Heroes of Might and Magic II

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Seems someone has made some hacks to try to fix something.
But if a fix breaks something else, of course not a good fix.

Yeah, I'm not sure if I trust this unofficial update.

I mean, the "Campaign intro" always worked perfectly on my computer with "Fastest possible" set and now it doesn't.

It's great that the animations between Campaign mission is fixed, but to be honest this issue was intermittent; basically the speech goes funny sometimes.

I wonder if you could somehow try to fix that meynaf, but no big deal if not?

[Aladin]

@Meynaf
I can't imagine the time you must have taken to achieve this conversion.

Is it normal that there are still messages in English with the data of the French version?

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by DamienD

I wonder if you could somehow try to fix that meynaf, but no big deal if not?

That part is quite tricky, merely having it work was already quite a big achievement - it didn't work at all in the Mac version and was disabled...
I've made many tests already and was never fully satisfied. Damned smk code is not readable and is fragile as a soap bubble. Not to mention my A1230/50 wasn't fast enough for proper replay anyway.
Maybe one day (actually many), if i find enough time and motivation.

For now, what you can do is to tick jit and max speed.
If the game goes too fast, you can slow it down with game settings (the computer icon within the game). You have "speed" setting here.

Originally Posted by Aladin

Is it normal that there are still messages in English with the data of the French version?

In some way, yes. Pure text messages are in the executable itself, which comes from an English version. Button text is however all premade graphics.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by meynaf

That part is quite tricky, merely having it work was already quite a big achievement - it didn't work at all in the Mac version and was disabled...
I've made many tests already and was never fully satisfied. Damned smk code is not readable and is fragile as a soap bubble. Not to mention my A1230/50 wasn't fast enough for proper replay anyway.
Maybe one day (actually many), if i find enough time and motivation.

No problem, your port is absolutely amazing as is

Originally Posted by meynaf

For now, what you can do is to tick jit and max speed.
If the game goes too fast, you can slow it down with game settings (the computer icon within the game). You have "speed" setting here.

Thanks for the info, will try that... but I've never needed "Jit" ticked with your port and it runs fine

[saimon69]

I put a link to a zip file with all the songs made so far in this other thread if needed:
Heroes of Might and Magic "state of the union" mod pack

[hmm, i wonder why when i do answer a thread it seems to become dead for a long while]

[meynaf]

Seems I had some unreleased changes waiting. I've now released all that as real 0.6 version.

0.6
. edtr: map's file size always got bigger (usually by 15 bytes) every time it
  was saved, even if nothing got added, due to a bug in the MapCellExtra
  cleanup routine (this new version will remove unneeded items, leading to
  smaller file size)
. edtr: info window (rmb) on ultimate artifact showed empty string (same bug
  occurs on pc version)
. both: new command-line option "nolace" to get 640x240 instead of 640x480,
  for those who *really* don't like interlaced screens (may make a few things
  faster as well but it's real ugly, especially texts)
. both: fixing a case when clicking on mini map could lead to a wrong place
. game: avoid using 100% cpu when not necessary (useful for laptops running an
  emulator set at max speed)
. game: reallocation of MapCellExtra when full didn't work, ending up in an
  abort when claiming resources (more likely to happen with maps edited with
  editor v0.6+, one bug was hiding another)
. game: a few problems fixed on minimap (aka radar), the most important being
  sawmills not shown properly
. game: keyboard shortcuts didn't work, can now f.e. view hero / enter town
  with enter key
. game: fixed havoc that could occur (game crash) if all 6 players each
  recruited 8 heroes
. game: no longer rejects maps that have a single player if win/lose special
  conditions make it a valid game

If people want to change something, please don't release hacked code in my back and submit some diff to me. I don't work on that project much anymore, but there is support.

[Aladin]

Thanks.

I have a bug when I encapsulate it in WHDL. When launching the first mission of the campaign after the objectives summary screen, the game exits displaying "incorrect memory block (free)". It worked fine with v0.5. On the other hand, the game works in scenario mode.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Seems I had some unreleased changes waiting. I've now released all that as real 0.6 version.

