I want to do little changes

[Mosiah]

Hi!
First I want to say that it's awesome how all of you guys are dedicated to H3! I always casually played the game now and then (random maps mainly) and even after 13? years the game is still the best in its genre imo.
So when I discovered this place with all the stuff you guys are modding I thought "wow yeah maybe some stuff you always wanted to change is in range now!" - it's simple about rebalancing some stuff without touching the models or anything (for now, lol).

So I'll just say what I want to do and I hope that it's just about changing some textfiles values that don't require much coding (-knowledge how to mod in this game - that would be too much for my time and motivation sadly):

I only want to change the basic SoD Gameplay. Even though I tried out WoG I felt like it was a bit too "bloated" with all the new stuff there). But since WoG without any wogifications done to the map is still fine that will do it too.

I want to change:
Pitlords - add range attack
Magogs - turn off AoE or turn off friendly fire
Hydras - add range attack
Medusa - slightly buff damage on par with archmages
(all + upgraded versions)

for now. I think it's possible but I hope it doesn't take too much to do so that I can avoid taking the main course of reading all guides and stuff.
Hope you can tell what it takes to do what I want to do and what I need (incl. what versions of the game / tools I need)

Thank you!

[GreatEmerald]

Yes, that's possible. But you will need to do some ERM coding (and ERM is super newbie-unfriendly). That said, for that you will only need a few commands and a few graphical tools to get the options for the commands right, so it's not really that hard once you get past the initial "eww" factor of ERM coding. Also, I'm sure people can walk you through the process.

[Xdarkon]

Actually I don't think adding ranged attacks to normal units would be too hard. Since you can use other textures for the ranged, (Maybe put the Death Cloud Lich ranged attack as the animation, without the green explosion, For the pit lords you can use the same textures as the Magog ones*Depends if you want a blast radius or a single stack attack*

[Ser Ironfist]

I've got a question about this.

Once I tried to do some ERM scripting after reading a long guide. What I could do was changing the abilities that creatures get by earning EXP in WOG. The problem was that I had to add the ERM lines into every single map that I wanted to use these changes.

Is it possible to change the basic special abilities of creatures? The MMArchive makes it possible to change Hp, damage and everything but I can't change special abilities or the way creatures move.

Let's assume I want to change bone dragons into dracoliches.
Using MMArchive I can now change the stats the way I want and I can also exchange the def files. But there is no way to create ranged bone dragons.

Does ERM scripting make it somehow possible to get bone dragons into a shooting unit (they should have this as their basic ability without needing to earn exp and level up)? And would these changes affect the whole game or only the map where I added the ERM lines.

[Salamandre]

Not sure what you mean by MMarchive. It is a simple tool allowing to open lods, by itself, it can't change anything in the game.

Now, Era II allows creating mods, once a mod is activated, every map will have your mod settings, and this is a friendly improvement over wog 3.58, where indeed you had to paste erm in every map.

About ranged creatures, you can create, the code is explained in Heroes community (in my profile, search threads).

But: you also need to add shooting frames to the creature def. Without, the game will crash.

[Ser Ironfist]

Thanks, I will check it out.
By MMArchive I just mean the possibility to extract all these txt. files like CRTRAITS. And I used it to add fan made creatures to the game.

But: you also need to add shooting frames to the creature def. Without, the game will crash.

I still noticed that when I tried to add another def to Master Gremlins.