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| Thread: OpenHeroes (VCMI + Horn of the Abyss + ? ) |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 10:03 AM |
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Edited by valgaav at 10:27, 08 Apr 2009.
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OpenHeroes (VCMI + Horn of the Abyss + ? )
What I'm proposing here is mainly for HoTA devs to consider, but who knows maybe someone else will be interested too ? .
HoTA seems like an amazing project, with great Art and ideas. VCMI ( http://vcmi.antypika.aplus.pl/forum/portal.php )is another ambitious project that tries to write a H3-like game engine from scratch. It's a fresh project but it's progressing in a very fast pace (just like HoTA). With it it would be possible to make HoTA a standalone H3-like open source game. HoTA plans 3 castles, if you add to it the almost ready Bastion and the future HoTA roman town we have 5 towns. It's more then enough for a fun game. The extra work is not that much if you compare it with the task of doing whole 3 cities. What's left is menu graphics / terrain / and spells animation.
Seeing the effort put into HoTA and VCMI it's just a waste that both projects are right now dependent on H3, labbeled as mods or engine. The great graphics of HoTA, new castles and ideas (like new war machines) the effort of VCMI team to make a great engine IMHO it all deserves to be standalone project. It could be called VCMI: Horn of the Abyss ... or OpenHeroes : Horn of the Abyss ...
There are many pros of not going to be another h3 mod but a standalone game.
No need to have original H3 files. You can get new people into this game aside from die hard Heroes fans. Furthermore within upcoming years it will only be harder to get the original Heroes3 (buy it)
No h3 legacy, With a new game you will not be tied to many limitations of h3. How the balance there works, 256 800x600 graphics which is archaic right now, limits (units, game mechanics) and bugs of the original game.
For example bigger res then 800x600 . VCMI will do those like this :
http://www.thedarkhouse.toxic.pl/EkranBitwy1024x768.jpg
http://www.thedarkhouse.toxic.pl/EkranZamku1024x768.jpg
However it would be nice if the battle window was not 800x600 but 1024x768 or even bigger as people use bigger res right now. Since HoTA team does their graphics in 3d mostly it shouldn't be hard to do two sets of graphics and make one widescreen friendly if you have the 3d models 
Long life. VCMI is under GPL license (it's open source). VCMI will most likely support many platforms: Windows, Linux, MacOSX. It may also have a 64 bit version and in few years time 64 bit may be a de-facto standard... You cannot adopt with the closed h3 engine to that.
Many possibilities for example VCMI will have a h5 like “simultanous turns” and a secure network mode that should prevent cheating in games (all planed in VCMI)... Once again it would be impossible to do those with the H3 closed engine.
Would be nice to see something like that. HoMM has a fantastic community and I always wondered why we do not have any OpenHeroes or FreeHeroes game (and other games like civilization series have their open versions like FreeCiv). If HoTA team isn't interested in this I would at least ask to publish their work on some kind of open license (like creative commons for graphics, and GPL for the source code) that would allow other to do it . Would be great if the same happened with Bastion town. Then maybe somebody would step up and make a stand alone game from it.
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Dj
Promising
Supreme Hero
Always loyal to HC
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posted April 08, 2009 10:33 AM |
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OH &*$%!! i love the screens O_O
yes...HotA + VCMI would be fantastic, but whithout Bastion (bastion is in WoG Team's plans).
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 08, 2009 11:37 AM |
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I am sorry, but have to disagree here. Not that the idea is bad, but...
There are what, 8 years that WoG is out and we never got any new mod, proof of how hard is to create one. And now, that finally we have the chance to see one, you propose even more work, and start everything from scratch.
HotA will be certainly out in a few months, and VCMI maybe never, after seeing how little progress have been made.
I don't see the problem that both depend of the HoMM engine and label. They are only mods, will be played 5-6 months and then forgotten. The original game has still a strong and active community. If you create a new game, you lose this community.
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Era II mods and utilities
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 01:02 PM |
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Not from scratch ... All animation and even ERM scripts are there and will have to be written anyway ... Sure a bit more work and for sure delaying the release date. However in how many places HoTA is limited by h3 binary ? How much work on hacking that is required? ...
Oh and VCMI progress is quite fine. Comparing it to other open engines they are doing a great work and in fast pace. I guess you do not monitor any other open projects and don't know how projects like that progress.
