[HN Gopher] Heroes of Might and Magic ___________________________________________________________________ Heroes of Might and Magic Author : jqcoffey Score : 213 points Date : 2021-12-26 15:14 UTC (7 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.filfre.net) (TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net) | tgtweak wrote: | Surprised not to see a mention of Bauldur's Gate, the dnd-under- | the-covers formula was and is extremely enjoyable and I think it | leads to very deep gameplay. | ModernMech wrote: | I like the HOMM series a lot, but my favorite game of this genre | was Lords of Magic from Sierra. It played a lot like HOMM, but it | had real time combat that you could pause. Amazing graphics for | the time, and I love the soundtrack! This is a game I really wish | had a sequel. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lords_of_Magic | lubujackson wrote: | Check out Master of Orion if you haven't already. | | I think it came out before LOM, but very similar, made by the | same team etc. The difference it is sci-fi themed, but | otherwise they are closely related. | ModernMech wrote: | Yes! Master of Orion was one of my favorite games as well! | jsnell wrote: | MOO was made by Simtex, and has no connections to Lords of | Magic as far as I know. You're probably confusing it with | Master of Magic. | mysterydip wrote: | Lots of good memories playing HoMM2, both single player and | hotseat multiplayer in college. I was a fanatic enough at one | point that I had almost completed a conversion of the NES Zelda | game to a map (sadly lost to the bits of time now). At least from | my perspective, it was a unique blend that scratched the itches | in my brain. | belthesar wrote: | Heroes of Might and Magic is such a great long form gaming | experience, whether you played solo or with some friends. GOG | does provide access to new copies if you'd like it, but I have to | highly recommend if you want to play on modern hardware to grab | the open source VCMI Project engine for Heroes 3. Heroes 3 is | often touted as the best of the series, and the cross platform | engine allows you to play on modern Windows, macOS, Linux, and | Android. | | https://vcmi.eu/ | airstrike wrote: | Sadly it looks like the macOS effort hasn't seen any updates | since August 2021 | mourner wrote: | The original (HoMM3 + expansions + HD mod) does run perfectly | fine with Porting Kit, including current versions of MacOS. | robbiep wrote: | I've also got it in my iPad, it's a pretty Good mobile | gaming experience (+ fun for travel with friends in hot | seat) | nodivbyzero wrote: | There are few HoMM projects on GitHUB. For example: | https://github.com/ihhub/fheroes2 | IgorPartola wrote: | I kid you not, I was just setting up HOMM 3 to play with my kids | now. It used to be a New Years Eve tradition in my family and I | think my kids are just about old enough to enjoy it with me. | xenihn wrote: | This seems like a great thread to ask for game recommendations. | | These are my favorite turn-based games of all time: | | HOMM 1, 2 & 3 | | Advance Wars series (including DS and DOR) | | Uniwar (a surprisingly excellent mobile game inspired by Advance | Wars and Starcraft 1) | | Civilization 5 + Vox Populi / Community Patch (my favorite | overall, but I'm getting bored of it because end game takes too | long, even on quick. at least it's still actively developed, | which is nice when I get the urge) | | Into the Breach (least amount of playtime on my list, but it's | still very solid. Playing it actually makes me feel kind of sad, | because it seems like the skeleton for a great successor to | Advance Wars, but there's no Steam Workshop for it, and no built- | in versus mode or multiplayer) | | Battle of Polytopia (second-least played amount, but also very | solid. Imagine if someone made a game out of the first ~30 turns | of a Quick-paced Civ5 game) | | Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup (when I imagine my perfect turn-based | game that I would design if I had the money to hire a full team | of people, it's a mix of HOMM, Advance Wars, Civ5, and DCSS. It's | the only roguelike I've enjoyed enough to play more than once, | and I've played it a LOT) | | Games that I already tried and didn't like enough to continue | playing | | Total War series | | Rest of the HOMM series (HOMM 4+), including mods | | Civ 6 | | Wargroove | | Endless Legend | | Humankind (sad to not have liked this one, I was so hyped for it) | | King's Bounty series | | Age of Wonders series (including Planetfall) | | Warhammer 40k: Gladius (it's _almost_ worth playing, but falls | short) | manmtstream wrote: | Songs of Conquest looks like a very promising spiritual successor | and modern take on HoMM, really nails the nostalgia for me. | https://www.songsofconquest.com/ | stavros wrote: | Thanks for that! Looks like an instant buy from me when