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Bionicle Heroes: Myths of Voya Nui Released!


Toa_Kralich

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Hello all! It's with great pleasure I announce the release of a Bionicle Heroes mod I've been working on for some time - the first mod on ModDB for Bionicle Heroes! Introducing - Bionicle Heroes: Myths of Voya Nui! https://www.moddb.com/mods/bionicle-heroes-myths-of-voya-nui

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This mod and a lot of the work within it would not have been possible without help from a few people - Sl0th and Iridium77 from one of my mod teams, Raising the Bar: Redux, who helped me work out the sound and texture formats and how to mod them respectively. Additionally, Hexadecimal Mantis over at Biomedia Project created several scripts that made previewing changes and extracting game content much easier. Finally, maver1k_xvii gave me one of his experimental scripts that, whilst not being used in the development of MOVN, allows me to look through older content in the game, and may lead to some interesting model ports in the future.

Now then - on with describing the changes coming to you in MOVN!

Gameplay: Toa

Part of what I considered a problem in Bionicle Heroes was how the Toa felt tremendously unbalanced - in the majority of encounters, Kongu's fast movement speed and high time-to-kill made him feel like the only obvious choice at Level 1, 2, and 3. Nuparu Level 3 is also very powerful, but carries the penalty of having a mortar attack, which balances him out a bit. My objective with the gameplay regarding the Toa is to pull most of them up to Kongu's level. Given Bionicle Heroes is very much a casual game, I wanted all Toa to be equally fun to play, rather than nerfing Kongu and Nuparu (which would have the side effect of making the game quite a bit harder). A number of changes went into making this happen, across all three levels of Toa, with most Toa at Level 1 and 2 getting extensive changes. Level 3 is the most well-rounded, though some Toa still received buffs and changes here.

Overall:

-Made all Toa have the same movement speeds and slightly improved turn rates to make all Heroes equally fun to control, as well as an increased FOV. The excruciatingly slow movement of Hewkii and Matoro made them quite frustrating to play, and Hahli, already the least powerful and useful Toa, did not benefit from a movement penalty. As a result, all Heroes now move at Kongu's speed, and all Heroes (including Kongu) turn a little faster to make static elevator sections a little better. The improved FOV helps the Heroes have less tunnel vision and allows you to take in more of Bionicle Heroes' reasonably nice environments. Hewkii, with this change, doesn't really require further buffs - which is why you'll see I made no changes to him. Kongu, of course, was already top-dog in most situations.

Level 1 Toa

-Raised Jaller's Level 1 firing rate and slightly decreased his damage - his result is a higher and more satisfying time to kill. Jaller is the rapid-fire Hero, and having a weapon that blitzes through enemies is both more fun and interesting than his previous incarnation. The slight damage nerf, however, doesn't make him overpowered at Level 1.

-Raised Hahli's Level 1 effective range and her damage. Hahli is by far the least useful and weakest Toa in vanilla Bionicle Heroes. She still does not have as high a time to kill as Jaller or Kongu, but her increased range means she is more viable at mid-range and the damage improvement means she can more comfortably deal with clusters of weak enemies. Using her no longer feels like a downgrade compared to other Toa.

-Raised Matoro's Level 1 damage very slightly so he can one-shot weak Bohrok and most Visorak. Stronger Bohrok varieties will still require two shots. This was due to his role as a sniper feeling less powerful when his attack couldn't one-shot basic enemies from the hip.

-Slightly raised Nuparu's Level 1 range and damage. Nuparu sees a significant power spike at level 3 but his level 1 and level 2 weapons are very underwhelming, so this aims to make the mortar just a bit more reliable.

Level 2 Toa

-Raised Jaller's Level 2 firing speed and damage - his DPS at Level 2 was previously very ineffective, but a small increase of both raises them to more satisfying levels. In some ways his Level 2 attack felt like a downgrade compared to Level 1. This ensures a better progression between upgrade tiers.

-Raised Hahli's Level 2 range and damage - for the same reasons as raising the level 1 stats. Hahli is one of the only Toa to receive major buffs across all three upgrade tiers, given her previously ineffective status.

-Slightly raised Nuparu's Level 2 range and damage - same reasons as raising Level 1 stats. This change ensures that the massive power spike at Level 3 Nuparu feels a little more balanced with previous levels.

Level 3 Toa

-About doubled Jaller's Level 3 firing speed but decreased his damage a few points - the result is still a higher TTK more in keeping with his rapid-fire attack. Jaller's Level 3 attack didn't feel like an evolution on the design of the character as a rapid-fire close-ranged blitzer. These changes keep this motif whilst also making it the most dangerous incarnation of Jaller.

