Might and Magic 6, 7, 8 merge based on mm8 engine. [upd. 15.02.2022]

[Templayer]

Today I have finally managed to read through my emails and email notifications.

Started reading at 11:00 and ended at 23:00, with pauses for food, taking the doggie for a walk, taking a shower, etc.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get to even a single of GDSpectra's comments on my youtube channel.

Crud.

[Templayer]

raekuul wrote:
Has a "shuffled main quest items mode" been considered, to encourage hopping continents periodically as opposed to doing them in sequence? Since there's no real incentive to hop continents without completing them first, there's a tendency for players to go through and complete the game one continent at a time, which is a significant balance problem if the starting continent is anything other than Jadame (even at max bolster).


Are you sure there is such tendency? IMHO it is much easier to hop between continents all the time to pass certain quest, get certain items, collect treasures or even check the high-end shops. Though, bolster might need some fix in any case. And for parties w/o town portal it is a completely different story.

I agree. Plus, some trainers are much easier to reach (or achieve) on particular continents than others, and IIRC in some cases it's easier to fulfill some prereqs on certain continents. If you take grandmaster alchemy, then hopping for reagents can help. Finally, you can hit all the shrines, altars, skill challenges, etc. for those boosts. They add up...and several repop. This is really good even if you're limited to Town Portal; to exploit the shrines in MM6, I do a lot of training at Ironfist in small doses of a couple levels, to leave time to hit the various shrines. Oh, and in this strategy, if you don't have Lloyd's, or if you have only 1 character with Lloyd's and want to conserve your Beacon spots...find a Pathfinder. Map crossings take 3 days less...so 2 days for most of em. That makes it faster than the travel schedules.

thud

[SpectralDragon]

Thanks! Was choosing between this and MM6 Zoltan :-)

The ideas are nice, actually. Will add some comments in GitLab.

No worries, either way's a win, since Zoltan is awesome as well.

Cheers and feel free to comment on them further either here, via Discord (if you have the account) or via the same means I talk to Templayer.

Today I have finally managed to read through my emails and email notifications.

Started reading at 11:00 and ended at 23:00, with pauses for food, taking the doggie for a walk, taking a shower, etc.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get to even a single of GDSpectra's comments on my youtube channel.

Crud.

I'm so sorry! ^^;

[andrey]

Old bugs and suggestions are now in GitLab:
Monsters disappear at certain angles in some dungeons
Monsters do not see you through open door

New bugs in GitLab:
Strange hireable in a training center

[Echo]

Did you check the equation?

To be perfectly honest I have no idea how to find it there... I've never used Github, looks quite confusing. I'll try to find it later

It's not github, it is gitlab. Check the README.MD file.

Well I checked it out but unless I'm missing something it just means the HP scaling is less aggressive? So changing only HP scaling to give monsters less HP?

[cthscr]

Well I checked it out but unless I'm missing something it just means the HP scaling is less aggressive? So changing only HP scaling to give monsters less HP?

You're right.

I wonder though what can be done with 'Bolster - maps.txt'. Right now there are 4 bolster kinds:

Code: Select all

	NoBolster 		= 0,
	OriginalStats	= 1,
	LowerToEqual	 = 2,
	AllToEqual		= 3

Something new might be added.

[eilacomeva]

Cleric? Yes. High Priest? That is the question.

Promoted and then moved to path of dark.
Anyway while trying to reproduce I've found a bug so funny that I stopped and uploaded the savegame (two of them actually)
- in the free haven savegame, talk to yancy (the man right to the west of you, close to the water expert teacher), then dismiss some useless characters from the adventurer's inn, then go back to yancy and click "join", I tried it twice (with slightly different results) and... well, see for yourself...

---

edit -- I laughed so much I forgot the links, here they are:
https://1fichier.com/?n8zk8g456ufqtcj8ktdj
https://1fichier.com/?anp0a3rq8rw01mf67izw

Tried it, didn't get a sex change.
NPCs "mutating" into hirelings in an immersion-breaking way
Took me half an hour to test this out and make printscreeens, due to various difficulties. If this was just two pictures (ideally on something better than 1fichier), I would have laughed my ar-se off, instead I did this instead of other stuff, and .... STILL DIDN'T GET THE SEX CHANGE!

Somehow I often fail to mention some important detail - sorry!
Anyway the point is that you need to HIRE Yancy, I did it (and repeated today just to be sure) and it worked (two different faces).
In my defense, I believe my mind was still on the bug where NPCs stop being hireable, that's probably how I managed to omit that crucial detail.

