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

[Piottor]

Okay todays report of what I found out in some of "top" dungeons of Enroth.

Castle Alamos: Works mostly as intended, didnt notice anything way off, except one passage (into a room with large water pool in middle) having sort of "invisible" wall, luckily there was one more entrance to the room so its reachable, but kinda messes progression inside as you gotta go around.

Castle Darkmoor: Evil aura of the place gets on wholly new level when there are many mobs - when there are many mobs, some of them become "invisible" under certain angles (I needed like 15 degree angle while looking to the ground at max angle to see some mobs and their corpses). Happened only in big rooms with big amount of mobs. For example tunnels with flying eyes, main lich room in which Lich King is, big room with tons of ogres.

One more thing - I didnt notice any of the liches being labeled as Lich King...either I simply didnt notice him and looted by mistake or he wasnt there at all, therefore posing similar issue as Lurch, Snergle, Agar and other "named" special monsters.

Tomb of VARN: Same issue as with Castle Darkmoor - some mobs and corpses siply became invisible at unless looking at certain angle. Other then that all seemed to work as intended.

Control Room: This might be just me being unlucky, but I scoured the whole place up for storage chests (didnt kill whole place up, termination drones are hard to kill even with protection from eradication), invisibility is really a big help here...he thing is I managed to find only 2 blaster pistols and 1 blaster rifle...In vanilla MM6 I always found enough Blaster Rifles for the whole team of 4, in merge I didnt find enough of any blasters for the team of 4 and we are having extra member...so very unsure whether just plain unlucky or a bug...

Side note: After completing Tomb of Varn, going inside of Control Room, then outside sky textures in many cities started to be...distroted of sorts...usually helped to just sleep in an inn and they gone away...first time I encountered "buggy" graphics so far...idk if it is even related to the VARN or ConRoom...

https://imgur.com/a/sp1mEls
Here are some images of the distorted sky...

Edit: Faulty link to images Link should be working now

[Mozaki]

Invisible mobs and corps happens to me either, in a lot of place.

In the NWC of mm6, none of the "Game conceptor" have their name. They are just Peasant, Goblin, etc...

Also, in somes dungeon (Corlagon's Estate and Temple of Baa that I remember) some enemis spawns outbound and can go outbound (behind the wall) but you can hit each other.

For the relic "Cronos", his special powers is "+100 hit points and - 50 luck" But instead of giving "+100 hit points", it give +100 endurance. :-)

[justl]

Okay todays report of what I found out in some of "top" dungeons of Enroth.

Castle Darkmoor: Evil aura of the place gets on wholly new level when there are many mobs - when there are many mobs, some of them become "invisible" under certain angles (I needed like 15 degree angle while looking to the ground at max angle to see some mobs and their corpses). Happened only in big rooms with big amount of mobs. For example tunnels with flying eyes, main lich room in which Lich King is, big room with tons of ogres.

Tomb of VARN: Same issue as with Castle Darkmoor - some mobs and corpses siply became invisible at unless looking at certain angle. Other then that all seemed to work as intended.

this problem with the flying enemies (flying eyes, djinss) was already an issue in the original mm6 version.
when they came too near they "floated on top" of you, still making damage.
in dungeons with low ceiling (like the robber hidout at castle stone, or agars lab), where to the djinns guard the teleporter/the eyes float in their hiding rooms it doesnt happen in this extreme.

positive side in big dungeons: you had enough room to end turnbased mode an run away a bit, since they arent blocking your path on the ground - which wasnt possible in the low ceiling dungeons)

[Xfing]

Damn, I got so fixated on the alternative inventory grid colors independent of complete interfaces that I probably won't be happy unless we have them

[Neron Darkiuss]

@Rodril Bit of good old "glitch", can you fix character Stat variable. That reset to 255 kinda immersion breaking)
Set Intellect to 500 via console, after Potion of Pure Intellect got it reset to 255.

Can MM8 engine use better textures? I can work on that. Just need to know where to look at old and where to put new.(some MM8\DataFiles\Textures) as example, for quick testing.

