I tried to save most homm things. But the idea was to make it in realtime. And as a homm fan as well, I can say: it feels as hommy as it could be in realtime. And, the turns are actually present. There are days and weeks, and you can build once in a day and you recieve new units to hire one a week. And spells in battles need time to cooldown, so it feels like there are turns...
Why would I watch a 40 minute video about your map? I could easily play a round in that time.
Next time make a highlight video and just use the gamesounds. :)
Looking forward to the update!
A couple questions:
1. What HOMM is this a remake of?
2. I realize there is a realtime system, Im assuming there will be an additional game mode for a turn based battle? If not, I ask that you please implement it or consider doing so, as it is a core mechanic.
Thank you!
1. Homm is a remake of kings of bounty or something.
2. I'm afraid, it's too late to make battles turn based, because the whole system of triggers is about realtime process. And I think, this game could be rather better if I would make units stack, instead of making it turn based.
I actually enjoyed the RTS-feel more than having a turn based, slow, approach (and yes, I own and used to play the original, HOMM 3).
The only thing I think you should add is make days/weeks more clear to the player.
Another thing I miss is glancing at my opponents' actions =P Like when I played HOMM 3 with friends, sharing the computer, you of course saw everything your opponent did... Would be interesting to see all players in this mod, as it feels like a singleplayer game at times, only seeing other players for a brief period - and then someone is dead =p
Well, there is a statistics bar (button at top right corner), where you can see some info about other players, and some ppl even complained that it make the game too transparent. And there is a reveal spell, which players can use to find out where other players are and what they do. So, there is alot of information to feel you're not alone. And it doesn't feel realy cool when someone attacks your army from the back when you fight monsters. Most of players would prefer to keep their deeds in secret.
And yes, I'll add a buoyant sound of week start like it was in homm 3. Dunno about days, any repeating signal may become obtrusive. Though, there is a tax notification presently appears every day, hope it may be enougth.
i recently picked up HoMoM II again, and one thing i really noticed when playing it was meaninful choices. By the time one week had gone by you could have almost every unit in the arsenal, besides the ultimate one, and almost a full mages guild. Now, I dunno if you've already taken this into consideration in your game, but it's a good tip i think.
Make "regular" units cost special resources, or make it so when you build one unit producing structure, another one is eliminated. Something along those lines.
i recently picked up HoMoM II again, and one thing i really noticed when playing it was meaninful choices. By the time one week had gone by you could have almost every unit in the arsenal, besides the ultimate one, and almost a full mages guild.
Is there that much difference between HOMM 2 and HOMM 3, 4, and 5? Since in all the other HOMMs, you can only build one building a week, that's 7 buildings by the end of one week. That is at most all 7 dwellings of your city, without any upgrades. And building those means you don't have room for a City Hall (for more gold), Fort (more growth) or blacksmith, let alone 5 ranks of a mages guild.
as someone who never played HoMM (any of them) i'll give you my thoughts
first the UI (showing where the skills were) seemed to be a bit messy since it was overlapping the usual UI i'd recommend either putting it in the normal UI or getting rid of the transparent effect
second there needs to be some clearer movement of units around, your tips/tutorial seemed inadequate and i didn't have a clue how to move units around until random clicks showed me how to move them (if you could put a glow effect around a selected portrait and leave a gap between the castle army and the hero army that would help alot i think)
adding some tooltips would be very helpful to some of the structures, ie does a magic tower in a city give you spells or is it the runes in the field?
i had no clue that when i got 8 or however many skills it was i wouldn't be able to get any others
speaking of leveling when do you get a level? an xp bar might be helpful
a few things i think were bugs
the phoenix thing, for the elves, fire effect remained for a couple of seconds after it had despawned
I remember HoMM a ton. Having the 1st through the 4th, I was very happy with the series; that is until HoMM 4 ruined it. I've seen HoMM 5 and 6 and quite honestly, despite how awesome the successors look, nothing can match the epic scale and polish HoMM 3 had. I remember map making on that game, having 2 worlds vs each other (using the subterranean system as the rival planet). My god the campaigns were insane.
When I was mapping for War3, my first project was making HoMM 3 into an RTS. This is more true to the Turned based though, from what I see. Mine was literally HoMM 3 in RTS form, including placing of the buildings, walls and controlling the armies by units like common RTSs. Your's rings of the HoMM aura. It looks very bland though. The combat system is the one part of the game that seems very lacking. It's epic how basically the encounters are real time like they are, but there is very little control and finesse available. It looks mainly all down to the spell casting of one's hero. Because of the lack of control, you won't achieve the tactical power of even a regular RTS styled combat system. Also, unlike HoMM battles, this Real Time combat system with no set boundaries can let allies tag team enemies. HoMM of course only let one instance happen at once. With this, a player with supreme skill could go though 2 or 3 heroes worth before they needed to retreat and reinforce. That wouldn't be possible in this mod unless the numbers simply stacked well for the tag teamed sap.
