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| Thread: Free Heroes of Might and Magic II 0.8 release |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 · «PREV / NEXT» |
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted May 06, 2021 12:36 PM |
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Greetings, ladies and gentlemen!
Another month and another release! fheroes2 has been updated to 0.9.3 version!
We have many things to share with Heroes of Might and Magic II players. We hope, you're aware that our work is still going with a full force.
In the last month we finally fixed one of the biggest visible issues: shadows around heroes on the World map. Previously shadows were rendered with unknown logic, even the same one multiple times. But now rendering looks as good as possible!
Also we added few more things making the game interface more friendly and pleasant to use.
We brought to life buttons for fast exchange of armies and artifacts in hero meeting dialog.
On top of this we made changes in Lich shooting attack. Now the area of the attack is visible helping players to perform the attack in known manner without any guesses.
A huge improvement was added to fheroes2: we added support of the original languages of the game: Polish, French, German and Russian!
And finally we almost finished the support of "The Succession Wars" campaigns, including bonuses and special victory conditions.
As usual our team spent enormous efforts for code quality as well fixed more than 80 bugs!
We hope, you enjoy the growth of fheroes2 project!
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LordCameron
Known Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
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posted May 06, 2021 06:00 PM |
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Wow you guys are moving so fast!
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 06, 2021 10:13 PM |
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Dear Heroes of Might and Magic II fans.
We're pleased to announce a brand new 0.9.4 release!
Past release had a basic support of The Succession Wars campaign which was good but not an ideal. In the past month we polished every aspect of the campaign, adding missing video scenes, fixing multiple discovered issues and even bugs encountered in the original game. But this is not everything, we added a full support of The Price of Loyalty campaigns! So now you could enjoy playing all 6 campaigns originally present in HoMM2.
The list of new features for this release includes an extended display of number of days in cursors, added shadow for magic book and showing double shadow for 2-hex monsters in the battle. You can easily plan your move without guessing where the creature will move at. Also if want to see how many creatures were in your army at the beginning of the battle or how powerful and useful your hero is you could open Hero Screen right from the battle!
Additionally, we improve overall performance and now it's up to 30% faster than previous version. Also the game consumes much less resources which is a way to deploy the game on portable devices in the future.
At last but not at least, we added a fully optional installer on Windows making the game installation easy and intuitive. Unix users receive an updated script for installation as well. Please note that from this version the game will store all save files in a separate place: for Windows it's user profile directory, for Unix it's XGD directory.
As usual our team fixed over 100 bugs, polishing AI, fixing many logical issues and UI defects.
We hope that you would like to play the updated game and stay tuned for more exciting news in the future!
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NimoStar
Responsible
Legendary Hero
Modding the Unmoddable
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posted June 07, 2021 06:02 AM |
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Nice. Sir Dralnik, how many people help in the project?= Or is it just your passion?
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Never changing = never improving
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 08:00 AM |
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NimoStar said:
Nice. Sir Dralnik, how many people help in the project?= Or is it just your passion?
Hi.
It's an opensource project and everyone can contribute. Last year lots of people helped the project, but I can mention about 10 people, who is working on fheroes2 engine and contribute the project constantly.
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Gandalf196
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 10:27 AM |
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While I much admire the work you are doing (marvelous to say the least), it pains me that nobody is doing the same with Heroes III, which, in my opinion, is the peak of the series and itches the fantasy vein in me like no other game in the history of Creation.
P.S.: I consider HotA an official expansion for all purposes and would like the fheroes treatment to that even better than to the official official Heroes III + AB + SoD.
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 10:51 AM |
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Gandalf196 said:
While I much admire the work you are doing (marvelous to say the least), it pains me that nobody is doing the same with Heroes III, which, in my opinion, is the peak of the series and itches the fantasy vein in me like no other game in the history of Creation.
P.S.: I consider HotA an official expansion for all purposes and would like the fheroes treatment to that even better than to the official official Heroes III + AB + SoD.
Unfortunately, similar H3 project is stuck because not optimized codebase and improper management.
Certainly, we're going to release our unofficial expansion (presumably called "Resurrection"), after fheroes2 engine will be ready itself. We're planning to make it in a way official 3DO expansions looked like: with proper, relevant features, new campaign and some new creatures.
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Gandalf196
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 11:05 AM |
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sirDranik said:
Gandalf196 said:
While I much admire the work you are doing (marvelous to say the least), it pains me that nobody is doing the same with Heroes III, which, in my opinion, is the peak of the series and itches the fantasy vein in me like no other game in the history of Creation.