-Increased Hahli's Level 3 beam damage and slightly increased effective range - for the same reasons as raising Level 1 and 2 stats. With this change, with clusters of very weak enemies, Hahli becomes very effective at quickly chaining her attacks between them. Her increased effective range also makes her more useful during boss battles.

Examples:

Gameplay: Piraka

The main problem I felt was present with the Piraka characters was they often weren't true evolutions of their Toa counterparts' attacks, combined with the fact that most of them, with the exception of Hakann and Vezon, had similar attacks. Hakann didn't feel fit for purpose or in keeping with his character, whilst Vezon felt underpowered considering for many players, playing as him may well be their third playthrough of all game levels for 100% completion. My changes aim to make each Piraka feel more like an evolution of their Toa, with the design philosophy being each Piraka should be better than their respective Level 3 Toa in most situations. The exception to this philosophy is Vezon - who, again, as the final unlockable character and most likely the one players use the most on a 100% playthrough, is intended to be better than any other character in almost all situations.

Overall:

-Made all Piraka have the same movement speeds, FOV, and turn rates as the Toa. I wanted to make sure the Piraka were on an equal footing with the Toa in these respects to keep them from sinking below some of the newly-buffed Toa.

-Thok: instead of just a generic beam weapon, Thok now fires out two very strong ice projectiles every 1.2 seconds. These projectiles travel very quickly and also have high range, making him as effective as Matoro at mid-to-long range, though for long-to-very long range sniping Matoro is still king. Thok feels like more of an evolution on Matoro, covering one of his weaknesses whilst not outshining Matoro in long-range engagements.

-Hakann: Hakann's attack speed was upped, damage reduced, and some small amount of spread added to his projectiles. To make him stand out further from Jaller, his attacks also have a small AOE damage radius and a small amount of AOE damage, making him better at handling groups of enemies than Jaller and overall more powerful at short range whilst not having Jaller's mid-range capability.

-Vezok: Vezok's beam attack received a damage buff and a slight range increase to push it to being a bit more powerful than level 3 Hahli, but otherwise his attack seemed very fitting for him, and received the least tweaks.

-Zaktan: Zaktan's rapid-fire projectile attack has been replaced with a shotgun attack with a tight spread, firing four projectiles at once roughly three times a second. His original homing effect remains but the range of the projectiles is significantly reduced, making him a strong close-range competitor to Kongu, but level 3 kongu has slightly more effectiveness at longer ranges. Zaktan's VFX has also been changed so his projectiles are green and the hit VFX is green, too, to better represent his elemental colours.

-Reidak: Reidak's sonic beam attack has been replaced for a modified version of the Piraka fragmentation Zamor - now firing at a rate of just over one a second with a reasonable blast radius, Reidak is not the "nuke the screen" option Nuparu is, but he is able to wreak havoc with smaller groups of enemies due to the volume of AOE explosions he can put out, trading reliability for sheer volume

-Avak: Avak's rapid fire bullet has been replaced with a slow firing barrage of three explosive bullets which do high single-target damage and have a small amount of AOE, styled after the third level Hewkii attack in Bionicle Heroes DS

-Vezon: Vezon has been massively suped-up so he feels properly like an end-game unlock character, whereas before he often fell short of level 3 Toa heroes. He shoots a barrage of four projectiles at a time five times a second with a small AOE, though the damage of each projectile has been reduced and there is a bit of spread. Nevertheless he is now chaos incarnate in most encounters, and ensures the third and final playthrough of Bionicle Heroes for 100% completion is both an exciting romp and a breeze.

Examples:

Gameplay: Misc

There are a number of small inconsistencies and mild issues with Bionicle Heroes I sought to rectify. Unfortunately, due to the lack of true modding tools for the game, actual level geometry and bugs with progression are nearly impossible to tweak at this time. I still feel the overall vision of the mod is achieved through the changes above alone, but there remains room for a more comprehensive overhaul should the necessary tools and breakthroughs in modding knowledge be made.

-Made first level start you with only Jaller to reflect the game's canon. This does not affect progression and helps make a new game playthrough more tonally consistent.

-Made hero mode in the bonus levels basically unobtainable - it seemed to go against the spirit of these levels as tough challenge levels when usually a third of the way in you'd get invincibility for the rest of it. As a result, Bonus Levels are tougher but feel better fitting in the game's sandbox.