Anyway it's up to devs of HoTA even if they do not want to do that, publishing HoTA graphics on some Creative commons license so that it can be easly used in vcmi isn't something that requires a lot of work. They can also always publixh two versions of HoTA :
1) a standalone one with vcmi
2) an SoD addon
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Warmonger
Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
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posted April 08, 2009 02:03 PM |
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Quote:
and VCMI maybe never, after seeing how little progress have been made
The mere fact that screenshots on main page are year old doesn't mean there aren't any new ones 
But, to be honest, it may take a year before the project will be fully playable H3 copy and much more to make it compatible with WoG and HoTa, adding RMG, editor, resonable scripts... the amount of features to implement is huge.
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avatar
Promising
Supreme Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 02:46 PM |
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History of modding H3 says, that imposible to merge to groups - probably one group will split with two, three parts. Each parts will start to make "new, own genious WoG addon". Sad, but true.
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Aleee
Known Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 03:14 PM |
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Good idea, but it seems to be imposible. I'm sure all of you understand how it's difficult to create add-on with a new town, new buildings, spells etc. If they try to do something together complexity of their task will increase in times.
Just for instance NO ONE of HotA developers knows English language well. Not the most important problem, but how difficult it will be to communicate.
AFAIK, HotA won't be an open project. May be some graphics will be available to download, not more.
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Salamandre
Admirable
Omnipresent Hero
Wog refugee
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posted April 08, 2009 05:40 PM |
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Quote:
But, to be honest, it may take a year before the project will be fully playable H3 copy and much more to make it compatible with WoG and HoTa, adding RMG, editor, resonable scripts... the amount of features to implement is huge.
I like to see you so optimist. Let's face it. Have you visited HotA sub forum in the Russian forums? It has no less than 200000 posts. They said it will be released in march, but delayed to an unknown date.
Now let's visit VCMI. It has less than 50 posts and it requires WoG 3.58 while saying it will be open and standalone project. I guess I am alone here to know how long is required to polish a script. I appreciate what they are doing, but from what I see, they did what? 1%? And the hardest part is once all the script are ready, and the testing phase starts, when they have to check and trap a small error through millions code lines.
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Era II mods and utilities
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 06:28 PM |
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Edited by valgaav at 18:59, 08 Apr 2009.
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Quote:
Let's face it. Have you visited HotA sub forum in the Russian forums? It has no less than 200000 posts. They said it will be released in march, but delayed to an unknown date.
Now let's visit VCMI. It has less than 50 posts and it requires WoG 3.58 while saying it will be open and standalone project.
Are you a troll ? So number of posts is for you the measure of how far is project progressing ? How about looking at vcmi repository and checking how many commits they do ? Now that would have a meaning, BTW VCMI subforum has over 2000 posts not 50 ... but well I guess you just want to troll around. WoG requirement is only for graphics the engine is standalone (and VCMI is an engine not a game/mod/addon).
Quote:
I appreciate what they are doing, but from what I see, they did what? 1%? And the hardest part is once all the script are ready, and the testing phase starts, when they have to check and trap a small error through millions code lines.
That just explains you never bothered to check vcmi at all. VCMI is realeasing preview versions since quite a while and people are helping to find bugs in those.
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Quote:
Good idea, but it seems to be imposible. I'm sure all of you understand how it's difficult to create add-on with a new town, new buildings, spells etc. If they try to do something together complexity of their task will increase in times.
One team is doing a game engine (vcmi) and another one (HoTA) is doing game content (arts, castles , animations etc.) ... I don't see much task added since both teams already are doing what is exactly needed to produce a full game.
Quote:
Just for instance NO ONE of HotA developers knows English language well. Not the most important problem, but how difficult it will be to communicate.
Since both team task are quite different (one does the engine, another does game content&scripting) I see no reason why magnificent fluent english is needed here.
Quote:
AFAIK, HotA won't be an open project. May be some graphics will be available to download, not more.
That's for HotA to decide I just pointed at possibility what they will do is up to them. I talked with Vcmi team and they are open to the idea now I'm posting here to catch a contact with anyone from HoTA as it's quite hard to do in any other way then here.
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History of modding H3 says, that imposible to merge to groups - probably one group will split with two, three parts. Each parts will start to make "new, own genious WoG addon". Sad, but true.