it | comes out. | duckmysick wrote: | There's another indie game called Hero's Hour that's heavily | inspired by HoMM. It has pixel art and the fights are real-time | instead of turn-based. | | Windows only. There's a free demo with a limited number of | playable factions. | | https://thingonitsown.itch.io/heros-hour | anonyfox wrote: | There is an iPad version of HoMM3 in the App Store that works | wonderfully - until it crashes midgame every single time... don't | know if this is a memory leak or something like that :-( | bitxbitxbitcoin wrote: | Looking forward to the article on HOMM2 and then 3! | SantiagoElf wrote: | Heroes of Might and Magic 2. I remember the first time I | encountered the game in some obscure Italian magazine that had a | disc and on the disc a demo of HoMM 2. I played the demo, and I | was blown away. Then 1999, I got ahold of Heroes 3, then the | expansions - Armageddon's Blade, Shadow of Death - so much fun | and unforgettable memories. | | Then in university, I discovered Wake of Gods [1]. This was a | fan-made extension of the game that fixed some stuff ( like Eagle | Eye being useful, fishing for artifacts in mana well's, having | commanders ala heroes 4, having a bank from which you can loan | money, etc.). | | I play heroes 3 complete edition with HD Mod [2] to this day, a | pretty awesome game, and still has an excellent, thriving | community. | | Honorable mentions besides Heroes of Might and Magic 3 - Heroes | of Might and Magic 4 (with all expansions) and Heroes of Might | and Magic 5 (all expansions - Tribes of the east). Heroes 5 is | the closest to Heroes 3 as mechanics and gameplay, and I enjoyed | it a lot. | | To this day I play roughly 4-5 games: Dota 2, Civilization 5, | Baldur's Gate 1&2 EE and Heroes 3. | | [1] - http://heroes3wog.net/ | | [2] - https://sites.google.com/site/heroes3hd/ | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Ah I still play a lot of BGEE/BG2EE (judging from the time | spent on Steam it's well into 200+ hours for each game) | nowadays. I'm also picking up NWNEE as there are a lot of high | quality modules. | thedailymail wrote: | The release of Baldur's Gate 3 caused some controversy due in | part to its turn-based combat system (distict from the real- | time system in BG 1 & 2). TBF, it felt like this was more | about purists disagreeing with an aethetic choice within a | much-loved franchise than about fundamental hostility to | turn-based games in general. | xyzzyz wrote: | BG2 system was also turn based, it just remembered previous | command you issued and repeated it, and didn't pause | automatically after every turn. | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | I have never played BG3. Plan to make a purchase when it's | done. I kinda dislike the early access model. | SantiagoElf wrote: | Back in the day - I used to mod the non-EE versions, but now | I just play the EE ones. | | 'Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!' | | NWNEE looks good, I played also Tides of Numenara, which is a | 'spiritual successor' of Planescape Torment. | throwaway675309 wrote: | I always felt like Minsc's character was absolutely | insufferable, in the same way that people who endlessly | quote Monty Python and the Holy Grail think that "your | father smelt of elderberry" is the pinnacle of humor. | Talanes wrote: | Yeah, both examples where the people quoting it miss that | the out-of-place context of the thing they're quoting is | what made it funny, not the words alone. | 5- wrote: | to this i'll add horn of the abyss (hota) -- a rather active | (and fully playable, including competitively) community | expansion to heroes3 -- bringing a new town, new creatures etc. | etc. -- generally considered to be at least on par quality- and | scope-wise with the official add-ons. | | https://www.hota.acidcave.net/about_the_project.html | | https://h3hota.com/ (the site is geared towards seasoned | players, but be sure to check out https://h3hota.com/en/gallery | for some visuals) | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | For some reason, HOMM* games never had any appeal to it, but I've | sunk hours in an obscure trading/exploration game Merchant Prince | and similarly obscure Hammer of the Gods. | | Only recently I've learned, that these games were direct | predecessors of HoMM made by the same studio, bridging the gap | between earlier King's Bounty (which I also played quite a lot). | rakwoelq wrote: | Fanstratics is a spiritual successor to Heroes of Might and Magic | III, it is being developed by the lead game designer of HoMM3. | There are some interesting newsletters being published about the | game. | | https://www.fanstratics.com/fstnewsletter01 | tholman wrote: | Amazingly the source code for the Heroes of Might and Magic 3 | expansions was lost for years, so they've not often been included | in the HD ports. Someone has (apparently) dug it up on an old | hard drive [1] though a few screenshots isn't a true proof. | | Knowing that a huge organization has lost such a treasured | codebase has insured that I backup almost every piece of code I | ever write... after 10 years of development I dip back in every | now and then and look at what younger me was working on, always | brings a smile to my face. | | 1. https://twitter.com/diskblitz/status/920801845349466113 | dreen wrote: | Unfortunately this is very common. The source to most classics | is lost forever. | salamandersauce wrote: | Yup. For Kingdom Hearts 1.5 they recreated the whole game | from assets off the PS2 disc because they lost it all which | is nuts. | KerrAvon wrote: | Diskblitz is reputable, for what it's worth. | cletus wrote: | I yearn for the days of turn-based strategy games. | | I played HoMM2 and (even moreso) 3 a _ton_. I loved the tactical | combat and that resource management didn 't get out of hand. I | played a ton of user-made maps. Loved it. | | The other two games of this genre I played a ton were Civ1 and | Civ4. | | I can literally recall waking up at noon, starting up Civ1 and | then looking out and it was dark. I didn't really play Civ2 and | Civ3 as much. They just added isometric view and even more micro- | management (IMHO). | | But that all changed with Civ4. It still had the stack of doom | problem but the solution added in Civ5 (one unit per hex and | hexes were also new) I found to be just annoying as it forced a | dance to get units placed. Plus once you got ranged/siege units | to range 3 I felt like it was game over. | | Anyway, the big thing that kept me on Civ4 wasn't the base game | it was a player mod called Fall From heaven 2 [1]. The depth was | amazing. I'd really hoped they'd make a standalone game or a new | version but I believe the creator now works at another game | company. | | So I never liked RTSs. To me it was a different kind of game that | focused on APS (actions per second). It's just not my scene. | | But turn-based games like HoMM and Civ are so rare these days it | makes me sad. | | [1]: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/mod-fall-from- | heaven-... | fgonzag wrote: | Those days never left. There's been a ton of TBS games released | throughout the years, some of them very very good. It's my most | played genre by far. | | Endless legend, XCom 2, Fallen Enchantress, Age of Wonders 3, | Age of Wonders: Planetfall, battletech, some tbs rpgs like | divinity original sin 2, the total war series is a hybrid | RTS/TBS genre, card games, tower defense games, and auto | battlers. | SSLy wrote: | Endless Legend / Space2 / Humankind too. | _Algernon_ wrote: | The town tiles growing over time mechanic of Civ 4 was amazing, | and made war costly even if you didn't lose cities or units. | Cyphase wrote: | The Battle for Wesnoth | | https://www.wesnoth.org/ | | > The Battle for Wesnoth is an open source, turn-based strategy | game with a high fantasy theme. It features both singleplayer | and online/hotseat multiplayer combat. | | > Explore the world of Wesnoth and take part in its many | adventures! Embark on a desperate quest to reclaim your | rightful throne... Flee the Lich Lords to a new home across the | sea... Delve into the darkest depths of the earth to craft a | jewel of fire itself... Defend your kingdom against the | ravaging hordes of a foul necromancer... Or lead a straggly | band of survivors across the blazing sands to confront an | unseen evil. | | > The choice is up to you... | HideousKojima wrote: | Wesnoth is too heavily based on RNG for me (and apparently a | lot of others who have tried it). Different terrain tiles | changing your chance of getting hit is a cool idea in theory, | but in practice it makes strategy less important and lucky | dice rolls more important, especially when some tiles can | give you a 70% or 80% chance to dodge. Increasing defense | based on the tile you're on (and maybe a _small_ dodge chance | boost like +5% or +10%) would make it much more about | strategy. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | Wesnoth is great and nicely balanced. | | Complaining about Wesnoth RNG is for losers. Wesnoth gives | you an estimate of how much damage did you do against the | expected. In long games, luck always evens out. In short | games, it evens out across other games. Just accept it as a | stroke of fate, and to your best with what you get. | chongli wrote: | That hasn't been my experience. From what I've dealt | with, a run of bad luck early will leave your army | perpetually behind the curve. Since units need to survive | battles to level up you can be totally destroyed by some | bad luck. Sure, your dice rolls will even out over the | long run but the effects of early bad luck will compound | throughout the game. | einpoklum wrote: | If you know exactly, in advance, with