Planning the new 'Unity campaign' for H4

The old Heroes games developed by New World Computing. Please specify which game you are referring to in your post.

Would you play it, if the Unity campaign for re-created for H4?

Absolutely, H4 is where it belongs
11
85%
Maybe, but I do support the idea
2
15%
Not likely
0
No votes
I've just played it in H7 and see no need for a H4 version
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 13

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Karmakeld
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Planning the new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 00:20

In the tread about HVII patch 1.7, Galaad wrote:
And about these new H4 campaigns... I just hope some dedicated h4 fans will implement them to h4, the game it belongs to, because here is just h4 texts in a h7 environment, pretty horrible from my POV.
I can't help but liking this idea :-D Before I continue this tread, I just wanna ask, if there is a general interest in seeing the Unity campaign being made for H4..?

Edit: Okay it seems this project will become a reality :oex: We will make a H4 version of the H7 Unity campaign, as it was originally intended.
We may have gotten hold of the story text, thanks to Erwinner :applause: , but the spoken dialogue from the cut scenes seems to be lacking atm. Also we need to read the story first, in order to plan out the maps. I imagine this to be a project FOR the fans BY the fans. Currently yours truly and iLiVeInAbOx05 are determinded to make this campaign a reality for H4. But we would very much like all the help we can get. So if there's any mapmakers who will be willing to help with landscaping and/or scripting don't hesitate to voluntier :) I'll get back with more details, once the story has been read, but we intend it to be a flexible teamwork, where people will contribute with whatever they're good at. Only limit is that we stay within the frames set by the story, meaning landscaping, map objectives etc. should match the descriptions in the story :)

We'll also need testers at some point. Preferably for all difficulties.

Unless we can find a way to extract the spoken dialogue in the cut scenes to text, we could use help transcripting them, either by people owning H7 or by watching youtube vid's.

So let's make a great campaign together.

EDIT: I've changed the subject of this tread, adding the word Planning, as this tread will now be used to discuss some of the campaign details (between team members).
We'll set up another tread for open discussions between the team members and the general community, where we'll also keep you posted about progress etc here: https://www.celestialheavens.com/forum/7/16034
Last edited by Anonymous on 03 Apr 2016, 21:30, edited 2 times in total.
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Steven Aus
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Steven Aus » 25 Feb 2016, 06:52

Well, I would be interested.
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Baronus » 25 Feb 2016, 08:19

If it will be possible I want play it in HIV. It is orginal for HIV.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 08:37

I think it's a matter of one or more mapmakers going together and create the campaign for H4 :) The story is written and can be read in H7. That's the least of the problems I think. Question is more to what extend the campaign should lean up against the H7 campaign, regarding map layouts, battles and scripts etc. Also it would be cool if it became possible to add new campaign pictures :) but I believe this is being worked on..
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Baronus » 25 Feb 2016, 09:06

It is a big work. Especially scripts. And campaign pictures. We dont have utilities to it.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Erwinner » 25 Feb 2016, 12:29

I'd definitely play it and praise you to heaven mate, I can't play the H7 one, it's like a bad fan mod, (well technically it is lol,)

also I think a H4 version should ignore the H7 map design because that's just one individual's fan fiction interpretation of the script, just go on the original text by Terry and the continent map from H4 of Jen, anything else is for you to define lol

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 15:50

Well I would/could volunteer as a mapmaker for a project like this, but I got another campaign going on. So if this is to become reality I think it would have to be a team job. The easy part, which any one could help with, is gathering up all the texts. There was a proposal recently about a collaborative campaign, and if more map makers would join, it would greatly speed up the process. And equally important, we'd need committed testers.

Erwinner, I think you're right about ignoring the H7 version. I imagine this to be a project for the fans by the fans, but at the same I curious about suggestions for the campaign. I haven't played it myself (seen bit of the first map on YouTube), so I have no idea if it's good or bad or if there's anything useful in the sense of inspiration.
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby iLiVeInAbOx05 » 25 Feb 2016, 16:03

Replacing a campaign picture probably won't require too much.. but adding them depends on how well the H4 application itself was designed. If they have hardcoded spots for the number of campaign pictures, rather than being able to read in a variable number, we won't be able to add campaign pictures (unless we can mod of course, but I don't know how to get into the exe file and do anything useful).

I would be pretty surprised if h4 was able to read in a variable number of campaign pictures and create a spot for them in the display, but I guess we'll see when I eventually get there. I'll also need to add the campaign or replace the one we replaced the picture for, etc.

