Elemental Mod for MM7 -- v3.1 holiday release!

[Tomsod]

Greetings! Elemental Mod is an ongoing project to improve MM7 without losing what makes it unique. Not necessarily different, but certainly better! As such, the mod mostly makes changes to game mechanics, and there's basically no new dungeons or monsters. (The fact that I can't draw doesn't really help!) I did add a bunch of new items and even two spells, but really the mod mostly reshuffles existing content to improve balance and enjoyment of the original game. Any feedback is very welcome!

Mod current status: v3.1 is released; work on the final, fourth version can start now. You can track my progress on the github page (but beware of spoilers!)

You can also download the latest release or see the announcement post.

[Tomsod]

Greetings everyone! I would like to introduce my mod for Might & Magic VII, the Elemental Mod. It's rather modest so far: its main goal is to re-implement MM6's elemental system (fire/elec/cold/poison/magic) in MM7. (I've always found it more aesthetically appealing.) There is also some undead-related content (e.g., zombified characters gain lich immunities, and some monsters can cast Destroy Undead on your party), and a few bug fixes (that I'll probably have to remove when the next version of MM7Patch comes out, as they're likely to be included there). For the complete changelog, see here, as it's quite long.

You can download the mod from here. The mod requires a recent version of MM7Patch, but you do not need MMExtension (although having it installed shouldn't break anything). Unpack the archive into your MM7 folder, then go to Data subfolder and delete elemental.rus.events.lod if you're using the English version of the game, or delete elemental.eng.events.lod if you have the Russian translation. You will need to start new game for the mod to work properly.

This is my first serious attempt at modding this game. I actually have big plans for a major rebalancing mod with tons of new features, but gotta start small! If you find any bugs, or uncaught mentions of old elements (except in spell school context), please do tell me. Thanks!

[Tomsod]

Good news! I started working on the aforementioned big mod for MM7, and to save effort I'm implementing it on top of this one. So please welcome Elemental Mod ver. 2.0! Judging by the changelog, this release should have about five times as many new features as the last one. These are mostly changes to magic and alchemy: there's one new spell, eight new potions, nine new item modifiers, and a lot of tweaks to existing ones. Among other changes: I added a "quick alchemy" feature, allowing to brew any potion in one click; Fire Aura and other similar effects can now affect already enchanted weapons and artifacts; magical curses have increased success chance based on skill; blasters and wands are now equipped in the bow slot; magic shops can recharge wands; locations in the same region share the reputation counter; area attacks print the total damage dealt; and I added a couple new unique items. You can see the full list in the changelog (scroll down a bit, past the v1.0 stuff).

Download from here! Like the previous release, you'll need MM7Patch (do not uncheck the last two optional tasks: the mod expects these to be installed), but no MMExtension is necessary -- that said, I did make sure my mod is compatible with the latter. (That's what the files in Scripts and Data/Tables are for.) Don't forget to delete elemental.rus.events.lod if you're playing the English version of the game, and make sure to start a new game.

By my estimate, I'll need 2-3 more releases like this one to complete this mod. Not sure how soon the next one is (I recently got a very demanding job), but it'll include race, class, and skill tweaks, as well as several new artifacts, among other things.

One last thing: some of the new items added by the mod (dragon scales and the armor made from them) require new graphics, but I'm no artist! What I've managed to put together is hardly satisfactory. So, if there's an artist out there who's willing to draw some badass dragonscale armor for MM7 paperdolls, I would be eternally indebted for your help.

[Eksekk]

The mod seems amazing!

Any chance that you are gonna tinker with quests, dungeons, overland areas etc.; I mean widely understood content rather than just major improvements to the engine? We here are starved for new content in M&M, and such a talented assembly mage should have no problems delivering it.

[Tomsod]

Any chance that you are gonna tinker with quests, dungeons, overland areas etc.; I mean widely understood content rather than just major improvements to the engine?

Well, adding new locations would indeed be great, but I feel it's a bit beyond my ability, as I can't draw! Just meshing together existing assets can only do so much, and it'd be too derivative. If I were an artist as well, I would certainly make a Vori Mod instead of this one, but it'll have to remain a dream for now...

Besides, the focus of this particular mod is to polish the existing game rather than to expand it. Sorry! That said, 3.0 will feature a change to the Bracada/Deyja questline that will allow you to "play both sides" for a while and mix Light and Dark promotions within your party, and there'll probably be a bunch of mini-quests given by grandmastery teachers, so that's something. But I just don't want to butcher the original game too much. MM7 is good, potentially really really good, and I desire to make it the best it can be instead of changing it into something else.