certainty, how a | battle between two units is going to end up, that means | your strategy is much shallower. You are much less likely | to need backup plans for anything. | | But it's even more than that. Some units cause the same | amount of _mean_ damage, but one may do so in fewer shots. | And on the defense side, two units may take the same mean | damage on a hex, but one unit has a higher dodge | percentage, while the other has damage resistance. | | That makes for a much richer variety of units: Reliable | hitters vs opportunistic shot-takers; tanks which will are | sure to survive an attack, and pestering nuisances which, | once swatted, will go away for good. You can't have that | without the randomness. | Cyphase wrote: | Both exist; see this for more details: | https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Defense_and_resistance | simonebrunozzi wrote: | Master of Magic, Master of Orion II? XCOM? | dccoolgai wrote: | Orion 2 might still be the GOAT. | cletus wrote: | I wanted to like 4X space games but I honestly never found | one I particularly liked. Too quickly they descended into | tedium. That includes MOO/MOO2. YMMV. | | I did play Master of Magic and really enjoyed it. Adamantium | halfling slingers anyone? | | I also played the original XCOM and enjoyed it although it | became simple once you had the right tech (blaster bombs?). | They allowed you to breach spaceships at any point you want, | which was way easier. | vitabenes wrote: | Love that game. Might play it again today after years and years. | Glad I saw this post. | bsaul wrote: | Is there a way to play this game on an iphone ? | unnouinceput wrote: | Probably you'll find a DOS emulator in App store. Install it | inside and enjoy | olliej wrote: | My favorite was HOMM3, which higher higher resolution art, and | was the last before they threw out the nice art and switch to | functionally lower resolution 3d models :-/ | fouadf wrote: | HoMM3 was soo interesting to me when I first saw it, I thought it | was like chess (dumbed down) and a boardgame. The mythology was | also like a reference to me. I played it for so many hours when I | was a teenager. I played HoMM4 and HoMM5 also. HoMM4 felt like an | incomplete game but very nice to play. HoMM4 has an amazing | soundtrack, I occasionally still play it while working. | | I think recently there was an imitation of the game on mobile, | and we all know how bad that would probably be given the horrible | game mechanics of mobile gaming (ads, play to win, waiting to | build) | lexx wrote: | HoMM3 is a magical game. And the music, especially in HoMM4. It's | one of my favorite soundtracks ever. I can instantly go back 20 | years and feel the warmth in my heart, playing this game | countless hours as a teenager. | stavros wrote: | HoMM2/3 are still two of my favorite games, I play them often. 3 | especially has withstood the passage of time. | p2detar wrote: | HoMM2 is one of my all time favorite games. I've spent countless | hours exploring all the corners of every single map in the game. | Sometimes, I would deliberately not defeat the last enemy, just | so I can reveal all the places, monsters and castles on the map. | | With its amazing soundtrack, there never was another game for me | that would immerse me so deeply in a world of fantasy. HoMM3 was | great, but the artwork was not quite to my taste. | 29athrowaway wrote: | In games like these it was cool to diff save states after | spending resources, and then increase those bytes for fun and | profit. | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Played a TON of HOMM3 back in university with some friends. We | played coop on the same box that is we take turns to play the | game. It was so much fun. That said, I never completed the | campaigns (the expansion packs are considerably more difficult). | I still have a copy of HOMM3 from GOG so might click it open | tonight! | bombcar wrote: | HOMM3 had some pretty extensive custom maps and mods available | - lots of time playing those. | | Never really got into the sequels as much, HOMM3 always felt | like a local maximum. | | Fun fact: one of the modded scripts for HOMM3 was written by | the developer of Dominion: | https://opinionatedgamers.com/2012/05/11/the-art-of-design-i... | and https://youtu.be/i6Uc1-AR4rM | SXX wrote: | Shameless plug: if you're still into H3 there is almost | complete open source implementation with mods support written | from scratch in C++. Also there is built-in mods support. | | Unfortunately I'm no longer actively participate, but project | is still going strong. | | https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi | | https://vcmi.eu/ | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Thanks! Surprised to see this. Looks like a good chance to | read some 2D game source code :) | SXX wrote: | To be honest it's mixed bunch because