We'll see how things go. I'm still working on documenting how to parse .h4c files :D

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Baronus » 25 Feb 2016, 18:17

I think in exe file we can find it using alphabetical searching. It is probably coded using normal words,
Replaceing will be enough. We are plaing only in one campaign at one moment. Then we can restoring old.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 18:23

I guess replacing pictues could work, just as easily as we're forced to replace portraits. I'm sure we could find some pictures that could be replaced. Anyway, I asume replacing campaign pictures, will work the same way as replacing portraits, by replacing the file they're read from, meaning it could be included as a mod file for that exact campaign. If this campaign would become reality, I just think some new campaign pictures, would be one of those things that would just complete it :-) But iLiVe, you didn't comment on the subject in any way ;-)
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby iLiVeInAbOx05 » 25 Feb 2016, 18:34

I know, I would like to help with this campaign of course, it will just be difficult as I have two pretty big projects already :D

The Map generator will be helpful for high level terrain design once I get it to that point, so at least there's a contribution ;)

I may also try to get something set up to pull the text out of the H7 map file, but that will take some time because I'll have to study H7 map files.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 19:27

Thx :-) I think we'd need a bit more help than just the 2 of us, but still a big help.
Extracting H7 text would be neat, but if it's a slow process (also considering your 2 other big projects), I think it would be useful to rely on fans contributing by writing of the the texts. I don't have access to H7, so writing off, is my only option, and it's a draaaag having to do 1 or 2 ppl.
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby iLiVeInAbOx05 » 25 Feb 2016, 19:36

I don't have H7 either, but if we could get a hold of the campaign file for Unity, that would be a good place to start for anyone with some programming experience :D

Just need to find out what compression (if any), is being used on the file. Then a program would just need to scan for ASCII text values (assuming that's what's being used) and copy them to another file. Would be much better than having to go through each map and type it by hand :D

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 25 Feb 2016, 23:04

Well I guess asking in the H7 section would be a good starting point, but I think we should just wait a few days or more, to see if we can gather a slightly bigger team. Some dedicated testers f.x. would be nice.
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby iLiVeInAbOx05 » 26 Feb 2016, 01:56

Even if we can't gather a larger team, we can approach things slowly when we have time. Slow progress is still progress :)

I just downloaded an H7 map (117mb wtf!) and opened it up in my hex editor. So, at the beginning of the file there is some readable stuff, but after that.. Lots and lots of non-readable.

It looks like the readable stuff at the beginning is comprised of some map objects. I'm not sure if the map had any scripts in it, so I don't know if the scripting was compressed, and so unreadable, or if there wasn't any scripting. I didn't see any text beyond the (seeming) landscape objects.

The file type is .UMAP, which some quick research suggests it could be opened by Ue4 (Unreal Engine 4). Looks like it's a free download after you register for their website, so I may give that a try and see if it can be viewed by that.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby cuc » 26 Feb 2016, 05:19

iLiVeInAbOx05 wrote:I just downloaded an H7 map (117mb wtf!) and opened it up in my hex editor.
No need to poke around like that. The game's official files follow the modern paradigm - separation of text and binary data for easier localization. The campaign text are all in their own files.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 26 Feb 2016, 08:01

Any idea where they're to be found?
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Baronus » 26 Feb 2016, 09:10

But are the text original Terry Rays creation? Mayby it is Ubi Lim fiction? We must found Terry Ray text and write campaign text using it.
I thing it is a novel form like in picture:
https://mmh7.ubi.com/en/blog/post/view/ ... -terry-ray

Image

And Ubi Lim created own campaign. We must get this novel.

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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Karmakeld » 26 Feb 2016, 13:37

I'll have to look into this, but the impression I got from Marzhin's post, is that it's Terry's text they've used. Marzhin did suggest a minor add to the intro, but he stated it was approved by Terry Ray, so I assume Marzhin wanted to stay true to Terry's text script, of course there could be minor text parts like quests that could be added. I guess Marzhin is the guy to ask.
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Re: The new 'Unity campaign' for H4

Unread postby Baronus » 26 Feb 2016, 14:32

We can write to Terry Ray.

"Dear Sir we are Might and Magic World lovers. We want to find old orginal materials from Heroes III and IV. Tarnum story etc. We will tray to efforts make maps and campaigns based on this materials. Can You help us if there are unused text and scenarios?"

Here is Terry Ray site but I cant find email:
http://tbraybooks.com/


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