Because of the lack of intrigue in the battle system, this mod looks more appropriate as a regular 4X styled game, with far less features than most 4Xs would aspire to have. Because (in the nature of HoMM) everything is purely military, the 4X feel is even incomplete. I can't wait to try it out once it's on the US servers, but I'd have to say that I worry about that battle system. I don't wanna' see a "single unit represents" a stack. But I will digress that the current spamming of units in front of one's Hero won't suffice well.
I'll ask someone to upload it on NA when I finish it.
And, guys, thnx for your opinions. I'll improve some of things you've mentioned. Some of them I can't imoprove because of existing trigger system. I would make it in different way if I'd predict how'd it work. But still I have a long list of improvements, which will make the game best it can be.
Thought, I don't know when will I start to work on this mod again, because I can't stop working on civ mod. It's just feels funnier to create something new.
I cant play this cause there are never enough players, there needs to be a way to start games with less players, where if the host is afk the game starts, players don;t know to whisper an afk host, so i can't sit in a lobby w8ting for it to full up cause it wont ever fill up, would reather play with 5 or so than not at all ...
I'm a huge Heroes fan and really want to enjoy this. But I am running into some big issues.
On both of the last games, I've had it tell me "your hero is dead and you have no castles left" and declare defeat, when in fact I had both a hero and castles. The latter time was when I had no fewer than 6-7 castles remaining and my hero had recently come back to life.
There really needs to be a sound effect for when you lose a castle.
There also needs to be more of a warning when you stumble too close to an unoccupied castle and its huge garrison attacks you. Way too easy to accidentally stumble onto a castle and get your whole army massacred.
The sound effect for when you lose a mine is great, but it's often impossible to tell where it happened. A visual effect of some kind on the minimap would be a huge help if you can do that.
Not sure how much you can do about it, but frame rate nearly always becomes a huge issue, either from the start or after 20 minutes into the game.
I've had lots of issues with units failing to return to a hero after a huge battle with another hero.
I've also had major issues where my army starts chasing after an enemy hero who's running away and they can never quite catch up to him but I can't stop them, either, and end up spending 5 minutes running after him.
Since you're limiting this to a single hero, which is different from all the HoMM games, it becomes extremely difficult to manage larger empires or transfer units between castles. Consider adding a feature that would let you do this. I think one good way to solve it would be to have a building you could create that would let you transfer units to a "pocket dimension" or something like that, essentially a shared garrison between all the cities you own. So you could buy units in one city, load them into this shared garrison, and the unload them into the destination city's garrison, and from there, give them to your hero.
Anyway, it's been a blast, and I'm extremely impressed with what you've been able to do so far. It feels like it's an ambitious idea with just a few too many rough edges, and I hope you'll keep working on it and make it more playable.
1) How come the map is sometimes in spotlight, and sometimes not? When it's not no1 ever joins the lobby lol.
2) The victory conditions needs to be changed to X+Y bases, where X is the number of base the NEXT runner-up guy has, and Y is some constant, such as 5.
Eg/ If a guy has 8 bases, to win u can't just capture 9 bases, but rather 8+5 = 12 bases. I think that is better for many many reasons.
3) Allow more heroes per player. For example, 1 hero for every 2 base a player has. Currently there is simply no way to defend all ur bases with 1 hero.
Alternatively, u can let heroes automatically learn Town Portal from a Level 5 Magic Tower. That is another solution I think. Currently the best we have is Teleport, which is a rather short blink and is nowhere near enough.
4) Some spawn spots are currently just more disadvantaged than others. If i recall correctly, bottom right spawn spot is surrounded by tons of very strong creatures making it really hard at the start to expand.
5) When picking up items from treasure chest, code it to give a floating text, like when u pick up resources. eg/ "item picked up!"
6) Bug: when a hero with full inventory tries to pick up an item from a treasure chest, the hero's army spawns as if the chest was an enemy, and nothing happens. This obviously needs to be fixed, and prolly coded with "inventory full!". U might also want to allow items to be dropped, or even better, sold in markets.
7) In line with 6), allow market place to automatically trade ur resources for others (obviously at a high rate), like in the original HoMM. Trading with other players simply don't work. It's just silly to sometimes have like 80 sulphur that is completely useless.
8) Tax needs to be reduced. Currently it is far too high. In order to support a large army a person must bank VERY hard for VERY long. Due to the treasury, gold increases exponentially if banked. That means potential gold decreases exponentially when not banked.