[eilacomeva]

...
Unfortunately I had enough testing today, I have hundreds of emails to go through, tens of youtube messages (not a part of said emails), and A LOT of stuff to do on both this and other projects, and very little time, so I will probably leave the confirmation and testing to other people. The save has been rehosted on GitLab, of course, so anybody can try it out. It doesn't have to be me.

Still, a very nice find, this bug has been bugging me for a long, looong time.

Everything here is done in people's spare time, and you've chosen for yourself one of the most time consuming roles, so take your time!

Thank you; it bothered me so much that I rewrote the bisecting thing in the least adequate language possible (among the non ridiculous candidates), ie POSIX shell... here it is, for your horror...
And about the rant: the reason I wanted to start-close-restart-close-... the game is that I remembered at least one game that went mad after alt+tab; found it, it's age of empires collectors edition. Not that it matters, but just for the record...

Code: Select all

#! /bin/sh
# mm678 savegame bisect.
# Written in POSIX shell for evulz! (and my love of reflinks)
readonly Good="good"
readonly Bad="bad"
# HACK to communicate from subprocess/subroutine
readonly NGood=13
readonly NBad=17
: ${DEBUG:=}

# TODO getopt

if test x = x"$DEBUG" ; then
	dbg() { true ; } # quiz: what happens with "{}"?
else
	dbg() { echo>&2 "debug($*)"; }
fi

if cp --help 2>&1|grep reflink >/dev/null ; then
	# doesn't work on zfs unfortunately.
	copy() { cp -ai --reflink=auto -- "$@" ; }
else
	copy() { cp -ai -- "$@" ; }
fi
# XXX these are HARD CODED!!!
mm678ScapeGoat=save017.dod
setup() {
	if test -e "$mm678ScapeGoat" ; then
		ls -l "$mm678ScapeGoat"
		echo>&2 "that's a temporary file we KEEP OVERWRITING;"
		echo>&2 "if it's just a leftover from a previous run, delete it;"
		echo>&2 "if it's an actual savegame, edit \"$0\" and replace \"$mm678ScapeGoat\" with some other number."
		exit 100
	fi
	copy "$1" "$mm678ScapeGoat"
}
teardown() {
	rm -f "$mm678ScapeGoat"
}

ls Autosave.dod >/dev/null # warn about wrong directory

LastKnownGood='SNAFU'

# XXX huge misnomer!
testarg() {
	test $# -eq 1 || { echo>&2 "testarg ONE ARGUMENT! ($*)"; exit 100; }
	dbg "testing $1"
	setup "$1" || return
	# then we do the testing by hand :D
}

# test_nth 0 foo bar baz => test foo
test_nth() {
	shift $1
	shift
	testarg "$1" || exit 111
	while : ; do
		printf '%s: %s/%s? ' "$1" "$Good" "$Bad"
		read ans||exit 123
		if test _"$ans" = _"$Good" ; then
			LastKnownGood="$1"
			teardown || exit
			return $NGood
		fi
		if test _"$ans" = _"$Bad" ; then
			teardown || exit
			return $NBad
		fi
		echo>&2 "seriously? ok, again..."
	done
}

# Under bash/ksh/zsh you have arrays (incompatible zsh iirc)...
# In the posix shell, the only arrays you have are arguments,
# and you can only shift one way:
# (a,b,c,d) => (c,d) is just "shift 2"
# (a,b,c,d) => (a,b) is NOT "shift -2", shift is unsigned
# => contortion:
#	tmp=a; shift => (b,c,d)
#	set -- $@ $tmp => (b,c,d,a)
#	shift => (c,d,a)
#	loop (ie, in plain English, rotate the array :), then shift until you have the required number.
# then recursively call bisect().
bisect_first_n() {
	dbg bisect_first_n "$@"
	test $# -gt 0 || bug
	wanted=$1
	shift
	for i in $(seq $wanted) ; do
		tmp="$1"
		shift
		set -- "$@" "$tmp"
		#dbg "rotated to $*"
	done
	while [ $# -gt $wanted ] ; do
		shift
		#dbg "shifted to $*"
	done
	dbg "=>" bisect "$@"
	bisect "$@"
}

bisect() {
	test $# -gt 0 || return 0
	mid=$(($# / 2))
	test_nth $mid "$@"
	e=$?
	if test $e -eq $NGood ; then
		shift $((mid + 1))
		dbg "bisect($*)"
		bisect "$@"
		return
	fi
	if test $e -eq $NBad ; then
		bisect_first_n $mid "$@"
		return
	fi
	exit $e
}
test $# -ge 2 || { echo>&2 "bisect what?"; exit 100; }
bisect "$@" || exit
echo "last good is \"$LastKnownGood\""