-Added Hahli to the starting roster in Thok's boss level, as she's otherwise unobtainable in this level. Going without one of the six core Toa for a whole level arbitrarily felt like a slap in the face for Hahli. Thok's boss level is all-round very unrefined and probably the worst out of all of the Piraka boss levels - I wish I'd been able to do more with his actual level as the other Piraka have vast, interesting arenas where their boss level takes place. Thok feels hard-done by in comparison.

-Fixed bug where Thok's ground pound attack and ranged attack were swapped, meaning his ranged attack action would instead trigger the ground pound and vice versa, reducing his effectiveness in his boss fight. He now correctly fires his projectiles at the player and ground-pounds when nearby. This goes some way to making his boss fight a bit more satisfying.

Visuals: Enemies

Thanks to Iridium77, the workflow for injecting custom textures into Bionicle Heroes was worked out. Whilst it requires manual hex-editing, the results in-game are hard to argue with. I had a few inconsistencies I wanted to work out, and hopefully these changes will make the game a little more visually satisfying for long-time Bionicle fans.

-Made Vahki textures more accurate to their set counterparts - the main edit being the headpiece. In the vanilla game they were all grey - their colours are now correct to the sets.

Examples:

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-Made Nidhiki's head texture more accurate to his canon depiction - grey head, green back headpiece. All associated unlock images and splash screens have also been updated

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-Made all Piraka weapon worldmodels (so the weapon models they hold when not used by the player) more consistent with the player viewmodels, but due to them having a totally different model in all cases with different UVs, this is only an approximate consistency

Examples:

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Visuals: Player

Whilst I felt the Toa weapons were reasonably good looking, I felt the Piraka weapons needed more work to look closer to their set counterparts. I did, however, also want to preserve the art style of Heroes, with the alternating elemental colouring on the player weapons.

-All Piraka weapons have received texture improvements. Added gold accents to Reidak's player weapon to make it more visually consistent with the set version, but retained elemental colouring for visual consistency with other weapon models in the game. Avak received more dark silver accents to the player weapon and a changed contrast/saturation. Zaktan's weapon had gold accents added and changed a few of the elementally coloured areas to have a better spread of colours between silver, gold, and green. Finally, Thok's weapon got more blue accents to to make a few areas more tonally consistent.

Examples:

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Visuals: Misc

A few miscellaneous changes were made visually throughout the game. These are mostly flavourful additions I did for my own interest, though I feel they add to the experience of the mod.

-Modified unlock images to be more accurate - the Avohkii uses the cut GUI texture found in the game files (wonder what it's doing there?), and the Vahki use modified images to reflect the changes to their model textures

-Restored original status screen from the Bionicle Heroes demo with some additional detail, though colours were inverted since the original was dark coloured and the status screen text is black

-Modified main menu screen to use a unique logo for the mod!

Examples:

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Little crusty but the version in the files is quite a bit lower resolution unfortunately

 

Wrapping Up

Bionicle Heroes: Myths of Voya Nui is currently complete, and is playable now, over at ModDB: https://www.moddb.com/mods/bionicle-heroes-myths-of-voya-nui More videos will be appearing on my YouTube account like the ones above showing the new gameplay in action with annotations to say what has been changed. It's been a fun time, and I'm thrilled to be finally able to release a mod for Bionicle Heroes after reading about so many modding attempts over the years.

If you want to know how I did much of the above, check out the following wiki, where modding Bionicle Heroes is actively being documented! I encourage you to give it a go - with the tutorials I've placed onto the wiki, more aesthetic mods like music changes and more are very possible! https://bionicle-heroes-datamining.fandom.com/wiki/Bionicle_Heroes_-_Datamining_Wiki

Your myth will begin soon, Toa Heroes! Stay tuned!

Edited by Toa_Kralich
forgot moddb link lol
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1 hour ago, Lenny7092 said:

I don’t get the difference, but I have a topic kind of similar to this: 

 

 

Anyway, it’s cool that you are making such a mod. Looks good. :)

I, er, did talk through the full changelog above if you want to read what the differences are between this and the original - also, there's two demo videos with annotations for where and when things have been changed and what the changes were. 

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6 hours ago, Toa_Kralich said:

I, er, did talk through the full changelog above if you want to read what the differences are between this and the original - also, there's two demo videos with annotations for where and when things have been changed and what the changes were. 