So in fact MOST of the income is due to interest. Therefore when a person spends most of that gold to recruit, their income often becomes negative becoz of the loss in interest, as well as the massive tax. Tax should be reduced by at least 50%. This will discourage money hoarding, as well as people trying to keep a "minimum army" and keep delaying recruiting their real army.
9) When a player loses all his base, and all his army, he should be automatically defeated. A hero without an army cannot do ANYTHING at all at the moment, so yeah, having the hero respawn automatically 40 s later is just redundant.
10) Changing the loading screen info to Zolden#672 instead of Zolden#929. Supply an email or website to which people can report bugs. I also suggest u change the loading screen picture to something cooler :P Some suggestions below.
How can you call this HOMM without turn based battles?
As a HOMM fan myself I doubt Ill play this without the core mechanic of HOMM.
I tried to save most homm things. But the idea was to make it in realtime. And as a homm fan as well, I can say: it feels as hommy as it could be in realtime. And, the turns are actually present. There are days and weeks, and you can build once in a day and you recieve new units to hire one a week. And spells in battles need time to cooldown, so it feels like there are turns...
Why would I watch a 40 minute video about your map? I could easily play a round in that time.
Next time make a highlight video and just use the gamesounds. :)
Looking forward to the update!
Dustin, you ahve to use your imagination, come on!
A couple questions: 1. What HOMM is this a remake of? 2. I realize there is a realtime system, Im assuming there will be an additional game mode for a turn based battle? If not, I ask that you please implement it or consider doing so, as it is a core mechanic. Thank you!
1. Homm is a remake of kings of bounty or something.
2. I'm afraid, it's too late to make battles turn based, because the whole system of triggers is about realtime process. And I think, this game could be rather better if I would make units stack, instead of making it turn based.
I actually enjoyed the RTS-feel more than having a turn based, slow, approach (and yes, I own and used to play the original, HOMM 3).
The only thing I think you should add is make days/weeks more clear to the player.
Another thing I miss is glancing at my opponents' actions =P Like when I played HOMM 3 with friends, sharing the computer, you of course saw everything your opponent did... Would be interesting to see all players in this mod, as it feels like a singleplayer game at times, only seeing other players for a brief period - and then someone is dead =p
Well, there is a statistics bar (button at top right corner), where you can see some info about other players, and some ppl even complained that it make the game too transparent. And there is a reveal spell, which players can use to find out where other players are and what they do. So, there is alot of information to feel you're not alone. And it doesn't feel realy cool when someone attacks your army from the back when you fight monsters. Most of players would prefer to keep their deeds in secret.
And yes, I'll add a buoyant sound of week start like it was in homm 3. Dunno about days, any repeating signal may become obtrusive. Though, there is a tax notification presently appears every day, hope it may be enougth.
Fucking nice! I am sure I will play it lot and I am sure it wont make further than page 4 in popularity.
i recently picked up HoMoM II again, and one thing i really noticed when playing it was meaninful choices. By the time one week had gone by you could have almost every unit in the arsenal, besides the ultimate one, and almost a full mages guild. Now, I dunno if you've already taken this into consideration in your game, but it's a good tip i think.
Make "regular" units cost special resources, or make it so when you build one unit producing structure, another one is eliminated. Something along those lines.
Is there that much difference between HOMM 2 and HOMM 3, 4, and 5? Since in all the other HOMMs, you can only build one building a week, that's 7 buildings by the end of one week. That is at most all 7 dwellings of your city, without any upgrades. And building those means you don't have room for a City Hall (for more gold), Fort (more growth) or blacksmith, let alone 5 ranks of a mages guild.
as someone who never played HoMM (any of them) i'll give you my thoughts
a few things i think were bugs
thats my thoughts after an hour of playing that.
to sum up: put tooltips in
p.s. do you only ever get one hero?
@Zolden: Go
I remember HoMM a ton. Having the 1st through the 4th, I was very happy with the series; that is until HoMM 4 ruined it. I've seen HoMM 5 and 6 and quite honestly, despite how awesome the successors look, nothing can match the epic scale and polish HoMM 3 had. I remember map making on that game, having 2 worlds vs each other (using the subterranean system as the rival planet). My god the campaigns were insane. When I was mapping for War3, my first project was making HoMM 3 into an RTS. This is more true to the Turned based though, from what I see. Mine was literally HoMM 3 in RTS form, including placing of the buildings, walls and controlling the armies by units like common RTSs. Your's rings of the HoMM aura. It looks very bland though. The combat system is the one part of the game that seems very lacking. It's epic how basically the encounters are real time like they are, but there is very little control and finesse available. It looks mainly all down to the spell casting of one's hero. Because of the lack of control, you won't achieve the tactical power of even a regular RTS styled combat system. Also, unlike HoMM battles, this Real Time combat system with no set boundaries can let allies tag team enemies. HoMM of course only let one instance happen at once. With this, a player with supreme skill could go though 2 or 3 heroes worth before they needed to retreat and reinforce. That wouldn't be possible in this mod unless the numbers simply stacked well for the tag teamed sap. Because of the lack of intrigue in the battle system, this mod looks more appropriate as a regular 4X styled game, with far less features than most 4Xs would aspire to have. Because (in the nature of HoMM) everything is purely military, the 4X feel is even incomplete. I can't wait to try it out once it's on the US servers, but I'd have to say that I worry about that battle system. I don't wanna' see a "single unit represents" a stack. But I will digress that the current spamming of units in front of one's Hero won't suffice well.
