HOMM3 Modification discussion

This post isn't the normal next hero approach  (I have three Clerics left among the normal clerics, and then all of the "extra" heroes that belong to Castle from the campaigns and for other reasons because Castle is the protagonist faction.) Rather, I've noticed that after making my conservative selections, I'm becoming a bit more bold and tinkering with them. First, I generally replaced the original portrait with a higher quality look-alike from the Stable Diffusion or ensrick collections, but generally one that looked very similar. The exceptions here were where the original was such a terrible design concept that higher quality still looked ugly (Aislinn or Clavius being a good example—also the Conflux elemental heroes) or ones where the original wasn't very good, but the alternatives weren't either (Tazar being the most iconic example here.) And there were a handful where I didn't love or hate the original, but an alternate presented itself that was really good that I really wanted to use (Solmyr, for example.) Otherwise, my selections were, as I said, very conservative. I picked usually the ensrick picture, but occasionally from one of the two Stable Diffusion collections, an image that looked like the original, but I decided which looked the best.

However, in tinkering, I've started to get more bold. I have a lot of alternative images, from ensrick's collection in particular, that I'm not using because I'm adapting into the regular HotA.lod rather than trying to use with VCMI stuff like Neutral Heroes or Tides of War. This automatically gave me a bunch of portraits that I didn't need, but many of which I liked. It occurred to me that while—for example—Jabarkas and Dessa's ensrick pictures look quite a bit like the original Jabarkas and Dessa, the Boragus and Saurug images do not. And that I had alternate images; ensrick's Thyroc and Oshmar images looked as good for Jabarkas and Dessa as the Boragus and Saurug images did for those characters. Wham! Bold switch. Now, my ogre characters actually all look more alike and better, but the cost of that is that a very familiar-looking image is lost. That's OK; I never much loved either of those originals anyway.

I also downloaded—literally just for the Hero portraits—all of the alternative town in VCMI, snagged the Hero portraits that I liked, and then uninstalled the mods again. Many of these alternatives weren't good, but I found probably close to two dozen that are excellent. More bold switches started happening, especially in the Necropolis faction, but also some in Tower and elsewhere from these collections.

And I got my own Midjourney images here and there, and with some modification, replaced a few other of the portraits that were lower mid in terms of my esteem. At first, I was only replacing the ones I really never liked at all or had just such a cool alternative that I could help it. Now, I'm replacing a lot more that I never actually disliked that much, but I have better options. I'm also considering replacing the minotaur and lizardmen heroes, because I don't really like minotaurs or lizardmen as heroes. I'm on the fence about the gnolls.

I'm tempted to spend some actual money on either Midjourney or DALL-E 2, and eventually create my own complete replacement portrait collection, where every portrait is unique. But I wonder if there's any value in that. As much as I like, for example, some of the Vallex or dtnmang collection material, I'm also using almost none of it, because it's too different, even when the images are good. I imagine that any collection I made of similar sort would have the same problem; it would only be of interest to me, and I'm not sure how interested even I am in doing it.

Anyway, here's a small selection and spoiler alert for some of my more bold changes; stuff that I hadn't originally intended to change, but which I've now embraced. Some of them aren't even necessarily "cool"; Grindan's portrait is now kind of a joke, for instance. But mostly, I think the new portraits look loads better than the original, or has just a better concept all around.

Fiur

Grindan

Ignissa

Inteus

Kalt

Lacus

Monere

Pasis

Dracon

Fafner

Solmyr

Yog (Wizard version)

Boragus

Dessa

Gundula

Jabarkas

Saurug

Aladar

Gem

Ufretin

Andra

Tazar

Aislinn

Clavius

Nagash

Nimbus

Tamika

Thant

Vidomina

Xsi

Ranloo

I also started taking notes for "Dark Fantasy X2", which will be a "D&D" setting with some inspiration drawn from Heroes 3 and the Hero selections in particular. I'll be honest; some of the cool hero portrait images are a big part of what inspired me to attempt this. Considering that I have a Dark Fantasy X campaign ready to run and two more in the pipeline that I'm supposed to be working on, this may seem like a major distraction. But I do like the idea of having two settings with a different tone and feel. I'm not always in the mood for the X-files or Supernatural in a fantasy setting, and sometimes I want something a bit more exotic. Still not sure how to have liches, vampires, demons and devils as PC races, but there's gotta be a way to make it work...

UPDATE: Got a better AI generated Nosferatu image to use to make a new Thant. Although I liked my original Thant, this one is clearly tons better.

New Thant

I'm also working up a complete replacement of all the genie girls from Tower. I don't actually like any of their original portraits, although they don't actively offend or anything. They're just bland and boring and they all kind of look alike. All of my alternates are pretty much slightly higher quality variations on the original too. Hoping to be able to find some more interesting replacements.

UPDATE 2: It also occurs to me that I should have been trawling through the Heroes IV portraits all along. They have a lot of the same characters, or others that have a similar look, that I could at least use in my personal game all I want. Although it's possible that the format of them won't work, it'll—if nothing else—be a great research resource for my ELEMENTAL FANTASY X.

UPDATE 3: A few other images that I did not use, but I wish I had an opportunity to use them. Oh, well.