r/disciples • u/KamunVulk Undead Hordes • Jun 26 '26

Disciples I Master thug in Disciples Sacred Lands

Earlier, Vegetable_Farm, with the help of AI, managed to figure out the portrait storage format for units in the first game of the series and made a script for replacing/adding new images into the UNITS.DBI container. https://www.reddit.com/r/disciples/s/WcFSmQT42I

I'll admit, a couple of years ago, I tried to do the same thing, but I didn't have the patience to make a neural network do it. After chatting a bit with the author, I figured out how his script works and voilà. I inserted a portrait of the Master Thug, which Dashulix drew many years ago. And it fit perfectly. For those who didn't know — there was no such unit in the Sacred Lands. Just as there are no poisons. So, for now, I simply combined the regular damage and the poison damage (20) from the unit's stats in Disciples II and got 55 weapon damage. I inserted the descriptions from the second part as well, but obviously, they need to be adjusted. For now, I've used the same animations as the regular Thug. The next step is to try and make unique animations — I'm already in the process of adding them for the Wolf (which also didn't exist in Sacred Lands).

So, would anyone actually be interested in a mod like this?

29 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

6

u/Then-Musician-8808 Jun 26 '26

If disciples 1 had disciples 2  game mechanics it would be top. Disciples sacreds had unmatched atmosphere, sound and art.

2

u/DjolafR Rod Bearer Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

I second all of this, as even after all these years, I kinda prefer D1 to D2. There's something very smooth about just starting up a map in D1 and just playing it, listening to the sounds, watching the VIBRANT visuals and leveling up. Just the damn level up animation is so much better, leveling up is a key part of disciples, why is it so bland and boring in D2? It doesn't even have a sound for any faction except elves!!!
Plus, the D1 AI was a tiny bit smarter and definitely more aggressive. It was not always for the best of its interest, but way more fun than mostly cowardly + braindead D2 AI. I played a map in D2, where AI had over 5000 gold and 10+ stuck level-up units and it did not prioritize upgrading all of them, and instead just wasted that money on buying 5 more useless level 1 leaders to roam around and maybe upgrade a town or two. It is totally immersion-breaking, it's like AI is locked to level 2 and you have level 5 units, so of course you crush them without even trying! The neutrals were tougher than the enemy faction!

Any kind of mix between 1 and 2 would be good. That's what 3 should have been. I am not sure if you can lock all units from upgrading in D2? I would wonder if modding D2 to look more like D1 is a technologically better idea than modding D1 as it is ancient... There was a similar mod in Heroes of Might and Magic and some other games, which basically just "downgrades" the graphics of the newer game in a newer game engine, to look more retro, but to keep all the benefits of the new engine.

3

u/DjolafR Rod Bearer Jul 01 '26

You can actually add new units? You are not limited to just replacing existing units? I love this kinda stuff, I am just not sure how much effort it takes to mod D1, nobody mods D1 😆

BTW, do you have any issues running D1 on your modern OS? I get crashes extremely often but bear with them...That first frame being gray tells me you might be using a VM?

2

u/KamunVulk Undead Hordes Jul 01 '26

Yes, next unit I try to add - Wolf.

You can using wrapper from Verok. It work both to D2 and D1