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

[Xfing]

Ok, I went through ITEMS.txt again - this time compared it with the newest one from the project to make sure I haven't overwritten anything from the latest release, which included paperdoll locations for new apparel etc. It's been updated on my network drive, the link is the same: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1N-AgI1 ... sp=sharing

Changelog:
- Armor values and prices accounted for, same goes for armor values of boots, cloaks, helmets, gauntlets etc. Now every armor and piece of equipment in general is different from all others in price, defense value, flavor text and skill requirement to identify/repair.

- All unique armor, shield and apparel values have been tweaked in accordance with what's in the tracker (slightly increased armor values, mostly)

- Actually fixed a bug - the MM6 tier 5 chainmail (Majestic Chain Mail) had a typo in its sprite reference, so the sprite wasn't displaying in-game. Fixed by putting in the proper reference, now works like a charm.

- Swapped the positions in the pecking order of the MM6 and MM7 Tier 3 leathers (Enchanted Leather and Officer's Leather). I think it has been suggested before, but it took seeing the sprites with my own eyes to realize it makes sense. The MM6 version looks stronger and has better coverage. Also changed the MM6 version's flavor text to reflect this, as it was identical to the MM7 armor's (can't believe how lazy they were with something that takes so little time between these two games!)

- Changed the item class for the MM6 gemstones from "Gem" to "Gemstone". Unified flavor text for gemstones from all 3 games according to the following format. "A (optional adjective) [continent-an] (gemstone name), (optional short description). As a gem quality stone it has no magical properties, so you might as well sell it".

- Changed prices of the gemstones to prevent redundancy. The top diamond is now 3500 with the next in line being at 3250, with the remaining gems ranging from 100 to 3000 in price. Here are the specific gem values:


Since this took so much time, I'll have to take a look at the treasure classes in another sitting, I gotta go to sleep now. But I'll definitely do it, and soon

Heads up!

Rodril, feel free to integrate the file into the next patch, it's been checked and verified to be safe.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed that the alchemy system still needs a tweak or two, so just a little reminder here. I could take care of this myself, but I'm not sure I understand the file structure enough to do it, so guess someone else will have to:

- The Protection from Magic potion grants the spell to the entire party, something that doesn't happen when drinking any other potion - where the effects are always individual, and rightly so. Someone has pointed this out for me early on when I was introducing the idea for this potion (it's the latest one I came up with), and I agreed, but despite this it hasn't been changed yet. Out of remaining individual effect spells that we could use, I would choose Pain Reflection personally, since at Expert level it affects only a single character and it's a decently powerful effect suitable for a White Potion. The recipes for the potion work nicely, so it would be a waste to cut it out entirely - but changing the spell (and potion name) to Pain Reflection would be a nice quick resolution for the idea. There are of course some other options like say, Fate or Regeneration but the first is absolutely underpowered (especially for a white potion), and the latter the opposite, absolutely OP and would make Divine Cure redundant - hence why Pain Reflection seems to be a good choice.

- Potion Recipe scrolls are once again sellable to Alchemy vendors, which is a definite improvement over vanilla, but the new potions still don't seem to have recipes of their own as in-game items, plus the potion recipes don't appear anywhere outside of alchemy shops (can't loot them randomly). It would be nice to have both these things implemented.

[raekuul]

Does/Can obtaining a potion recipe scroll add to the autonotes?

[Xfing]

Does/Can obtaining a potion recipe scroll add to the autonotes?

No, it never has. You have to use the directions from the recipe and mix the potion yourself, then you get the recipe in your notes. It's been that way forever, in both MM7 and MM8. But now that you mention it, it might be a good idea to get a recipe from just reading a scroll. Then again, if they were made available in random loot, it would trivialize potion making and remove the experimentation factor which makes the MM7/8 potion system one of the best by far in any RPG. Coolest thing about the recipes is following the directions and getting the desired result yourself, methinks

[raekuul]

I can see that, yeah. The scrolls also aren't a 1:1 explanation of how to brew the potion (they tell you how many reagents you need, but not the proper mixing order) while what is in the autonotes is the exact recipe from experimentation.

[Xfing]

I'm working on the treasure levels. First gotta plan them out, which is about halfway done, then implementation. So I'm about 25% done When I finish I'll post both the file with the changes and an excel file showing how I obtained the treasure values.

