H3SW General Discussion

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might be very hard to implement since they have never existed before.

Like I said: I made those up almost instantly and without much thinking, so my proposed abilities should be taken as sketchy examples, and not as viable ideas.

We present the second trailer of the project beta, originally shown at Streamfest 2019 event in Moscow, April 27th.
Although the contents of the video are mostly based on actual v0.8.x mod builds, those who pay attention may find some new surprises.

I just found this and had to register so I could post how excited I am about this project. I downloaded it and played around with it a little and it is awesome. Best news I have had in a long time.

I always though HOMM3 had the best mechanics of all the HOMM games, but H2 had the best atmosphere. This is a beautiful blend of the two.

Can't wait for the Succession Wars original campaigns (Roland and Archibald) to be released - even if this ends up being a string of scenarios like you did for the H1 campaign.

Thanks guys this is great!

Hey Drindome

Thank you so much!! It is always nice to hear someone is enjoying the mod About the original campaigns we got some nice plans and progress done already, but don't expect anything too soon.

Sir Albe wrote:

About the original campaigns we got some nice plans and progress done already, but don't expect anything too soon.

Yes! Thanks Sir Albe. Sounds promising. Anything worthwhile takes time. Something to look forward to down the road.

-Lord Drindome

Hello community!

I am a long time HoMM 2 player, and I just recently discovered this mod. Originally I thought this is going to be a half-baked buggy asset trip, but after playing for hours I was suprised about the general quality. Sure I encountered some missing assets and some graphical glitches, but it wasn't serious.
I was even very sceptical about the new factions, but they were very nice too, the new assets fitted very well the original look and feel of HoMM2.

This experience got me thinking, that maybe this mod worth finishing up, so may question is: is there a way I can contribute?

I am currently working as a Senior iOS application developer (I mainly use Swift and Objective-C), but I have basic knowledge of several other languages and I am happy to pick up some skills in order to contribute.

Who ever has some information about this, please contact me.

Best regards.
(Discord: Daedelus#2370)

Hello and Welcome here Daedelus.

Patience, it can take several days to get an answer but nobody is forgotten.

Hi daedelus

I am glad to hear that you enjoy the mod and even more, that you offer us your help. We could definitely use some help on the programming, but I am not aware of what exactly needs to be done. I will need to get in contact with Orzie as he is the one who knows, how things are going on the programming side of the project. Please stay tuned while I talk with Orzie and maybe we can figure something out

Hello!

If you read this message, please proceed to Facebook messenger so we can contact there in a live chat. Or, if that is not an option, you can use PM or emails here.

https://www.facebook.com/thesuccessionwarsmod/

I don't have experience in Discord and won't be able to start gaining it in the coming month (just lack of time, to be honest), but I wouldn't like to lose contact.

daedelus wrote:

Hello community!

I am a long time HoMM 2 player, and I just recently discovered this mod. Originally I thought this is going to be a half-baked buggy asset trip, but after playing for hours I was suprised about the general quality. Sure I encountered some missing assets and some graphical glitches, but it wasn't serious.
I was even very sceptical about the new factions, but they were very nice too, the new assets fitted very well the original look and feel of HoMM2.
(Discord: Daedelus#2370)

I had the same thought. I'm checking the forum every several months and I'm quite scared that mod will get abandoned. This wouldn't be too great because it actually feels really close to be 'complete'.

There are several issues, minor glitches, missing campaing feature and according to some trailers, revamp of spell system incoming but besides that it really feels complete and high quality.

But of course I understand that fan-made side project can be very time consuming and everyone has private life, work etc. so its hard to dedicate on something like that.

Perhaps if Orzie would post some project roadmap it could be easier for community to help?

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There are several issues, minor glitches, missing campaing feature and according to some trailers, revamp of spell system incoming but besides that it really feels complete and high quality.

There is damn lot of missing features and ideas, and complete lack of time for bringing them to life, including making necessary tutorials for the people to learn from.

Currently, we are trying to bring up the campaign mechanics so that v0.8.2 can be released. We are always in need of 2D artists who are not afraid of some pixel hunting, because almost every asset in the game could benefit from that.

Still, the major bottleneck is in programming, and there are no guides to help the people help us.

It would be good to release v0.8.2 in 2020, we'll see how it goes.

Orzie wrote:

There is damn lot of missing features and ideas, and complete lack of time for bringing them to life, including making necessary tutorials for the people to learn from.

Currently, we are trying to bring up the campaign mechanics so that v0.8.2 can be released. We are always in need of 2D artists who are not afraid of some pixel hunting, because almost every asset in the game could benefit from that.

