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

[Lucius]

Dear Rodril, could you please consider changing Murmurwoods tree to accept MM6 and MM7 diamonds for horsehoes as well? Because due to adding MM6 and MM7 gems, now there is much less horsheshoes from random treasures like that.

[Echo]

Are enemy hit points supposed to grow with character level? Because now that I am level 150 everything has 500+ hit points, Supreme Titans have 5000+. Is this a feature you built in to make the second continent you visit more of a challenge (when you have already leveled quite a bit) ?

Hm, that sounds like it could become a bit tedious to deal with given that characters reach their last power spike way sooner. After reach the Grand Master level in their skills the power just trickles in slowly with levels. Skill points are harder to put in and there's no more big changes.

I was pondering about it a little and saw some ways of handling the whole scaling thing in a merge like this. Some/all of these ways may be completely impossible to do, of course, so it's just loose ideas:

1. Dynamic scaling

The good:
- player can go wherever they please whenever they please
- there's always tough challenge present in the game

The bad:
- player might feel it's better to hold off on leveling their team not to scale monsters too heavily
- if the scaling is very progressive it may lead to really bulky monsters that take forever to kill

2. Static scaling

The good:
- it's easier to balance everything to the achievable power levels of the player; more control
- provides a big challenge for players who want to only push through one scaled continent
- gives the ability to hand-place increasingly powerful items that could help make up for the lack of proper character scaling at high levels

The potentially good or bad depending on the preference:
- player would need to travel between the three worlds and progress through all three storylines at once to keep the game's balance moderate

The bad:
- to keep all content engaging, all three games would need to be progressively scaled in difficulty manually
- if a player pushes through one continent despite the high difficulty the others will prove too easy

Questions

- are there blasters in the game? They were absent in MM8 and I don't know if they were transferred.
- is it possible to change the scaling of stats/skills/spells/whatever at all? Or is it all hardcoded?
- is it possible to add another skill level after the Grand Master? I don't suppose so, but who knows.

[Lucius]

Dimension Door location in Murmurwoods stopped working (no message, no changes to TP spell)
Shrine of Might in Bootleg Bay does not give +10 to Strength at January even after talking with Sage.

[Rodril]

Now for some issues: In Snergle's Iron Mines when you free Ghim Hammond he says he gives you a key for the chambers in Snergle's Caverns but he doesn't. I'll post once again if I find some other issues.

Fixed. Reload previos save OR open debug console (ctrl+f1), type evt.SetNPCTopic{851,0,1614} , execute it (ctrl+enter) and reenter Ghim's cell.

Are enemy hit points supposed to grow with character level? Because now that I am level 150 everything has 500+ hit points, Supreme Titans have 5000+. Is this a feature you built in to make the second continent you visit more of a challenge (when you have already leveled quite a bit) ?

Yes, but no, it was not supposed to be that terribly big, apply today's patch.

Statistic shows only total number of Arcomage wins (but should include specific tavern names)

Those notes stored in "Autonotes", at the end of "miscellaneous" section. Rest fixed, thanks.

- are there blasters in the game? They were absent in MM8 and I don't know if they were transferred.
- is it possible to change the scaling of stats/skills/spells/whatever at all? Or is it all hardcoded
- is it possible to add another skill level after the Grand Master? I don't suppose so, but who knows.

Yes, Grayface repaired them in last mmextension.
Yes, we have various events, where these stats are calculated, possibly to inject something there.
Rather no. Besides it would require adding a lot of stuff around, like teachers, tweaking/adding spellbooks etc, engine itself does not support this at current state.

1. Dynamic scaling

I prefer that way, because of flexibility of adjustment. I screwed up somewhere with HP amount, making monsters just tougher was not the purpose. System where party grows stronger along with monsters, despite static it or progressive, seems like vicious circle. My wish is to scale up complexity of combat tactics, not monster's toughness, stat boost just prevents monsters from being one-shotted. Can not say will it be successful or not. For example, during progressive scaling some monsters getting close combat offensive spells like sparks or sharpmetal, what supposed to be obstacle on the way of knights, some other getting their move speed increased, so shooting from distance won't be an option, 3rd level of monster power mages and static monsters geting ability to summon something.