P.S.: I consider HotA an official expansion for all purposes and would like the fheroes treatment to that even better than to the official official Heroes III + AB + SoD.
Unfortunately, similar H3 project is stuck because not optimized codebase and improper management.
Certainly, we're going to release our unofficial expansion (presumably called "Resurrection"), after fheroes2 engine will be ready itself. We're planning to make it in a way official 3DO expansions looked like: with proper, relevant features, new campaign and some new creatures.
Very nice! Could we have a sneak-peek  ?
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 02:06 PM |
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Gandalf196 said:
Very nice! Could we have a sneak-peek ?
Not yet. 
But you can always discuss something you want to implement in future expansion at our discord "ideas" thread. Who knows, maybe your proposals will be included. 
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gnollking
Supreme Hero
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posted June 07, 2021 05:38 PM |
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super impressive as always
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Blake00
Known Hero
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posted June 09, 2021 11:46 AM |
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Edited by Blake00 at 14:59, 09 Jun 2021.
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sirDranik said:
Certainly, we're going to release our unofficial expansion (presumably called "Resurrection"), after fheroes2 engine will be ready itself. We're planning to make it in a way official 3DO expansions looked like: with proper, relevant features, new campaign and some new creatures.
Oh wow.. you guys are doing a whole extra campaign too? That's awesome! 
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Copy of what I just posted at CH, but figured I'd post here too for curious fans of this great looking project.
CHave tested out your latest version. Looking good man! Nice to see Heroes 2 in 1080P HD on my big screen! And I noticed a few AIs running around fighting battles and stealing treasure etc so I can see you've already done some good work with them haha.
For anyone interested in my HD test shots here they are below. They're slightly distorted as sadly when I hit PrtScn & pasted into paint it snapped the slightly squished windowed version despite me having the game full screen with no window bar at top when I hit the key. I'm not using windows 10 so maybe the sniping tool on that will take true 1080p full screen shots.
(Click to expand)
Oh and I know this question is going to sound crazy and will probably never happen as most people's love with HoMM began with HoMM2 but I started at HoMM1 back in 1995 (when it came on a PC Gamer demo disc) and still have huge love for its graphics & simplicity plus I especially love its colourful animating town screens with all the units in front of their dwellings doing their stuff lol. Despite the endless hours I've put into all it's sequels over the years I still come back to it every few years for a game. So I nearly friggin died when the HoMM3 Succession Wars mod team teased that HoMM1 mod April fools joke facebook post a few years back lol.
But anyway the question is once the FreeHoMM2 project is finished later this year would you guys in the new team maybe maybe maybe consider a modded HoMM1 version of your excellent work in the future? As HoMM2 was basically HoMM1 with a bunch of (great) stuff added on top so if the sub skills, 2 extra races, extra battle hexes, extra spells, units & heroes etc were disabled and the AI taught to not use them then you'd basically have a HoMM1 like engine ready for HoMM1 graphics import. Hell I'd even take a simpler/easier 'dirty' HoMM1 graphics import with all the extra HoMM2 stuff still left turned on lol. We have those lovely HD mods for HoMM3 & 4 now days so if this was done then that would be it, the final missing link and the whole series would be available in HD!
The HoMM3 SW April Fools shot from a few years back..
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Blake's Sanctum - Heroes of Might & Magic: fan page containing pictures, vids, info, similar games & fan projects!
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 06, 2021 11:04 AM |
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Hello, Heroes of Might & Magic II players!
Today we're presenting 0.9.5 version of fheroes2 project with many changes.
First of all, we added Monster Description information for every creature with special abilities. This change is extremely useful for newcomers and even for pro players who want to refresh their knowledge.
Secondly, we fixed a lot of issues being presented with object passabilities on the World Map. Sometimes players were unable to progress with certain maps due to aforementioned problems. Now the project has the same logic as in the original game. Besides this some logic with object interaction was fixed as well.
On top of this, a huge amount of work was given for AI improvement: now it can interact with more objects, it has better hero management and path planning.
[Check the progress of AI at 0.9.4 version]
[Check the progress of AI at 0.9.5 version]
Overall AI is much smarter in comparison with previous releases so be ready to enjoy the challenge
A small but useful feature was added to the game: all scrollbars now support continuous scrolling while holding arrow buttons.
We also dedicated some time for fixing music related issues, adding missing features of campaigns such as scenario restart or Bane / Alliance monster behavior.