Of course the idea is that every item will now have different treasure weights than others in its class, rather than sharing its weight with its 2 counterparts from the other two games, despite differing in quality. Tier 1 quality chests will now favor the first tier (out of 15) much more, while in the past the first 3 tiers would be counted as one (the fifth lowest) and appear with equal frequency. That should make getting better gear much trickier, extend the journey a bit and make the hunt for the very best items a rewarding goal in and of itself.

[justl]

hi,

currently i have entered the hive in mm6.
when i am in the hive the game keeps crashing (hard, to windows) without any script messages.
i suppose it comes when the radioactive flood text should appear - but i cant confirm it

justl

[justl]

hi,
in mm7 i found the armors on the armorracks@the armorsmithies a little bit of the hinge ;-)


edit1:
also in mm7:
when going into turn based mode, the green/yellow/red color around the chars goes under them instead of surrounding them

(when exiting turnbased mode, it goes up again around the chars)

edit2:
item in the misc shop are also positioned a bit to low:


edit3:
contestants shield from emerald isle should have value 0 or unsellable:


justl

[Xfing]

Okaaaay, this was sooo tedious and such boring work no wonder no one felt like doing it, but I went ahead, rolled up my sleeves, bit the bullet and did the deed. Here's the altered list of treasure levels to go with my updated version of ITEMS.txt:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ol9Mh9 ... sp=sharing
And here's the Excel documenting the changes that I made compared to the original:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ud5o1u ... sp=sharing

In a nutshell:
- Items come in families of 11 (when MM6 and 7 had three items per, rather than five) and 15. Clubs are one exception, there are 8 of them (since the Overlord's Club from MM8 is kinda like a mace, I didn't touch it in any way). And of course gemstones, which there are 31 of.
- Most categories, except for clubs and hats, end with an item exclusive to Tier 6, appearing with a low chance, meaning these items are rare and will be harder and slower to get. You'll have to raid several top tier dungeons to completely outfit your characters with this category of gear and shouldn't be able to find it in shops. Stalt-laced ore should be able to yield items of this level. The most valuable gemstone is also in this category.
- Treasure Level 1 chests will now be the best source for getting the crappiest Tier 1 gear, with it becoming considerably more rare in even Tier 2 chests than it was before. You have to specifically look for junk to find junk, after all.
- No changes were made to wands, scrolls, spellbooks, potions, reagents etc.

@Rodril feel free to test (alongside ITEMS.txt of mine) and consider integrating it! Everyone else, if you want to try this out ahead of time and see how it alters your experience, all you need to do is to open mmmerge.T.lod with MMArchive and drag ITEMS.txt and rnditems.txt into the window, the original files will be overwritten instantly and the application will make a backup copy of the original file for you automatically.

[Xfing]

hi,
in mm7 i found the armors on the armorracks@the armorsmithies a little bit of the hinge ;-)

I don't have this particular problem - I suggest reinstalling the files from scratch like Rodril suggested (need to get the 1.2GB package).

However I've noticed that the MM7 cloaks worn on troll paperdolls are slightly off point:


I've tested it with Huntsman's Cloak and Elegant Cloak (tiers 2 and 4 from MM7). Leather Cloak (MM7 tier 1) fits fine.

[justl]

hi,
in mm7 i found the armors on the armorracks@the armorsmithies a little bit of the hinge ;-)

I don't have this particular problem - I suggest reinstalling the files from scratch like Rodril suggested (need to get the 1.2GB package).

hi,

complete reinstall done:
backing up the saves away
uninstall via windows
delete the leftover directory manually
install gog mm8 version
using the 1,2gb file to overwrite

results:
placemon.txt error gone
hardcrash in the hive gone
mm7 grafic errors remaining

justl

edit: hardcrash in hive returned, im not getting any much further then the first "save spots" (the light blue floor panels at the beginning of dungeon), probably an issue with the scripted "flooding process" there

[Maslyonok]

Ok, I've taken another pass at ITEMS.txt and it seems like there is a problem of some sort. Even though the format is fine, the game isn't taking further adjustments. For example, in the first row, the name of the sword was changed to "Iron Longsword", as you can see in the picture:


but the game still displays it as just "Longsword".

The vendor prices and damage of the items had already been adjusted last time, so this time I just went over remaining armor values, flavor text and ID/Repair values - now every item of any given category has its own value for these skills. The values were calculated the following way:
- The first item from the category is always 1 (with one exception being hats, those start at 2)
- The highest value of the class was taken, and then it was divided by the number of items in the category (usually 15, but can also be 11 for certain weapons and plate armor and 30 for rings)
- Every item's value was incremented by the divided value. So if there are 15 items they go from 1 to 15 normally, 1 to 20 with chain armor, 1 to 25 with plate, 1 to 30 with rings - in equal increments (1; 1,33; 1,66 etc).