Still, the major bottleneck is in programming, and there are no guides to help the people help us.

It would be good to release v0.8.2 in 2020, we'll see how it goes.

Thats why I was writing about roadmap. If we (I mean - community) know what is going on project, what are the plans, we could support this.

For example - the version 0.8.1 is very close to be 100% playable - but crashes related to necromancer city and lack of campaing mode is taking the project down. Probably, the better case is to focus on short term gains - fixing minor ballance issues, necromancer city crash or lack of upgrates in certain cities is probably way easier to go through than waiting until spell system is overhauled.

If I was project manager in this case, I'd first focus on fixing random crashes when playing necromancer, then focus on adding missing features (like campaing mode) and finally develop new spell system. Why is that? Lets assume we have some articical (and subjective of course) metrics that we call "playabaility value" - it will try to answer how much is H3SW playable.

As a player that spend a lot of time in H3SW, I'd judge it this way:

- necromancer city is randomly crashing, I'd say that this is worth like -0.3 of playability score. why? because whenever I enter the game, I cannot "just play" - I must be aware that I cannot play one of the races (necromancer) and I should avoid entering captured necro cities to avoid crashes. I cannot play the game 100% as I must avoid certain features given to me because they crash
- there are unballanced creature banks - this makes some sort of features unuseable but they do not have a BUG. creature banks are too strong for h2 environment to handle but game is still playable because I must avoid it for balancing reasons, not technical (crash/glitch) reasons so I'd value it as -0.05
- there are no campaing suppor at all. this is hard to judge, but in situation where everything works flawlessly and is perfectly balanced, I'd consider campaing support as like +0.1 value, so its "above" target. this is because game is totally playable but it does not feature linked scenarios.
- overhauled spell system seems like a must because original h3 spell system is terrible. but, original spells were in game for 22 years and were implemented without changing in other mods like VCMI or HOTA - so while I hate current spell system, any improvement I'd see like a +0.X value, an improvement OVER the playability threshold.

Considering this, I'd firstly focus on getting to 1.000 playability value so I'd first focus on something like necro city crrash and creature banks, THEN I'd consider taking on campaing mode and THEN on rewrite of spell system. This way you could bring project value in shorter timespans, just my mind flow to give you an example:

1) i'm not playing H3SW because one of cities is making game crash all the time so I feel like I'm playing incomplete thing
2) i wish i could develop some campaings to H3SW but feature is not available for now
3) i'd love to see more balanced spell system as an improvement to original H3 game

As for example, If you push 3) onto live, it wont really matter for me (subjective I know) because I wont play it until there are no more random crashes on regular basis. This is just to give you an example how others people may take project.

So i'd say first major issue on project is to lack on public and official roadmap - what is being developed, when it started, where is the estimate of the end and what it brings to overall project value.

But there is more - project is closed source. I see you Orzie complain about that there are

[quote]no guides to help the people help us.[/qoote]

and I feel that the problem is that project is closed source. I know that you or your team worked hard to bring this mod into life and its very hard to publish source of your hard work, but in order to keep project healthy I think its an NECCESSARY step. It took like 10+ years for microsoft to realize that but they finally open sourced their hard work in form of some parts of C# or TypeScript or Edge browser or Visual Studio Code toolkit - and this increases trust for company, because if they scrap the project - other can fork it and continue on.

I see this a common problem in H3 modding that people dont generally open-source their work. WOG project is dead because it took like seven years until 3.59 version was turned open source and it was simply too late for anyone to care. The same issue can be with HOTA as they modify game exe really hard but its still closed-source model. If it was not - you could simply add new city to H3SW based on their code, how they did it so we have some sort of knowledge sharing there.

If any unprecticable situation occur in Orzie life - be it an accident (I hope it never happens of course), lack of time due to daily work/family time or simply lack of motivation to continue project - H3SW dies immediately without any further hope. For open source project if an author retires - community can still continue work.

Just take an example how generally humanity achieves things - its never just a simple "one dudes comes and does everything from scratch to 100%" thing. Lets get an example from moon landing by US in 196X years:

- they have like thousands of years of knowledge about starts, moon and general astrology to begin with
- they have very good knowledge of Einsteins theories about time & gravity to base upon
- Einsten theories are based on Newtons laws how gravity, attraction and oribits work
- they have v2 rockets from german engineers that developed it originally for WW2 advantage
- they added their own contribution on that knowledge pot to bring first humans onto moon

See that they never implemented everything on their own - instead they took thousands of years of knowledge and added some part from their on that made first people to walk on moon. If ever Elon Musk will send people on Mars - its hardly effort of him & his company as they will be using knowledge of all those points above PLUS knowledge about spacecraft development and landing on other celestial bodies.

