Dervish Faction General Concept

Yeah, probably a some kind of poison attack could be great, yet we already have a lot of such abilities planned for the Witch lineup.

I understand what you mean concerning the night atmosphere. In fact, we thought about a lot of variants including the Arabian nights, but the thing we wanted to show on the first place was the hot temperature of the desert. There are 2 common variants which appear in our imagination when we think about a desert castle: either it's a plain blue sky with sun in zenith, and the mentioned concept of the Arabian nights.

The graphical trouble might appear when we will try to create nights: Heroes 2 3D renders are a bit sloppy, and we have to stick to H2 palette which is, you know, not so rich. Moreover, we risk to lose the visibility of the buildings.

Here is what we tried while experimenting with the skies.

But the trouble is that we cannot have complex atmosphere like in H3, so red sky of that kind is not fitting (not even mentioning that it's reserved for the Heretic).

The other variant which is present in Aladdin intro is the totally blue-ish buildings, which in fact also resembles Prince of Persia, but it doesn't really uncover the yellow color of the buildings which in fact must be present at all costs (we've got the castle featured on the adventure map, where no nights are present).


If you remember the first level of Aladdin (I loved that game too), he starts in a town just like ours. Moreover, daytime desert is also featured more often in that game, as well as the majority of other desert-themed games.


I still plan to feature the Arabian nights theme somehow. Perhaps it can be an upgrade of Rogues (the Brigands or Bandits) who will look exactly as Ali-baba's troops with faces covered in black.

Arabian Night could appear together with Grail. It will be just like having two towns in one

It's really hard to apply all this on buildings though. We will need to check, however.

I actually planned to make somewhat enhanced Rainbow (like sorceress one) as a grail building for good castles, Storm for Warlock, Necromancer and Inferno, and custom Grail buildings for Witch and Dervish.

Precisely this is why I don't like to give comments or suggestions. In most cases you guys already thought about it, but you got your reasons for not doing those things.
I understand the difficulty in the colour palette.
The problem with the colours of the building by night could be solved by adding a lot of torches or other fire sources (which are also present in the other castles) in the game.
But I'm pretty sure you already thought about that option and perhaps it's not possible to realise.

Anyway I'm pleased to hear that you already thought about it and I won't bug you with it anymore .

Quote :

The problem with the colours of the building by night could be solved by adding a lot of torches or other fire sources (which are also present in the other castles) in the game.

You can put the torches as objects, but lighting exists separately if we speak about drawing

Well, no problem, you seem to be the most polite speaker from anyone we conversed in the Development board

We will see what we can do about the implementation of night desert setting somehow somewhere.

Great. Looking forward to the release!

I found an old PC game called Arabian Nights, but on Russian language it's called in either russian or polish: "Orientalne Noce". This game is from Sylmarils and pretty unique to it's story. I have the game in spanish language so I can tell you it's unique story.

We start the entire story with a prince called Ali, who's mission is to save the 6 daughter of the sultan. Each of the princesses has at least 2 hidden messages can be found in their magical foundtain. If the prince drink the water from fountains, some hidden messages reveal about the current princess who you about to save. The prince also has magical preferences by using the rings can be found around the stages, there are 4 different rings can be found in the entire game, each of the rings has 3 levels of spell casting. In the very end of the story the prince must save the sultan too before face against 2 final bosses, one of them is somewhat similar to Jafar from Aladdin, who usurps the sultan's throne, after this evil nemesis dies, the other one is a short sultan with mighty power who actually can control his body to transform between either a sultan or a genie. The second one is complicated to kill.

The 4 magical rings are the next in-game:

1. an offensive spell casting ring
- Level 1: Fireball with minor explosion radius
- Level 2: Fireball with huge explosion radius
- Level 3: Triple Fireball w/ minor explosion radius & knockback force

2. a time slowing ring
- Level 1: Slows down a single target
- Level 2: Blinds multiple targets around
- Level 3: Cures your body from time affecting spells

3. a shield ring
- Level 1: Creates projectile shield in front of you protects from magical projectiles
- Level 2: Creates energy orbs through your body absorbs the lack of physical damage taken, rarely if the prince gonna flinch from damage taken
- Level 3: Creates energy orbs through your body which grants full physical damage immunity and the prince never gonna flinch from damage taken

4. a nature disaster ring
- Level 1: Creates a severe earthquake do slight damage to foes surround you
- Level 2: Electroshocking and one hit kills a single target in front of you
- Level 3: Makes you levitate from the ground and do atmospherical explosion to all foes standing on the ground

The prince can upgrade his turban and sword in later stages which increases magical durability and damage bonus. The prince can perform a one hit kill by sneaking behind foes and stab them on the back just like the Spy in Team Fortress 2. The prince also has equipment to throwing knives which grants one hit kill on headthrow, also has bombs which can be thrown to a short distance and explode in 1-2 seconds flat which do massive damage. In the prince equipment there are money can be used to purchase equipment items, also there are potions like: health potion, mana potion, poison potion, antidote potion, hallucinate potion and an extra potion type which has the exact same effect like like the shield ring's level 1 power (mana projectile shield).

I don't know if that unique story of Ali has something similar to Aladdin's story, but I know that his arsenal is overpowered.