[eilacomeva]

I can't reproduce the bug where guards in the pit don't react to bounty monsters - savegame at https://1fichier.com/?w1ph2yomrcxfvfkx6o78
What I see is that the guards that are not killed fight back; I was 100% sure that the OTHER guards would also intervene, but apparently this savegame proves my memory wrong

Added to the Issue - the savegame WAS NOT rehosted, because you are using one of the shi.ttiest filesharing service ever. Even Jdownloader cannot go around the "one file only and then wait a fu-ck-ton of minutes" limitation, and I just downloaded two files (one through Jdownloader, and one through a browser with VPN), and now I would have to change my VPN location to actually download. Or... WAIT.



Please rehost the file on a site that isn't garbage.

for example ulozto.net

Advantages of ulozto -

Uploading:
Can upload anonymously (through browser only, file manager started requiring being logged in)
You can upload an infinite amount of files (!!)
Upload queue in browser, while about 5 files from the queue are uploaded simultaneously!

Downloading:
You can download anonymously
You can download an unlimited amount of files, as long as you are downloading them one by one

Disadvantages of ulozto -

Uploading:
The cap is like 500 to 1000 kB/s for speed, I think. I don't know or care.
Can only upload files up to 19 GB (yes, GB!) in size. If your file is bigger, you will have to split it (I did upload once like a 60 GB file there... anonymously... )

Downloading:
Anonymous and free users are limited to 300 kB/s. Which pretty much doesn't matter for printscreens and saves.
There was a captcha in the past (and now isn't if it can identify you are not a bot automatically) for anonymous users.

Not sure how I ended up with that website, all I cared was - wait for it - to upload stuff without an account, I had no idea it penalized multiple downloads like that; the best part is that I downloaded the savegame with Yancy from there, so I now should wait 105 minutes to download... anyway, snapshots ftw!
https://ulozto.net/file/jqVQM6MaXxa1/bo ... he-pit-dod

Thank you for the list of pro/cons

[Templayer]

Thanks! Was choosing between this and MM6 Zoltan :-)

The ideas are nice, actually. Will add some comments in GitLab.

No worries, either way's a win, since Zoltan is awesome as well.

Cheers and feel free to comment on them further either here, via Discord (if you have the account) or via the same means I talk to Templayer.

Today I have finally managed to read through my emails and email notifications.

Started reading at 11:00 and ended at 23:00, with pauses for food, taking the doggie for a walk, taking a shower, etc.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get to even a single of GDSpectra's comments on my youtube channel.

Crud.

I'm so sorry! ^^;

Don't be, I should be. I really want to get to them but I cannot. Might have to wait until weekend.

[Templayer]

Promoted and then moved to path of dark.
Anyway while trying to reproduce I've found a bug so funny that I stopped and uploaded the savegame (two of them actually)
- in the free haven savegame, talk to yancy (the man right to the west of you, close to the water expert teacher), then dismiss some useless characters from the adventurer's inn, then go back to yancy and click "join", I tried it twice (with slightly different results) and... well, see for yourself...

---

edit -- I laughed so much I forgot the links, here they are:
https://1fichier.com/?n8zk8g456ufqtcj8ktdj
https://1fichier.com/?anp0a3rq8rw01mf67izw

Tried it, didn't get a sex change.
NPCs "mutating" into hirelings in an immersion-breaking way
Took me half an hour to test this out and make printscreeens, due to various difficulties. If this was just two pictures (ideally on something better than 1fichier), I would have laughed my ar-se off, instead I did this instead of other stuff, and .... STILL DIDN'T GET THE SEX CHANGE!

Somehow I often fail to mention some important detail - sorry!
Anyway the point is that you need to HIRE Yancy, I did it (and repeated today just to be sure) and it worked (two different faces).
In my defense, I believe my mind was still on the bug where NPCs stop being hireable, that's probably how I managed to omit that crucial detail.

Added to the GitLab Issue, and priority was raised to Normal. Didn't test it, though.

[Templayer]

Thank you; it bothered me so much that I rewrote the bisecting thing in the least adequate language possible (among the non ridiculous candidates), ie POSIX shell... here it is, for your horror...
And about the rant: the reason I wanted to start-close-restart-close-... the game is that I remembered at least one game that went mad after alt+tab; found it, it's age of empires collectors edition. Not that it matters, but just for the record...

