NEWS

12-Apr-2011 Proposals for fully modifiable hero skills, creatures, terrain and magic spells

OBJECTIVES

The heroes community has many excellent modders with an in-depth understanding of the game and brilliant ideas how to improve it.

The originally released Heroes V supports only a limited number of modding concepts. Our aim is to support a much broader variety of mods and provide the modders with a clean interface to enhance and add content in a way that was not possible before.

With a fully featured AI and an advanced modding interface that adapts to the desires of the modders in our community and our own much more user-friendly content tools, our hope is to enable the heroes modders to do more and become the premier modding community in our realm, and in turn bring the strategy game genre to new heights.

ONE INTERFACE THAT SERVES ALL

Everything that can be made configurable, and also the selection of active mods, will go into XML files that are stored in a predefined directory. The mod maintainer chooses a name for the mod's XML file and defines what elements and attributes are provided by this mod's XML file. All XML files pertaining to mods will be read at runtime and the necessary adjustments to the game made.

It is up to the modder to define the meaning of the elements and attributes and to provide the necessary background information. Once the mod is proposed and approved by the community, I can implement the necessary in-game interface that interpretes the XML file and adjusts the game accordingly, thus modifying settings and importing the necessary resources, for example for a customizable spell system (the effect, description, picture), creature modifications, hero perks and more in a consistent way that is supported by the game. /Q

USER MODIFIABLE PARAMETERS

With the choice of XML files, modders can also supply more easily a customized user interface for the user to set parameters, ideally by providing tick boxes, sliders for values and other simple UI elements. There is a variety of tools for XML editing widely available.

SCHEDULED TASKS

CHANGE REQUESTS

MODIFIABLE TERRAIN PROPERTIES

Terrain tiles on the adventure map and in the combat arena can have many more properties and will be fully modifiable. See the gameplay section for details.

MODIFIABLE CREATURE STATS

The stats of creatures will be fully modifiable and based on a very flexible compound logic. See the gameplay section for details.

MODIFIABLE HERO SKILLS AND PERKS

Every hero skill and perk will be completely modifiable, inclusive the skills of existing heroes. See the gameplay section for details.

MODIFIABLE MAGIC SPELLS

Each magic spell will have a much more detailed structure and adapt to magic compounds. See the gameplay section for details.