"how to mod" questions

[Seravy]

EDIT : nevermind, I found it on my own.

$981EF for the % reduction per spell book above 7, original value is $0A.
$981E6 for the number of books where the bonus starts, stored as a NEGATIVE number as it is a subtraction, meaning $FF=-1= 1 book, $F9 = -7 = 7 books, default value.

changed my values to 2% per book starting at 4

I wonder which is the one for research bonus? $981EF only affects 'cost' and I recommend it should be balanced out by a higher research bonus.

The Master of Magic Editor.exe I found is already capable of changing the research cost so I never needed to look for that.
Not sure if additional books need any extra boost to research, at least in my game. I do want to use a higher than default book limit, and research reduction is cumulative the same way as casting, I need to keep it quite low if I don't want to run into a "free research" problem when too many modifiers stack.
On the other hand, with more picks and books, they don't need to be as rewarding as you can take more. 11 picks were very constraining on options if taking 7+ books of the same type, but with the 15 picks I plan to use, not so much. Books also give extra starting power and ofc more spells. I think, at best, 3%/book could work if it starts at 4 books.

I have a new question. I started replacing portraits with the MoMTweaker.exe for the wizards. I loaded the palette used by the original portraits into the new ones but despite that a lot of the colors simply don't show up and appear black/white. Is there a specific palette I should be using? Where can I find it? Will it be the same for all other types of portraits (diplomacy screen, F9 etc?)

[Anthony]

I wonder which is the one for research bonus? $981EF only affects 'cost' and I recommend it should be balanced out by a higher research bonus.

Not sure, but I do know that the Tweaker seems to know how to change those bonuses.

[Seravy]

Oddly enough, importing the 24 bit images into the LBX directly seems to yield much better results than applying the palette manually and importing 8 bit files. I guess the tool knows the palette better than the original game's images :D
A certain red color does seem to get turned into white tho, but the rest works fine, so I guess it's acceptable for now.

One more question : is there a known way to remove the limitation of no life and death magic at the same time? I mean on the custom wizard creation screen, I don't mind not finding them in towers and such.

[zitro1987]

I figured out the research bonus figures. I applied book bonus tweaks to my mod.

See my mod's thread post #70 for attachment file BookDiscount_4bks5perc.txt (Size: 468 bytes / Downloads: 3) ... the first 5 items that change from 10 (0A) to 05 relate to research and the sixth relates to spell cost.

[Seravy]

I figured out the research bonus figures. I applied book bonus tweaks to my mod.

See my mod's thread post #70 for attachment file BookDiscount_4bks5perc.txt (Size: 468 bytes / Downloads: 3) ... the first 5 items that change from 10 (0A) to 05 relate to research and the sixth relates to spell cost.

Checked out your mod and you seem to have tweaked buildings quite a lot. Can you enlighten me how to change the food/gold/power/mana/population production of buildings? I tried editing the building table but it had pretty much zero effect on these even when I changed the value of the field marked power where Alchemy Hall has 3.
I would love to have a wizard's guild producing Power, or Shrines, Temples, Catherdals producing more than the default.

[zitro1987]

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...752&page=5
Posts #43 and 64 from Kyrub (isn't he great at this?) is where I got what I needed. As for production buildings, while he only mentioned a few (and I ended up using different bonuses in some), the other production buildings are very close to each other in the hexeditor and can be easily spotted as '19' (25%) or '32' (50%) with identical codes around them.

In my case, I ended up with a massive +10 power for wizards guild (available to all races), +6 gold marketplace (instead of a +50%), miner's guild and mechanicians guild also having +x instead of +50% bonuses, shipwright's guild adding food, builder's hall adding more housing bonus, and trade goods doubling in strength. Also, each farmer adds +1 gold instead of +0.5

[Seravy]

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthrea...752&page=5
Posts #43 and 64 from Kyrub (isn't he great at this?) is where I got what I needed. As for production buildings, while he only mentioned a few (and I ended up using different bonuses in some), the other production buildings are very close to each other in the hexeditor and can be easily spotted as '19' (25%) or '32' (50%) with identical codes around them.

