I highly admire projects like this. Something even as simple as a core engine rewrite is a spiritual undertaking. I do not recall if Heroes 3 was multiplayer or not, but making the game multiplayer over TCP required the engine to limit itself to the use of integers since a single floating point would butterfly effect its way into destabilizing the lockstep system used in peer to peer networking. AMD / INTEL / POWERPC systems of the day (and even today) have millions of flags to configure the FPU at compile time.<p>As a shameless plug, and if anyone's interested, I'm doing something similar with Age of Empires 2: <a href="https://github.com/glouw/openempires" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/glouw/openempires</a>
I think I have the Linux version of this game in my attic.<p>Steam and GOG had big sales through the end of December that had me looking at some old games like this. I thought about getting some Microprose games to spare me the trouble of copying them from 5.25" and 3.5" floppies (if they're even readable anymore), but I figured it was just as well to leave the graphics and gameplay to my rose-colored memory.<p>It did get me thinking about what it takes to bring classic games to a modern audience. Grim Fandango and Age of Empires have gotten updates, primarily to the assets. The negative reviews tend to focus on old-fashioned gameplay, or bugs that <i>still</i> haven't been fixed after umpteen years.<p>A project like this reminds me of the ScummVM engines, which basically provide a new platform for old assets. It's harder to get excited about this, because it's just one game.
the recent revival of hmm on ios by a major editor ( can’t remember the name) was such a disappointment... They completely changed the gameplay to adapt it to the current trend of buying things on the store to progress faster...<p>There’s such a big opportunity for a simple port of hmm on mobile with regular gameplay and maybe a small refresh of the graphics !
Heroes of Might and Magic (specifically 2 and 3) and Worms (the 2D ones like Armageddon), were the pinnacle of multiplayer entertainment for me.<p>Sure, there were quicker fixes, like Street Fighter etc., then later the convenience of online with Warcraft 2, StarCraft (dialing up directly to your friend's computer), but..<p>Having a couple friends come over and having some good natured competition, seeing their reactions in person, having to think up strategies in a way that wouldn't make it apparent what you were going to do, the shifting alliances of teaming up against whoever was winning, the impromptu bets and bargains...<p>That was a kind of fun that I haven't seen replicated since.<p>Startup Idea: A sort of alternative arcade for hotseat PC games like that.
I wish there also was an open-source engine for WarCraft 2, with modern AI, big screen resolutions support but without the drawbacks of modern RTS games like GPU power requirements (making it hard to play them on commodity hardware) and excessive graphics complexity (making map and tile design hard).
Aren't there copyright issues with this game? Not that I'm against developing it anyways, but - wouldn't the organizers/leads get into trouble with Ubisoft?
Nice. There is a open source engine for the original X-Com games - OpenXcom. I recently started playing a total conversion mod for it called X-Piratez. Its a total blast.