[Eksekk]

3.0 will feature a change to the Bracada/Deyja questline that will allow you to "play both sides" for a while and mix Light and Dark promotions within your party, and there'll probably be a bunch of mini-quests given by grandmastery teachers

That sounds absolutely amazing! MM7 is definitely my favorite part of the series, but choosing only one type of magic in one playthrough can be restricting (especially that I almost always choose "good" (light), but that might be only my problem ) I wish you the best of luck developing this mod, as I'm no artist/modeller either and thus can't help. By the way, I understand that the focus of this mod is "polished vanilla", but just in case you wanna do other projects in the future, you might find more people interested in helping on M&M discord server. Either way, I will surely be one of the first to playtest the mod once it's complete (and maybe even before if you need help with that).

[Tomsod]

Either way, I will surely be one of the first to playtest the mod once it's complete (and maybe even before if you need help with that).

More playtesting is always welcome, of course. Moreover, I wouldn't advise you to delay until this mod is done, as it could be two or more years before that! If you must wait, wait until the next release, which should be sufficiently distinct to warrant a playthrough. Although I did post this current release with the expectation that someone will play it as well.

[keksua]

This mod sounds very sweet to me. I also liked MM6magic system a lot more then later ones.

Preservation now halves the chance of monsters causing instant death or
eradication.

What about protection from magic spell of body?

Also, I replaced wand spells Sparks and Spirit Lash with Slow and
Psychic Shock, as the former two aren't really ranged spells.

Maybe adding two new would be better? Imma love both sparks and spirit lash wands.
I can offer you modifying merchant skill and price multipliers in guilds/shops to be more like in MM6, where you constantly lacking money to train/learn spells and in MM7-8 I can't remember any issues with gold, even in first plays.

[Tomsod]

I also liked MM6magic system a lot more then later ones.

I know, right? MM7 had a lot of good changes, but its elemental system sucked out half of the strategic depth from the magic schools. Not to mention aesthetics!

What about protection from magic spell of body?

It's now called "Immutability", and yes, it does still provide complete protection from instant death, but only at GM. Whereas Preservation only needs Expert to learn. I playtested this release with a Druid instead of a Cleric, so I could not get GM at all and Preservation ended up being very helpful to me.

Maybe adding two new would be better? Imma love both sparks and spirit lash wands.

The entire point was to remove those wands, not to add new ones, as wands are now equipped as ranged weapons and by default won't be used in melee (although I added the ability to shoot in melee range if you really want to). Since neither Sparks and especially not Spirit Lash can be used outside melee range, they would become very inconvenient to use. So, I removed them.

I can offer you modifying merchant skill and price multipliers in guilds/shops to be more like in MM6, where you constantly lacking money to train/learn spells and in MM7-8 I can't remember any issues with gold, even in first plays.

The strange thing is, MM7 has actually nerfed Merchant skill compared to MM6 (7% + 1%/2%/3% per level at N/E/M compared to MM6's 7% + 3%/4%/5%), and besides the removal of general stores, nothing much changed regarding shops, but you do indeed still end up with much more gold from the midgame on! I initially intended to add several mid-late-game "money sinks" in my mod, but my friend who helped me playtest insisted that he never has enough money even to train and that my riches are mostly the result of my OCD style of play, so I postponed it for now. Now that you corroborate me, I'm not so sure I should have. Anyway, the biggest money sink (custom shop orders) will have to wait until 4.0 no matter how I look at it, as it'll be quite a hassle to code.

[keksua]

Let me put it this way: I've played vanilla mm6 lately with solo sorcerer and was sure I'll be fine with merchant 1 as I don't need to train other party members and buy spells(spells really cost a ton in mm6). But at lvl 60 I was so tired I have to grab, enchant and sell every piece of gear I can find and I still have insufficient gold to train that I took lvl4 expert, and later 7 master as expert still wasn't enough lol.

[Xfing]

You got Destroy Undead to work? Instant effect, "hitscan" single target spells didn't work on monsters in MM8 (not sure if any monster ad one of those in MM7 tho), it's a long-known issue. So for example implosion on greater air elementals, mass distortion on greater earth elementals or paralyze on plane guardians didn't do a thing and just had the monsters perform the casting animation with no effect at all, pretty much wasting a turn.

Destroy Undead is a similar kind of spell, so if you found a way to make it work on monsters, maybe you could present the code in the GrayFace patch thread, maybe it could be reused to fix those spells that aren't working.

[Tomsod]

By "on monsters" did you mean monster attacking a player or monster attacking a monster? In the former case, my code just picks a random player, calculates the damage and directly casts the "damage player" function, i.e. I bypass most of the AI spellcasting code altogether, along with whatever bugs it might have. However, when the spell is cast on another monster, I call a more higher-level function which does most of the heavy lifting. So at least the latter doesn't seem to be buggy.

