|
| Thread: Any chance to set Heroes III free? | |
|
pacija
Tavern Dweller
|
posted March 17, 2013 01:46 PM |
|
|
Any chance to set Heroes III free?
13 years have passed since Heroes III Complete had been released. I believe it is not earning much money for its current owner Ubisoft with current business model (Heroes III Complete + Heroes IV Complete could be bought for 3 euros in local supermarket and I doubt lot of people buys it).
So, in light of new technologies and business models, do you see any possibility for releasing the source code for Heroes III by Ubisoft? For example setting final target price on kickstarter which fans would need to collect in order to sell source to public domain? I am sure this would benefit greatly to both fans and current owners, as it would open much more abilities for modding, introducing anticheat systems or online ladder integrations etc.
Regard this as brainstorming so all ideas, no matter how silly they might seem, are welcome.
|
|
shares
Supreme Hero
I am. Thusly I am.
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 02:05 PM |
|
|
More likely is that it will be used as a marketing tool, such as being sold in boxes together with newer, more profitable games. Such as a Heroes VI box with Heroes III included to make it sell just a tad bit better... or maybe they feel it's time to make a large collectors box with all of the games included.
If we're lucky, we might see something along the lines of what EA did when they released Red Alert 3. Then the first game was given away for free as a marketing hype some time before the release, complete with compatibility stuff for newer operating systems. I'm betting stuff like that didn't happen with H6 because the game was rushed to release so quickly and suddenly.
____________
|
|
The_Polyglot
Promising
Supreme Hero
channeling capybara energy
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 02:17 PM |
|
|
The price is extremely low anyway these days, why bother? It would be extremely weird if one of the greatest strategy games in existence were given away for free.
____________
Friend-shaped
|
|
pacija
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 02:28 PM |
|
|
|
I meant "free as in speech", not neccessarily "free as in beer". In other words, open source code which everyone is free to modify so it is easier to implement new features without having to reverse engineer.
|
|
The_Polyglot
Promising
Supreme Hero
channeling capybara energy
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 02:31 PM |
|
|
Oh, that. Between VCMI, WoG, and HotA, do we really need it? That's a genuine question, I'm not really into modding, myself.
____________
Friend-shaped
|
|
pacija
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 02:40 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Oh, that. Between VCMI, WoG, and HotA, do we really need it? That's a genuine question, I'm not really into modding, myself.
I'm not into modding either, but - correct me if I am wrong - all these projects build upon original Heroes III binaries. Respect to all those people that put so much effort and time into reverse engineering, exploring in virtual darkness what hex string does what and trying to modify it in a way that meets the expectation. I wonder what these people would be able to do if they were not forced to explore in the dark, but with map of all the internals.
|
|
Storm-Giant
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
On the Other Side!
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 03:28 PM |
|
|
Quote:
Quote:
Oh, that. Between VCMI, WoG, and HotA, do we really need it? That's a genuine question, I'm not really into modding, myself.
I'm not into modding either, but - correct me if I am wrong - all these projects build upon original Heroes III binaries. Respect to all those people that put so much effort and time into reverse engineering, exploring in virtual darkness what hex string does what and trying to modify it in a way that meets the expectation. I wonder what these people would be able to do if they were not forced to explore in the dark, but with map of all the internals.
But ain't VCMI recoding the game?
HotA is using reverse engineering, yes, but look what they say in their website:
"We want to rewrite the entire H3 engine (VCMI is NOT another mod) giving it new possibilities."
____________
|
|
Evaline
Known Hero
|
posted March 17, 2013 03:35 PM |
|
Edited by Evaline at 15:38, 17 Mar 2013.
|
|
What makes you think that ubisoft owns Heroes III sources? Ubisoft only bought the rights to the Heroes of M&M universe (trade mark) and rights to distribute HoMM I/II/III/IV under ubisoft label. Heroes I/II/III/IV sources were destroyed along with the original HoMM developers - New World Computing.
|
|
pacija
Tavern Dweller
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 07:25 PM |
|
|
Quote:
What makes you think that ubisoft owns Heroes III sources?
Just an assumption. Now that you say this I see it doesn't have to be true.
Quote:
Heroes I/II/III/IV sources were destroyed along with the original HoMM developers - New World Computing.
Could this really be true? To really forever destroy few hundreds of megabytes of code in a world of backups, replication, and zetabytes of storage? It has to be somewhere out there...
|
|
shares
Supreme Hero
I am. Thusly I am.
|
|
posted March 17, 2013 07:32 PM |
|
|
Sure, there might still be copies of the source code, but officially they might not exist. Source codes are usually kept by developers rather than publishers and so they were probably lost for the market when NWC went down. It's a common story in the brief history of the video game industry.
____________
|
|
|
|