There is literally NO REASON to keep H3SW closed-source and making it open-source would open possibilities for other people to contribute and bring project back on track. The other good example could be Node.js - an open source javascript runtime that allows to launch console applications by using javascript. It begin as one people project, over the years community split to various forks as everyone had their own idea how should project work - but FINALLY they all merged again into sinple beautiful project that is baseline for being most performant tool to develop HTTP server applications. This is perfect example where community won over single person and we have real and useful project that was made by many people.

From my point of view, 10 years of commercial software engineer (C++, Java, some assembly and then mostly Frontend with JS/TypeScript) - if there was documented open source H3SW on github, I'd gladly clone it and TRY if I manage to understand whats going on here. If I could - I'd proably contribute to the project for the greater good. I'm not sure if I could manage but having the project open source would make me at least TRY to help. Now I cannot do anything for H3SW to continue.

So, summarizing my point of view:
- I think H3SW should have clear milestones and roadmap
- I think H3SW should be as docummented as possible and open sourced

This way me and many other people would easier contribute to project and help with it.

Anyways, thanks Orzie for great job around the project and I wish you best luck with it

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Thats why I was writing about roadmap. If we (I mean - community) know what is going on project, what are the plans, we could support this.

For example - the version 0.8.1 is very close to be 100% playable - but crashes related to necromancer city and lack of campaing mode is taking the project down. Probably, the better case is to focus on short term gains - fixing minor ballance issues, necromancer city crash or lack of upgrates in certain cities is probably way easier to go through than waiting until spell system is overhauled.

The Necromancer crash seems to be fixed for v0.8.2.

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If I was project manager in this case, I'd first focus on fixing random crashes when playing necromancer, then focus on adding missing features (like campaing mode) and finally develop new spell system. Why is that? Lets assume we have some articical (and subjective of course) metrics that we call "playabaility value" - it will try to answer how much is H3SW playable.

This is all nice and I love that you care so much. Thing is: everything you mentioned is already being worked on. Both campaigns and spell mechanics are the key features for v0.8.2 update. We are not blind, trust us. We don't have time to bring them just yet. It's not about the lack of planning, it's about the absolute lack of time to commit to the project currently. As a musician, I am in a very hard time during the pandemic. My industry is frozen, and it will be the last to recover from all industries ever.

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1) i'm not playing H3SW because one of cities is making game crash all the time so I feel like I'm playing incomplete thing
2) i wish i could develop some campaings to H3SW but feature is not available for now
3) i'd love to see more balanced spell system as an improvement to original H3 game

The crash is caused by the broken building mask of upgraded Lich dwelling. Every time you hover the mouse over it, you get the memory leak, which are accumulating over time. I can give you the quick fix so that you can test the game for us. This will be helpful.

New campaigns for H3SW, I'm afraid is a long story, and will require a lot of guidelines to satisfy the original concept. I wouldn't recommend to count on that in the following months. Only when the Heretic faction will be up, something can happen, and even then, you must understand that we cannot promise anything to people without them showing their skills in mapmaking.

I also don't promise any substantial balance upgrade, too. To speak about balance, you will need to create an isolated system with strictly defined gameplay rules. In modern Heroes 3, this is Jebus Cross RMG template. Given that we removed one of the key elements of that gameplay (conservatories), a new balance system is to be designed, also based on a selection of RMG templates. All other games are, so to speak, subjectively balanced, just like it is in Heroes 2.

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So i'd say first major issue on project is to lack on public and official roadmap - what is being developed, when it started, where is the estimate of the end and what it brings to overall project value.

I don't see a necessity of an official roadmap as well as I disagree with the proposed open source nature of the project. Currently, we do not have time to clean up the code so that it can be presented on GitHub. I described the reason. We do not try to limit the people's knowledge about the game, but we are currently not in the shape to bring the information. Making guides is a different task than development, and we struggle to find time for the latter already. Ideally, we'd do it, but it's not going to be the matter of discussion in the following months. This is for sure.

As a side note, open source never helped Heroes 3 mods, and it's not going to help now. What keeps H3SW consistent is the design ideas which I always tried to enforce, arguing about these or those suggestions, explaining to people why their Gargoyles cannot go to Wizard even though they like it the H3 way (as one of the most notorious examples). What you get is the forks, not the development of the original idea. Finally, WoG is open source and VCMI is open source. None of the projects are around to this day, which only contributes to the argument. For now, we just speak about the closed GitHub profile for the people volunteering to do some reverse-engineering/programming work, and this step is the only step we are going to take, at least for now.