But actually, it's possible that some monster spells not working in MM8 is not a bug at all, but just an unimplemented feature. After all, it was done in a hurry. In MM7 too, most of the pre-placed Wizards have Paralyze as one of their spells, but it seems to be a typo, because there just isn't any code that supports AI casting that spell. With my two spells (Turn & Destroy Undead) I also had to write the AI code myself. So it could be that NWC added some new spells to new MM8 monsters, but then forgot to write the necessary code for it. If that's the case, it could indeed be fixed in a similar manner, although I must stress that a separate chunk of code (up to three, even) must be written for each spell you want to implement, so it's not a one-size-fits-all solution.

As for Grayface's patch, I just presented him a list of 50+ bugs (most with fixes) I found while coding v2.0, so he might be a bit busy right now. Besides, I haven't really investigated the MM8 code that much, so I don't even know where the functions that deal with AI spellcasting are located there.

[Xfing]

Well I would assume they had at least part of the code responsible for monsters being able to cast those spells implemented, since they bothered to let the monsters have those spells on paper. But it's probably like you're saying - they didn't get around to making those spells work due to time constraints. Now that I think about it, monsters being able to cast Paralyze means that if you're not safeguarded against paralysis, your entire party can get disabled within a few seconds. That would make the Plane between Planes probably the single hardest outdoor location in all three games.

But yeah, I would expect these spells on monsters to work kind of like you described - choose a random party member and apply the effect to them. I see little use for spells like Turn Undead used against the party (I'd expect it inflict all Liches with an "Afraid" condition?), but the general code for this type of spells should be in place, since we've got a working Dispel Magic in MM7, and even Mass Curse in MM6 before that. So Turn Undead, Inferno, Souldrinker and such should probably be relatively easy to implement.

[Tomsod]

I see little use for spells like Turn Undead used against the party (I'd expect it inflict all Liches with an "Afraid" condition?)

And Zombies, yes. Admittedly it's not the most meaningful change in the patch, but v1.0 was more of a probing stone than a serious effort.

As to those MM8 spells, I won't be fixing them, as, again, I'm not very familiar with its code, and even in MM7 bugfixing is more of a byproduct of my stumbing upon them than a goal in itself. But if anyone wants to try, it shouldn't be very hard, especially since IIRC the Merge folk already tweaked Power Cure etc. effects when cast by monsters, so they should've discovered the relevant function already. But even if not, I'd advise to look at my new monster spell code and the function it replaces, then find a corresponding function in MM8 and replace it the same way. The other two related functions (parsing the spell name in monsters.txt and checking if the spell should be cast) probably already work as desired, so only that one change is required. Good luck to anyone brave enough to do this!

[Eksekk]

Sorry that it's unrelated to the main topic, but how do you guys (Tomsod, Grayface, Rodril, cthscr) get so proficient in reverse engineering? I tried to learn it once but stopped after a week or two because things kept getting harder and harder. How do you learn so much?

[Tomsod]

Yeah, it was also super hard when I first tried modding a game (IIRC, it was a small hack for Worms 4), and I gave up after a while. But later I tried again, and succeeded! The next mod felt easier than first, so after a while I got the hang of it, and studying disassembly no longer feels like a 4D crossword puzzle by now. I even recently got a real job because of my assembly knowledge (not really related to reverse engineering, but the experience helps). So judging by my experience, you just need to try again, and preferably start small.

[Eksekk]

Thanks for your answer (though I don't think it will help me, but it's my fault). Now, to get back on topic, is the mod gonna feature difficulty upgrades? I'm going to play it with a magic party, which might make it more difficult (at least in the beginning), but base games are very easy for a lot of us. If you don't wanna force extreme difficulty on all players, I think creating difficulty settings where game will for example load different monsters.txt or mapstats.txt will be easy for you, based on your current progress. What do you think about that?

[Eksekk]

Also, if I might suggest new features, maybe make "DrainSP" monster effect drain a percentage of maximum SP, like 10% (possibly based on Personality/IntellectEffect) instead of everything? It always felt overpowered to me disabling a spell caster with a single strike.

[Tomsod]

Now, to get back on topic, is the mod gonna feature difficulty upgrades? I'm going to play it with a magic party, which might make it more difficult (at least in the beginning), but base games are very easy for a lot of us. If you don't wanna force extreme difficulty on all players, I think creating difficulty settings where game will for example load different monsters.txt or mapstats.txt will be easy for you, based on your current progress. What do you think about that?

Actually, this is a good idea. I've considered making some parts of the game tougher -- e.g. I originally intended to buff all undead, not just ghosts, to counteract the holy water -- but I scrapped many of those changes for fear of scaring potential players. But indeed, the game does lose a lot of replay value by becoming a bit too easy once you learn to play it well.

