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

[GrayFace]

here are the results (took a couple of attempts because your program was trying to catch the alt+tab window instead of mm8

Moving the game out of Program Files might help. Antivirus could also be the cause of this.
Also, your patch version isn't up to date.
The new version of the patch will land today or tomorrow and it will try last resort of renaming the old file when it can't be deleted. For now you can rename autosave.dod (or saveXXX.dod) into something by yourself each time you save.
To my understanding, this is a bug of something in the system, because the game itself closes the file handle properly before trying to delete it and replace with tmp.lod.

just out of curiosity, as a unix programmer who knows nothing about mm8 or your patches,
in the first two lines those zeroes look like a null pointer, is that it?
Or is it an artifact f how your program crashed mm8, or whatever? thanks a lot anyway.

Yes, to provoke a crash it just sets EIP to 0.

[Roticet]

Is there a guide on how to handle some of the unique situations this mod allows? Things like starting in Enroth (with help from the class unlocker) with a dark elf or vampire character & how to handle leveling up dark elf or vampire abilities / promotions. Also how & when exactly can you jump continents with your party?

True, a manual for this mod would be great! where specific actions, monsters, spells and items are described. Also new game mechanics, how promotions works (depends on the continent you start at), how to travel to the new continent and how to travel between the old continents. And many other things I didn't mentioned. I really would like to help in this or other categories (if my help isn't unnecessary). I don't know anything about coding, but I have some photoshop skills and would like to use them for creating a beautiful manual for this great new game and maybe add a small piece to this big and beautiful puzzle called Might and Magic Merge. what do you guys think about it?

A good chunk of the information that people have been requesting specifically are in Templayer's suggestion tracker. So that would be a good place to pull that information from. And promotions are linked to the classes. The locations of the promotions are still the same as Vanilla MMs. So, cleric promotions are on Antagarich (MM7), where as Priest promotion is on Jadame (MM8), and so on and so forth. While this mod does add A LOT of stuff to it, the core games are largely untouched (minus bug fixes). This mod isn't like TCC for 6 or the Maestro Mod for 7. The major difference for promotions/trainers is that GMing skills can now happen in Enroth (MM6) by going to the Master trainer of whatever skill.

how to travel to the new continent and how to travel between the old continents.

this is most definitely in the Suggestion Tracker. Along with tips on how to get it to work. If the secret shouldn't be spoiled, (personally I don't care if it is or isn't) then a clever riddle about how to get the secret teleporting spots to work properly would be nice. Plus, some light reading of text boxes from Verdant explain how to travel between the 3 continents using specific spells and a certain book, that should be added to the manual.

[eilacomeva]

Do what GrayFace has said, and also remember that even through you are running something under an user that belongs to the administrator group (like the default "administrator" account), you still need to launch the program as an administrator, since the restrictions still apply. You have to do some tinkering for them not to. It is retarded, I know.

UAC can deny writing permissions or even delete files without prompting - I saw that happen for my sister on Win8 with The Sims 3. Upon opening the game, the UAC has silently decided that some of the game files are "evil" (I guess) and as I had the folder opened on another screen, I saw files just disappearing in front of me - with no prompt even though UAC was set to prompt the user. And the game crashed, of course. Upon disabling UAC and reinstalling, the game worked flawlessly. I cannot tell you how much I hate the "we decide for you" mentality that Microsoft started using as their main motto from Win8 onwards. Ugh.

We disagree here - I spent enough time of my life with "computer" == "shared family computer" that I seriously do appreciate these things
("hey bro, I accidentally overwrote your savegame, sorry" etc etc - I'd rather these things be plain impossible).
Re the "we decide for you": as all of my computer dual boot, I need to disable fast boot, or linux will complain that the ntfs partition wasn't unmounted cleanly and refuse to mount it (or mount it read only, I forgot); guess which option every XXX update (Creator's Update etc etc) keep __resetting__
even after I explicitly turn it off?

Also I am a professional coder as well! (Java + Javascript + Oracle SQL + Hibernate JPQL)

I do not have any experience with virtual stores (other that the virtual storing that UAC does tends to break games, since it moves the files to the virtual store, but the game if it is old searches for the file in the folder where it is supposed to be, and fails).

