Legends of Ancients - Book III. available for Download

Posted 16 February 2019

by Pol

After years of waiting there's finaly available Book III. This is because LotA team revived in previous year and got aboard new member - mctronic. Congrats!

And if you would be interested, contact them. They are still looking for a new volunteers, to create and test maps. Book IV is ahead!

Dear CH Community,

The Legend of the Ancients (LotA) team is proud to present Book 3 of HOMM5: LotA.

LotA1-3_TotE.zip

Book 3 is the work of dedicated HOMM fans that started around 2008-2009.

Book 3 features innovative ideas not seen in the previous books of LotA and in all HOMM5 Campaigns (to the best of our knowledge), and also features themes from previous games in the M&M Universe.

We are hopeful that you will enjoy playing the campaign as much as it was for the LotA team to implement it.

Please note the following for Book 3 of HOMM5: LotA:

1) It is only compatible with version 3.1;
2) Make sure that the option "No EyeCandies" is left unchecked; and
3) The game has been tested on Hard difficulty (for full AI).

Bugs, comments and suggestions may be reported on this thread.

Regards,

The LotA Team

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H4:HDMod - Current Status

Posted 18 January 2019

by Karmakeld

In july 2016 news of a HD mod for H4 was announced. 
A few days before the announcement a teaser-puzzle was posted as Picture-Of-The-Day displaying the adventure map in 16:9 ratio. Since then we've been trying to keep up with development of the project. Sadly not many updates have followed the announcement from the Equilibris team, but that hasn't prevented the community from keeping the discussion alive.

HDMod - Game Settings and new resolutions

Fans are asking for the lastest news about the Equilibris HD mod. Is the project still alive? What's the status?

Rumors, on the Russian forum, says that project leader Dalai has traveled to Europe, which might explain his absense - althought Internet is somewhat widely accesable in most parts of Europe (but mind that's just a rumor)..

Meanwhile we can confirm that Equi programmer Max is still working on implementing the new UI for the HD Mod and although news has been somewhat scarce since the announcement of the HD Mod, progression has been made.

Below you can see the original 1024x768 townscreen, for comparison you can drag each of the images below, into your browser window to view them in full scale:

1024x768 original townscreen

This early version, posted at the announcement, displays a large Equilibris logo in the lower left corner (as well as mirrored edges ). The Equilibris team were asking artists for help, in creating better looking townscreen.

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Read more: H4:HDMod - Current Status

MM Merge - A talk with Rodril

Posted 08 January 2019

by Pol

For some time you can watch developing of MM Merge, which is merging Might & Magic 6-7-8 on MM8 engine. And we felt that there is a right time to ask a few questions about the mod, current state and purpose.

Were you thinking about putting MM Merge to MM8 engine even before?
Yes, when I played MM6 and suddenly it turned out that the characters could not become liches, and the enemies, raised with dark magic, kept being agressive, then I wanted to somehow bring in these features. Back then I was finishing school and I did not have enough time to try. The desire came back when I first saw Grayface's MMArchive - extractor of game files. The choice between engines 7 or 8 did not cause me to think much, I've immediately chosen MM8, simply because this is my favorite part of the series, although now I am more attracted by the content that came from MM7. I think that the choice of the MM8 engine is the right decision due to the more flexible management system of the party and a larger size of ​​the game window.

How did you get to the series?
The games showed me my elder brothers. In fact, the first such game of similar genre that interested me was "Betrayal of Krondor", I sat and watched my brother play, and all these pixel cutscenes, pixel people, made a big impression. The most valuable for me was and remains a certain balance of naturalism and fantasy in these games: the characters have the proportions of real people, the monsters are created to look natural. At the same time, even though the pixel world was not densely populated, behind each object there was a story: if there is a tombstone in the middle of the field - come and read the epitaph, dig there and be killed by swarm of ghosts. Later, when I started to play myself, I liked the opportunity to ignore the main story and go explore the world. These two points are what I really lacked in MM10: everything looks like a completely unrealistic cartoon, and I have to go through the “corridors” of the plot before I can just walk around and explore the world.

What all limits do you removed? What all is moddable now?
The presence of limits was a surprise to me. If you have MMArchive, you can open the EnglishT.lod and see that information, for example, about monsters, is stored in a simple text table. The first thought that arises: "Hey! I can just change existing or add new lines!" - but not. The game is able to reserve parts of the computer’s memory for its own purposes, but for some reason, text tables are not located in the reserved areas, but in the data section of the executable file. Therefore, the increase in any table leads to the fact that it's rows "climb" on the rows of the next table, which in most cases leads to critical errors in reading. The task was to calculate the amount of memory for each table, reserve it, and then write the table there. It doesn't sound very difficult, but add here the fact that the game is already compiled and all pointers and references to the table should be searched for in the disassembled version and corrected by hand. If you downloaded the modification, open the folder "... Scripts\Structs", all scripts with the name "Remove" in the name is the removal of limits. I will briefly describe them in order of creation (I hope to make detailed documentation in the future).

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