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

[cthscr]

Don't just uncheck win95 compat but set Win XP SP3 one.

[jmaster]

Hello to all of the community and happy holidays for those who have not run out of them yet
I have made another portion of MM6 armors, I think that we have all of the MM6 and MM7 armors done for now. I remade MM6 plate armor to be used with hands part of armor(because armors have them I thought that they need to be used). Because of that, someday I'll remake Yoruba to fit MM7 tier 3 prototype.
So, all that I have done can be downloaded here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1InXDup ... fYB_OVEUYa
Complex item pictures https://drive.google.com/file/d/1yegHIV ... ClK6iM7XeQ
Also archive contains images for genie with v6 and v6a, but I'll need to modify paperdoll images for her. That's because Echo (thanks to you and happy holidays too!!! ) uploaded images without my blurry background removing
As for minotaur, they have quite different paperdolls too. One of the problems is unarmed right hand position. I haven't found where to do this, but, I think, we need to shift hand of brown one pixel-two up of gray one - down.

For first leather armor you'll need to edit sprite name for it in items.txt in EnglishT.lod AND in gamefolder/Datafiles/. Also you'll need to change its appeal on map somehow(it uses mm8 one), I haven't found where to do this

Screenshots of the armors
Male

Female

Minotaur

Troll

Dwarf

[SpectralDragon]

Also archive contains images for genie with v6 and v6a, but I'll need to modify paperdoll images for her. That's because Echo (thanks to you and happy holidays too!!! ) uploaded images without my blurry background removing

Dunny you said it because she, bless her, also uploaded complete Genie assets too.

[alexcatalin]

Is it normal for the Andover Potbello quest (retrieve baal candelabra) to give me -200 reputation?

[Echo]

Hey so SpectralDragon alerted me there were some missing Genie assets causing issues (I see you guys have found the re-upload and got the clean paperdoll already ).

I've finally gone and dug into the archive of my MM folders and tried to pluck out and reorganize all the newest versions of things and stuff. It's all re-uploaded in that topic of mine (and some stuff might still be in the Modling reupload folder linked in the Modling topic, both are in my signature) in case anything else was missing.

Those MM6 armor ports are super cool btw I'm always so happy to see Merge progressing! Hope the new year goes great for all of you!

[SpectralDragon]

Is it normal for the Andover Potbello quest (retrieve baa candelabra) to give me -200 reputation?

Yes, that´s straight from MM6 and it´s a hint that the cult of Baa is a wicked one.

[mightandmagicplayer]

Is it normal for the Andover Potbello quest (retrieve baal candelabra) to give me -200 reputation?

That -200 is vanilla, but mm6 had a scale of -1000 to +1000, whereas mm7-mm8 has a scale of roughly -25 to +25, which causes huge issues with the merge having your rep jump from one end of the scale to the other with a single quest.

[jmaster]

I'm now replaying mod with new items. Now it becomes quite harder: if you want to abuse save/load with Emerald island dragon, it now takes MUCH longer time to dig relics, and it is good
I have several questions for community version of mod:
1) How are bonuses of artifacts combined in the mod? I mean that bonus from normal items and from special items were combined, but now cloak of the moon and, for example, ring of dark magic don't stack anymore. Aren't sun and moon cloaks supposed to be special items?
2) Got to the wasp nest and now jumping height is not enough to got through it. In Rodril version everything worked as it should(if I load my save there). I found lines for it in extraevents.lua, tried to add jumping bonus there, or, at least, show that script is working by adding item to inventory, but it seems to be completely failed. My lines there are following