UAC won't protect you against anything. Ever. It only screws with you.

EDIT: I see you already did what GrayFace has said. Nice. Let's wait for him. He basically reverse-engineered the entire engine at this point, so he is the person person in the world to help you find the cause of a crash.

My experience is also limited, but compared to what I do by hand on unix (install windows games using $WINEPREFIX) the 1st time I found out about the virtual store it looked neat!

Oh, in case you're not reading it already, have a look at the old new thing, Raymond Chen's blog; these days it's mostly "arcane windows details", but in the good old days he spent a lot of time explaining the madness they had to deal with to make sure that new versions of windows would stay compatible with any program older versions used to run fine even if what they did was utterly insane - other than being a very interesting read, it did soften my stance on microsoft quite a bit.

I always assumed GrayFace was a 3DO programmer who kept the source code hush-hush; that he reverse engineered the thing is 99% epic (99% because the "MM 6/7/8 Total Remake" apparently did the same).

[eilacomeva]

here are the results (took a couple of attempts because your program was trying to catch the alt+tab window instead of mm8

Moving the game out of Program Files might help. Antivirus could also be the cause of this.
Also, your patch version isn't up to date.
The new version of the patch will land today or tomorrow and it will try last resort of renaming the old file when it can't be deleted. For now you can rename autosave.dod (or saveXXX.dod) into something by yourself each time you save.
To my understanding, this is a bug of something in the system, because the game itself closes the file handle properly before trying to delete it and replace with tmp.lod.

Copying the game somewhere else is what I'm going to try if all else fails (as I laugh, because on wine everything runs 100% fine).

Not the antivirus apparently, I have windows security essentials or whatever it's called these days (the one that comes with windows) and disabling it temporarily didn't make a difference.

I installed the game by vanilla mm8 install + extract the mm678 merge + extract the 10.06.2019 update, I thought it included the latest patch???
I did have an older (2015/2016) version, but I uninstalled & reinstalled mm8 when I thought I had the installation wrong somehow, also deleting the mm8 directory, so I would expect no remnants of the old version.

just out of curiosity, as a unix programmer who knows nothing about mm8 or your patches,
in the first two lines those zeroes look like a null pointer, is that it?
Or is it an artifact f how your program crashed mm8, or whatever? thanks a lot anyway.

Yes, to provoke a crash it just sets EIP to 0.

ok, thank you.

[Templayer]

Is there a guide on how to handle some of the unique situations this mod allows? Things like starting in Enroth (with help from the class unlocker) with a dark elf or vampire character & how to handle leveling up dark elf or vampire abilities / promotions. Also how & when exactly can you jump continents with your party?

Is there a guide on how to handle some of the unique situations this mod allows? Things like starting in Enroth (with help from the class unlocker) with a dark elf or vampire character & how to handle leveling up dark elf or vampire abilities / promotions. Also how & when exactly can you jump continents with your party?

True, a manual for this mod would be great! where specific actions, monsters, spells and items are described. Also new game mechanics, how promotions works (depends on the continent you start at), how to travel to the new continent and how to travel between the old continents. And many other things I didn't mentioned. I really would like to help in this or other categories (if my help isn't unnecessary). I don't know anything about coding, but I have some photoshop skills and would like to use them for creating a beautiful manual for this great new game and maybe add a small piece to this big and beautiful puzzle called Might and Magic Merge. what do you guys think about it?

Guys, you can check the Tracker.
To use the unlocker - download it from the Tracker, unpack and replace existing file somewhere in the Merge subfolders with the modified one.
To start as a Dark Elf in Enroth - select Enroth on New Game and then select a Dark Elf paperdoll (with any class you wish to play as).
How to handle Dark Elf promotions? Travel to Jadame.
How to travel to Jadame? Check the tracker. For detailed information check the Spoiler section.

Moving the game out of Program Files might help. Antivirus could also be the cause of this.
To my understanding, this is a bug of something in the system, because the game itself closes the file handle properly before trying to delete it and replace with tmp.lod.

You mean that Win10 is an extremely fabulous system that is in no way a piece of <censorship>?

