The Protectors of Etheria is a stand-alone mod of the game Warlords Battlecry 3 (i.e. it can be run without having the original game installed - 100% free full game). It is an improved RTS/RPG game with new campaigns, quests, terrain, units, items, heroes, modding features and more. Beta versions available for download!
New Name Set
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Description
Dragons will now have more.. unique names.
No D&D like names, like Avorinodroxithil?
lol
this isnt D&D ;)
I know, it was a joke about over-complicated Dragon names in D&D.
Again just to clarify, only retinue / gift Dragons will have these new names. Produced ones will still be named Swamp Dragon / Storm Dragon etc...
Prior to 0.8.7, Dragons that were given names used the Daemonic naming set, which meant a Dragon could have the same name as an Imp.
Hi WBCKharn, I just want to know if there is a chance to edit the vanilla game in order to obtain as retinue units dragons as well, thanks in advance!
AƒƒÄ
It's really easy, actually.
You just need an XCR editor to edit the necessary files (check the WBC3 wiki for links). The easiest thing to do is edit an existing "give retinue" campaign event and just change the unit's ID to that which you desire (can even be titans and other heroes - although their stats will be of the dummy heroes)
The IDs for each unit can be found in the .en files in the sides folder (can be viewed with windows notepad). I.E: Minotaurs.en will have the IDs for all the Minotaur units, as well as names so you can see what unit is what.
Thanks WBCkharn, but where I found in the game folder the Retinue unit avaible?
You need to edit campaign.xcr within the English folder. You should be able to quickly work out what the different files in there mean. But basically loc files refer to the location on the campaign map. By modifying these you can add entirely new actions to a location (the act files). But like I said, it would be easier to just find an existing retinue act for a location and just modify that as apposed to creating an entirely new act if you are planning on doing this just to get special units in your retinue.
But then again, if you are doing this just for that, then you might as well use a hero editor to directly modify your hero to have such units in your retinue. (DalGurak's unit editor has a built in hero editor)
Thanks again WBCKharn, but I already know how to do this, already added lots of new act into my campaign!
My Apologizes, i badly exposed my previous question, I mean how to allow a dragon, once reach the 3rd level in battle, to be a part of heroes' retinue after the winning of that battle, in the same retinue screen where you can rename your retinue units, that all...sorry again :P
In which case - no, it can't be done without the source code. The game has a few "hard-coded" exceptions as to what units can not be offered to you for your retinue at the end-of-battle screen. Without the source code, you can not change this.
As I already expected, the coolest part of modding are hardcoded, however, I have other doubt to be clarified, and I hope you will be avaible as ever:
I edit one of my heroes with the Heroes Editor of the Unit Editor MFC Tool, to get a Dark Elven Black Guard as my hero model, but the fact is that, even by adding the 8th graphics AKGXs.RLE in game, my Black Guard Hero still crash the game once I cast a spell with he... Already tried to watch with the ARM & the ANI editors tools, but all seems fine...can you help me(once again) please?
Thanks in advance and sorry for the often bother! ;)
You can only add new hero models with the source (it's hard coded, again).
The same thing for almost everything except terrain and features (trees, rocks).
Worry not, there will be new hero models in 0.8.7.
So I have no chances to add new heroes into the vanilla game, and what about the heroes voices, them are hardcoded too or can be "easily" implemented?
New hero voices also hard coded. Without the code, your best chance is to replace already existing material (on - virtually - any field).
BTW, if you have hero voices you would like to see implemented in TPC just send them over as you did with the avatars.
No, I haven't new voices, I asked this before starting to messing around the audio files!
I'm no expert, but you also need to edit the .ANI file to enable the new RLE. When you import them back into the xcr, do not encrypt them.
Already done and the ANI seems to automatic consider the new graphic action for that unit (in my case the casting spell graphic) but still crash the game even if encrypted or not...
However I'm working on some unit recoloring, after I will finish them, I'll send them to you MOD Team for implementing them in this splendid MOD, if you wish! ;)
Don't encrypt the graphics - the game doesn't like that. Encrypting the .ani and .arm files are recommended.
I can't recall whether the game can actually read those files when not encrypted, but I've got myself into the routine of encrypting all but graphical files across the whole game. Encrypting those .ani and .arm files also makes them able to be edited directly with the XCR editor that has a built in Hex editor.
As for the .ani editor - I've never really understood what it was doing when I tried using it. In some cases it displays negative values for something that is clearly positive and works in game. Other times the values just don't seem to correspond to the .ani file itself (assuming we're talking about the same .ani editor here). I usually just edit the .ani files directly myself (with the XCR/hex editor tool).
*edit*
I've just looked into the .ani file for the Blackguard and no - the vanilla one does NOT support animation for spell casting. You'll need to edit that in order to get the animation to play and not crash the game. (Spell casting is the 6th animation for a unit)
Thanks WBCKharn, an other failure for my own mod, but doesn't matter, now I'm Recoloring the vanilla unit in order to get those units to be replaced, but I'm getting a problem:
When I try to recoloring the graphics with golden or grey/black/white it works fine, but if I try to edit them by changing to another colour, it simply don't work and it dephases the whole picture, in example, I tried to change the original bronze golem to a crystal one, the cyan colour, once indexed, turns into a sort of dark Violet/Blue, so I can't get that new unit graphic!