Code: Select all

-- Calc jump height event

mem.autohook2(0x473164, function(d)
	local t = {Height = d.eax}
	events.call("CalcJumpHeight", t)
	d.eax = t.Height+400
        evt.Add("Inventory",1);
end)

function events.CalcJumpHeight(t)
	t.Height = math.min(t.Height, 420)
end

UPD: Code is working, but for simple jump, not the spell "Jump". Is spell height fixed somewhere else? I remember that I never been available to jump to the top levels. In Rodril version, I repeat, everything were fine...
UPD2: That code works only for outdoor simple jumps on X key. And I figured out what's difference between old and last version: problem is in mm8.ini, in old version there were no line "FixMovement=0". If I delete it or change to 1 then jump became higher. So, this problem is solved

3) In the land of giants game had crashed VERY often, especially when you first get there after crossing three sculls brick over the road. Sometimes it crashed when I was fighting with titans
4) Some spells and some enemies seems to deal damage in % of character health. For example bow of carnage deals almost the same percent of damage for party character(in case of friendly fire against the wall) with 30 hp and with 3000 hp. Similary acts spell "rock blast". Is it correct?
5) MM8 have very weird character timing. If you have 4 characters, all of them have possibility to act in turm based mode, but if you'll add fifth - he or she will do something only if one of the four previous character will be unable to act that turn. Can it somehow be fixed?
6) Localization files(especially russian) seems to be outdated. Character classes are still written in englist, but I discovered another bug - baby dragon from the warlork quest misses lines for feeding him (I mean that there are no lines for it, but script acts and food is consumed. Status line text remains blank too)

[cthscr]

1) How are bonuses of artifacts combined in the mod? I mean that bonus from normal items and from special items were combined, but now cloak of the moon and, for example, ring of dark magic don't stack anymore. Aren't sun and moon cloaks supposed to be special items?

Special items take their bonuses from MM8, not from ExtraArtifacts.lua, so stacking depends on MM8 engine. Several MM8 artifacts were dehardcoded to get their bonuses stackable.

3) In the land of giants game had crashed VERY often, especially when you first get there after crossing three sculls brick over the road. Sometimes it crashed when I was fighting with titans

I always suggest to create an issue and attach a reproducible savegame.

4) Some spells and some enemies seems to deal damage in % of character health. For example bow of carnage deals almost the same percent of damage for party character(in case of friendly fire against the wall) with 30 hp and with 3000 hp. Similary acts spell "rock blast". Is it correct?

No as far as I can tell (of Carnage definitely deals different percentage with increasing level via debug console). But damage may depend on your skill.

5) MM8 have very weird character timing. If you have 4 characters, all of them have possibility to act in turm based mode, but if you'll add fifth - he or she will do something only if one of the four previous character will be unable to act that turn. Can it somehow be fixed?

Again, I suggest to create an issue. Even GreyFace might read an issue.

6) Localization files(especially russian) seems to be outdated. Character classes are still written in englist, but I discovered another bug - baby dragon from the warlork quest misses lines for feeding him (I mean that there are no lines for it, but script acts and food is consumed. Status line text remains blank too)

'master' branch contains modified files in DataFiles directory.
As for baby dragon lines - I suspect '03 LocalizeTables.txt' doesn't work fully (well, it may be insufficient). Got it with lines from GlobalTxt.

[Xfing]

Maan, are those MM6 armors sweet! They're absolutely amazing, can't wait for Rodril to compile all the updates and port them finally UwU

[GrayFace]

Improved or remade MM6 paper dolls.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/n4lh9g5k3dq35fw/z%20mm6body.icons.lod?dl=1
[edit] This won't be the last version, I'll further tweak them.
[edit2] I've uploaded tweaked version to the same URL.

[cthscr]

Hello to all of the community and happy holidays for those who have not run out of them yet
I have made another portion of MM6 armors, I think that we have all of the MM6 and MM7 armors done for now. I remade MM6 plate armor to be used with hands part of armor(because armors have them I thought that they need to be used)

Sweet, pushed. (I also enabled Charele in rnditems so the only unobtainable seems to be Hermes' Sandals.)