0.6
. edtr: map's file size always got bigger (usually by 15 bytes) every time it
  was saved, even if nothing got added, due to a bug in the MapCellExtra
  cleanup routine (this new version will remove unneeded items, leading to
  smaller file size)
. edtr: info window (rmb) on ultimate artifact showed empty string (same bug
  occurs on pc version)
. both: new command-line option "nolace" to get 640x240 instead of 640x480,
  for those who *really* don't like interlaced screens (may make a few things
  faster as well but it's real ugly, especially texts)
. both: fixing a case when clicking on mini map could lead to a wrong place
. game: avoid using 100% cpu when not necessary (useful for laptops running an
  emulator set at max speed)
. game: reallocation of MapCellExtra when full didn't work, ending up in an
  abort when claiming resources (more likely to happen with maps edited with
  editor v0.6+, one bug was hiding another)
. game: a few problems fixed on minimap (aka radar), the most important being
  sawmills not shown properly
. game: keyboard shortcuts didn't work, can now f.e. view hero / enter town
  with enter key
. game: fixed havoc that could occur (game crash) if all 6 players each
  recruited 8 heroes
. game: no longer rejects maps that have a single player if win/lose special
  conditions make it a valid game

If people want to change something, please don't release hacked code in my back and submit some diff to me. I don't work on that project much anymore, but there is support.

Thanks meynaf, will test shortly

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Aladin

Thanks.

I have a bug when I encapsulate it in WHDL. When launching the first mission of the campaign after the objectives summary screen, the game exits displaying "incorrect memory block (free)". It worked fine with v0.5. On the other hand, the game works in scenario mode.

Can't reproduce. Could you please be more verbose for the things you do ?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Thanks meynaf, will test shortly

meynaf, did you change the way the videos are played?

I now have the same issue with the "Campaign intro" as I did with the "unofficial" update i.e:

[ Show youtube player ]

Anyway, no big deal... I'll just adjust my configuration by setting "Jit" and "CPU Speed = -60%".

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by DamienD

meynaf, did you change the way the videos are played?

It's possible i did some change that looked like having no impact.
SMK anims have always had timing issues and i have no clue as of yet.

[meynaf]

Found it ! There was indeed something broken.
Please get program back from original archive link and check again.

[Aladin]

Thank you, it's working now

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by meynaf

It's possible i did some change that looked like having no impact.
SMK anims have always had timing issues and i have no clue as of yet.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Found it ! There was indeed something broken.
Please get program back from original archive link and check again.

Ok, you're saying that I should redownload homm2.lzx now?

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Ok, you're saying that I should redownload homm2.lzx now?

Just tested this; same issue with the "Campaign intro" jittering when using only "Fastest possible".

No biggie though; I'll just keep the updated configuration with "Jit" and "CPU Speed = -60%"

[meynaf]

Sorry, lots of sync issues depending apparently on speed.
The smk isn't an easy part, and the fact it often plays two smk files simultaneously (one for video, the other for sound) doesn't arrange matters.

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Sorry, lots of sync issues depending apparently on speed.
The smk isn't an easy part, and the fact it often plays two smk files simultaneously (one for video, the other for sound) doesn't arrange matters.

No worries meynaf

[meynaf]

Apparently there are problems when the cpu is more than fast enough to play the video - which wasn't the case at all on the A1200 that was used to do the port...
In any case, smk playback has been put on top of todo list.

[saimon69]

Originally Posted by meynaf

No, unfortunately there is no music. It's on the todo list, maybe one day (when i find a good solution).
Options exist to play either MIDI or CD but changing them will have no effect. Note that Mac version could not play MIDI either (actually, XMI).

Well is going in my opinion to be a non-simple problem: tunes that i have so far range from 200k to (unoptimized) 600k and the way are used on the game implies that at any time one song could switch to another depending where the hero is located - i envision long load times switching heroes PLUS at least one channel need mixing with sound FX; and since was instructed to go for the best quality of sound i did not work too much on optimization for simultaneous sound and music yet

[lifeschool]

I installed this from the Abandonware Games web site, but cant get it to work at all.

On normal WB, launching from CLI gives an error in French -

Echo ouventure ecran


On my PPC setup with WinUAE Zorro III graphics card,

It played the globe intro anim (with music), then quit to DOS, said something about Nul pointer

Throw (err _NilPointer)
Smackmgr.cpp error line 565