Copying the game somewhere else is what I'm going to try if all else fails (as I laugh, because on wine everything runs 100% fine).

Not the antivirus apparently, I have windows security essentials or whatever it's called these days (the one that comes with windows) and disabling it temporarily didn't make a difference.

I installed the game by vanilla mm8 install + extract the mm678 merge + extract the 10.06.2019 update, I thought it included the latest patch???
I did have an older (2015/2016) version, but I uninstalled & reinstalled mm8 when I thought I had the installation wrong somehow, also deleting the mm8 directory, so I would expect no remnants of the old version.
ok, thank you.

Why as a last resort? That should be the first thing you do... or better yet, the null thing to do (i.e. not installing anything into Program Files at all on these systems(Vista->10)).
The latest update doesn't have the latest GrayFace patch, and Rodril hasn't been here for quite a while. But it does work with an older one (the one it is packaged with), I think.

EDIT: I have never heard about Windows Security Essentials, but it sounds like it is to security tools like what MS Paint is to drawing programs.
(Sorry, it is hard to suppress my hate for Microsoft after spending my entire life dealing with their bullcr-ap)

[DaveHer]

I like the idea of a manual. Writing it should be done carefully in a way that gives the necessary information without spoiling anything for new players. As a new player, I for example wouldn't want to know the mechanics of intercontinental travel beforehand - I would want to discover them myself. If the mechanics were explained, they could be in a spoilers section. I would however want to know that the general possibility of continent-hopping exists, because it's the main attraction of the mod. Promotion mechanics should probably be explained because they have posed a lot of questions in the past. The Sorcerer promotion line is especially convoluted, so listing every class with each possible promotion would probably be called for. The ability to edit various things via data tables could be explained as well.

I don't know if you can discover the way for intercontinental travel without being told. I know how to do it only because I was told how to do it by Rodril and then i wondered how can I discover it on my own. The answer use to be in the tracker also.
David

I know actually via the quest, but dunno if i go I will can come back xD the quest giver talk too much but dont specify nothing xD

Quest is not the only way for intercontinental travel. There are books and land marks that can take you to other continents and back again. These land marks are the ones that I was talking about when I said that you can not find them unless someone tells you where there are. Check the tracker.
David

[alekssandros]

Quest is not the only way for intercontinental travel. There are books and land marks that can take you to other continents and back again. These land marks are the ones that I was talking about when I said that you can not find them unless someone tells you where there are. Check the tracker.
David

FASCINATING! I let them come, MM6 is long enought to start looking for go to the other continents since begining =P But is good to know that

[GrayFace]

Moving the game out of Program Files might help. Antivirus could also be the cause of this.
To my understanding, this is a bug of something in the system, because the game itself closes the file handle properly before trying to delete it and replace with tmp.lod.

You mean that Win10 is an extremely fabulous system that is in no way a piece of <censorship>?

I think I first discovered the bug on Vista. It was on my father's PC. There the file would stay locked for a very short period of time and that was enough for delete+move to fail.

[Templayer]

Moving the game out of Program Files might help. Antivirus could also be the cause of this.
To my understanding, this is a bug of something in the system, because the game itself closes the file handle properly before trying to delete it and replace with tmp.lod.

You mean that Win10 is an extremely fabulous system that is in no way a piece of <censorship>?

I think I first discovered the bug on Vista. It was on my father's PC. There the file would stay locked for a very short period of time and that was enough for delete+move to fail.

Oh Windows Vista. The greatest operating system of all time!

Anyway, if he doesn't turn off UAC then moving the game out of the program files probably won't work. I think.
What basically happens if you turn the UAC off (in a non-hackish way) is that some of its "protection mechanisms" will still apply on any file that has the string of "Program Files" in its path. And if you have UAC turned ON, then those mechanisms work EVERYWHERE. If I remember correctly, it has been a few years since I had to deal with that (and I have dealt with that permanently).

[eilacomeva]

You mean that Win10 is an extremely fabulous system that is in no way a piece of <censorship>?

I think I first discovered the bug on Vista. It was on my father's PC. There the file would stay locked for a very short period of time and that was enough for delete+move to fail.

