H4 Map Generator Updated
- by Kalah
Hello everyone! News from iLiVeInAbOx05:
A new H4MG build is ready for download. Go here to get it! If you haven't tried it out yet, read the instructions, otherwise just scroll to the bottom of the page and download it 
The AI Enhancing portion of the H4MG has come far enough along that it’s ready to be released. Additional AI enhancing events and features will continue to be developed and released (discussed in this thread.)
Here is a video with a demonstration and info:
Here is a what can be done with the AI panel:
- Add a number of AI enhancing events at the push of a button.
- Clear all AI enhancing events at the push of a button.
- Edit the AI enhancing events while being able to restore the events to their defaults.
Planned features for the AI panel:
- Save / load your AI profile (the settings you prefer for AI enhancements).
Here is a list of events / scripts implemented followed by those still on the way:
AI Enhancement
- Show entire map for AI
- Make every player "vital" under AI properties
- Events to give gold / resources to AI (including recurring increases)
- Increase starting level of AI heroes
- Reduce neutrals on encounter for AI (fewer AI losses while still gaining normal experience)
- Increased AI movement
- Increased AI experience
- Increase dwelling populations for AI towns
- Starting skills for new AI heroes. (Need suggestions for skill combinations)
- AI artifact sorting (PatFX working on this)
- AI hero stat buffs
Other
- Balancing mechanism for neutral armies for each difficulty level
- Make the AI options tunable for difficulty. The easiest way to do this would be to have a selectable percentage reduction applied for each difficulty level under champion.
- Control neutrals vs. an opponent.
This release also includes a feature to copy/paste or move a selected area of a map. Note: move will only work on the same map and level. See the video below for a demonstration/explanation!
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Where to Next for the M&M Franchise?
- by Kalah
As Heroes VII development is officially ended and Limbic's contract with Ubisoft expired, we ask: what's next? There are also rumours going around that Erwan le Breton's "M&M team" has been disbanded. The way we see it, there are three general options:
- Ubisoft continue to develop the franchise, publishing games like M&M 11 and another Heroes title, possibly with Erwan le Breton's team, possibly with Limbic as developers, possibly somebody else. I'm honestly not sure if this is the preferred option; with Ubisoft's financial muscle behind the franchise, at least we are assured a continuation. However, I think we can all agree that many of the choices made in recent years have not been good ones and that changes would have to be made.
- Ubisoft sells the franchise to another game producer. Given that fans have been unhappy with several of Ubisoft's strategies, some have argued that it would be better if the whole thing was handed over to somebody else. The hope, then, is that the new producers are more dedicated to the wellness of the franchise and develop games of which the fans approve. This, however, is far from guaranteed. Changing producers could make things even worse.
- The franchise is mothballed. No new Might & Magic or Heroes games are made and the world moves on to other things. Just like great games of the past can now be found on abandonia.com or GOG, some of the more well-made games in the series may still be played years or even decades from now. Fans may start to produce high-quality mods and maps, keeping the show somewhat alive, but as time passes by, most of them will move on. This will effectively mean the end, albeit a drawn-out one. As a good friend of mine put it, however: perhaps it is time.
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Heroes VII. - Development cancelled
- by Pol
Old proverb says that "all good things come to an end". I would add that unfinished as well. Today Ubisoft offically announced, that hotfix 2.2.1 released yesterday was the last one and farewell.Long suffering is gone, this was, let to say, expected outcome.
We may certainly speculate, what, where and why that happened. But let admit that for more than a half year Ubisoft communication with a fans was sporadic at best. Only the die hard fans from Limbic, like Hero or Oakwarrior, and of course omni-presented deity Ubi-Moshi were here.
The future is in the mods and modders, which could do, especially with help of ex-developers, a miracles.
Read more: Heroes VII. - Development cancelled
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CH Hacked, Fought Back
- by Kalah
You may have noticed we had some troubles the last few days, with our forums going down and accounts being unaccessible. The simple reason for this is: we were hacked. Exploiting a weakness in Joomla after our update, some childish idiots who probably thought deleting forum accounts on a small fan website was really funny, managed to wreak havoc on our little home. It could even be an automated hack, created to exploit the weakness in any website it could find. Thanks to the sterling efforts of our admin Pol, however, we have now been restored to normal function.
As a small editor's note: we admire the efforts of hacking groups like "Anonymous", or hackers who try to discover flaws in software security so that these flaws can be corrected. Such individuals work to protect the safeties and freedoms of ordinary people in the digital world. On the other hand, people who target sites like ours, I mean - what's the point? We're just a small gaming website, not even remotely harmful. Hacking a site like ours is just juvenile. So this is my advice to whoever out there may feel this applies to them: grow up, get a life and leave us alone.
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We have been updated!
- by Pol
Do you remember that small message at "08 August 2016". Now it's done!
After some "tick tack" with our hoster they updated us today, so you could experienced a small downtime.
Please report any issues, as usually, in our bug thread.
All the base are, basic functionality have been checked and everything seems to work, just faster.
To the top of that the avatar on the main site and some minor login problems were fixed today as well. There were also activated "Active Topics" and when you click on forum category, like here, you will see them too.
Rock'n'Roll Baby!
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Heroes Moving in on China?
- by Kalah
There's an interesting announcement on Ubisoft's Chinese channel, talking about a cooperation designed to increase Ubisoft's sphere of influence, increasing their activity in the Chinese market. Granted, my Chinese is about as good as my Klingon, so I had to rely on an online translating tool and things may have gotten lost in translation - still, it seems Ubisoft are looking to spread their market shares in the mobile market by entering into such cooperations.
The international channels are quiet so far, so there is no telling what effect (if any) this will have on the English-speaking part of the franchise.
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AI Enhancement Tool - first test results
- by Dalai
As we wrote in previous news article, we has some progress with AI Enhancement Tool programming. We decided to put the tool to test.
To do that we chose one of the maps selected for World Championship 2016 Heroes 4 online - W16 El Dorado. We let the AI play this map twice for two months. First playthrough was AS IS (AI-1), and second playthrough AI was aided by scripts from AI Enhancement Tool (AI-2).
H4MG AI panel settings:
Then we compared the results, and want to share them with you.
Read more: AI Enhancement Tool - first test results
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Maptesting Manually
- by Kalah
As we still haven't been able to get a proper map section up and running, we're entering manual mode. I've been frustrated over this but then I remembered: we have a forum, let's use it. Maps can still be uploaded and downloaded to and from our servers, it's just the actual map section pages that don't work. So, when you want to submit a map for testing or distribution, use the e-mail: maps(a)celestialheavens.com. As soon as we have it uploaded, a post can be made in our forum's mapmaking guild. There, we can create dedicated topics to each map, for discussion and feedback or just matchmaking.
A new map is already out for testing - a Heroes V TotE map which you can find and discuss here.
Alternative solution for maptesting, if you want to do the whole thing yourself (it's faster), is to upload the map somewhere online, and then create a forum post in the mapmaking guild yourself. Just enter a link to where the file can be found, your contact information and whatever else you want to say.
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Duel of Champions Closes Oct. 31
- by Kalah
The M&M DoC team have announced that on October 31., Duel of Champions will close down. After this date, both the game itself, the website and its official social media channels will no longer be accessible. The announcement also warns that you will have to convert all your remaining resources before the closing date, otherwise these will be lost after the shutdown.
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