HOMM3 Complete bugs

[bot]

I encountered 2 main bugs while playing XL maps in HOMM3 complete, especially when the map is full of adventure objects, including heroes.
1. Already visited keymaster's tent. This bug modifies the entire scenario, of course.I can pass through the gate, even I haven't visited the tent and AI can also pass.
2. Not all the objects on the map are loaded, including heroes. If there is a quest gate and if you are supposed to get an artifact or to defeat a hero that it doesn't exist on the map you'll get a fatal error.
The question is if anybody else encountered the same problems, or I have a wrong version of the game.

[Yurian Stonebow]

XL maps in Heroes III are known to* cause some problems when some of these (or all of them) conditions are met:

-all eight Players enabled
-lots of Events used on the adventure map
-different special win/loss options enabled simultaneously
-numerous Quests with complex requirements to complete them
-underground also enabled with complex settings of Quests etc
-"pre-scripted" Heroes and Events interact poorly with one another
-the map in question has been subject to numerous updates with many
changes to the Events, Quests and other similar map making trickery

As I recall, we have discussed some of these problems and perhaps related stuff as well in a thread called "H 3 game notes - not so known facts". I sincerally hope that my "findings" helped you out in some way.



Yurian







* What I say here is based purely on my own observations about the game. It is quite possible that others will disagree with me.

[Muszka]

I encountered 2 main bugs while playing XL maps in HOMM3 complete, especially when the map is full of adventure objects, including heroes.
1. Already visited keymaster's tent. This bug modifies the entire scenario, of course.I can pass through the gate, even I haven't visited the tent and AI can also pass.
2. Not all the objects on the map are loaded, including heroes. If there is a quest gate and if you are supposed to get an artifact or to defeat a hero that it doesn't exist on the map you'll get a fatal error.
The question is if anybody else encountered the same problems, or I have a wrong version of the game.

Neither of these happened to me, ever. But, hey! A PC program is full of surprises

[Corbon]

1. Already visited keymaster's tent. This bug modifies the entire scenario, of course.I can pass through the gate, even I haven't visited the tent and AI can also pass.

The map Knee Deep in the Dead is such a candidate. There's only one green tent, and it's on "your" side, yet the AI my pass through the green post in the NE corner sometimes. This happens somewhat infrequently, but tends to occur more often on higher difficulties. Key to Victory is another map with that oddity.

[Yurian Stonebow]

"The map Knee Deep in the Dead is such a candidate. There's only one green tent, and it's on "your" side, yet the AI my pass through the green post in the NE corner sometimes. This happens somewhat infrequently, but tends to occur more often on higher difficulties."

In this official NWC made scenario the main CPU opponent, called the "Necrolord" starts with a Necropolis that features an already built mage guild of the highest level (5) where he can gain access to the spell "Fly". Out of the total 9 level 5 spells 4 have been disabled or simply can't appear in the Necro mage guilds due to faction related spells and abilities, the AI thus has 1 out of 5 chance to get the spell "Fly" and pass over the mountains to reach the Green tent situated on "the player's side".

Remember, that when playing with higher levels of difficulty, or should I say the highest two levels of difficulty selected, the AI has less limitations and more resources and troops at "his" disposal right from the start of the scenario and thus it is more likely to gain the needed experience to gain enough levels to get Expert Wisdom resulting in "him" Flying around the map.

"Key to Victory is another map with that oddity."

Did you notice that there are a number of Random artefacts lying around the map, both on surface and the underground levels of the map? Tome of Air Magic has not been disabled by the map editor and could very well be available when the scenario is started and the Random artefacts are, well, randomly selected.


With solidarity,


Yurian

[bot]

Actually, I was talking about the map Vengeance Is Mine, the white key master's tent was already visited, and also, The Stormbringers if I remember correctly, the black one this time. Podarok with the red one. In one map, named The Empire of the World(don't remember which one, because were 2 maps) I was supposed to defeat a pink hero, at a certain position on the map, but when I got there I noticed that hero was missing... In all cases the solution was only one: restarting the scenario, because those odd things happen randomly.By the way, Vengeance is Mine was a great map, like Unleashing the Bloodthirsty, pity I wasn't able to finish them....