Well, it’s been a long time since I played the game. Lol. However, I see that you made the Mask of Light gold. :)

I like Lego, Bionicle, and Hero Factory!:)

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A patch 1.1 is in production! Right now the following changes are planned:

1. A fix to the now very minor progression bug in Water 1 where due to starting with only Jaller you can't get the Kongu canister here. The initial gate gears will now spawn a Hahli and Kongu mask so that you leave this area with all the characters you would have had initially, plus Jaller, whilst still starting with only Jaller for the game's canon

2. All gold mode requirements bumped up, so less time is spent in gold mode and more time is spent a. enjoying level ambience and b. upping the challenge a tad due to not spending two thirds of the game invincible. Boss gold mode requirements will probably not be changed since they're balanced around much shorter, more tightly packed engagements. 

3. All non-buildable interactables - boats, levers, etc - will be usable by any Toa, not just Hewkii

This is all thanks to feedback from current players of the mod, so if you have further feedback, please let me know here, on ModDB, or on Discord at Kralich#0901 - I'm on the BZPower Discord so feel free to message me there. 

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6 hours ago, Distorted said:

Curious to see where this goes. Are there any plans to tone down the bloom lighting? That's the main thing that I found unbearable in BH.

I looked into removing or toning down the bloom but none of the graphics settings in the config files actually affect it :( there is an external script you can run that someone made but it makes the game ridiculously unstable and crashes constantly. if I find a permanent solution that doesn't crash the game, expect an update to the mod with this in it!
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Question: in your mod, do you retain the ability to play as the other six Piraka even after you've beaten Vezon? That was always one of the biggest frustrations for me with the original game: that if you played each level through once, including the final boss battle, and only THEN went back to previous levels (as I tended to do, because to me it seemed redundant to take a second run through each level before fighting Vezon, knowing that I still wouldn't be able to complete them to 100% without him) you missed out on the chance to play the other Piraka completely, because Vezon replaced them as the bonus character in all levels.

Since you've put so much work into upgrading them all, it would be a shame to lose the ability to play as them upon unlocking Vezon; if there was some way to keep them available as playable characters, that would be fantastic!

In any case, though, looks like really nice work! If I ever play through the game again, I'll give your mod a try! :D

Edited by That Matoran with a Vahi

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"New legends awake, but old lessons must be remembered.
For that is the way
of the BIONICLE."

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27 minutes ago, That Matoran with a Vahi said:

Question: in your mod, do you retain the ability to play as the other six Piraka even after you've beaten Vezon? That was always one of the biggest frustrations for me with the original game: that if you played each level through once, including the final boss battle, and only THEN went back to previous levels (as I tended to do, because to me it seemed redundant to take a second run through each level before fighting Vezon, knowing that I still wouldn't be able to complete them to 100% without him) you missed out on the chance to play the other Piraka completely, because Vezon replaced them as the bonus character in all levels.

Since you've put so much work into upgrading them all, it would be a shame to lose the ability to play as them upon unlocking Vezon; if there was some way to keep them available as playable characters, that would be fantastic!

In any case, though, looks like really nice work! If I ever play through the game again, I'll give your mod a try! :D

I actually looked into this and determined that each Piraka is a derivative of a base class of Piraka tied to their specific stage. I don't think it's possible to have all six piraka at once, but it might be possible - though as of yet I've been unsuccessful in getting this to work - to have Vezon and that stage's Piraka. One thing I do think is possible is making it so you can't unlock Vezon - if there's a solution to allowing Vezon and the Piraka playable at once, it's going to be messing around with stage rules that are responsible for Piraka being unlocked.

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Oh my god. This is FANTASTIC! Amazing work. I'm about to mod my game and go for a 100% playthrough. Thank you for this!!


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Bionicle: ANP aims to create narrated versions of all the Bionicle books, with voice actors for each character, and music taken from various media to enhance the story. Check here if you're interested in voicing a character, and here for the chapters that've already been released!

Formerly: Tahu Nuva 3.0

Looking for a Bionicle Beanie. Black one with the symbol on it. Contact me if you are willing to sell

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I looked into your fancy mod, and I’m very impressed! You are able to make the Piraka’s weapons resemble the weapons that the player uses and accurate to the sets! 
 

You know, you should tell Lego about this. I did tell Lego that they should do a modernized remake of the game (with the bud fixes, getting rid of frustrations, stopping the overuse of Hero Mode, and voice acting). Quest for Mata Nui (a fan game) got a comment from Lego Games, so that’s why I said that. :) 

 

Have you fixed the descriptions for the Bohrok (the game confused them as the Bohrok-Kal) and the part where you completed the game, by the final cutscene won’t be activated unless you replay a level? 
 