Overall we managed to fix more than 70 bugs!
Thanks to everyone for making this release happen and we hope that you'll enjoy the game!
You could also support the project development on Patreon.
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Gandalf196
Disgraceful
Supreme Hero
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posted July 06, 2021 09:51 PM |
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sirDranik said:
Gandalf196 said:
While I much admire the work you are doing (marvelous to say the least), it pains me that nobody is doing the same with Heroes III, which, in my opinion, is the peak of the series and itches the fantasy vein in me like no other game in the history of Creation.
P.S.: I consider HotA an official expansion for all purposes and would like the fheroes treatment to that even better than to the official official Heroes III + AB + SoD.
Unfortunately, similar H3 project is stuck because not optimized codebase and improper management.
Certainly, we're going to release our unofficial expansion (presumably called "Resurrection"), after fheroes2 engine will be ready itself. We're planning to make it in a way official 3DO expansions looked like: with proper, relevant features, new campaign and some new creatures.
Point me to it
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Blake00
Known Hero
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posted July 09, 2021 01:34 PM |
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Already said this over at CH, but great work guys!
Oh and to anyone wondering, sirdranik already replied to my HoMM1 in HD question over there that it's not really possible and would require a lot more stuff than you think to be rewritten. Still.. a man can dream haha.
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Blake's Sanctum - Heroes of Might & Magic: fan page containing pictures, vids, info, similar games & fan projects!
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LordCameron
Known Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
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posted July 23, 2021 05:43 PM |
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You guys are the real heroes of might and magic
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sirironfist
Known Hero
King of the ogres
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posted July 25, 2021 10:51 AM |
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Amazing progress again! Love the monster descriptions, those are one thing I always felt were missing in the original. How does the AI compare to the original AI at this point?
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sirDranik
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 25, 2021 11:59 AM |
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AI becomes better each release.
Currently it is rather nasty and fights quite well in battle, spamming lots of spells. However, some issues left, but we're fixing them each week.
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LordCameron
Known Hero
Veteran of the Succession Wars
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posted July 25, 2021 11:39 PM |
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Gandalf196 said:
sirDranik said:
Gandalf196 said:
While I much admire the work you are doing (marvelous to say the least), it pains me that nobody is doing the same with Heroes III, which, in my opinion, is the peak of the series and itches the fantasy vein in me like no other game in the history of Creation.
P.S.: I consider HotA an official expansion for all purposes and would like the fheroes treatment to that even better than to the official official Heroes III + AB + SoD.
Unfortunately, similar H3 project is stuck because not optimized codebase and improper management.
Certainly, we're going to release our unofficial expansion (presumably called "Resurrection"), after fheroes2 engine will be ready itself. We're planning to make it in a way official 3DO expansions looked like: with proper, relevant features, new campaign and some new creatures.
Point me to it
VCMI
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Bytebandit
Promising
Famous Hero
Soul Merchant
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posted October 18, 2021 12:03 AM |
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I started the Heroes of Might & Magic Series with the original game, and shortly afterwards got really hooked on HoMM II. Played HoMM3 for the longest time, also got involved with WoG near the end of it's run with the original WoG Team. Then I got HoMM IV. I was totally disenchanted with THAT unfinished project. I recently got HoMM V TotE and I found that to be a little too intimidating with all the choices and stuff involved with that game.
But this project you have done has made me shelve all the others I have, and has allowed me to play my favorite game of the series all over again. I agree with most of the other purists of the game that a little tweaking of the AI (juuust a little only) is enough. The original AI for H2 is by far the most balanced of the series. And I see that once the AI issues you have been addressing by your fabulous team are done, then everything else concerning creature tweaks should be left for optional choices by the player.
I hope I don't come across like I am criticizing stuff. 'cause I'm not. This is the best thing to happen to the HoMM series since HotA. In fact, I put this ahead of anything else Modded or Added-On to a Heroes game ever!
Thank you for all you have done to "Ressurrect" one of the best Computer games of all time!!
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Dranikolog
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posted November 07, 2021 01:01 PM |
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Bytebandit said:
I hope I don't come across like I am criticizing stuff. 'cause I'm not. This is the best thing to happen to the HoMM series since HotA. In fact, I put this ahead of anything else Modded or Added-On to a Heroes game ever!
Thank you for all you have done to "Ressurrect" one of the best Computer games of all time!!
Thanks!
We hope, Heroes 2 will shine again soon.
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