In my case, I ended up with a massive +10 power for wizards guild (available to all races), +6 gold marketplace (instead of a +50%), miner's guild and mechanicians guild also having +x instead of +50% bonuses, shipwright's guild adding food, builder's hall adding more housing bonus, and trade goods doubling in strength. Also, each farmer adds +1 gold instead of +0.5

Thx, I found a LOT of useful into there.

Next question : When I change building maintenance cost to 0, it messes up the display very badly (shows like 200 gold), is there a fix for that? 0 seems to display fine for Trade Goods and Housing, but not for anything else.

Also, latest finding : In the place where you find the number of starting common spells, the data immediately after it is for the uncommons and rares, so it's easy to change the number of those, or even set it to 0 entirely (I go with no rares, and earlier uncommons, but fewer and later commons). The first post should be updated to mention this.

Edit : I ran into a new problem. The player sometimes starts by having the last spell from random realms (Time Stop, Armageddon, Charm of Life, Nature's Wrath only).

-I confirmed that default wizards having over 10 of the same type of book cause this. (despite custom wizards having no problem with it)

-Reducing the number of Rare spell picks to zero for 11 books causes this. Surprisingly, increasing it also does not work as it you are unable to spend your 2nd pick and can't proceed. I'm guessing the latter is because there aren't enough default rare picks defined so it does not start the selection with all picks spent. The default picks table is right after the number of choices, and it has 13 numbers per realm, 10 commons, 2 uncommons and a rare. Changing the number of rares TO 1 from zero might work for less than 11 books, haven't tried.

-Reducing the number of Uncommon picks also generates the problem.
-So does reducing the number of commons

So altogether, the conclusion is, altering any numbers related to the starting spells is not working without changing the code itself. Including commons.

[zitro1987]

So altogether, the conclusion is, altering any numbers related to the starting spells is not working without changing the code itself. Including commons.

It's pretty complicated to alter these things. User Kyrub pretty much did it all himself based on ideas from both of us.

[Seravy]

So altogether, the conclusion is, altering any numbers related to the starting spells is not working without changing the code itself. Including commons.

It's pretty complicated to alter these things. User Kyrub pretty much did it all himself based on ideas from both of us.

If you have a patch I can apply that turns off rare spells, or the entire free starting spell mechanic, or even replacing it with the old "guaranteed spells" option, let me know.
If not, I guess I can live with having starting spells, as I accelerated towns and units, and powered up the fortress too, but still, starting with things like Wraith or Stream of Life sounds pretty broken.
Fortunately, now that the cost reductions aren't as high as original it will take much longer to cast them.

[Seravy]

I didn't see it posted anywhere yet, I found the gold bonus for the Bank and Merchant's Guild :

Bank gold bonus :
$C081E 32 → ??

Merchant's Guild gold bonus :
$C07BE 64 → ??

These, especially the MG produce crazy amounts of gold when paired with high taxes, and definitely need a reduction of their effect.

Also, prosperity spell bonus :
$C0862 64 → ??

A few more discoveries :
Setting the number of towers to fewer than the default 6 pairs results in more frequent crashes on map generation. Setting it to more then 6 has no effect, the game seems to be hardcoded to have 6(x2) slots for towers.
Setting the lair amount does not change the amount of nodes.
There are 102 total slots, about 40 gets taken by towers and nodes. So even if you set more then 60 lairs, it won't give you more than 102 places total.

The following information in another thread is wrong :

Marketplace + 3 bonus
C091F 8B C6 BA 72 00 F7 EA C4 1E BC 9C 03 D8 => 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 90 33 FF
C0847 83 46 F2 32 => BF 03 00 90 (bonus is the second byte from right (03))
C0886 8B FA => 03 FA
C08BC 8B F8 => 03 F8
(inner city display is not fixed… maybe later… or not)

Actually, c091f does not contain those bytes, they are located at c0957. Also, changing them seems unnecessary for the marketplace bonus, in fact, doing so breaks Trade Goods, making it produce negative gold.