Uh… Huh. That would not be great. I would probably still pick it up, but HoMM games have never been about the story/campaigns for me, they are (imho) best approached as board games, and a RMG is a fantastic way to get more mileage out of that. I know the HoMM III RMG was the standard I held other RMG’s to for a very long time (I think AoW3 has finally achieved HoMM III levels of RMG success).
Yeah, looking online, there were ~7 scenarios in the original and in each of the x-packs, so this doesn’t look like the complete game based on that.
It’s the “complete” game, it just doesn’t have the expansions - which unfortunately means no RMG. Shame.
D’oh, mis-worded that. Meant “Complete Edition,” which is the CD I had back in the day, IIRC:
Also, for the sake of my sanity whenever I look at the forum, can someone please fix the typo in the thread title?
I very much agree.
Unfortunately, the lead level designer and the writer for Heroes IV saw the game as being about story. One of my many failings as a project lead is that I didn’t clamp down on that. Because the story repeatedly mentioned specific heroes by name, the campaign scenarios repeatedly included death of those heroes as failure conditions. This was terrible from a game point of view, and I knew that, but I had so much on my plate that I never got the chance to straighten that out.
That’s incidentally why I always wondered a bit about the RMG reception. The same people didn’t see any value in it, since they didn’t care about Heroes as a strategy game, and hence the internal feedback at New World wasn’t great.
Hoes of Might and Magic: Play now my lord.
Looks like, from the Heroes website:
“But why only RoE? To understand the origin of the project and its development we need to go back to 2003. At that time we asked New World Computing to retrieve their archives for all the Might & Magic titles. We found tons of documentation and data but regarding Heroes III we had nothing but the usable source code of Heroes III Restoration of Erathia.”
I really appreciated the RMG as well. The campaigns were fun, but there was a clear tension between the mechanics and the story that wasn’t present in the skirmish mode.
That’s what I was afraid of.
I vaguely remember getting contacted by Ubisoft a few years back to see if I had a copy of the Heroes III source code. I’m not sure about that, since I get contacts like that from fan groups periodically, so I may be mis-remembering if Ubisoft did the same thing.
In any case, I don’t have the source, so I couldn’t help them.
This looks like a nice way for me to try HoMM3 (especially if it plays well on a tablet), but I hope the HD upgrade includes a zoom feature on the strategic map. (I’ve only played 1 and 2, and I can’t remember if they had zooming on the strategic map).
I like these new HD remakes, but I’ve found that they often ‘zoom out’ the player’s view and the little sprites go from small to microscopic (partially due to my using a laptop, but the same would be true on a tablet I think). I’ve really enjoyed Stronghold HD, but I had to try playing at 1360x768 because my 1920x1080 screen made it too hard for me to enjoy the little animations on the units. Of course, running at 1360x768 wasn’t ideal either, so after I’d watched the animations for a bit I switched back to my native resolution.
I think this issue may be even more important with HoMM3 since those maps have always been somewhat cluttered with tons of little details. They add character, but they make it harder for me to distinguish between terrain and armies/resources/etc.
Gus’s AI and RMG for Heroes 3 has still not been equaled in any game of this type as far as I know.
this looks like a pain to do all this HD cleanup judging by the video (nice)… poor guy who had to do that ;(
Yeah, that was pretty fun to watch. I don’t have a good sense for how long that process would take, but I thought it was a good ad and counter argument to anyone thinking that an HD remake was labor free.
Yeah, I always see the something along the lines of “Lazy devs just run it thru photoshop! It’s nothing! It should be a free patch!”
No, dumbass. Someone actually has to do that Photoshop work.
I once created an animated gift with images I captured from a video of the Spelunky guy to make a forum avatar. It turned out pretty well, but it took like 30 minutes and it was all of 20 frames. I then got brave and thought I’d try to make my own face on the Spelunky guy and make a custom skin! Holy fuck no no no no no.
So with that in mind, the above video broke my brain. :/
Oh God yes, the RMG was what made HoMM III something I played for YEARS and not just a few weeks (like most of even the best games). And it was terrific! It’s painful to read about the HoMM IV stuff in that I wish HoMM games would be approached more as CiV/AoW3 games where the “meat” of the game is the board-game aspect, with a campaign thrown in for fun and to teach the mechanics of the game for new players, by and by. Ah well.
What? It never occurred to me that the inclusion of the RMG could be regarded as anything other than a smashing success. ¿Unlimited maps? At least I know that was how it was received by the community back then. Me and my group were delighted.
Moreover, that single piece of software has remained the sole (and virtually daily) source of digital entertainment for my father, even today in his old age. So you can imagine how grateful I am for that clever idea :-)
Unfortunately, the lead level designer and the writer for Heroes IV saw the game as being about story.
A turning point. And the series never recovered from it.
How quickly I went from euphoria to dismay. I loved the HOMM III campaigns, but once (well, twice) is enough. The RMG is where the longevity comes from, and I can still only dream of that on my iPad.
If you could load maps generated elsewhere, then you could access both the zillions of hand-made scenarios and campaigns and also random maps that could be cranked out for you externally.
Okay, wait. Something weird is going down on Ubi’s end. The video shows the painstaking work they did converting sprites to HD resolution. It’s very cool and impressive. Seriously, I don’t need more convincing.
Here’s an image their PR sent out showing the difference between the old and new versions:
WTF? The old stuff didn’t look that bad. It’s literally available now on GOG for everyone to see.
