Interesting that this is on front page. I thought HOMM is quite niche right now. I'm still spending some time on HOMM3 and recently created mcp for Claude Code (with opus 5.5) to play it - you can look at short playthrough here:
https://www.youtube.com/live/uU-vvTOZFQY
It is not good at it! And very slow! I tried to improve, teach strategies, write some analysis scripts, etc. Did not help much.
HOMM was niche when it came out. The genre was always petite and a few studios here and there is all that the market could ever support. This is why a well-executed game like HOMM 3 for example has such a high stickiness factor. The brand loyalty is almost built in given the type of audience it attracts.
I see a lot of people doing recreations of games (or simply new ones) but I've noticed that there's just some ick-factor (hard to explain), in addition to performance issues, and just plain old bugs.
It's amazing what can be built using vibe-coding, but it still feels far away from actually being able to create proper games with soul.
I'm not sure if meant to ask if this project is an ai-recreation. I just wanted to say that the fheroes2 project is much older than that. I was playing with it during covid (if I remember right).
I suppose it's possible that they have changed development practices recently, but I think you can probably enjoy it without guilt if that worries you!
Adding 2c, because I am building stuff with near zero previous game building experience.
I don't think you are that far off. It did get remarkably easy to get to a working prototype and get ideas you carried all those years in your head, but then you get to see how well they fare in reality. Worse, some combinations of those ideas don't mesh well with others.
Example, among other things, I am building a.. protest simulator based on Chicago riots ( not plopped anywhere.. it is still not balanced based on AI vs AI results so far). The basic location, sprites, system is in place, but the overall .. dunno.. there is something missing ( edit: though atm, violence is minimal by design and I wonder if that needs to be present even if it is rare ).
I guess what I am saying is: AI can you get pretty far with the initial build, but your guiding hand is still what counts for making it good.
You’re not wrong but there are only so many game designers out there who have a distinct style and an art director who is a bit unhinged. Moreso when it’s a style that isn’t obviously trying to sell you something, which is unfortunately a pit many indie games fall into as they race to be a better version of what they saw other successful indie games do. It was already a saturated product before AI
In general terms, the machine can do the coding, you have to provide the soul. It's no different from the tons of human-made shovelware with no clear direction.
I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for. There's no soul and games don't have them.
You have some kind of subjective feeling of nostalgia (or something else) and want to pin it on AI-assisted development. That's real for you, but not objective.
May be niche but I actually bought HoMM2 last week on GOG to replace my aged CD, what a coincidence.
Heroes 2 in particular and Might and Magic 2 (Gates to Another World, the RPG blobber) are some of my favorite games of all time. I also discovered there was a Mega Drive (Genesis for you Americans) port of King's Bounty, the predecessor to HOMM.
I may want to try what you did too, I managed to have a local Qwen 3.8 instance play M&M2 fairly successfully using dosbox-x and MCP, so I may be able to have it play HOMM2 too. Thanks for the idea!
I know it'll sadly never happen under Ubisoft's watch, but I would absolutely kill for a new HoMM game that combined HoMM2's graphical aesthetic with the game mechanics from HoMM3.
I've actually never played Wesnoth, although I've heard good things about it. I want to say that combat plays out more like the Civ series rather than having a dedicated "battle screen" you'd see in HoMM - at least based on the gameplay footage I've seen [1].
OTOH, can never have enough turn-based strategy games though so I should give it a shot!
VCMI is also available for Android. Mod support. New factions. Not that the depth or homm3 leaves anything to be desired, but it's really fun nonetheless to try new stuff :)
I also loved 3, "Songs of Conquest" has been an enjoyable spiritual successor for me recently even if the base game is quite limited on factions and a number of mechanics differ. I'm also keeping an eye on "Heroes of Might and Magic: Olden Era" when it eventually releases.
It's fun reading about the differences they've made regarding the AI computer players, giving them a more modern/better tactics vs the also interesting way it was implemented before (computer players being always able to see the full map and have extra creature growth)
I don’t think you develop this kind of things to be useful and solve problems. It’s more of a fun hobby project/homage kind of things. Maybe not everything has to have a purpose yk
There is this HoMM3: The Succession War total conversion mod for HoMM3 in the style of Heroes 2 which happens to have new factions for what looks like Heroes of M&M II.
It is not good at it! And very slow! I tried to improve, teach strategies, write some analysis scripts, etc. Did not help much.
https://www.youtube.com/live/jRi9cdo95As
It's amazing what can be built using vibe-coding, but it still feels far away from actually being able to create proper games with soul.
Or am I wrong?
I suppose it's possible that they have changed development practices recently, but I think you can probably enjoy it without guilt if that worries you!
I don't think you are that far off. It did get remarkably easy to get to a working prototype and get ideas you carried all those years in your head, but then you get to see how well they fare in reality. Worse, some combinations of those ideas don't mesh well with others.
Example, among other things, I am building a.. protest simulator based on Chicago riots ( not plopped anywhere.. it is still not balanced based on AI vs AI results so far). The basic location, sprites, system is in place, but the overall .. dunno.. there is something missing ( edit: though atm, violence is minimal by design and I wonder if that needs to be present even if it is rare ).
I guess what I am saying is: AI can you get pretty far with the initial build, but your guiding hand is still what counts for making it good.
If anything, things are harder now.
I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for. There's no soul and games don't have them.
You have some kind of subjective feeling of nostalgia (or something else) and want to pin it on AI-assisted development. That's real for you, but not objective.
Heroes 2 in particular and Might and Magic 2 (Gates to Another World, the RPG blobber) are some of my favorite games of all time. I also discovered there was a Mega Drive (Genesis for you Americans) port of King's Bounty, the predecessor to HOMM.
I may want to try what you did too, I managed to have a local Qwen 3.8 instance play M&M2 fairly successfully using dosbox-x and MCP, so I may be able to have it play HOMM2 too. Thanks for the idea!
I think it’s also popular in eastern Europe
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeEpTaU26pQgpMOAJZ-Eq...
(https://www.wesnoth.org/)
OTOH, can never have enough turn-based strategy games though so I should give it a shot!
[1] - https://imgur.com/a/Kgqz2tx
I have such fond memories of HOMAM3 and playing it in hot seat mode as a kid.
Interestingly the game is still massively popular in ex-Warsaw Pact countries. Although I think it’s having a resurgence in the US too.
[0] https://vcmi.eu/