why are all the maps i wanna play all in EU? :(
I'll ask someone to upload it on NA when I finish it.
And, guys, thnx for your opinions. I'll improve some of things you've mentioned. Some of them I can't imoprove because of existing trigger system. I would make it in different way if I'd predict how'd it work. But still I have a long list of improvements, which will make the game best it can be.
Thought, I don't know when will I start to work on this mod again, because I can't stop working on civ mod. It's just feels funnier to create something new.
I cant play this cause there are never enough players, there needs to be a way to start games with less players, where if the host is afk the game starts, players don;t know to whisper an afk host, so i can't sit in a lobby w8ting for it to full up cause it wont ever fill up, would reather play with 5 or so than not at all ...
tell ppl in the game screen to join the chat channel too so when enough players finally arrive they can whisper each other ... to get a game going
alright, ty
I'm a huge Heroes fan and really want to enjoy this. But I am running into some big issues.
Anyway, it's been a blast, and I'm extremely impressed with what you've been able to do so far. It feels like it's an ambitious idea with just a few too many rough edges, and I hope you'll keep working on it and make it more playable.
Transferring suggestions over from Bnet forums:
1) How come the map is sometimes in spotlight, and sometimes not? When it's not no1 ever joins the lobby lol.
2) The victory conditions needs to be changed to X+Y bases, where X is the number of base the NEXT runner-up guy has, and Y is some constant, such as 5.
Eg/ If a guy has 8 bases, to win u can't just capture 9 bases, but rather 8+5 = 12 bases. I think that is better for many many reasons.
3) Allow more heroes per player. For example, 1 hero for every 2 base a player has. Currently there is simply no way to defend all ur bases with 1 hero.
Alternatively, u can let heroes automatically learn Town Portal from a Level 5 Magic Tower. That is another solution I think. Currently the best we have is Teleport, which is a rather short blink and is nowhere near enough.
4) Some spawn spots are currently just more disadvantaged than others. If i recall correctly, bottom right spawn spot is surrounded by tons of very strong creatures making it really hard at the start to expand.
5) When picking up items from treasure chest, code it to give a floating text, like when u pick up resources. eg/ "item picked up!"
6) Bug: when a hero with full inventory tries to pick up an item from a treasure chest, the hero's army spawns as if the chest was an enemy, and nothing happens. This obviously needs to be fixed, and prolly coded with "inventory full!". U might also want to allow items to be dropped, or even better, sold in markets.
7) In line with 6), allow market place to automatically trade ur resources for others (obviously at a high rate), like in the original HoMM. Trading with other players simply don't work. It's just silly to sometimes have like 80 sulphur that is completely useless.
8) Tax needs to be reduced. Currently it is far too high. In order to support a large army a person must bank VERY hard for VERY long. Due to the treasury, gold increases exponentially if banked. That means potential gold decreases exponentially when not banked.
So in fact MOST of the income is due to interest. Therefore when a person spends most of that gold to recruit, their income often becomes negative becoz of the loss in interest, as well as the massive tax. Tax should be reduced by at least 50%. This will discourage money hoarding, as well as people trying to keep a "minimum army" and keep delaying recruiting their real army.
9) When a player loses all his base, and all his army, he should be automatically defeated. A hero without an army cannot do ANYTHING at all at the moment, so yeah, having the hero respawn automatically 40 s later is just redundant.
10) Changing the loading screen info to Zolden#672 instead of Zolden#929. Supply an email or website to which people can report bugs. I also suggest u change the loading screen picture to something cooler :P Some suggestions below.
http://blogs.suburbanchicagonews.com/games/UBISOFT_Might%26Magic_25th_Final_Logo.JPG
or
http://fc09.deviantart.net/fs50/f/2009/329/b/8/Heroes_of_might_and_magic_by_hgjart.jpg
or
http://wallhits.com/data/media/5/game_heroes_of_might_and_magic_5_06_1600x1200.jpg
or
http://screens.latestscreens.com/pc/screenshots/mightmagicheroesvi/MMH6_Danse_Macabre_Screenshot_02.jpg
or
http://i.imgur.com/ocpLG.jpg