[Rodril]

*previous message doubled somehow*

[Echo]

I prefer that way, because of flexibility of adjustment. I screwed up somewhere with HP amount, making monsters just tougher was not the purpose. System where party grows stronger along with monsters, despite static it or progressive, seems like vicious circle. My wish is to scale up complexity of combat tactics, not monster's toughness, stat boost just prevents monsters from being one-shotted. Can not say will it be successful or not. For example, during progressive scaling some monsters getting close combat offensive spells like sparks or sharpmetal, what supposed to be obstacle on the way of knights, some other getting their move speed increased, so shooting from distance won't be an option, 3rd level of monster power mages and static monsters geting ability to summon something.

I see. The additional skills and such sound fun and interesting

I've got some followup questions/musings if you don't mind:

One - I don't know if it's still a problem with the fancy merge and updated scripts and all that, but the summoning skills added to monsters notoriously crashed my game (as cool as they are! So making them work would certainly be fun). One monster summoning something could be accepted by my game, but when I had a few (for instance, added the skill to the Centaur Chieftains to test and went to Ravenshore's plains) it would crash rather quickly.

Two - how do you plan to make the scaling affect the early-game content from each game? Let's say someone finishes MM6, then MM7, then starts MM8. Will the pirates/feather snakes and the like be dragon-powered? Or will the early/mid-game content remain easy?

Three - what of the typical "return and rampage" fun? I mean, say you start MM6 game, struggle to clean New Sorpigal, then progress and when the area respawns you go back guns blazing and show those puny goblins and wizards who's boss? The sense of progression is very important in these games. If the monsters (any monsters - from goblins through werewolfs to dragons) all keep scaling with the player, won't it make re-clearing old areas not as easy, killing the sense of progression? And if they do remain easy, the problem with other continent early/midgame content being silly easy returns. Vicious circle

Four - what of the item power? If the monsters are scaling dynamically, say, a player goes and finishes MM7. They got their normal MM7 end-game gear, have drank all the potions, enchanted every bow and dagger, and then they enter MM8 after that. Won't all the loot found there be basically useless? Let's say a player finished MM8 anyway and gets a slight upgrade to their items (which in itself sounds little worrisome with how heavily gear-gathering focused MM games are). Then they move to MM6. It's an entire game with little to find.

These were the primary reasons I thought of static-scaling in the first place. But by no means am I trying to say how the system should work, please don't misunderstand me I'm just thinking about the possible issues with the dynamic world and wondering how they could be solved. I find it intriguing and I like to discuss stuff like this

[Bloax]

Doing a manual pass of the entirety of the three games to make them progressions of eachother would be the obviously "best" solution, the problem there being a massive workload, alongside a tough decision to make if one sets out to do so;

1) You can have the pleasure of editing almost the entirety of the trio of MM6-8 several times, according to which order of appearance they were entered in - all this to allow "picking" what continent you prefer to start on.
2) You can have the lesser pleasure of editing just as much of the three games, but now only once - due to forcing a specific order of progression, so that you can predictably know when a player reaches a certain point in the game, removing that freedom of choice might sting though. : )

As for this

One monster summoning something could be accepted by my game, but when I had a few (for instance, added the skill to the Centaur Chieftains to test and went to Ravenshore's plains) it would crash rather quickly.

I'm for some reason reminded of giving some weird little mod that multiplied the amount of enemies a spin in MM7, and had the game crash a lot on Walls of Mist because of too many actors/projectiles existing.

[Echo]

Doing a manual pass of the entirety of the three games to make them progressions of eachother would be the obviously "best" solution, the problem there being a massive workload, alongside a tough decision to make if one sets out to do so;

1) You can have the pleasure of editing almost the entirety of the trio of MM6-8 several times, according to which order of appearance they were entered in - all this to allow "picking" what continent you prefer to start on.
2) You can have the lesser pleasure of editing just as much of the three games, but now only once - due to forcing a specific order of progression, so that you can predictably know when a player reaches a certain point in the game, removing that freedom of choice might sting though. : )

I would actually prefer to play the 2nd option. It would make more sense to me.
a) The introductory monsters on each continent look/feel/are said to be introductory. Bumping into some goblins overdosing on steroids, because I've just demolished a Devil Queen would be a bit strange
b) The feel of the games would be kept more - as in, you can choose to do beginner stuff A, B, or C. It was always like that in MM6-8 only the variety of choices was more narrow. Now for instance you could do not "Ravenshore or Alvar", but "Ravenshore, Alvar, or Harmondale, or Erathia, or Castle Ironfist, or Bootleg Bay" kind of thing. The remaining of the bunch would obviously be easier, but perhaps some could be chosen to "go up a tier" to make for some more variance.
c) Feeling like traveling between the continents is beneficial to my progress would encourage me to explore them all and progress all over the place at the same time with perhaps biting into some more challenging bits every now and then on a whim.