Hi, just want to know wouldn't those corrections overcomplicate the localization adaptation? Anyway, your enthusiasm is amazing!

[justl]

hi,
in mm7 i found the armors on the armorracks@the armorsmithies a little bit of the hinge ;-)

I don't have this particular problem - I suggest reinstalling the files from scratch like Rodril suggested (need to get the 1.2GB package).

hi,

complete reinstall done:

another thing after the clean reinstall:
sounds are tearing on entering dungeons, doing things rapidly, etc.

[Xfing]

ith rings - in equal increments (1; 1,33; 1,66 etc).
Hi, just want to know wouldn't those corrections overcomplicate the localization adaptation?

Hey - well these things should have been done before the localizations were made and I agree, it's more work to render these changes this in the localizations also. But then again, it could simply be ignored and use the old localization text as well. The ID/Repair values and treasure classes from the other file would still apply, because the index numbers of the items are what counts.

In general, item names were changed so as to be different than other items (the only exception were gemsones because... too much thinking necessary haha), but I think that part you can suspend your disbelief for when playing a localized version, it's just a convenience.

Anyway, your enthusiasm is amazing!

Thanks! Though it's just short bursts of enthusiasm usually. I was waiting really anxiously for all the stuff to be repainted and this item differentiation thing kinda is my pet project, so I needed to see this through to the end

[Xfing]

One final small correction to the ITEMS.txt file - changed ID Item values for MM6 artifacts and relics from 15/20 to 20/30 to bring them in line with MM7 and MM8 items.

It's updated and the link is the same.

[justl]

hi,
i dont know if thats a vanilla bug (from mm6 to mm8?):

when the char with the alchemy skill has a full inventory, mixing potions is still possible, resulting with a potion and an empty flask
but when you take the second of the 2 flasks from another characters inventory and move it over to the alchemy character and then mix it, the empty flask is neither in the alchemy char nor in the other chars inventory.

justl

[cthscr]

However I've noticed that the MM7 cloaks worn on troll paperdolls are slightly off point:

That's because without [forgotten] patch trolls and minotaurs use male (aka v1) cloak image variant. Obviously, patch was in Comm/Revamp from the start and was added to Fixes and sent to Rodril a week ago.

[Xfing]

However I've noticed that the MM7 cloaks worn on troll paperdolls are slightly off point:

That's because without [forgotten] patch trolls and minotaurs use male (aka v1) cloak image variant. Obviously, patch was in Comm/Revamp from the start and was added to Fixes and sent to Rodril a week ago.

Sweet. Rodril will have quite a bit of stuff to integrate


BTW, would you know what's the deal about that leather belt that replaces MM7's Tier 1?

It's cool and all, but if we want a base version that's at least somewhat reminescent of vanilla then we should keep the original one. Am I correct in assuming that's unintentional and also to be patched?

Another suggestion (important!):
I've noticed that the MM6 unique weapons have cool mechanics added to them regarding elemental damage, like the Artemis bow's added lightning damage materializing in the form of lightning bolts (alongside a wing buffet effect - awesome!). However, I'm not sure about the implementation of the same thing with Hades - when swinging the sword, an invisible Dragon fires Acid Bursts to go alongside it, which are a separate entity. The nonexistent dragon even makes kill comments if the acid burst is what happens to kill the monster in question. I know the description says it oozes acid, but I don't think it's supposed to ooze quite enough to launch entire jets of acid, that's probably a bit of an overkill, especially for a melee weapon. Cool? Sure, but a bit impractical and unrealistic. Artemis doesn't have any of those problems - the lightning bolt hits at the same instant as the arrow itself and the damage even gets displayed together. So would it be possible to re-code Hades into just producing a simple acid burst splash sprite rather than create an entire jet, which is hard to suspend disbelief for?

