and Magic 6, 7, 8 merge based on mm8 engine. [upd. 05.11.2023]

[StormyG7]

I've been away for a bit, but I'm curious about getting MM 678 running again, but with my own modifications.

A few things before I even install the mod,

1. Is there a changelog or git-hub or page that details all the things MM Merge does and what each update did?

2. Following up on changes, last I played, the merge didn't finish adapting all the armor and characters from MM6 and MM7, how's that going?

3. In the past I made a crude script to import/export characters to bypass the limit. Is there still a hard limit on party members? How does that work?

4. Is there a good source of information and user contributions, mods, and add-ons? I vaguely recall a genie and some other character options being made as add-ons. Is there more stuff like that out there? Where can I find it?

5. After a few years of Software Engineering schoolwork, a few GIMP photo-editing projects for games, I may be interested in maybe contributing to the Merge with some modifications of my own. Is there a tool-chain of sorts people use? I recall Greyface had some tools, and the ERA II launcher had some tools for the archived content.

[EstelRandir]

As far as I remember from original mm6 the vulcano was triggered by clicking on the buoy at the coast that is near to the vulcano. In mm7 8 you then had the boats and the canons to shoot on them.

You are correct! Haha, that worked. I do not think I ever tried that in all my runs through the games.

[cthscr]

1. Is there a changelog or git-hub or page that details all the things MM Merge does and what each update did?

https://gitlab.com/letr.rod/mmmerge - Base
https://gitlab.com/cthscr/mmmerge - Revamp
Note they are based on MMExtension repo now.

2. Following up on changes, last I played, the merge didn't finish adapting all the armor and characters from MM6 and MM7, how's that going?

IIRC, Hermes' Sandals is the only non-implemented graphics. And there are some issues with its implementation.

3. In the past I made a crude script to import/export characters to bypass the limit. Is there still a hard limit on party members? How does that work?

Which limit? Game has an array of 50 RPC if you mean that. Quasi-extending it is possible but will increase savegame size significantly.

5. After a few years of Software Engineering schoolwork, a few GIMP photo-editing projects for games, I may be interested in maybe contributing to the Merge with some modifications of my own. Is there a tool-chain of sorts people use? I recall Greyface had some tools, and the ERA II launcher had some tools for the archived content.

MMArchive and TxtEdit from https://grayface.github.io/mm/ for me. But I'm just coding.

[StormyG7]

Thanks for the info. Is there a repo, or list of mods for the merge somewhere?

Which limit? Game has an array of 50 RPC if you mean that. Quasi-extending it is possible but will increase savegame size significantly.

Yes, I think so. I made a character export tool I think using a Lua script that exported all the character and inventory data to a text file. It wasn't significantly large itself. So, with a game this old, I'm curious how significantly large a save file could get simply by raising the 50 RPC cap. I planned to go about and try to make a unique instance of every single character that can join the player's party in MM Merge. When I played MM8, I used to enjoy leveling them all to around level 100 or so, but MM8 is a bit small, compared to say MM6 with the large sprawling dungeons, and I once had a team I refused to quit at 12 years old in MM6 with characters over level 300, kinda wishing I could try out all the classes in the game and swap out party members. So this is kinda my thing.

Is there also a limit to how many party NPCs can be in a Tavern as well?

My plan is to create a mod to have new characters, and races to try and make as many of the NPC's as unique as possible. No duplicate faces. I vaguely recall seeing some try to add races/character faces and those paper doll type profiles. I might make something of my own, though I did edit some in the past, and it was extremely tedious to make all the character expressions, but might be worth a shot.

IIRC, Hermes' Sandals is the only non-implemented graphics. And there are some issues with its implementation.

Wonderful news. I may still make a mod because I recall in the past I always liked to visually edit the weapons suit my preferences with more practical and aesthetic shapes. I might also consider adding some Heroes of Might and Magic artifacts just for fun.


I like the look of your revamp mod. The promotions look

[cthscr]

Which limit? Game has an array of 50 RPC if you mean that. Quasi-extending it is possible but will increase savegame size significantly.

Yes, I think so. I made a character export tool I think using a Lua script that exported all the character and inventory data to a text file. It wasn't significantly large itself. So, with a game this old, I'm curious how significantly large a save file could get simply by raising the 50 RPC cap. I planned to go about and try to make a unique instance of every single character that can join the player's party in MM Merge. When I played MM8, I used to enjoy leveling them all to around level 100 or so, but MM8 is a bit small, compared to say MM6 with the large sprawling dungeons, and I once had a team I refused to quit at 12 years old in MM6 with characters over level 300, kinda wishing I could try out all the classes in the game and swap out party members. So this is kinda my thing.

Character (RPC) structure itself is 0x1D28 bytes, but beacons images are stored outside of it.

Is there also a limit to how many party NPCs can be in a Tavern as well?

There should be. And I suspect it to be 50 as well.

My plan is to create a mod to have new characters, and races to try and make as many of the NPC's as unique as possible. No duplicate faces. I vaguely recall seeing some try to add races/character faces and those paper doll type profiles. I might make something of my own, though I did edit some in the past, and it was extremely tedious to make all the character expressions, but might be worth a shot.

Have in mind that current (vanilla) code has a limit of 127 faces (signed short int) for RPCs. I'd like to have something like Rust Dragon for zombie though.

[StormyG7]

127 faces, I don't know how many there are, but I suspect that's plenty. I don't think there are that many NPCs available, or even close since the cap is 50.

Character (RPC) structure itself is 0x1D28 bytes, but beacons images are stored outside of it.

Is there also a limit to how many party NPCs can be in a Tavern as well?

There should be. And I suspect it to be 50 as well.

Ok, then more to the point on this one, since you've mentioned it's possible to bypass these 50 character caps, do you know how? I'd like to get started. Where should I begin making changes?

[jmaster]

Hello to everyone and happy holidays
Long ago I wanted to add light and dark interfaces from MM7 to Merge mod, but I haven't managed to get proper result. And I haven't seen any ready interfaces for now, so I decided to give another try. So, I would like to present to your attention a mod that adds light and dark interfaces!

All you need to do - unpack archive to your game folder. This will make active two additional states after MM6 interface in Controls -> Extra settings -> Interace settings
Limitations - can't get to work changing 4 icons to the left of the screen and NPC icon and can't do anything with that asymmetric 4 corner pictures around character picture. I've used original ones as sample, but their behavior is different of mine. This problem presents only if 1 or 2 characters are hired. If your party consists of 3 and more - no visual problems. If anyone can help with that, please help
And another one - I haven't changed buttons in inventory to make this mod language independent

Screenshots:





Download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YuESyZ ... sp=sharing

And another one, but, I guess, that only the author of the patch can help me. (GrayFace, if you see this, can you help?)
I want to get UI look like more like the one in patched MM7 version without characters background and that corners just like this. I managed to get this screenshot by manually erasing background around characters in "basebar.bmp"(you can see small doubling around first character, I think that it is because that picture loads with shift somewhere in code), but it deals not only with in-game screen, but with inventory too.
So, to do this the only thing to do is to disable drawing "basebar.bmp" at all in the game and not in the inventory


Thanks to GrayFace, Rodril and all the authors of modifications for the game who made it possible to make my mod

[StormyG7]

Very nice, I appreciate that. My favorite interface was MM6. Somehow 6 seemed to have the best detail in the GUI of all the 3 games.