[Piottor]

this problem with the flying enemies (flying eyes, djinss) was already an issue in the original mm6 version.
when they came too near they "floated on top" of you, still making damage.
in dungeons with low ceiling (like the robber hidout at castle stone, or agars lab), where to the djinns guard the teleporter/the eyes float in their hiding rooms it doesnt happen in this extreme.

positive side in big dungeons: you had enough room to end turnbased mode an run away a bit, since they arent blocking your path on the ground - which wasnt possible in the low ceiling dungeons)

I never had this problem in regular MM6 Or maybe it was fixed in patch by Grayface?

Also to end turn base mode I would first need to initiate it I rarely use turnbase, maybe few levels from start when mobs can overpower you very fast...but not much of turn based mode after level 10 Real time combat is way more engaging imho

[Templayer]

Okay todays report of what I found out in some of "top" dungeons of Enroth.

Castle Alamos: Works mostly as intended, didnt notice anything way off, except one passage (into a room with large water pool in middle) having sort of "invisible" wall, luckily there was one more entrance to the room so its reachable, but kinda messes progression inside as you gotta go around.

Castle Darkmoor: Evil aura of the place gets on wholly new level when there are many mobs - when there are many mobs, some of them become "invisible" under certain angles (I needed like 15 degree angle while looking to the ground at max angle to see some mobs and their corpses). Happened only in big rooms with big amount of mobs. For example tunnels with flying eyes, main lich room in which Lich King is, big room with tons of ogres.

One more thing - I didnt notice any of the liches being labeled as Lich King...either I simply didnt notice him and looted by mistake or he wasnt there at all, therefore posing similar issue as Lurch, Snergle, Agar and other "named" special monsters.

Tomb of VARN: Same issue as with Castle Darkmoor - some mobs and corpses siply became invisible at unless looking at certain angle. Other then that all seemed to work as intended.

Control Room: This might be just me being unlucky, but I scoured the whole place up for storage chests (didnt kill whole place up, termination drones are hard to kill even with protection from eradication), invisibility is really a big help here...he thing is I managed to find only 2 blaster pistols and 1 blaster rifle...In vanilla MM6 I always found enough Blaster Rifles for the whole team of 4, in merge I didnt find enough of any blasters for the team of 4 and we are having extra member...so very unsure whether just plain unlucky or a bug...

Side note: After completing Tomb of Varn, going inside of Control Room, then outside sky textures in many cities started to be...distroted of sorts...usually helped to just sleep in an inn and they gone away...first time I encountered "buggy" graphics so far...idk if it is even related to the VARN or ConRoom...

https://imgur.com/a/sp1mEls
Here are some images of the distorted sky...

Edit: Faulty link to images Link should be working now

Added to the bug tracker. That sky glitch is kinda cool.

Invisible mobs and corps happens to me either, in a lot of place.

In the NWC of mm6, none of the "Game conceptor" have their name. They are just Peasant, Goblin, etc...

Also, in somes dungeon (Corlagon's Estate and Temple of Baa that I remember) some enemis spawns outbound and can go outbound (behind the wall) but you can hit each other.

For the relic "Cronos", his special powers is "+100 hit points and - 50 luck" But instead of giving "+100 hit points", it give +100 endurance. :-)

Added to the Bug Tracker.

@Rodril Bit of good old "glitch", can you fix character Stat variable. That reset to 255 kinda immersion breaking)
Set Intellect to 500 via console, after Potion of Pure Intellect got it reset to 255.

Can MM8 engine use better textures? I can work on that. Just need to know where to look at old and where to put new.(some MM8\DataFiles\Textures) as example, for quick testing.

The first thing was added to the Bug Tracker. Welcome to the grand project!
I do not know what the engine can handle texture-wise, but we are missing artists in other places! Namely repainting equipment for the MM8-type of paperdolls!
At least cloaks would be good and simple, and yet we do not have them, except for three of them! Same goes to other stuff! Check the tracker in my signature!
Also Sawyer made it possible for gauntlets and gloves to be visually shown on the paperdoll!
Enjoy your stay.