That's quite sad ... There is Freeciv, Freecol, Lincity and quite a lot of other free open source games that are cloning some of the best turn based games... Don't you think HoMM deserves one too ?
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Docent_Picolan
Promising
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 10:48 PM |
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m.. discussing things like this makes no sense as long as we haven't got both a stable version of HotA (1.0, not 0.1-beta) and a stable build of VCMI  neither is going to happen soon..
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uruk-hai
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 08, 2009 11:13 PM |
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@Docent_picolan so u have a nice release date for us or its gonna be delayed again?
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 09, 2009 08:26 AM |
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Edited by valgaav at 08:27, 09 Apr 2009.
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Quote:
m.. discussing things like this makes no sense as long as we haven't got both a stable version of HotA (1.0, not 0.1-beta) and a stable build of VCMI neither is going to happen soon..
Hi.. Thank you for responding to this topic.
Firstly I would like to say I'm impressed with progress of both HoTA and Vcmi. Those two projects really are blazing fast if you compare them to other heroes-like things/mods in the last years.
Your point is understandable but there are some things to consider. Hacking on h3 exe for HoTA purposes may eat up a lot of time. With current heroes engine you must stick with 256 colors for models which is limiting and probably takes some extra time for your graphics. Other thing is scripting languages Vcmi will most likely not be limited to just ERM but also have LuA and maybe other scripting languages too. That point depends though on your coders preferences, maybe they like ERM... In the end it just may be easier for you guys to use vcmi, especially since in the log run both projects ETA is far in the future
Releasing some preview version of HoTA (like vcmi guys do or along vcmi releases), might actually help to keep/get people interested in the project, and that's always a good thing, as it provides the crucial beta testers  ... and sometimes (though that's rare thing to happen) it even may get you a new team member be it a graphic specialist or coder.
Oh and IMHO generally a stand alone game spawns more interest then a game engine or mod ... but that's just my maybe biased opinion.
and no I'm not forcing things on you... please continue the great work you are doing.
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leslie
Tavern Dweller
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posted April 09, 2009 09:37 AM |
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Edited by leslie at 09:38, 09 Apr 2009.
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couldnt find much diff in the pics that are shown in the VCMI site.
though its using new engine
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valgaav
Adventuring Hero
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posted April 09, 2009 10:37 AM |
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Quote:
couldnt find much diff in the pics that are shown in the VCMI site.
though its using new engine
Pics on the main site are a bit outdated. Besides as graphics goes vcmi is using original H3 graphics so no big difference there, which doesn't change the fact it supports more then 256 colors, but someone would have to make such graphics
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Aleee
Known Hero
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posted April 09, 2009 12:54 PM |
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Hota will be undoubtfully released soon. VCMI.. I don't know exactly when they are planning to release 1st version, but it seems we won't be able to try it within months.
May be Hota devs just don't want to take any chances? As I understant they'll have to remake some things according to the fact that the engine will be changed. As I think it's quite dangerous because I can't see activity of VCMI project. It will become much more difficult to release any new version as it depends on two teams, and if one has any troubles another one won't be able to do anything. It's more convenient to work independently, isn't it?
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spartak
Hired Hero
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posted April 09, 2009 10:06 PM |
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Edited by spartak at 22:15, 09 Apr 2009.
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let's wait the stable version of addition
...later we'll return to this talk.
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E-J
Known Hero
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posted April 13, 2009 04:16 PM |
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Quote:
let's wait the stable version of addition
...later we'll return to this talk.
Wise words!
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bronzephenix
Hired Hero
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posted April 13, 2009 07:11 PM |
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VCMI seems promising, but my main worry is the AI. Can you use H3 one or will you have to create it from scratch (quite hard) ?
If VCMI is multiplayer-only I think it will limit the interest of many players.
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E-J
Known Hero
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posted April 13, 2009 07:17 PM |
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IMO the original H3 AI isnt that good/intellingt and with easy to fool. personally i wont care if the AI turns out to be different from H3.
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Alustor
Famous Hero
ooo da :)
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posted April 14, 2009 12:56 AM |
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Quote:
Quote:
VCMI seems promising, but my main worry is the AI. Can you use H3 one or will you have to create it from scratch (quite hard) ?
If VCMI is multiplayer-only I think it will limit the interest of many players.
where the F*** this u heard that VCMI is going to be multiplayer only??? 0_o is h3 multiplayer only?doh...
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