HoMM5 Widescreen Patch

This mod adds proper windowed mode to Heroes of Might and Magic V & Hammers of Fate and realigns UI without stretching on 16:9 resolutions. Also, for all three games it optionally removes fade-to-black effect on launch + removes intro videos. It also optionally replaces Monotype Corsiva in regular text (non-headers) with Palatino Linotype.

Mod works with

• GOG version
• Steam version
• Heroes 5.5 mod installed on either of these two.

Features (Heroes V + Hammers of Fate)

• Widescreen UI. Keep UI spacing at any aspect ratio (virtual screen backported from ToE). Cutscenes and loading screen also have letterbox side bars on 16:9 as in ToE.
• Fullscreen option. Adds Fullscreen checkbox to video settings.
• HoF windowed mode. Fixes stock version not having window frame when switched to windowed mode.

Note

Stock Tribes of the East already has widescreen support and windowed mode.

(Except it ships with Dark Messiah mod, a standalone exe build which does not have widescreen support. Dark Messiah mod is not supported by this patch.)

Optional features (all three games)

• Skip splash fade and intro. Removes the 2 second fade to black effect before the splash screen and removes the intro videos (replaced with blank clip for correctness).
• Font fix. Reading that much of Monotype Corsiva is insufferable. This mod renders body texts with Palatino Linotype.

Installation

1. Close the games and extract the release zip.
2. Copy dinput8.dll from the zip next to each H5_Game.exe: bin\ for Heroes V and Tribes of the East, bina1\ for Hammers of Fate.
3. Run homm5-widescreen-patch.exe. If the games are under Program Files, run it as administrator.
   • Open folders opens the game folders plus folder with dinput8.dll in Explorer so you just need Ctrl-C and do Ctrl-V in each game folder.
   • Install stays disabled until every detected game has the DLL.
4. Choose the options and click Install. Building the game data takes a few seconds per game.

Warning

For some reason, HoMM5 games persist UI layout in save game files. You need to start a mission / custom map anew to see UI fix working.

Click Uninstall to remove everything the patch installed. Running Install again with different options rebuilds the files.

How it works

• DLL hook via dinput8.dll next to H5_Game.exe patches game memory at startup. DirectInput passed to the system DLL as usual. Original exe files are preserved.
• Extra .pak archive per game contains the files needed for layout fixes and the new font files, as well as blank intro vid pointer.

Note

Some antiviruses may flag the dll because of hot patching.

The exe and the DLL are not signed. Windows SmartScreen will show "Windows protected your PC" for the patcher. With Smart App Control turned on, Windows may block the unsigned dinput8.dll and the game won't start.

This mod does not contain any malware & only Win11 setup was ever tested.

No Ubisoft or Linotype assets are shipped, everything game-specific is built from game files on your machine.

Installed files:

Where	Files
bin\, bina1\ (ToE: bin\)	dinput8.dll, homm5-widescreen.ini, homm5-widescreen.log (written by the DLL)
datals\, dataa1\ (ToE: data\)	homm5-widescreen.pak
video\ (with "Skip intro")	homm5-intro.xml, homm5-blank.ogg

homm5-widescreen.log logs what the DLL did at the last game run. If the game folder is read-only for the game (e.g. under Program Files), the log goes to %LOCALAPPDATA%\homm5-widescreen\ instead.

Languages

For font swap, every GOG language except Simplified Chinese should work: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Russian, Spanish. Only EN was tested though.

If installed games are in Chinese, font fix option is unavailable during install.

If you want to switch the language in installed game, uninstall the mod first.

Building

Visual Studio 2022 (C++ desktop workload), CMake 3.24+, 32-bit target:

cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A Win32
cmake --build build --config Release

Builds homm5-widescreen-patch.exe (recipes and the clip embedded) and dinput8.dll.

Dev tools:

• homm5-data-build: rebuilds the layout pak from a recipe, for byte-for-byte checks.
• homm5-font-build: builds the font paks from a game or from given paks.

Third-party code: zlib 1.3.2 with its minizip (zlib licence).

.h5u mods compatibility (ToE)

• Mods in UserMODs\*.h5u should work alongside this patch.
• But, for a rare occasion when another mod replaces the same UI or text files there could be a conflict, and then mod with a newer timestamp wins.
• Even if another mod is titled "UI Fixes", it does not nesessarily mean there will be a conflict.

Implementation details

See docs/README.md for technical details.

Credits

Built with Opus 5.5.

This mod was made possible by REA: Reverse Engineer Anything skill set.