[Templayer]

Damn, I got so fixated on the alternative inventory grid colors independent of complete interfaces that I probably won't be happy unless we have them

Rodril's tracker note on your new potion system states that explosions needs to be reviewed in POTIONS.txt and that autonotes needs correcting.

[Piottor]

...but we are missing artists in other places! Namely repainting equipment for the MM8-type of paperdolls!
At least cloaks would be good and simple, and yet we do not have them, except for three of them! Same goes to other stuff! Check the tracker in my signature!

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to do those repaintings? I could give it a shot (but I dont promise anything), if I knew where to look and how to do those...
I noticed the list of "unfinished" items beforehand...and was wondering about it ever since (about a week for now)...

Edit: Also (edit: double also) was wondering on unofficial localisation, are there any texts that could be translated from english then implemented without the voiceovers? Would love to give a hand in a project aside from just reporting stuff that seems off during playthroughs

[Neron Darkiuss]

...but we are missing artists in other places! Namely repainting equipment for the MM8-type of paperdolls!
At least cloaks would be good and simple, and yet we do not have them, except for three of them! Same goes to other stuff! Check the tracker in my signature!

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to do those repaintings? I could give it a shot (but I dont promise anything), if I knew where to look and how to do those...

Same thoughts
as i understand i need to "transform" old mm6-7 cloaks to mm8 character paper-doll?
OK i can install clean mm6-7 games extract needed files
just give me size accurate paper-doll image, is it composed from parts or i can extract it from icons.lod?
Also many years back ive edited a lot for mm6, as i remember there was palette restriction in place
can i do them any color depth any format now?(mm8 engine better blah blah)

[Templayer]

...but we are missing artists in other places! Namely repainting equipment for the MM8-type of paperdolls!
At least cloaks would be good and simple, and yet we do not have them, except for three of them! Same goes to other stuff! Check the tracker in my signature!

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to do those repaintings? I could give it a shot (but I dont promise anything), if I knew where to look and how to do those...
I noticed the list of "unfinished" items beforehand...and was wondering about it ever since (about a week for now)...

Edit: Also (edit: double also) was wondering on unofficial localisation, are there any texts that could be translated from english then implemented without the voiceovers? Would love to give a hand in a project aside from just reporting stuff that seems off during playthroughs

GrayFace and Rodril did some of them, but they made no text tutorial as far as I know. There is a tutorial on how to paint gloves and gauntlets at the end of the tracker, though. The visible gloves / gauntlets on a paperdoll script hasn't been implemented yet, because in Rodril's words - we only have normal female paperdoll leather gloves from MM8, and since those are missing for other paperdoll types, we cannot enable the script as we have no fully painted sets yet.

You got to ask Rodril about the localization, but he said that a non-automatic one is currently almost impossible.

[Templayer]

...but we are missing artists in other places! Namely repainting equipment for the MM8-type of paperdolls!
At least cloaks would be good and simple, and yet we do not have them, except for three of them! Same goes to other stuff! Check the tracker in my signature!

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to do those repaintings? I could give it a shot (but I dont promise anything), if I knew where to look and how to do those...

Same thoughts
as i understand i need to "transform" old mm6-7 cloaks to mm8 character paper-doll?
OK i can install clean mm6-7 games extract needed files
just give me size accurate paper-doll image, is it composed from parts or i can extract it from icons.lod?
Also many years back ive edited a lot for mm6, as i remember there was palette restriction in place
can i do them any color depth any format now?(mm8 engine better blah blah)

I don't know.

I do think that the palette restriction is still in place, but I might be wrong on that.
These are the paperdoll types: Normal Male, Normal Female, Minotaur, Troll, Dwarf (which is a scaled down version of the Troll paperdoll minus headgear, which is from the normal paperdoll) and Dragon.
I am not an artist and I do not know how to unpack the games / where to look etc. People who have done that on this project - GrayFace (he made some relic and artifact armours for the Merge), Rodril, Sowyer and Jamesx did the paperdoll conversion, and Krystal. Also there were a few others, can't remember those from memory.

