Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?
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
#42I still have an original Loki Heroes3 Linux CD, still scared of falling down the rabbit hole again
Same here, as well as the original Jagged Alliance 2 DVD case. Glad to add HoMM3 to my list of previously closed-source games that are now open. Now if only they'd open source NeverWinter Nights . . .
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#43Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?
Fun and balanced castles, expansions and mods, playable and bug-free on modern systems. It's a great game, or actually several games in one: town-building, map exploration, RPG, chess-like strategy battles
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#44Never played any of the Heroes games - what's the draw to 3 specifically, above 4, 5 etc?
never played 4 or 5, but from reviews at the time it sounded like 4 and 5 were just lower effort games coasting on the reputation of 2 and 3
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#45Pro 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.
Is there an installer that gets you all that?
nvm. found it: https://hilo90mhz.com/homm3/
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#46Off 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/
Other comments are talking about how it's not in scope, which is unfortunate for this case, but since you loved the app, I poked around and found a quite active fork! Unsure how functional it is, but it seems to have gotten quite a bit of love: https://github.com/MaddTheSane/Boxer
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thanks for sharing. What time was that, if I may ask?
Late 90s largely - we started with H2 and when H3 came out, enthusiastically switched to it as soon as the two guys who would always have friends over got their copies. They always had the latest stuff because they were upper-middle class and back then even such people would live in commie blocks, since it was free real estate, and send their kids to public schools.
H4 didn't make such a splash because even though it was better balanced, it felt like a downgrade in many respects.
I went to a different middle school so when I regained contact with my grade school friends they were already either exploring alcohol and sex or got sucked into WoW - in one case even both.
Anyway H3 left a mark on my generation thanks to its great replayability and social aspect that fit well into post-communist reality, with walkable, but hideous architecture and absent parents, majority of whom were working overtime(by western standards at least).
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#48Well it’s open source. But is it free though?
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Thanks for sharing. What time was that, if I may ask?
Well into the aughts.
Re: VCMI: Open-Source Engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
#50Well it’s open source. But is it free though?
VCMI engine is free and open source software licensed under GPLv2.
Original game assets (music, sprites) are proprietary and you have to buy them in order to play. There actually Heroes 3 Mac demo that can be legally used as alternative source of Heroes 3 game data, but it missing some towns.