Oh Windows Vista. The greatest operating system of all time!

Anyway, if he doesn't turn off UAC then moving the game out of the program files probably won't work. I think.
What basically happens if you turn the UAC off (in a non-hackish way) is that some of its "protection mechanisms" will still apply on any file that has the string of "Program Files" in its path. And if you have UAC turned ON, then those mechanisms work EVERYWHERE. If I remember correctly, it has been a few years since I had to deal with that (and I have dealt with that permanently).

I thought it worked by either having some filesystem attribute, or maybe by recording in the installed program list "installed something here" - please tell me that you're joking about it searching for the string "program files"...

I've never tried windows pre 95, windows 95 only in a vm for some reason (program compatibility?), and I'm lucky enough that I've never touched windows me, but your picture is missing windows 2000 - the BESTEST windows!

[eilacomeva]

...

Copying the game somewhere else is what I'm going to try if all else fails (as I laugh, because on wine everything runs 100% fine).

Not the antivirus apparently, I have windows security essentials or whatever it's called these days (the one that comes with windows) and disabling it temporarily didn't make a difference.

I installed the game by vanilla mm8 install + extract the mm678 merge + extract the 10.06.2019 update, I thought it included the latest patch???
I did have an older (2015/2016) version, but I uninstalled & reinstalled mm8 when I thought I had the installation wrong somehow, also deleting the mm8 directory, so I would expect no remnants of the old version.
ok, thank you.

Why as a last resort? That should be the first thing you do... or better yet, the null thing to do (i.e. not installing anything into Program Files at all on these systems(Vista->10)).
The latest update doesn't have the latest GrayFace patch, and Rodril hasn't been here for quite a while. But it does work with an older one (the one it is packaged with), I think.

EDIT: I have never heard about Windows Security Essentials, but it sounds like it is to security tools like what MS Paint is to drawing programs.
(Sorry, it is hard to suppress my hate for Microsoft after spending my entire life dealing with their bullcr-ap)

1. Because that's the way it's supposed to work, and because I like the idea of the virtualstore to keep old games working;
also, I'm using wine myself, my brother is the windows guy.

2. Being installed by default means it's the one antivirus that all malware writers test against; Tavis Ormandy, in his interesting research on antivirus vulnerabilities and stupidities, recommends it as one of the least bad(*), but here's some of their not-really-best-moments https://twitter.com/taviso/status/981577213546909697


(*) can't find the link right now - which is good, that series on antivirus systems was an interesting read

[GrayFace]

What basically happens if you turn the UAC off (in a non-hackish way) is that some of its "protection mechanisms" will still apply on any file that has the string of "Program Files" in its path. And if you have UAC turned ON, then those mechanisms work EVERYWHERE. If I remember correctly, it has been a few years since I had to deal with that (and I have dealt with that permanently).

On Win 7 turning off UAC turns off everything, it becomes like XP in that sense. Pretty sure in terms of files UAC on Win 7 only covers special folders. Files aren't the only thing that UAC effects BTW, it also restricts use of hooks API. So, legitimate programs have a harder time, while viruses can easily elevate themselves. See "uacme" for a completely public set of ways to do it.

I thought it worked by either having some filesystem attribute, or maybe by recording in the installed program list "installed something here" - please tell me that you're joking about it searching for the string "program files"...

It has to be some sort of attribute of Program Files folder.

I've never tried windows pre 95, windows 95 only in a vm for some reason (program compatibility?), and I'm lucky enough that I've never touched windows me, but your picture is missing windows 2000 - the BESTEST windows!

The NT family until 9x was ditched isn't included there.
I used Win 95 back in the day. It was cool, but had one habit that wasn't very nice. It would suddenly stop loading for no reason. It was happening about every half of year and we had to reinstall it every time it did.

[GrayFace]

1. Because that's the way it's supposed to work, and because I like the idea of the virtualstore to keep old games working;
also, I'm using wine myself, my brother is the windows guy.

This is your brother's computer, meaning there's only one user, your brother.

[EstelRandir]

Ok so, there is no wiki, etc to help with this. Can someone tell me if/how you can raise dark elf / vampire ability (expert, master, etc) in Enroth / Antagarich?