[Piottor]

GrayFace and Rodril did some of them, but they made no text tutorial as far as I know. There is a tutorial on how to paint gloves and gauntlets at the end of the tracker, though. The visible gloves / gauntlets on a paperdoll script hasn't been implemented yet, because in Rodril's words - we only have normal female paperdoll leather gloves from MM8, and since those are missing for other paperdoll types, we cannot enable the script as we have no fully painted sets yet.

I dont mind gloves not showing tbh, it was always the case for MM6-8, but if there are no written tutorials onto how to repaint other models then I guess it rules me out of this part

You got to ask Rodril about the localization, but he said that a non-automatic one is currently almost impossible.

Non-automatic impossible? Pity...I wouldnt mind translating it sentence after sentence if I had some text sources that need to be translated. Tho there probably arent that many people who would need a slovak translation anyway, since that is my native language

[Vinevi]

Also many years back ive edited a lot for mm6, as i remember there was palette restriction in place
can i do them any color depth any format now?(mm8 engine better blah blah)

I've been editing UI for quite a while now. It is interesting how MM8 works with that, even the vanilla version. It'd be cool if anyone explained that in detail. What I've noticed that you can import both RGB (no palette) and Indexed. And in the first case if you import the image like that, it will look a bit washed-out in-game. I think what it does it just has some sort of a built-in palette which is like a general one, that has a lot of colors and if the game gets an rgb image it converts it to that palette on the go hence importing non-indexed graphics works but the colors are a bit off. SO it might be actually wise to import rgb graphics instead to not go overboard with indexed stuff since it always converts to the existing one? (granted that's how it actually works and not the other way).
Again if someone knows it in-depth I'd be glad to hear.

[Rodril]

Damn, I got so fixated on the alternative inventory grid colors independent of complete interfaces that I probably won't be happy unless we have them

Honestly, i don't want to add this feature. It feels excess, though easy to implement. If it will make you happy, you can use it personally: https://www.dropbox.com/s/la38cb4ua5jym ... s.zip?dl=0 - unpack files into game folder, grids will be switchable at adventurer's inn.

Can MM8 engine use better textures? I can work on that. Just need to know where to look at old and where to put new.(some MM8\DataFiles\Textures) as example, for quick testing.

At the moment - no. MM engine does not support texture scaling, textures with increased size will wrap across entire object. Grayface mentioned possible HD mods in next version of MMPatch, probably scaling in some form will be added. To work with textures you need MMArchive ( https://grayface.github.io/mm/#MMArchive ) to view and extracts game resources from .lod files, all textures are stored in "Bitmaps.lod", item/character pictures - in "Icons.lod".

Is there some sort of tutorial on how to do those repaintings? I could give it a shot (but I dont promise anything), if I knew where to look and how to do those...
I noticed the list of "unfinished" items beforehand...and was wondering about it ever since (about a week for now)...

Yes, i have video about it: https://youtu.be/lipriutf3SI

Also many years back ive edited a lot for mm6, as i remember there was palette restriction in place
can i do them any color depth any format now?(mm8 engine better blah blah)

Pictures must be in .bmp format, not necessary to generate pallete for it, MMArchive will do it upon archiving.
Paperdolls can be extracted from icons.lod, i've used these: https://www.dropbox.com/s/k0l58t53z8wc6 ... s.zip?dl=0

[Rodril]

Non-automatic impossible? Pity...I wouldnt mind translating it sentence after sentence if I had some text sources that need to be translated. Tho there probably arent that many people who would need a slovak translation anyway, since that is my native language

It is possible, just too painstacking, all texts are stored in simple txt tables, you can extract them with MMArchive from "EnglishT.lod", use TxtEdit ( https://grayface.github.io/mm/#Txt-Edit ) to edit them in convenient way.