This happen for all the vanilla units, insted, I tried to edit (just for trying) a new unit graphic of your TPC Mod and it works fine with every colours...
There's something odd with the official units that we haven't figured out yet. The program that I2 initially used to saved their images must have saved the files with all but no-extra data tacked on or something like that. You can take one of their units and re-save it with no modifications but now it's worth more in memory.
Internally it's been causing lag for us (which we have since remedied). We've suspected it's to do with the palette and what you've said essentially confirms that. (I think I've already ruled out DPI which is known to cause issues with text dialogs.)
But anyway, when recolouring official units, it's usually better to promote them to full colour before modifying them, so their strange format doesn't interfere. Of course, you'll need to set up the "special colours" which I'm sure you already know about (magenta shades and team colours).
Afterwards, if you have access to the infinite graphics compressor, then use that to turn them into .rle files. (Use the RLS option as that reduces the files size without effecting the quality.)
So you mean that the unit graphics can be imported into XCR files even in to RLS istead of RLE format?(EDIT: Tryed right now it don't work!!!)
You said:
"But anyway, when recolouring official units, it's usually better to promote them to full colour before modifying them"
Here you mean to transform the picture to RGB and then re-index it, if yes already done, otherwise explain me what it mean specifically
You Said:
"Of course, you'll need to set up the "special colours" which I'm sure you already know about (magenta shades and team colours)."
No problem for this, I take a part the player colour and the magenta 248-1-248 and the shadows just to edit the other colours
You Said:
"I've already ruled out DPI which is known to cause issues with text dialogs."
Indeed, wit the last unofficial patch of the vanilla version the game ultra-lags after the NIS text of every campaign mission, but not a problem, instead what mean DPI?
1. All the custom units / buildings / features that I've added to the game were all done with the RLS option (it still saves as .rle but uses a different format). This option was used to help save memory and reduce lag when not cached. It's never failed for me and not just for TPC but also for the vanilla game.
How exactly is it not working for you? Does the game just not load the image at all? (Remember, don't encrypt graphical files)
2. All units are saved with a 256 colour palette. Removing the palette and setting the image back to 16 million colours is usually the best way to go when recolouring official units. Well, it is for me but I suppose it depends on your editing program.
3. You seem alright with this one.
4. DPI = Dots per inch. For some programs it's stated as PPI (Pixels per inch). My old Windows XP would rate the image resolution as DPI but Paint Shop Pro would rate it as PPI (with the option of going Pixels per centimeter). Some graphical editing programs allow you to edit the DPI / PPI of an image. It's been years since I had to mess with this properly but from what I remember WBC3 doesn't like certain images higher than 72 DPI (I think it was 72). The only time I recall this being an issue was with text dialogs but there could be other situations where the game won't like images with high DPI.
Thanks for your time WBCKharn, so:
1.I changed the graphics of 2 units in game with RLE compression(instead of RLS) and no problem right now, it is not the game that don't load the graphic, but is the RLE Viewer tool that dephases all the colours I used (even if indexed) except the Golden and the Greyscale, I don't konw why!
2.This is related to the RGB/Indexed colours Switch, I normally use this process in order to edit the pictures, but if I save the picture after this process (from original indexed, then convert to RGB, edit the colour as I wish, then re-indexing to 256 colour 8-bit, and save the picture) the RLE viewer tool is able to read correctly all the colours, but the middle axis of the picture is moved to the left side with the picture cutted and a weird black stripe on top of the picture, so, the process I used to get the unique 2 units I managed to works is a bit different but seems to works only for those colours(gold and greyscale), the proces is:
from original indexed, then convert to RGB, edit the colour as I wish, then re-indexing to 256 colour 8-bit, and save the picture and close it,(I call this picture aaa.bmp) then reopen the same picture edited right early and open a copy of the same picture before the whole proces (so just the original unit graphic extracted with the RLE viewer tool)(I call the original copy aaaa.bmp) then copy the whole content from the edited picture(aaa.bmp) into the original graphic(aaaa.bmp) at this point just save this picture and convert aaaa.bmp with the infinity Graphics converter!
This works only for Gold/Greyscale recolouring, if I do this process by recoloring the same graphic with another colour(in example cyan colour) once i copy the content of aaa.bmp into aaaa.bmp, instead of cyan colour I get a dark purple colour...
3. no problem here
4. thanks for the explanation, and I checked, my program (GIMP 2) is already set to saves pictures in 72 ppi, so I don't think is this my case
Sorry for the long post but maybe you or someone else here can help me, even because I have some ideas on units recolouring that may you COULD like and implement into TPC!
Thanks again for all!
The RLE viewer is rather unstable. You should only use it to convert official units to bmp formats and leave it at that. Once you have the image as a bmp, keep a "master copy" of so if you wish to make any further changes, just go back to that bmp format and DON'T use the RLE viewer to turn your modified rle back to a bmp.
As for my method of sorting out palettes, I modify my images at 16 million colours (24 bit) than convert the "finished" image to 256 colours. Then I edit the palette to remove the team colour and magenta pixels. Convert back to 16 million colours, then convert that image to 225 colours. Then I edit this new palette and manually add in the team / magenta colours. Once done I save the palette (not the image). Now I reload the original image (and all other images for that unit/building) and just load that previously saved palette and everything is set.