I'm for some reason reminded of giving some weird little mod that multiplied the amount of enemies a spin in MM7, and had the game crash a lot on Walls of Mist because of too many actors/projectiles existing.

I think the mere multiplication of actors shouldn't cause this. I have made a tiny mod for myself multiplying all monsters in MM8 locations by a fair bunch. I think it went from regular 2-5 per spawn to 10-15. What the game did with this was ignore a whole bunch of spawns - but the others were huge. So I could find a massive cluster of wolves where 3-4 spawns worked in an area and then travel further to find absolutely nothing where other spawns should be.

I also elected to add a whole lot of creatures to maps manually 1-by-1 to go around the spawner limitations. It didn't crash for me ever - I tried asking here if it could cause crashes but I don't recall getting a definite yes/no response. From my personal experience - it's a no.

But the moment a creature had the summon ability, WHAM! game is dead. Took me a few loads I recall to find out what the cause of that was, but it also explained to me why I sometimes crashed using Maestro's mod (where I first encountered the fancy summons). Increased spawns increased crashing for certain - perhaps Maestro's spawns were small enough to make it okay for the most time, but I still had issues with them.

[Rodril]

summoning skills added to monsters notoriously crashed my game

Each map have limit of 500 monsters. When map reachs this limit, it stops to spawn anything. That why some of your spawns did not work, firts ones, you've encountered, brought monsters count to limit very fast. For some reason ability to summon was exception, game did not check anything, but continued to summon further, as result new mon properties have been written over other game data, what caused crash. I've added check there, so monsters won't summon anything when limit of 500 is reached. Code is in "RemoveMonstersAndPlacemonLimits.lua" script in "...Scripts\Structs\After" folder, put it in same directory of clear MM8 with MMExtension and try it at wish. Over 500 monsters, placed manually would probably crash game too, but i have not ever had enough patience to place that much.

Two - how do you plan to make the scaling affect the early-game content from each game? Let's say someone finishes MM6, then MM7, then starts MM8. Will the pirates/feather snakes and the like be dragon-powered? Or will the early/mid-game content remain easy?

Settings and restrictions of monster's scaling belongs both to monster itself and to map, where he was spawned. One of the columns in "Bolster - maps.txt" is "Extra points" - extra levels which will be added to current mon's level at step where script decides, whether boost monster or not. Negative values makes monsters always "behind" party for certain amount of levels, positive making them tougher and stronger. I did not fill this column for now, except starting locations (Daggerwound, New Sorpigal, Emerald Island), but it is the way how "easy" locations will stay "easy".

Also this table can be modified during game play, so next continents's "Extra points" will be shifted, but i have not implemented it yet.

Three - what of the typical "return and rampage" fun?

Returning to "per-map" bolster, i've stated before, shifts will keep areas able to be rampaged.

Four - what of the item power?

This is the point, where i don't have clues. I don't like curse of item progression and i'd like to find another solution than just scaling them. After all items system is the weakest at the moment: mm6-mm7 afrifact effects have not been rescripted yet. Only thought i've ever had in this direction is homm III - alike artifact sets: when bunch of items, weared together, give some effect which really matters.

[jmaster]

Hello and thank you for this brilliant mod! It's great to have possibility to play all three games as one For such mods bugs are normal, but you're fixing them really fast. For today I'm replaying mm7 and have encountered some bugs:
1) Armorsmith in Erathia has profession "null", most of time works as normal, but if you move mouse not on armor or empty space - game crashes.
2) Relics for special classes seems to work for everyone, not from basic mm8 list. For example, knight relic armor can be easily used by paladin.
3) Often in chests you can find spellbooks from mm6. Character says that it can't be learned or that it is already known.
4) For now, I compleded Walls of mist, but I didn't receive light guild membership. I think, that some problem will be with dark magic.
5) The game seems to lack most of text(I play with Russian patch, maybe problem with it), for example no texts for returning spy to queen of giving fort plans to king, or, other example, no text for hero quest.
6) Skills shown "yellow" when right clicked only for first class promotion and shown red for unpromoted mm8 characters
7) Murmurwoods light guild sells only basic light books.
8) For unknown reason, usind town portal in front of Tularean stables causes effect of Dimension Door(mine wizard was only master of water magic in that moment).
9) Blasters cannot be identified or repaired by smiths(by the way, it seems normal for me. How they are supposed to fix such weapon? ), same problem for special items, like Eclipse shield (for unknown reason it was given to me after winning arcomage in mm7, with two other relics, but without standard special items)