project started | more than 10 years ago and there is both: some decent | code as well as terrible one. | | Good sides: it's fully client-server, AI implemented via | pluggable libraries while all saving / networking | implemented using serialization based off | Boost.Serialization. | jandrese wrote: | I played it a bit, but got turned off a bit by the random | events. In particular there was an event where huge numbers of | one type of critter would appear randomly on the map. If you | could talk those critters into joining your armies you were | guaranteed a win. If not you lose. The entire game at that | point became a race to collect as many of those critters as | possible and form a giant doomstack that nothing could hope to | stop and crush the opposing castle. | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Yeah that's the week of X event. I only play the campaign so | it's kinda OK for me. What I really hate is the week of | plague... | moreira wrote: | The game is actually still going strong - there's a mod that | adds a modern multiplayer lobby, with ranked competitive games, | lots of new random map generators, and there are some big | Twitch streamers for it; Lexiav is the biggest for English | language I think, he streams full-time and gets close to 1K | viewers most of the time. HOMM3 is in an amazing place right | now, definitely click it open and have fun again! | kzrdude wrote: | Heh, when I saw it on twitch it was very popular in russia | and every stream was in russian :) | [deleted] | stavros wrote: | What's the mod called? It sounds great! | moreira wrote: | HOTA (horn of the abyss). Adds a new town as well. Look it | up. The HOTA mod plus the HD mod both combine to give you a | modern experience for bigger resolutions (lots of UI | improvements and stuff, without affecting gameplay). | stavros wrote: | Ahh, thank you, I did install HotA but I must have missed | all the multi-player stuff you mention. Thanks, it really | is great! | grayrest wrote: | HoMM3 was also my main experience with the series. I tend to | pick it up once every few years with the last time in early | 2020. My problem with the game is that I know the AI exploits | so it's never THAT much of a challenge. | | If you're picking it up again, the HD plus mod lets you play on | higher resolution screens and adds keyboard shortcuts for | things like splitting a creature stack in half. Highly | recommended. | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Thanks! I probably can still have a lot of fun because I | don't really remember any of the exploits! I know I should | split the soldiers into N piles of 1 soldier and 1 pile of | larger group but other than that I know nothing! Probably the | reason I couldn't beat the campaign back then. | hangonhn wrote: | I love HoMM3. Someone has even ported to Android -- in case you | ever feel nostalgic. I replay it every now and then. Despite | the outdated graphics, the game itself has aged really well. I | still enjoy it immensely. | hnthrowaway0315 wrote: | Yep, the graphics, the writings, everything is perfect. With | the HD mod it's very up to today's standard. | didip wrote: | I dare say, this blog is as dangerous as tvtropes. | | I keep going down the memory lane with Master of Orion, Master of | Magic, etc. and I couldn't stop! | traspler wrote: | It's not a traditional Might & Magic game (maybe it just carries | the name for brand recognition) but I love ,,Might & Magic: Clash | of Heroes" it's very simple the extremely fun. I would love the | have a browser version with online multiplayer for that. The | mainline titles were always too tedious for me. | b0rsuk wrote: | malermeister wrote: | There's an open source engine for Heroes 3, with high res and mod | support: https://vcmi.eu/ | mathfailure wrote: | I think this project is worth being mentioned here: | https://github.com/ihhub/fheroes2 | tshaddox wrote: | I played countless hours of HOMM in "hot seat" mode with my | brother. The castle songs for each civilization are still fresh | in my mind. | zinxq wrote: | I played HOMM3 for 5 hours straight when I first encountered it. | I know that sounds like nothing, but unbeknownst to me, | installing it had reset my graphics drivers to set my monitor's | refresh to 50Hz. | | 50Hz is one of those things you can see if you look at it in your | peripheral vision, but not so much straight on. | | After 5 hours I was screaming in pain my eyes hurt so bad. I | couldn't figure out why they hurt and I couldn't stop playing | either. | aix1 wrote: | In terms of eye strain, is that any different to watching PAL | TV for five hours straight (25 frames/s or 50 fields/s)? | pavlov wrote: | The viewing distance makes the difference. | | A CRT TV is larger and you sit further away. A computer | monitor is in front of your face. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-26 23:00 UTC)