An optional difficulty slider could be a perfect compromise, and as I understand some other mods already feature it as well. The only question is what it should affect? Monster stats are an obvious choice, although perhaps a more elegant solution would be directly adjusting PC and enemy damage without changing the visible numbers. But MM7 is only mostly about combat, so a balanced difficulty slider should also affect other facets of the game. Money is also important, so making everything more expensive, or, alternatively, making gold more scarce (and lowering the sell price of loot) is one such option.

What else? I could penalize earned XP and/or skill points per level, but perhaps it would be a bit too cruel. I really need to brainstorm this.

Also, if I might suggest new features, maybe make "DrainSP" monster effect drain a percentage of maximum SP, like 10% (possibly based on Personality/IntellectEffect) instead of everything? It always felt overpowered to me disabling a spell caster with a single strike.

Consider that other monsters are able to turn your caster to stone, or knock them out, or outright eradicate them, which all will disable them just as well. The only difference is that SP loss can't be easily remedied with magic, although there are potions for this. Besides, even without SP your PC is at least able to use weapons etc., unlike the aforementioned conditions. So it doesn't feel that outlandish to me. And really, just draining a small portion of a wizard's mana pool is as good as doing nothing at all, since wizards have too much mana anyway.

[Eksekk]

What else? I could penalize earned XP and/or skill points per level, but perhaps it would be a bit too cruel. I really need to brainstorm this.

No, please don't penalize xp/skill point gains, it will make it much harder to achieve relevant masteries. In my opinion, boosting monster stats (possibly spawn rate of monsters to make group nukes like meteor shower/fireball/rock blast more useful, but don't overdo it, because then incinerate and more single-target damaging spells will be useless; ideally, some monsters should have spawn rate increased and there also should be (mini)bosses where you can utilize all debuffs and single-target damaging spells) and increasing buy prices should be enough. And like you said, it should be optional, so someone wanting to play doesn't hit the wall and stop playing. Maybe allow difficulty to be switchable ingame until you leave Emerald Island?

And in my opinion you should be somewhat rewarded for playing on a higher difficulty mode, so maybe a little more XP for killing enemies like numerous mods have done? Not enough to completely trivialize the game, but enough to feel a difference in power?

Another helpful tip for balancing might be that in the case of monsters, I always felt magic spells were OP. Even the basic Harm, which does 8 + 1-2 per skill, felt devastating, let alone acid burst or blades (or even worse rock blast). If you feel you can't make the monster type stronger, just give it a magic attack and adjust the numbers accordingly.

Also, armageddon should be nerfed, it's the one spell that is OP because you can kill anything on the map from safety of your hideout. But please don't go the way of bumping magic resistance of every monster outside, it's better to just disable the spell entirely or make it so ridiculously expensive that you'll be able to afford it only with GM merchant and selling literally everything you find. Another option is backporting MM8's Dark Grasp instead of armageddon, but it depends on your willingness, it would still be powerful by wrecking bosses, but not powerful in a "you'll empty all maps in half an hour" sort of way.

Consider that other monsters are able to turn your caster to stone, or knock them out, or outright eradicate them, which all will disable them just as well. The only difference is that SP loss can't be easily remedied with magic, although there are potions for this. Besides, even without SP your PC is at least able to use weapons etc., unlike the aforementioned conditions. So it doesn't feel that outlandish to me. And really, just draining a small portion of a wizard's mana pool is as good as doing nothing at all, since wizards have too much mana anyway.

Well, the only difference that you said is a veeeery important one, as Protection from Magic is possibly one of best spells ingame, and having no way to block the mana-drain is a problem. Of course, there's alchemy, but normal blue potions are too weak (unless you grind alchemy to 15+, but then you'll have no magic skills, and find clanker's amulet and savescum +25 alchemy item from dragons), and white divine power requires too many reagents to be easily solvable. Maybe add another type of shop where you will be able to mass-buy low-level reagents, of course for boosted price? It would make alchemy a viable counter to this problem. Still, I can't force you to nerf the mana-drain, but it is annoying having to constantly reload and/or lloyd back to church (I'm mainly considering the final devil room in colony zod there, as advanced form of wights mana-drain is manageable because you don't encounter them in bulk). And yes, you can use weapons, but spellcasters have very low hp and will die easily in hand-to-hand combat, so it's not a complete remedy.

Also, as a FYI, I don't consider magic overpowered and always utilized melee parties, using magic only for buffs/debuffs and practically no damage at all, and almost never had roadblocks, even in mods like Echo's MM8 modling or Azimovhaas's mm7 mod (MM7 Reimagined).