In fact this has drawn my attention to the issue at large: MM7 and 8 enchanted weapons unfortunately didn't have elemental anims the way MM6 did, barring some area splashes for "of Carnage" bows and the Splitter axe. So reintroducing those generally is a great endeavor and I'm 100% behind it. My suggestion is to make it uniform and universal for all weapons with elemental damage - and the codebase should allow to do this, because of how "of Carnage" bows display the Dragon Breath splash animation upon impact, the Splitter axe displays the Fireball splash, or how Snake displays the slowing particle effect when you hit an enemy with it. And most enchanted weapons except those few MM6 artifacts/relics don't really visually signify the elemental damage they do yet. So yeah, the idea is just to add certain elemental splashes to attacks, both melee and ranged when weapons have elemental enchantments. So it seems all the code is already in place. Now this model could of course be applied both to generic weapons with enchantments and artifacts/relics quite easily:
- Fire: the generic Fire spell particle impact splash - if I recall the Fire Bolt spell produces a larger one than say, Inferno or Fire Spike when they damage an opponent, so those two spells' splash could be used for "of Fire" and "of Flame", while Fire Bolt's could be used for "of Infernos".
- Electricity (Air): the Sparks/Lightning Bolt particle impact splash
- Ice (Water): the Ice Blast shard impact for the first two levels, the Ice Bolt impact splash for "of Ice".
- Poison (Body): the Poison Spray impact splash (the 1st two levels - of Poison and of Venom)
- Acid (Body): the Acid Burst impact splash (the 3rd level - of Acid. And this could replace what Hades currently has, but with a sound to make it more unique)
- Light: the Light Bolt impact splash (the sword Elsenrail could have it). Sunray's is a smaller version, but there is no generic weaker Light damage enchantment with which to use it and Elsenrail does 10-20 Light damage, which is a lot.
- Dark: the Darkfire Bolt impact splash (the sword Glomenthal has added dark damage).

Alternatively you could forget the larger Fire/Light bolt splashes and use the smaller ones for all enchantment levels, so as to not clutter the screen too much. Oh, and those probably don't need sounds so as to not clutter your audio - with possible exceptions being Hades and maybe some other select uniques. If not, sounds could be kept as they are now - only for Dragon Breath/Fireball area impact splashes.

What do you think? This should be quite simple to implement. Not to knock Hades because it's quite cool now, but I just can't help but feel the Acid Burst launching kinda breaks immersion And this opportunity could be taken to do all elementally enchanted weapons as well.

[Xfing]

As for bugs - I'm getting a fatal crash when switching between party character inventories while inside the Adventurer's Inn. Should be reproducible, since it's the latest version.

Also, minor suggestion: when you get a dark elf peasant and choose a class for them, I kinda like that they only retain up to Expert even if they get a magic class - having Darkfire as a Ranger or even a Druid would be mad OP. That said, dark elves converted to vampires keep Dark Elf Ability, but it's displayed as red at all skill levels, meaning it is an illegal skill. I believe the intention here was that this skill shouldn't carry over? Likewise, dark elf knights keep basic Dark Elf Ability, but they have no way of putting it to use, since they have no mana. Therefore I suggest Dark Elf Ability to get wiped (just like Light/Dark magic gets wiped for High Priests/Master Wizards) for Knights and Vampires. Also,. there is a discrepancy when displaying the skills while viewing the character in the Adventurer's Inn (dark elf ability all levels red) or inside the party (first two white).

Another series of small bug reports:
- Lathean promotes Necromancers to Liches if you have a Lich Jar - even without having retrieved the Lost Book of Khel (the "Promote Necromancers" dialogue option). The dialogue option for this should be disabled until after completing Taleshire's quest
- Similar problem with the Jadamean black potion fetch quests where you have to bring ingredients in return for a black potion. The "do you have the ingredients" option is visible before you even get the quest, and you complete the quest when you click it. If you then carelessly click on the quest, it'll be permanently stuck in jour journal.
- The "Balthazar of Ravage Roaming" dialogue option for Dadeross returns no dialogue and disappears if you click it (tested only before the Mino promotion quest was acquired).

[justl]

hi,

a bug/feature in the bounty hunting section (no idea if its mm7 related or in any of the 3 games possible (encountered it in mm7)
i was assigned to hunt a sea terror (one of this chaps https://mm6.wiki/w/Sea_serpents ) in the tulearen forest.
it neither appeared on land nor sea.

justl

found a wand in tatalia (near lord markhams villa at the trolls) /mm7 with no charges:

edit: found a 2nd wand there (i mean predetermined items from the ground) also with no charges - also an alacorn one (of fireballs)

[Xfing]

Another small bug:
- In the shop "Alloyed Armors and Shields" in Tatalia (Tidewater), the Buy Standard and Buy Special menus seem to be swapped - Buy Standard gives much better gear than Buy Special.