[Echo]

Each map have limit of 500 monsters. When map reachs this limit, it stops to spawn anything. That why some of your spawns did not work, firts ones, you've encountered, brought monsters count to limit very fast. For some reason ability to summon was exception, game did not check anything, but continued to summon further, as result new mon properties have been written over other game data, what caused crash. I've added check there, so monsters won't summon anything when limit of 500 is reached. Code is in "RemoveMonstersAndPlacemonLimits.lua" script in "...Scripts\Structs\After" folder, put it in same directory of clear MM8 with MMExtension and try it at wish. Over 500 monsters, placed manually would probably crash game too, but i have not ever had enough patience to place that much.

That is really nice to know! I'll definitely use that when I'll be back to modding MM8 maps. I actually enjoyed placing monsters very much haha. It's so zen. Place here, place there, make a circle here, these can camp, these lurk in the river, these are having an evil-minded gathering, these guard the temple, these guard their secret stash, etc. Fun stuff.

Settings and restrictions of monster's scaling belongs both to monster itself and to map, where he was spawned. One of the columns in "Bolster - maps.txt" is "Extra points" - extra levels which will be added to current mon's level at step where script decides, whether boost monster or not. Negative values makes monsters always "behind" party for certain amount of levels, positive making them tougher and stronger. I did not fill this column for now, except starting locations (Daggerwound, New Sorpigal, Emerald Island), but it is the way how "easy" locations will stay "easy".

Interesting way to handle it. So in theory, if easier locations will always stay easy, will medium ones always stay medium, and only hard ones scale to the player's level infinitely? What will happen if a player decides to not level up? I've seen some playthroughs where players took a challenge of not leveling up. Is it possible that the game will actually be easier if one does not train and only raises their skills through horseshoes, for instance?

This is the point, where i don't have clues. I don't like curse of item progression and i'd like to find another solution than just scaling them. After all items system is the weakest at the moment: mm6-mm7 afrifact effects have not been rescripted yet. Only thought i've ever had in this direction is homm III - alike artifact sets: when bunch of items, weared together, give some effect which really matters.

I love the idea of connecting items together for special effects, that's always tons of fun

I think I'm having trouble imagining item-management for dynamic world due to my experiences with Oblivion/Skyrim. I don't know if you've played those games, but one of the first mods I ever get for either is one that levels the world and stops it leveling with the character.

I don't like the idea of acquiring an "artifact of great power" scaled to my character's level, which in a few levels will become worse than a random junk found on a bandit lol. Not a fan of said artifact being weak and growing in power alongside my character either. Is it an item of great power? Yes? Then let me FEEL it, Bethesda I absolutely love crawling through some hell to bring out a badass item and use it to smack down monsters that would otherwise still be challenging.

In Oblivion/Skyrim as you level up you also start encountering bandits who are now all tougher than the dragons you used to fight few levels back and dressed in exquisite gear that the best blacksmith in town wouldn't have had before... but now does, plenty of it

But many players don't mind any of it, they take it over a limited freedom and a more linear kind of progression. And I guess Bethesda way might be the only way to grant that freedom in a big and open world.

[Bloax]

Artifacts growing in power tied absolutely to your level is no fun, artifacts growing dramatically in "power" levels as you use them (because they eat souls or whatever) - is quite fun on the other hand.

I don't remember too much of MM6/7, but I can certainly say that MM8 suffers from being generally "too easy" with too many areas being rather weak - even if you run a silly handicapped party.

[Rodril]

For today I'm replaying mm7 and have encountered some bugs:

Points except 6 and 9 are fixed, apply latest patch and redownload russian localization, i've replaced missing texts with english equivalents, probably Kristal will fix it soon (some were in NPCText and NPCTopic).

...I've seen some playthroughs where players took a challenge of not leveling up. Is it possible that the game will actually be easier if one does not train and only raises their skills through horseshoes, for instance?

All locations will scale infinitely, but some will be behind player's level. Another column in "Bolster - maps.txt" is "BolsterKind" it have several options: "LowerToEqual", "AllToEqual", "OriginalStats" and "0", first and second speak for themselves, thirds keeps stats original, but allows script to add spells and ability to summon something, fourth - no boost at all.
I did not think someone would do this, in current state - yes, nothing will be boosted. Though, it is not hard to "fix" this - just use player's experience instead of level to count amount of scaling, but it is nice way of playthrough, won't touch for now.