[alekssandros]

Ok so, there is no wiki, etc to help with this. Can someone tell me if/how you can raise dark elf / vampire ability (expert, master, etc) in Enroth / Antagarich?

Definitly you must go to Jedame. Where u got a darkelf and vampire in Enroth?

[EstelRandir]

Definitly you must go to Jedame. Where u got a darkelf and vampire in Enroth?

Character unlock mod. I thought I remembered some post where trainers, etc were placed in other continents to help options like this. It would be rather fun if that were true. I was not very fond of MM8, but I like a couple of the character options.

[alekssandros]

Definitly you must go to Jedame. Where u got a darkelf and vampire in Enroth?

Character unlock mod. I thought I remembered some post where trainers, etc were placed in other continents to help options like this. It would be rather fun if that were true. I was not very fond of MM8, but I like a couple of the character options.

u can save them in free haven town hall (house at west from magic shop) and recruit other classes from training grounds or some peasant and convert them to a some classes do u need until u can find the way to go jedame.

I playing with paladin/druid/sorcerer/druid/archer and have in reserve 2 sorcerer, 1 cleric, 1 thief

[alekssandros]

Guys! Just got a bug with the reputation counter T_T dunno if is the keep (south of Frozen Highlands) or just it happens T_T

I save the game with 73 of reputation, and when I load I get 0 T_T

Someone has happened it this before? Is solved?

[Emjayen]

Did anyone have any success running this on the original Italian version under windows 10?
It DOES work on wine(*), but I'm trying to get it to work for my brother who hates linux

[..]

So-long as it's run elevated it will run natively without issue on Windows 10, albeit at a signicant performance hit irrespective of GrayFace's patch being installed.

I gather from reading your posts, the exact problem is that it's hanging at the point of beginning a new game, after selecting a continent and character creation?

Can you confirm that standard game (ie., not the "merge") works as expected?

A few things:

- Verify that no ACL shims are enabled for the image. As you read Raymond's blog I assume you're familiar with how these are implemented.

- Verify your SID holds the appropriate permissions (notably: write/create) to the game installation path and children.

- Provide a dump of the process at the time of hanging. Easiest way would be to use Process Explorer (right-click process -> create minidump).

- There's no standard utility like strace on Windows, however the same can be accomplished using WinDbg or probably more easily something like API Monitor.

- I doubt it's some edge-case related to a bad installation, however you can use this torrent as an alternate installation source. It contains images of the original series discs.

Oh, in case you're not reading it already, have a look at the old new thing, Raymond Chen's blog; these days it's mostly "arcane windows details", but in the good old days he spent a lot of time explaining the madness they had to deal with to make sure that new versions of windows would stay compatible with any program older versions used to run fine even if what they did was utterly insane - other than being a very interesting read, it did soften my stance on microsoft quite a bit.

The worst of it is almost exclusively due to inept programmers breaking interface contracts, frequently by e.g, digging into internal datastructures and otherwise making assumptions they shouldn't be.

Luckily the mess of compatibility hacks are for the most part entirely isolated to the Windows subsystem layer/UM components -- the real kernel service interface remains relatively clean.

His blog is certainly something I'd recommend following, even for users.

What basically happens if you turn the UAC off (in a non-hackish way) is that some of its "protection mechanisms" will still apply on any file that has the string of "Program Files" in its path

That's not a thing -- access control is handled via the standard NT access control model. UAC is implemented by having a user's process run with a restricted standard access token, granting a secondary "admin" access token/associated privileges when a thread requests it (subject to approval via the consent prompt you're familiar with, which is the only real change with UAC as it requires kernel support)

Re: Complaining about Win8/Win10

What exactly is the issue with it? Aside from aesthetics.

[GrayFace]

So-long as it's run elevated it will run natively without issue on Windows 10, albeit at a signicant performance hit irrespective of GrayFace's patch being installed.

Do you mean it runs slower on Win 10 than on Win 7? My patch introduces extra performance hit on high resolutions, because it scales UI in software in single thread. Flexible UI is less demanding, because less of the screen is covered by UI.

- Provide a dump of the process at the time of hanging.

Already done.