Code: Select all

#! /bin/sh
# mm678 savegame bisect.
# Written in POSIX shell for evulz! (and my love of reflinks)
readonly Good="good"
readonly Bad="bad"
# HACK to communicate from subprocess/subroutine
readonly NGood=13
readonly NBad=17
: ${DEBUG:=}

# TODO getopt

if test x = x"$DEBUG" ; then
	dbg() { true ; } # quiz: what happens with "{}"?
else
	dbg() { echo>&2 "debug($*)"; }
fi

if cp --help 2>&1|grep reflink >/dev/null ; then
	# doesn't work on zfs unfortunately.
	copy() { cp -ai --reflink=auto -- "$@" ; }
else
	copy() { cp -ai -- "$@" ; }
fi
# XXX these are HARD CODED!!!
mm678ScapeGoat=save017.dod
setup() {
	if test -e "$mm678ScapeGoat" ; then
		ls -l "$mm678ScapeGoat"
		echo>&2 "that's a temporary file we KEEP OVERWRITING;"
		echo>&2 "if it's just a leftover from a previous run, delete it;"
		echo>&2 "if it's an actual savegame, edit \"$0\" and replace \"$mm678ScapeGoat\" with some other number."
		exit 100
	fi
	copy "$1" "$mm678ScapeGoat"
}
teardown() {
	rm -f "$mm678ScapeGoat"
}

ls Autosave.dod >/dev/null # warn about wrong directory

LastKnownGood='SNAFU'

# XXX huge misnomer!
testarg() {
	test $# -eq 1 || { echo>&2 "testarg ONE ARGUMENT! ($*)"; exit 100; }
	dbg "testing $1"
	setup "$1" || return
	# then we do the testing by hand :D
}

# test_nth 0 foo bar baz => test foo
test_nth() {
	shift $1
	shift
	testarg "$1" || exit 111
	while : ; do
		printf '%s: %s/%s? ' "$1" "$Good" "$Bad"
		read ans||exit 123
		if test _"$ans" = _"$Good" ; then
			LastKnownGood="$1"
			teardown || exit
			return $NGood
		fi
		if test _"$ans" = _"$Bad" ; then
			teardown || exit
			return $NBad
		fi
		echo>&2 "seriously? ok, again..."
	done
}

# Under bash/ksh/zsh you have arrays (incompatible zsh iirc)...
# In the posix shell, the only arrays you have are arguments,
# and you can only shift one way:
# (a,b,c,d) => (c,d) is just "shift 2"
# (a,b,c,d) => (a,b) is NOT "shift -2", shift is unsigned
# => contortion:
#	tmp=a; shift => (b,c,d)
#	set -- $@ $tmp => (b,c,d,a)
#	shift => (c,d,a)
#	loop (ie, in plain English, rotate the array :), then shift until you have the required number.
# then recursively call bisect().
bisect_first_n() {
	dbg bisect_first_n "$@"
	test $# -gt 0 || bug
	wanted=$1
	shift
	for i in $(seq $wanted) ; do
		tmp="$1"
		shift
		set -- "$@" "$tmp"
		#dbg "rotated to $*"
	done
	while [ $# -gt $wanted ] ; do
		shift
		#dbg "shifted to $*"
	done
	dbg "=>" bisect "$@"
	bisect "$@"
}

bisect() {
	test $# -gt 0 || return 0
	mid=$(($# / 2))
	test_nth $mid "$@"
	e=$?
	if test $e -eq $NGood ; then
		shift $((mid + 1))
		dbg "bisect($*)"
		bisect "$@"
		return
	fi
	if test $e -eq $NBad ; then
		bisect_first_n $mid "$@"
		return
	fi
	exit $e
}
test $# -ge 2 || { echo>&2 "bisect what?"; exit 100; }
bisect "$@" || exit
echo "last good is \"$LastKnownGood\""

Can't read that code. It is too alien to me. I'm just a poor Java / C# guy currently. And occasionally Javascript. Too different.

[Templayer]

I can't reproduce the bug where guards in the pit don't react to bounty monsters - savegame at https://1fichier.com/?w1ph2yomrcxfvfkx6o78
What I see is that the guards that are not killed fight back; I was 100% sure that the OTHER guards would also intervene, but apparently this savegame proves my memory wrong

Added to the Issue - the savegame WAS NOT rehosted, because you are using one of the shi.ttiest filesharing service ever. Even Jdownloader cannot go around the "one file only and then wait a fu-ck-ton of minutes" limitation, and I just downloaded two files (one through Jdownloader, and one through a browser with VPN), and now I would have to change my VPN location to actually download. Or... WAIT.