[Corbon]

In this official NWC made scenario the main CPU opponent, called the "Necrolord" starts with a Necropolis that features an already built mage guild of the highest level (5) where he can gain access to the spell "Fly". Out of the total 9 level 5 spells 4 have been disabled or simply can't appear in the Necro mage guilds due to faction related spells and abilities, the AI thus has 1 out of 5 chance to get the spell "Fly" and pass over the mountains to reach the Green tent situated on "the player's side".
Yurian.

Wait, the CPU has the Fly spell, visits the green tent, then flies back and opens the gate from "his" site?

[Muszka]

Wait, the CPU has the Fly spell, visits the green tent, then flies back and opens the gate from "his" site?

It easily can... CPU acts sometimes ilogical - think of H2 where he occupied the same map 2-3 times a day. The situation got better, but never perfect. I mean that the AI sometimes doesn't uses his flying abilities when he could.

[Yurian Stonebow]

@Corbon

Yep. It sure can do that. Like Muszka said, the AI is a fascinating player but in terms of complex logical decision it makes. I have seen "him" flying past those mountains killing the wandering units around the Green tent and happily Flying back to its starting area. Mysterious are the ways of the AI...



Yurian

[bot]

I have to remind you which are the bugs I've noticed, bugs that have nothing to do with spels like fly or dimension door. And now, after more documentation I can tell where I found the bugs with the tents.
1. Vengeance is Mine. From the beginning of the game I have 2 heroes. One is supposed to visit the brown keymaster's tent, the other have to wait until the other has visited the tent, to get an artifact behind the border gate. But when I went to brown border gate the gate opened, even I HAVEN'T visited the tent yet. When I visited the tent for the FIRST time, I got the message Begone.... The same thing happened in Ringing of Victory with Red keymaster's tent and also in the map named The Dream Reaper, that time was the Black keymaster's tent in cause.
2. About the missing hero: I played that map until I found a quest gate. Whenever I visited that gate I got a fatal error, closing the program. then I checked with the map editor what was the quest. It wasn't mapmaker's fault. He placed that hero on the map. The error was because in my game that hero wasn't loaded. When I restarted the game the hero appeared. Because i must tell you these oddities appear randomly. When I restart the game maybe I won't encounter them. For the tents bug too.

[Pol]

To be honest, no one of these bugs ever happened to me. Are we talking about H3C from 3DO, not any refurbished release?

And when we are, everything other on your computer is running fine? These sounds pretty much like memory errors, see the randomness. And memory errors can be cause by corrupted game installation, by faulty ram or by faulty ram controller ( a special case for AMD processors).

Try to check it, one by one...

[Muszka]

faulty ram controller ( a special case for AMD processors).

hehe.. I'm anti-AMD.

[bot]

You might but right, but I must tell you there were 2 different computers on which I installed the game. First I had an AMD Barton 2500+ with 512 RAM, which now it doesn't work so good, maybe it is about RAM memory, broken who knows, because I suspected this but I didn't check enough as long as I changed the PC and second time you might be right, because the new computer is an Intel Dual Core with attention 2 GB RAM, but when I installed the game only 2MB of memory were recognized. It said the system didn't pass the test. And with this new computer I also have some trouble because of the PCI Expres video card I believe. Thank you anyway, I will check the RAM memory for the old computer. For its age it still does a good job.

[pifou42]

Just got this keymaster issue, but it doesn't seem related to map size.
Looks like returning to main menu just doesn't clear the visited keymasters flags.

Added some keymaster tents to my usual (small) test map, and did this :
Start a game on my map, visit some tents, quit to menu, start a game on another map.
=> The tents I just did visit were indeed "visited", from day1. (nwcwhatisthematrix helps here : )

I did several tests. Loading a game does clear the flags, and only gives you the ones from the savegame, but if you started a game with the bug and saved, you also saved the buggy "visited" tents flags, and schmuck'd up you save
I don't remember if winning (/losing) the game instead of quitting to menu did behave differently, but I doubt it.
Would be easy to test, but I'll just remember to quit/relaunch the game before starting a new map now. Not just quitting to menu.

--
Btw, is there an up-to-date known issues list ?
I know I'm Lord-Haarting a 15 years post, but this is where Google brought me... so feel free to link the right "known issues" place here if it exist, since I didn't find it. (I only found HotA bugs page on thelazy.net)
And yeah, I also took a detour by the "not so known facts" Yurian mentions (https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/7/7723), but didn't see anything about keymasters out there