I've been editing UI for quite a while now. It is interesting how MM8 works with that, even the vanilla version. It'd be cool if anyone explained that in detail. What I've noticed that you can import both RGB (no palette) and Indexed. And in the first case if you import the image like that, it will look a bit washed-out in-game. I think what it does it just has some sort of a built-in palette which is like a general one, that has a lot of colors and if the game gets an rgb image it converts it to that palette on the go hence importing non-indexed graphics works but the colors are a bit off. SO it might be actually wise to import rgb graphics instead to not go overboard with indexed stuff since it always converts to the existing one? (granted that's how it actually works and not the other way).
Again if someone knows it in-depth I'd be glad to hear.

As far as i know MMArchive converts .bmp images to indexed format, but it's algorythm is not that good as specialized software is. So all images are indexed, there is no special universal pallete.

[Vinevi]

As far as i know MMArchive converts .bmp images to indexed format, but it's algorythm is not that good as specialized software is. So all images are indexed, there is no special universal pallete.

Oh good to know. The auto indexing is very handy for testing new things. By the way thanks a lot of embedding lod files for custom UI graphics. It's very convenient, I guess I should be updating them from now on, thank you so much for these! Hoping to update the one for 6 very soon.

There is a lot of knowledge about modding these games around, but not much is public or conveniently stored. I like the tutorial you've made regarding modifying things but it would be also very cool to have things documented somewhere, like a wiki of some sort. The first thing that comes to mind is just a list of pastebin articles, or we could have like a branch here, on CH for guidelines.

Can MM8 engine use better textures? I can work on that. Just need to know where to look at old and where to put new.(some MM8\DataFiles\Textures) as example, for quick testing.

It can, if I remember correctly there is an HD patch that upscales and replaces the bitmaps. An interesting thing would be to try ESRGAN upscaling if anyone got a capable NVidia GPU (CUDA capability 5.0+ or 3.0 if built from source) wiki (see compute capability in the table).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpwG2uNWhiQ
As far as I am concerned no one really tried that yet, I can't do that as well because I don't have a proper card.
Since it is an algorithm it will upscale everything for you automatically, then you just need to batch convert everything to indexed palette somehow without losing any detail, for example using imagemagick and that's it. Although I think it might break the game since indexing like that will probably make the game go overboard with palette limit.

[Vinevi]

double

[Neron Darkiuss]

As far as i know MMArchive converts .bmp images to indexed format, but it's algorythm is not that good as specialized software is. So all images are indexed, there is no special universal pallete.

Oh good to know. The auto indexing is very handy for testing new things. By the way thanks a lot of embedding lod files for custom UI graphics. It's very convenient, I guess I should be updating them from now on, thank you so much for these! Hoping to update the one for 6 very soon.

There is a lot of knowledge about modding these games around, but not much is public or conveniently stored. I like the tutorial you've made regarding modifying things but it would be also very cool to have things documented somewhere, like a wiki of some sort. The first thing that comes to mind is just a list of pastebin articles, or we could have like a branch here, on CH for guidelines.

Can MM8 engine use better textures? I can work on that. Just need to know where to look at old and where to put new.(some MM8\DataFiles\Textures) as example, for quick testing.

It can, if I remember correctly there is an HD patch that upscales and replaces the bitmaps. An interesting thing would be to try ESRGAN upscaling if anyone got a capable NVidia GPU (CUDA capability 5.0+ or 3.0 if built from source) wiki (see compute capability in the table).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpwG2uNWhiQ
As far as I am concerned no one really tried that yet, I can't do that as well because I don't have a proper card.

upscaling is not a problem i have tested 4 programs, only need simple way to test ingame

you can use nvidia onlibe service for upscaling
https://developer.nvidia.com/gwmt

[Vinevi]

upscaling is not a problem i have tested 4 programs, only need simple way to test ingame

you can use nvidia onlibe service for upscaling
https://developer.nvidia.com/gwmt

I tried real quick importing custom x4 bitmaps and yeah the game won't fill the surfaces but render the texture in full size which is not what we want. So I guess we won't do much here without GrayFace, reimporting and indexing everything manually is pretty tedious as well, granted he solved that long ago.



Having adaptive scaling with mmextension would've been pretty nice. The other way is to upscale the game with his patch (x4) and then replace the textures with the new ones, which are neurally enhanced.