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There is literally NO REASON to keep H3SW closed-source and making it open-source would open possibilities for other people to contribute and bring project back on track. The other good example could be Node.js - an open source javascript runtime that allows to launch console applications by using javascript. It begin as one people project, over the years community split to various forks as everyone had their own idea how should project work - but FINALLY they all merged again into sinple beautiful project that is baseline for being most performant tool to develop HTTP server applications. This is perfect example where community won over single person and we have real and useful project that was made by many people.

All successful Heroes 3 mods are closed source. There are not too many to be named, but I explained the point above: all of them have designers and coordinators.
I'm not saying that I am strictly against open source, but you just don't understand the scale of the problem. I don't want you to feel bad about me saying this, and I will take the point into consideration, but I am physically unable to change the situation anytime soon.

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From my point of view, 10 years of commercial software engineer (C++, Java, some assembly and then mostly Frontend with JS/TypeScript) - if there was documented open source H3SW on github, I'd gladly clone it and TRY if I manage to understand whats going on here. If I could - I'd proably contribute to the project for the greater good. I'm not sure if I could manage but having the project open source would make me at least TRY to help. Now I cannot do anything for H3SW to continue.

For now, we will try to make a closed GitHub page to store the current achievements. There is no need to make it open for now, though: the project has a coordinator for a reason.

In short words: I have no illusion about the project's playability and I understand pretty much what are the current problems of the project.

It is all about the free time, and substantial life changes. I don't have time to translate the design document from Russian, I don't have time for graphics, I don't have time for supporting 2 official forums of the project. I am unable to work my every evening on the project like it was during 2017-2019. If I quit setting my life on the rail, and work on the project like before, I will end up on streets, which are cold here in Russia. So, I need time to set things up. Not so much differences for some other Russian team members, it's either free time, or their involvement in HotA.

The latest try to make some kind of a project roadmap was in 2015. The real situation is not very different from now.

For v0.8.2, the main focus is classic campaigns (maps already converted, alternative mission mechanics are done, scenario awards are not done), 80+ new maps (already converted), mass-versions of spells. We could benefit from people who are already experienced in Heroes 3 reverse engineering, but we cannot do much with fresh people without them gaining experience "on the field", so to speak. I do have time for coordination, but not for setting the project naked for everyone to see.

Is possible to restore the Homm2 vanilla spell animation?

Hello guys.

Things more moving in slow motion here, yet I still enjoy playing the mod very much.
I would still like to help @Orzie, maybe I could do some bug fixes.
But I need a little guidance at the beginning.

My brothers, I just dropped by to wish you the best of luck for the next update and life in general, whenever you will have time to finish it, it doesn't matter. Just wanted to give you some positive vibes. I haven't posted anything in some time but I always had an eye for this community.

I truly hope you are all safe, healthy and have not suffered too much from this chinese virus! Best wishes, luck and strength!

Thank you so much Taiyoumaru for your kind words

I can tell you that work is going a bit slow, but steadily. Right now a lot of nice graphical changes are in place, so that H3SW will be even prettier

Hello everyone, i really liked playing the map that is called good to go i think, you start with every unit and buildings.

The problem is i have found a annoying crash when entering the necromancer city, it doesnt happen in the start.

Could someone fix this crash?

I have sent the crash report and hopefully you have received it.

Right now the necromancer city in good to go map is a unplayable town.

Thanks for your help!

Hey Werebion The Necromancer town crash is a known issue, but as far as I remember, it has already been fixed and thus the next version will not contain this bug.

It is time for The Succession Wars Mod to set sail into 2021!!
The next update of H3SW will bring H2 styled flags on all boats, so that you can enjoy the sweet H2 graphics at sea as well.

All the colors of the wind... In the next version of H3SW you can use all the H2 styled flags you want on your boats. Which do you like the most?

I would pick the south-west boat... Because the flag isn't glitching

3 boats have the shadow in a wrong direction.

ps: I always love to see H3SW screenshots! Thanks Sir Albe

I've just noticed that random maps are unbalanced in campare to old good scenarios.
During later game many heroes have above +20 of one or more skills.
This is unbalanced due to too pawerfull artifacts and buildings/trees which give you +1/+2 skill for free.
Anyway it is easy to disable specific buildings & artifacts in RMG Template Editor and make new RMGTemplates in the spirit of H2

True, RMG games tend to go towards very high hero stats which we are aware of. One thing we have looked into is removing the effect of duplicate artifacts, meaning you will only the +16 att bonus from one Ultimate Sword of Dominion and cannot stack up on these. Another thing maybe changing the templates as you say, but we haven't look much into that yet