And I guess Bethesda way might be the only way to grant that freedom in a big and open world.

Artifacts growing in power tied absolutely to your level is no fun, artifacts growing dramatically in "power" levels as you use them (because they eat souls or whatever) - is quite fun on the other hand.
I don't remember too much of MM6/7, but I can certainly say that MM8 suffers from being generally "too easy" with too many areas being rather weak - even if you run a silly handicapped party.

Current purpose is to preserve mm6, 7 and 8, as close to thier sources as possible, i would not totally overhaul whole item system for now, but all game files are open for side mods.

[jmaster]

Thank you for fixes! But now I found some more:
1) Harm undead seems to not working on mm7 zombies
2) Key from Setag's tower(looted from Setag himself) not working for quest door in tower. In addition to that, this quest is not listed in the questlist.
3) Trees around oldest tree remain hostile after returning heart of forest(maybe because I hit some of them before speaking to the oldest tree)

[Echo]

@Rodril

I understand your points, you've come up with a solid system Best of luck in getting everything to work. It sounds like a solid brain-scratcher, especially with the items involved and character progression limitations. It's a shame adding new levels of skills and whatnot would be so complicated.

Once everything is set and done I may play around a side-mod, indeed. Get MM8 up in difficulty and add some points of interest that it's really lacking. Maybe build an alternative static monster table to see how that works out. And also because I love building tables

A tiny question/note - with the monsters getting stronger/weaker, the XP and rewards will scale too?

[Rodril]

1) Harm undead seems to not working on mm7 zombies
2) Key from Setag's tower(looted from Setag himself) not working for quest door in tower. In addition to that, this quest is not listed in the questlist.
3) Trees around oldest tree remain hostile after returning heart of forest(maybe because I hit some of them before speaking to the oldest tree)

1 - Fixed, thanks, there was kind-definition issue over all monsters in game, 2 - fixed, speak with Quixot again to get the quest and try to open the door after (or execute evt.Set{"QBits", 536} in debug console (ctrl+f1 - to open, ctrl+enter to execute) and try to open the door, without visiting Charles), 3 - trees should become friendly after map reenter.

A tiny question/note - with the monsters getting stronger/weaker, the XP and rewards will scale too?

Experience scaled, rewards - not. I'd like to make rewards scaling customizable via tables, it have not been not implemented yet. Thanks.

[jmaster]

Almost finished mm7. In some details I really prefer playing with mm8 engime But there is one problem with looting monsters and items in front of party(maybe it is only in my version, although I use GOG one) - I have to tilt the camera down from centered view. This happens both with space button and left mouse button. The other side of this problem - sometimes I can loot items located somewhere far away(as for mm8 - it is looting potions and ingredients in zantora's laboratory from main hall or even from basement). I don't know what can cause this

As for MM7 bugs there are few more:
1) No encounter with stealing tapestry from castle after joining light or dark side (payment for fireball wand).
2) No dialogs for creation weapon, armor and item from ore in Erathia
3) It is impossible to equip minotaur with swimsuit. I really don't know what to do with them and with dragons in that part, except dismiss party member. But I cannot reunite with them in adventurer's guild if they were created from beginning of the game or hired in training hall/tavern
4) Rat portrait for right click is located too high, shown only black screen.

PS: Autoleveling surprised me a bit First I think that it was wrong health bar size, but spell showed me, that it is normal. I didn't expect to see zombie with more than 200hp or giant bat with more than 80hp,

[Ironfist95]

I bet that minotaur would rather not put on that pesky swimsuit

Is it possible to turn off the enemy scaling for personal modding experiments?

[Rodril]

3) It is impossible to equip minotaur with swimsuit. I really don't know what to do with them and with dragons in that part, except dismiss party member. But I cannot reunite with them in adventurer's guild if they were created from beginning of the game or hired in training hall/tavern

He should not equip it, enough to have swimsuit in inventory of each player and touch west edge of map ("Avlee"), did not it work?' Have not dismissed companions appeared in Adventurer's Inn in Tatalia (near Mercenary guild)? I'll look into other points.

Is it possible to turn off the enemy scaling for personal modding experiments?

Yes, remove "Bolster - maps.txt" from "...Data\Tables" folder. Script will generate empty one after next launch.

[equs]

Thank you for that great mod. loved this games! will post bugs if I find. Have installed it yesterday and copied my savegame of MM8 to the mod version and it startet without any problem in the new game. Great. Do all updates will be stored in the first post?