GrayFace MM6 Patch v2.5.7 [Mar 4, 2022]

[Rune_Caster]

Holy Hera!

You can do it with just one enemy the Percival bow have a nice nifty nasty bug... bang bada boom! I have to test it with a "of Carnage" bow...

hm I can't get the bug to happen with a normal bow with "of Carnage" so it must be the combnation of "of Carnage" and "of Swiftness" that causes the bug... (edit) it seems that the spell "Haste" has to also be in effect for the bug to happen...

[Macros the Black]

Holy Hera!

You can do it with just one enemy the Percival bow have a nice nifty nasty bug... bang bada boom! I have to test it with a "of Carnage" bow...

hm I can't get the bug to happen with a normal bow with "of Carnage" so it must be the combnation of "of Carnage" and "of Swiftness" that causes the bug... (edit) it seems that the spell "Haste" has to also be in effect for the bug to happen...

The same thing happens if you have a party of all archers or just a solo archer and you get your recovery speed down low enough. The enemy's "ouch, I got hit" animation lasts longer than it takes for your character to recover. While the enemies are going through their animations, the game doesn't switch to the next party member, so if your recovery speed is fast enough you can keep firing. I think grayface lowered the recovery cap of bows to have them be able to compete with blasters, which is why this is happening with bows now.

I posted a long time ago that in the late game an all archer party in MM7 is the strongest possible combination because of this - bows do more damage than blasters and you shoot 2 arrows instead of one energy blast.. At the same speed as blasters. It's super powerful, but also really really lategame so it shouldn't matter in a normal playthrough. So it seems more like a novelty to me, although it's pretty abusable in a solo playthrough more than anything. I first noticed it when I did a solo Ranger playthrough (which, btw, Rangers are great for solo playthrough in MM7. It's almost like they were designed for it).


I'm guessing what happens with Percival is that the fireball effect causes multiple enemies to go through the getting hit animation, thus allowing this to happen when even just one of your party members is fast enough with a bow. That does seem like it needs to be fixed somehow, as you'd be able to do it pretty early in the game.

[thrakk]

Grayface, do you still have that To Do List for this patch? Do you think you might work on it?

[Macros the Black]

It seems that the area of effect radius of Death Blossom is either wrong, or they decided to change it after printing the manual. From the manual, these are some distances of varius spells:

Ring of Fire: 5 feet (10 at expert or master)
Fireball: 10 feet
Meteor Shower: 10 feet
Rockblast: 20 feet
Starburst: 20 feet
Death Blossom: 40 / 60 / 80 feet!! (depending on rank)

So in other words, Death Blossom is supposed to have a radius of at least 4 times that of Meteor Shower and twice that of Starburst... And even doubles that at master rank... And yet it seems it hardly hits anything even when I aim it so it hits exactly in between the enemies - regardless of whether that's on top of them or on the ground between them.

And I've gotten pretty good at aiming it in my attempts to figure out what's wrong with the spell. The protrusions on the UI surrounding the minimap can be used to determine where the projectile will land if the target area is on the same elevation as you are.

It may be that they nerfed the spell into the ground in between the manual being printed and the game being released to make Meteor Shower and Starburst more powerful in comparison. It may also be that radius is 2D in a 3D landscape (i.e. it hits anything to the left or right of it within 40 feet, but travels only a very small distance toward or away from you).

It would be cool if the spell got fixed since it seems like a fun alternative to Meteor Shower and Starburst - one that is physical damage and can hit flying creatures with enough practice. I know they changed it in MM7 and 8 to be more similar to Meteor Shower and Starburst but it fires so few projectiles that they're unlikely to hit much. Perhaps they changed it because they were unable to make the spell work as intended, or perhaps because having it work as originally intended made it too powerful?

[tolich]

I guess it's just a large area and a few parcels.

[GrayFace]

Grayface, do you still have that To Do List for this patch? Do you think you might work on it?

Sure. I'm still not working on little things of which there is quite a number.

[d2r]

I've been playing through the game, and I noticed that one of the fountains in Bootleg Bay (the +2 permanent intellect one) appears to be bugged with the patch; it only applies the bonus to the first character in the party and just displays "Refreshing!" for the others. I had two questions:

1. Is this a bug native to the game, or is it with the patch?

2. Where are the save files once you apply the patch? I wanted to copy them and run the unpatched game to double-check.

Anyway, aside from this, it's a really great patch overall. Kudos!

[GreatEmerald]

2. Where are the save files once you apply the patch? I wanted to copy them and run the unpatched game to double-check.

The save files in general, ever since Vista, are put somewhere inaccessible, because Windows doesn't allow writing into Program Files (so it redirects the files to a "safe location"). You need to run the game as an administrator to allow saving in Program Files, or disable UAC's File Virtualisation component.

[d2r]

2. Where are the save files once you apply the patch? I wanted to copy them and run the unpatched game to double-check.

The save files in general, ever since Vista, are put somewhere inaccessible, because Windows doesn't allow writing into Program Files (so it redirects the files to a "safe location"). You need to run the game as an administrator to allow saving in Program Files, or disable UAC's File Virtualisation component.

Is there any way at all to access my current set of saves so I can use them to troubleshoot? When I ran as admin, it just loaded a blank set of saves (and I had to sit through the opening cinema :/)

UPDATE: I searched for *.mm6 and specified to look in hidden files; they're located in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\3DO\Might and Magic VII.