As for minotaur, they have quite different paperdolls too. One of the problems is unarmed right hand position. I haven't found where to do this, but, I think, we need to shift hand of brown one pixel-two up of gray one - down.

pc21LHo, pc22LHo ?
Side note: Trolls and Dwarves (Minotaurs also) might require head adjustment like it is done for pc01, pc02 etc. in pc01head, pc02head. Unfortunately I don't know details about *head.

For first leather armor you'll need to edit sprite name for it in items.txt in EnglishT.lod AND in gamefolder/Datafiles/.

Only in DataFiles/ - it overrides the one in EnglishT.lod

Also you'll need to change its appeal on map somehow(it uses mm8 one), I haven't found where to do this

Number in column next to non-identified name.

@all:
You might want to take a look at https://gitlab.com/templayer/mmmerge/-/issues/686
I guess we have Templayer/GrayFace competition there.

[jmaster]

cthscr, thank you!

pc21LHo, pc22LHo ?
Side note: Trolls and Dwarves (Minotaurs also) might require head adjustment like it is done for pc01, pc02 etc. in pc01head, pc02head.

For minotaurs not left but right hands need shifting. When I made plate armor, I've had to make right arm part wider to fit position for both of arms.
For head images, I didn't get how they are used in game too...

the only unobtainable seems to be Hermes' Sandals

If I remember correctly, they never appeared in the random loot, the only place to find them was to loot them from Megadragon in Land of the giants. That's where it can be found in MMMerge too

@all:
You might want to take a look at https://gitlab.com/templayer/mmmerge/-/issues/686
I guess we have Templayer/GrayFace competition there.

That's the problem, that I ran into, when I sent my images to the Templayer via mail. He didn't know to replace present on paint tracker pictures with mine or to left present ones. I answered, that he should leave previous ones and add mine into the same document. For recoloured images problem is bigger - I really don't know what images should be add to game, because some of the gamers prefer original images. Maybe we should use optional lod for it with choice from Grayface or Templayer graphics.

[SpectralDragon]

the only unobtainable seems to be Hermes' Sandals

If I remember correctly, they never appeared in the random loot, the only place to find them was to loot them from Megadragon in Land of the giants. That's where it can be found in MMMerge too

That's the problem, that I ran into, when I sent my images to the Templayer via mail. He didn't know to replace present on paint tracker pictures with mine or to left present ones. I answered, that he should leave previous ones and add mine into the same document. For recoloured images problem is bigger - I really don't know what images should be add to game, because some of the gamers prefer original images. Maybe we should use optional lod for it with choice from Grayface or Templayer graphics.

When it comes to Hermes´s Sandals, I˙d say that given how they are it´s pretty much preferable to not be modified because it demands all feet types to be visible in order to be worn (Vampire, Lich, Goblin, Human, Elf, Dwarf, Troll, Dark Elf, Cleric, Necromancer; both male and female) and well, who is ready to take on this absolutely monumental task? ^^; It definitely needs to be done by multiple people, this one.

Funnily, those images were actually supposed to be images for MM6 Artifacts and Relics, so that they˙re visually different from regular items, from what I got.

[cthscr]

pc21LHo, pc22LHo ?

For minotaurs not left but right hands need shifting. When I made plate armor, I've had to make right arm part wider to fit position for both of arms.

pc21rhd then? I suppose https://github.com/GrayFace/MMExtension ... perDol.txt could help a bit.

[jmaster]

Going further into new version. First I thought that flight buttons broke somehow, later saw information about vertical movement restriction in turn based mode. Good idea, but you've missed some of the other keys, especially vertical movement via mouse scroll I really like idea to toggle this config on or off depending on user demands

Second bug: with all of the items added, game, somehow bugged artifact spawning. Now it is possible to loot more than one relic or artifact. I cleared dragon cave in mm8 and received 5 or 6 Zeus armors, 3 Titan belts and couple of other artifactis. I doubt that it is correct

[cthscr]

Going further into new version. First I thought that flight buttons broke somehow, later saw information about vertical movement restriction in turn based mode. Good idea, but you've missed some of the other keys, especially vertical movement via mouse scroll

That's GrayFace's patch with its own dll. Almost nothing I can do about it.

