Using WOG to turn Homm3 into an RPG - Anyone interested?

[Vidocq666]

Just posting to say I'm looking forward to this, seems like a fun concept.

[Arkas]

Last night I worked on a scaling system for pre-determined or special battles, and aside from some balance testing, it's working as intended now. This means that the game has ONLY ONE linear aspect, and that is the main plot line, which at this point does not hold the player back from exploring and doing whatever they want.

With random quests, random battles, random caves and dungeons, and the addition of plenty of scripted side-quests, the game is fairly wide open. I plan on further branching the main story to allow for even more paths to completion, and that should do it for removing the last bit of linear-ness from the game.

You'll still need to play through the first few Main quests to open up the rest of the map, but that should not be too much, and you'll probably want to explore that area anyway.

[Arkas]

I was going to get some more screenshots up, but here are some showing the first part of character creation:

At this point, choosing a class only affects the cost of adding points to the Hero's primary stats, and the cost of spells. I may or may not get more detailed in the differences. I'd like to re-do the secondary skills that don't fit in with the RPG aspect and possibly make those purchasable as well, but who knows at this point, I've got many other things that need to be worked on first.



Gender plays a minimal role, at this point it won't help or hinder your advancement, you won't miss out on any quests, etc... But, there may be a few quests here and there that differentiate.


Are you Evil? The story plays out differently depending on how Evil you really are. Alignment points can be adjusted though, even during character creation.


This is one of 4 questions chosen randomly out of 10 right now, The answers will adjust your Alignment incase you don't want to be completely Evil, etc... The answers can adjust you from Good/Evil to Neutral, or Vice Versa, but don't adjust enough to go from one extreme to the other. I plan on adding another 2 answers to each question, and will try to shoot for 20 total for some variety.


It's the basics of Advanced leveling, I'd like to completely remove the existing leveling, but it causes a bunch more problems with commanders and heroes and so for now, You level as normal, but also get to pick a few extras:


I gotta take off, I wanted to get the rest of character creation shots up here, some more up-to-date interiors, and definitely the newer Henchman info dialog boxes, but I spent the last hour fighting with imageshack wanting to crash on me a few dozen times as I'm trying to upload, so I managed to get 5 out of 9 shots up.

[Kryp2nite]

I realize that this post is probably dead since it's been over a year, but I think it's a fascinating project.

I'm curious though as to why you chose to replace the def files when scripts could potentially achieve the same affect.

ZVSE
!#OB2/31/0:T12;
!#OB2/31/0:S;

!#OB2/31/0:T12;
Changes the function of the object/creature into something else in this case to a campfire, I chose a campfire because it was the first object I could think of which did not involve the hero moving into it.

!#OB2/31/0:S;
This disables the function of the object.

Any code can follow this so that the object should be able to be given a completely new function.

Also, the hint text and such must be changed as well in order to reflect it's new purpose.

In order for this to work properly I believe that the creature must be set to savage and that it never flees.

Not exactly portable I know but neither is editing def files.

Lastly, I hope that this project isn't dead!

[Arkas]

@kryp2nite -

I used OB extensively in my scripts, so I know how it works, thats what I used to allow the player to enter a building and be teleported into the underground.

The problem with it is that it only allowed you to change the graphic into other objects. Monsters are NOT treated as objects, so I could not change a windmill into a Medusa and use OB to start a conversation.

What I could do though, is treat a monster like an object and start a conversation, and I did do that with the Henchmen. What happens in that case, is that the game still treated it as a battle and when the conversation was over, the monster dissappeared. That worked for a couple of the henchmen because they joined you automatically after the conversation. It did not work for NPCs because they required multiple visits in most cases.

So, the only solution was to have objects that the game treated as objects, but looked like monsters (well mostly humanoids). The only way to accomplish that was to change the defs.

And you're right about it being dead. I put a ton of work into it and while it didn't look pretty, it was packed full of awsomeness, but two things happened, I'm on a new PC, and H3 doesn't run on it, and aside from some tech support from the WOG team, I did it all on my own and got what I wanted out of it. I'm not about to start all over by myself almost 3 years later, even if H3 did work on my new box.

[Salamandre]

What about visiting other forums where newer tools are released every month? Atm it is possible to replace anything without changing the defs, just change its properties in special tools. Changing the appearance of the object by script is required only in game now, not in editor.

[Pol]

Actually all ways are leading back to the "Rome"

Thanks to ByteBandit

[Arkas]

Other ways to do what I've already done are kind of irrelevant, I used the only method that was available at the time. I was simply arguing that OB didn't work that way 2 years ago.

Besides, I still wouldn't start over now regardless of how many nifty tools are available if I still had to do it all by myself, it was a lot of work. Especially since learning how to use those tools would probably take me just as long as doing it the way I already know how...