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
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.
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 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!
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)
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.
This is a surprisingly saturated category as far as alternative OSS engines go
It is not good at it! And very slow! I tried to improve, teach strategies, write some analysis scripts, etc. Did not help much.
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!
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 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/