One of the fantastic things about Heroes of Newerth (HoN) is the level of customizability allowed by the game. HoN enjoys a strong modification sub-community, creating modifications that alter everything from appearance to sound effects and even complete user interface overhauls.
Things have improved since the early days of the game and installing a bunch of mods has never been simpler. The first stop for HoN mods should be the official HoN modification forums where one will find all the latest and greatest mods being discussed and supported.
First things first, one had best install the HoN Modification Manager. This handy utility takes the grunt work out of installing and maintaining most HoN mods. It will manage mod incompatibilities and features a handy auto-update.
A brief explanation on the difference between *.honmod files and *.s2z files is needed. *.honmod files are specifically designed to function through the HoN mod manager. *.s2z files are simpler, in that they are copied into the HoN resources directory and loaded automatically by the game. In some cases, *.s2z files and *.honmod files will alter the same portions of HoN resource files, creating an incompatibility. This usually results in something being broken.
When combining *.honmod files and *.s2z files, make sure you understand which portions or the game resource files are going to be converted and try to avoid incompatible mods. It will only give you a headache. Below I’ve listed some mod suggestions to get started with. These are by no means the ‘be-all and end-all’ of available mods and it’s well worth exploring those available to find the right set up for your personal HoN needs.
The boys at Bang!Craft do a smashing job of producing plenty of great mods which alter many aspects of HoN. It’s best to peruse the list of mods for oneself, but below are some suggestions to get started.
Great for gamers with low-end PC’s that struggle to keep up with all the graphical effects. This mod sets frame rate thresholds, and should the game dip below the threshold, all spell effects are temporarily disabled. They are re-enabled when the frame rate surpasses an upper limit threshold.
Auto-detects missing hero calls from other lanes, playing a sound and/or scrolling message. Also implements easy-access buttons for calling missing heroes and related missing information. Customizable to work with key-binds and chat macros.
This mod displays cooldown timers for player and ally spells as well as timer bars for certain important buffs (such as Jeriziah’s magic immunity). This is extremely handy for timing spell combinations and discerning at a glance whether allies are ready to support in battle.
Bang! UI tweaks
Bang!Craft offers four UI tweak packages, ranging from beginner to advanced. In that order, they are: Bang! Basic Improvement Pack; Bang! Addition Pack; Bang! Elective Pack; Bang! Enhancement Pack.
The is a UI overhaul mod for the advanced or dedicated HoN player. This mod removes all the standard artwork frames and allows all elements of the UI to be shifted and resized to personal preference. It takes a bit of fiddling to get everything just right but the visual real-estate gained is worth the effort.
Despite the original post stating that Movable Frames and Mod Options Framework are required, these are now integrated into the game. Should an older mod still ‘require’ those, these dummy files will solve the problem.
Fairly self explanatory. This mod changes the ability to last hit allied creeps from the ‘press the ‘A’ button to attack and then left click’ affair, to a straightforward ‘right click deny’ solution. It doesn’t work on allied heroes and allied pets to avoid accidents.
One of the most contentious mods available, with old school DotA players and HoN pro’s alike crying foul. Well, they can keep crying until S2 makes an official policy regarding the mod. This mod adds a small indicator to creep health bars to show when they can be last hit, for either a deny or gold. Great for a noob in training or a lazy veteran.
See the above regarding contentious mods. This mod will display the cast range for your hero’s abilities. For new players things might be incredibly confusing and this is a good mod to help bring them up to speed. Veteran players should be ashamed to be using this mod however as it’s a serious blow to their street (forest?) cred.
This mod will help players learn the range limits of towers.
An alternative to the above mentioned.
A simple mod that reminds via chat when the rune will be spawning.
Allows players to queue up abilities to be automatically learned upon leveling – great for those moments when a level is gained during the heat of battle. A new spell can often secure a kill.
Many HoN players enjoy listening to their personal music collection while playing, but this has the downside of drowning out in-game voice chat. This mod will lower the volume of external music players in the same way that in-game sounds are lowered when voice traffic is being sent and received. Winamp and AIMP are supported natively and with minimal fiddling, one can get most global-hotkey supported music players to function as well.
Texture overhaul – PogS SkinS
For a one stop visual overhaul look no further than PogS SkinS. This is a high resolution texture pack containing improvements for practically every hero in the game. The file is in *.s2z format and must simply be placed into the HoN directory. One can open the *.s2z file to remove particular hero textures they don’t want, useful when combining textures from other modders. Be warned, this texture pack is designed for high-end machines and one will be expected to run the game with all graphics settings on high.
There are of course plenty of other mods available. For more sound and texture changes, visit the HoN Modifications sub-forum. There’s definitely something for everyone, and some mods inject a lot of humour into the game.
Happy modding and happy pwning!
Do you have any favourite mods worth sharing? Discuss Heroes of Newerth mods on the MyGaming forum.
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download link for Bang fps please š