Anyway, I agree with what the others said about the Vezon replacing the Piraka. That’s annoying if you want to play your favorite Piraka. Why not also make Vezon look like his toy self when the player plays as him? To be honest, I’m not sure if you could do that, though, because you seem to be able to change the colors of some stuff, like the Piraka’s weapons and the Vahki’s heads.

I like Lego, Bionicle, and Hero Factory!:)

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6 hours ago, MrSciFiGuy said:

Oh my god. This is FANTASTIC! Amazing work. I'm about to mod my game and go for a 100% playthrough. Thank you for this!!

Just a quick note - there's a minor progression bug in Water1 that currently prevents 100% completion, but I've fixed it in an upcoming patch. If you want to do a full playthrough, hold off till you see an announcement in this thread about the 1.1 patch as it also includes numerous other quality of life changes. 

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3 hours ago, Lenny7092 said:

I looked into your fancy mod, and I’m very impressed! You are able to make the Piraka’s weapons resemble the weapons that the player uses and accurate to the sets! 
 

You know, you should tell Lego about this. I did tell Lego that they should do a modernized remake of the game (with the bud fixes, getting rid of frustrations, stopping the overuse of Hero Mode, and voice acting). Quest for Mata Nui (a fan game) got a comment from Lego Games, so that’s why I said that. :) 

 

Have you fixed the descriptions for the Bohrok (the game confused them as the Bohrok-Kal) and the part where you completed the game, by the final cutscene won’t be activated unless you replay a level? 
 

Anyway, I agree with what the others said about the Vezon replacing the Piraka. That’s annoying if you want to play your favorite Piraka. Why not also make Vezon look like his toy self when the player plays as him? To be honest, I’m not sure if you could do that, though, because you seem to be able to change the colors of some stuff, like the Piraka’s weapons and the Vahki’s heads.

I've tried to get in contact with a few TTGames developers, specifically to ask them regarding how certain systems in the game work, but no dice as of yet. I'm not so much looking for official recognition from Lego or TT as I am looking for some kind of technical support on the inner workings of the game.

Regarding the Bohrok descriptions - I looked into this but whilst I can clearly see a string file with all the info in it, I actually can't seem to change the in-game text with my current understanding of how it works. I need to do some more research to figure out if archives text can actually be modified or not yet. The cutscene thing for the final completion might be a code bug - we don't have code access so any changes I can make have to be within the outer limits of the game's files. Code changes for functionality unfortunately aren't possible at this time.

Regarding Vezon - I've looked into this as recently as last night and still, no luck with figuring out exactly why or how Vezon replaces the other Piraka. I have a theory I might be able to disable Vezon altogether, but, er, that hardly feels like a solution. And yeah, I can't make model changes - we can change textures but not models, since we can only export the model format at this time, not import it. Textures can be injected at will though they have to be the same resolution to work properly; remaking the header data of the hex file you're injecting the textures into could allow for higher resolution textures, however. 

 

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On 11/7/2020 at 2:17 PM, Bambi said:

Looks like a lot of work went into this. I don't own the game on PC so I can't try it at the current time, but you're making me want to play it again on Gamecube lol. Hopefully you or someone will be able to figure out a way to keep all six Piraka playable after beating Vezon. Mod looks good so far!

Still working on future releases! Given Heroes is Abandonware, by the way, ModDB allows a modified game client to be uploaded to the site - downloading it off of ModDB gives you a standalone, playable release. 

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  • 4 months later...

Forgot to announce this, but I also released a 1.2 version, and the final version of this mod. I'm not likely to return to Heroes modding any time soon as I'm trying to focus my efforts on other personal projects, but I fixed more bugs across 1.1 and 1.2, fixed more inconsistencies, and tweaked a few other QoL things. Grab the 1.2 release standalone and it should work right out of the box. https://www.moddb.com/mods/bionicle-heroes-myths-of-voya-nui/downloads/bionicle-heroes-myths-of-voya-nui-12-final-release

Edited by Toa_Kralich
forgot link oops
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  • 4 weeks later...

Definitely gonna check this out. I had the demo disc for PS2 and one of the most baffling things is that in the demo, Hero Mode naturally wears off after a minute or two, unlike the final game where it's basically indefinite. I always thought the game would have been exponentially more enjoyable if they kept Hero Mode like that...

Another thing that kinda irritated me was how the game auto-aimed for you. Some aim assist is fine, but that just trivialized combat. I'd be interested to see how it plays with a more conventional aiming system, although that might be out of the scope of this mod. Similarly, the camera always seemed just a bit too close to the character, who also always seemed just a bit too far to the side IMO.

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