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VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

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Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#21

Post by bombcar »

thriftwy wrote: post #5

Pro players use HoMM3 HD Mod + HotA addon, which are closed source improvements of the original binaries with solid support for multiplayer action. It has lobby with ladder ratings, simultaneous turns, etc.

Beware that the lobby plays modern H3 multiplayer with very specific rules - watch some YouTube about it before you venture into it. Twenty years has perfected H3 multiplayer to a science of when you do the break on Jebus Cross. And if you don’t know what those mean, you will be in for a sad time.

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#22

Post by 5- »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #19
thih9 wrote: post #13

Off topic, I wanted to compare it to the original, wanted to run that in Boxer.app[1] and realized that this software is now unmaintained. That’s unfortunate, it was a nice product with good UX. Also, unapologetically skeuomorphic, like many apps of that era. [1]: http://boxerapp.com/

Dos won't cut it for H3; it's wine territory and wine is a pain to use on mac, as Apple killed it with the move to Catalina

crossover (the commercial wine release) still supports macos: https://www.codeweavers.com/crossover#mac

through a pretty cool technology: https://www.codeweavers.com/blog/jschmid/2019/9/10/so-we-don...

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#23

Post by jokethrowaway »

wiz21c wrote: post #10
vintermann wrote: post #4

Back in the day, since I used Linux exclusively, a demo of Might and Magic III (ported by Loki software) was one of the very few games I had. I resorted to figuring out the save file format in order to play as the other towns on the demo map.

Loki software did some serious good. Any idea what they've become ?

Bankrupt. Icculus is famous enough for Patreon. Everyone else got good jobs.

It's crazy that nobody bought them. I would have expected video game companies to be more forward-looking and try to create an alternative to Windows, especially after seeing the success console had, and Linux was the obvious choice.

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#26

Post by pjmlp »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #23
wiz21c wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loki software did some serious good. Any idea what they've become ?

Bankrupt. Icculus is famous enough for Patreon. Everyone else got good jobs. It's crazy that nobody bought them. I would have expected video game companies to be more forward-looking and try to create an alternative to Windows, especially after seeing the success console had, and Linux was the obvious choice.

Why should they?

Game development has always been about IP and business opportunities coming out of that IP.

Historically, specially since 1983 crash, game industry has also been mostly about closed platforms with a minimal watermark for quality, where most copy-cats stop at the door.

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#27

Post by Tade0 »

bombcar wrote: post #17
gchamonlive wrote: post #3

It must feel great to devote yourself to a passion project and it turns out to actually work and people use it. I assume this is a passion project because I can't imagine getting funds for a project like this, specially when it might conflict with upstream licenses. In any case congratulations to the developers.

There’s a few games out there that have absolutely immense fandoms in places unexpected - Heroes III is absolutely HUGE in countries east of the old iron curtain, partially probably because it runs well on older computers but also because it’s one of the best games ever made.

As someone from that region I know the reason: it's the hot seat feature[0].

You only needed one copy of the game and one PC for you and your friends to play together. Every class in school had at least one guy who had his own PC, who often invited friends over to play after class and since commie blocks are particularly walkable, we could all return home on our own.

I spent a good chunk of my preteen years like that.

[0] really badly translated to what directly translates back to "flaming buttcheeks".

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#28

Post by notpushkin »

bombcar wrote: post #16

My personal ranking puts HD Mod above VCMI (currently) but VCMI has some features that HD Mod will likely never enable - because they’re fundamentally game changing. https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/ HD Mod also works with Horn of the Abyss https://heroes3wog.net/horn-of-the-abyss-download/ which is an (pretty successful) attempt to build an unofficial expansion to H3 that has the feel of H3. Anyone who played…

There's an incomplete HotA implementation on VCMI, too! https://github.com/vcmi-mods/horn-of-the-abyss/blob/vcmi-1.4...

It can be installed from the launcher, on the Mods tab.

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#29

Post by [deleted] »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #23
wiz21c wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loki software did some serious good. Any idea what they've become ?

Bankrupt. Icculus is famous enough for Patreon. Everyone else got good jobs. It's crazy that nobody bought them. I would have expected video game companies to be more forward-looking and try to create an alternative to Windows, especially after seeing the success console had, and Linux was the obvious choice.

[deleted]

Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III

#30

Post by notpushkin »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #19
thih9 wrote: post #13

Off topic, I wanted to compare it to the original, wanted to run that in Boxer.app[1] and realized that this software is now unmaintained. That’s unfortunate, it was a nice product with good UX. Also, unapologetically skeuomorphic, like many apps of that era. [1]: http://boxerapp.com/

Dos won't cut it for H3; it's wine territory and wine is a pain to use on mac, as Apple killed it with the move to Catalina

Personally, UTM with a Windows XP VM worked for me (I'm on Apple Silicon, so Wine was a no go from the start).
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