I really like idea to toggle this config on or off depending on user demands

Hidden option was added recently. You can find it in General/MiscTweaks.lua near its end. (Set it into true in MMMergeSettings.lua) I'm not sure where to place information about it.

Second bug: with all of the items added, game, somehow bugged artifact spawning. Now it is possible to loot more than one relic or artifact. I cleared dragon cave in mm8 and received 5 or 6 Zeus armors, 3 Titan belts and couple of other artifactis. I doubt that it is correct

You loaded an old game with almost all of artifacts found, then kill everyone and after that start inspecting loot? It's bugged since old days, independent on newly added artifacts - check is done against found artifacts. I have an idea how to fix this but it isn't finished yet.

[MarkMiko]

So I have 16 whisp wrappings in my inventory from Corlogan's Estate. I understand that they are part of some kind of quest later on, but: Do I need all of them or just 1?

[cthscr]

It's bugged since old days, independent on newly added artifacts - check is done against found artifacts. I have an idea how to fix this but it isn't finished yet.

Well, I hope I've added all the necessary changes. Wouldn't work [fully] properly on old saves but you shouldn't get more than one new instance of artifact item generated (i.e. no more three new Zeus etc., while already spawned somewhere else Zeuses will still be obtainable till next map refill).

[darkdill]

Just thought I'd share a couple of ideas for things that could be added to the game.

1. Some kind of auto-refreshing Torch Light item, much like how the Horn of Ros will continually cast Detect Life or a Cartographer will continually recast Wizard Eye. Having an item that constantly refreshes Torch Light would be very nice to have, even if it's non-critical.

2. Changing the Bolster mechanic to work off several different values instead of just a single BolsterMult number. I like it when the Bolster mechanic enhances the damage of my enemies, but not-so-much when it gives them huge amounts of HP (i.e. Oozes, MM6 Gargoyles). With more selectable values, customizing the Bolster effect would be much better in its flexibility.

3. Update the spell list's damage values and such. For instance, Lightning Bolt is strictly inferior to Blades and Acid Burst, even if there are plenty of enemies immune to Earth damage. I know some damage values are already altered (i.e. Dark magic was nerfed), but some of the other elements need to have their damage formulas updated.

4. Change stat progression to provide bonuses in a more logarithmic fashion. In the current build, raising stats like Might, Speed, etc., gives the most bonuses before the stat reaches triple digits. Once you go above 100, any thresholds you reach give a very minor benefit (i.e. reaching 150 Endurance only gives 5 HP). It would be better, IMO, if low values for those stats gave less benefit, with the benefits increasing the higher you go (i.e. 25 Endurance gives 5 HP, 150 Endurance gives 25 HP, and so forth).

5. Changing various mastery effects for certain skills. I think we all agree that Grandmaster Shield isn't very helpful, as you could just cast Hour of Power to get the Shield spell effect (or just cast Shield itself). Instead, I'd have had GM Shield give a chance (equal to skill) to block/evade incoming physical attacks, negating them. Similarly, GM Sword giving bonus AC doesn't feel overly useful.

Also, a couple of things that can't really be done with MM8's engine, but I wish they were possible.

- Separating elemental and status resistances. In order to make an enemy immune to Shrinking Ray, you also have to make them immune to Dragon's Breath and Shrapmetal. Similarly, to make an enemy immune to Enslave, they also must be immune to Psychic Shock. Making damage and status immunities separate would be a big improvement.

- New spells. A "Harden Item" spell would've been handy for all those times you face against enemies that constantly break your equipment (and would lessen the need for Alchemy). Similarly, I miss the MM6 Fire Blast spell; such a great magic shotgun.

- New enchantments. An "Immune to Curses" one would've been really nice to have.