Please rehost the file on a site that isn't garbage.

for example ulozto.net

Advantages of ulozto -

Uploading:
Can upload anonymously (through browser only, file manager started requiring being logged in)
You can upload an infinite amount of files (!!)
Upload queue in browser, while about 5 files from the queue are uploaded simultaneously!

Downloading:
You can download anonymously
You can download an unlimited amount of files, as long as you are downloading them one by one

Disadvantages of ulozto -

Uploading:
The cap is like 500 to 1000 kB/s for speed, I think. I don't know or care.
Can only upload files up to 19 GB (yes, GB!) in size. If your file is bigger, you will have to split it (I did upload once like a 60 GB file there... anonymously... )

Downloading:
Anonymous and free users are limited to 300 kB/s. Which pretty much doesn't matter for printscreens and saves.
There was a captcha in the past (and now isn't if it can identify you are not a bot automatically) for anonymous users.

Not sure how I ended up with that website, all I cared was - wait for it - to upload stuff without an account, I had no idea it penalized multiple downloads like that; the best part is that I downloaded the savegame with Yancy from there, so I now should wait 105 minutes to download... anyway, snapshots ftw!
https://ulozto.net/file/jqVQM6MaXxa1/bo ... he-pit-dod

Thank you for the list of pro/cons

No prob, thanks for using it. Heck, thanks for using ANYTHING ELSE than filthier or whatever it is called again.

[eilacomeva]

Btw, the bug with the Artemis bow is here but not in gitlab, but its status is not clear to me
- https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/ ... is#p371513 says it's intentional, but I don't see anything in its description(?)
- plenty of posts later (just search for "Artemis") mention it pushes enemies just like the dragon skill, which it does.

[eilacomeva]

Thank you; it bothered me so much that I rewrote the bisecting thing in the least adequate language possible (among the non ridiculous candidates), ie POSIX shell... here it is, for your horror...
...

Can't read that code. It is too alien to me. I'm just a poor Java / C# guy currently. And occasionally Javascript. Too different.

Well, the point is that it's a ridiculously inadequate tool for the job(*), so I guess that's ok... I just felt stupid writing what amounts to a binary search, so I made it a little less boring by using the wrong tool for the job.


(*) it's basically the unix equivalent of a batch file, except it's a bit less horrible

[eilacomeva]

...

UPDATE: Sibernethy had a VERY faulty installation of MMMerge, Emjayen tested his own MMMerge files against Sibernethy´s MMMerge files and posted a screenshot on the matter: https://media.discordapp.net/attachment ... height=618

Sibernethy reinstalled the entire thing and now those funky bugs (Cleric having an out-of-body experience - that bug became a meme - and "corrupted followers" bug) are all gone, so this issue is closed. You can add that one as "Solved" on GitLab too for any other people that have the "corrupted followers" bug.[/quote]

Ok, great. Btw, about the screenshot, does windows now support some tool to verify checksum? Or did you need to have Sibernethy install some program to do that?

[Toby]

Good Evening, everyone. I'm the new guy, Toby (actually I have been around a long time but I never intervened until now). I hope I can help Templayer, Spectra and everyone else who contributed to the merge to make this piece of art a little bit better for everyone.

[andrey]

Do we have any readme about console? What variables, commands, etc. are there, how to put things/check the content of the chest, how to put things in the inventory and so on. There are bits of this information scattered on tracker or forum, I'm wondering if there are more details.

New in GitLab:
Automated testing
Cannot run mm8.exe from another directory

[eilacomeva]

Do we have any readme about console? What variables, commands, etc. are there, how to put things/check the content of the chest, how to put things in the inventory and so on. There are bits of this information scattered on tracker or forum, I'm wondering if there are more details.

New in GitLab:
Automated testing
Cannot run mm8.exe from another directory

The script to automate tests is a really good idea!

[eilacomeva]

Probably I'm just the only one who didn't know this trick, but anyway: immolation+invisibility => hurt close creatures and STAY invisible, both in the merge and in vanilla.

Also a silly thing: you can have dead monsters with non zero HP, IIUC because some of their allies have power cure - savegames at https://ulozto.net/tam/_WIS1U5xwvPWS - btw, reanimate the priests and sometimes they will heal you as a side effect, hurrah!