UPDATE 2: The bug appears to occur even when I run using the unpatched version of the game, but I'm still not sure if it's just a problem on my end or not. Has anyone else ever had this issue with this particular fountain?

[Rune_Caster]

2. Where are the save files once you apply the patch? I wanted to copy them and run the unpatched game to double-check.

The save files in general, ever since Vista, are put somewhere inaccessible, because Windows doesn't allow writing into Program Files (so it redirects the files to a "safe location"). You need to run the game as an administrator to allow saving in Program Files, or disable UAC's File Virtualisation component.

Is there any way at all to access my current set of saves so I can use them to troubleshoot? When I ran as admin, it just loaded a blank set of saves (and I had to sit through the opening cinema :/)

UPDATE: I searched for *.mm6 and specified to look in hidden files; they're located in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\3DO\Might and Magic VII.

UPDATE 2: The bug appears to occur even when I run using the unpatched version of the game, but I'm still not sure if it's just a problem on my end or not. Has anyone else ever had this issue with this particular fountain?

You have to run the game in Compatibility mode for windows Xp (service pack 3) if you want it to save the games to the local Might and Magic Directory

[Macros the Black]

I've been playing through the game, and I noticed that one of the fountains in Bootleg Bay (the +2 permanent intellect one) appears to be bugged with the patch; it only applies the bonus to the first character in the party and just displays "Refreshing!" for the others.

This may sound dumb, but are you sure it's not just because your other characters have a higher intellect than the first character? Those wells only increase your stat if it's under a certain value.

[tolich]

More over, any well has a number of 'charges', that is, how many times it can increase your stat. E.g., New Sorpigal's Well of Luck increases Luck by 2 up to 16, but only 8 times. To get more, you must wait till its reset.

[GrayFace]

You need to run the game as an administrator to allow saving in Program Files, or disable UAC's File Virtualisation component.

It's best not to install it into Program Files. Games should be in a Games folder outside of Program Files.

[GreatEmerald]

It's best not to install it into Program Files. Games should be in a Games folder outside of Program Files.

That works too. Though the proper way for a game to do it, as both Windows since Vista and Linux expect, is to write the game into Program Files or /usr, and write the save files into Users/name/AppData or /home/name/.local. This is done specifically for multiuser support: each user should have their own save and config files, but the read-only game files should be shared so that space isn't wasted.

[Gouby]

Hello
First thanks al to for your work on MM6.
I have downloaded your mod and your MM6 Controls.
I play on windows XP launched by VirtualBox and it clearly improved my game experience.
However The MM6 Controls does not seems to work.
I'm always stuck with the original key bindings which are not confortable at all...

Can anyone help?
Thanks in advance.

[Macros the Black]

It would be nice if when holding right-click over an attribute or resistance if it would tell us the number of that attribute/resistance the character is getting from his/her equipment and/or how much he/she has without his/her equipment. Similar to how holding right-click on attack now shows recovery time. This would be useful because then we can take bonuses from equipment into account when deciding who should drink from a barrel, or who to give all the relevant stat boosting equipment to for a circus minigame or a sword-in-the-stone.

Edit: if you go into the free haven sewers from Richard Harp's house (across from the earth guild) you come down in the southwest of the dungeon, which makes sense considering where his house is. However, if you take the ladder back up from there you arrive at Amber Praetor's house (north of the high council building). Her sewer entrance works fine otherwise.


Just some things for your to-do list

[thrakk]

Grayface, do you still have that To Do List for this patch? Do you think you might work on it?

Sure. I'm still not working on little things of which there is quite a number.

Thanks for the reply.

I doubt there will be many more people reporting issues or asking for requests. Maybe all the little things are all that's left to make a final version.

I only bring this up because (despite my two requests being little) I've been OCD and put off ever playing MM6 again until you worked on it. I'm sure this sounds stupid and it is stupid. Stupid and OCD

[GrayFace]

Version 2.0 is here
[+] Custom LODs (for mods). For example, Data\*.icons.lod archives would be loaded after icons.lod, possibly replacing its content. Same with every other archive.
[+] When switching from mouse look to 'standard mode' the mouse would start at screen center if over 10 seconds have passed since last switch. Otherwise it will return to its last position, as usual.
[+] Now you don't have to specify AlwaysStrafe for mouse look. It will be on while in mouse look mode. If you don't like this, you can specify NormalStrafe=1 to do turns even in mouse look mode.
[+] Now you can set FixStarburst=0, FixInfiniteScrolls=0 and/or FixInactivePlayersActing=0 options to disable corresponding fixes if you prefer using these bugs to your advantage.
[-] Movement rounding issues fixed properly. Strafes weren't precise because of these issues.
[-] Save game failure on some computers. Actually caused by a bug of some system software, not the game itself.
[-] Games.lod archive required very special sorting.
[-] My bug: MouseLookUseAltMode wasn't supported.
[-] My bug: "`" or "i" written in MMExtension console were causing character screen to open. Same thing with mouse movement when mouse look is on.

[sherwin_p]

Another patch! Nice, glad to see there are people still working on these games. May have to do another replay later this year.

[Macros the Black]

Even though the last update was in September and I'm way late, I still feel obligated to say it's awesome you're still patching this game Grayface.

I just found another little bug in MM6 (but it might be in the other games too, haven't tested): apparently the Scholar NPC does not actually give an experience increase. The Instructor and Teacher work as intended, but the Scholar does not (only giving the identify item bonus). That certainly makes the NPC less useful than I thought..