Resurrection of fheroes2 with 0.8 version

Good day, fans, knights and trolls of Heroes of Might and Magic 2!

We're pleased to announce that open source project Free Heroes of Might and Magic II has just got a new release - 0.8 version with a plenty of delightful changes! Here is a short list of them:
- Major rework of battle animations including units, spells and heroes
- Implementation of color cycling to animate water/lava surfaces, adventure map objects and units
- Refining UI including scaling, responsiveness, alignment and content (both text and sprites)
- Implementation of missing spell effects such as Lightning, Armageddon, Death Wave as well as fixing many others
- Update render engine and added SDL 2 optimizations; better fullscreen and high resolution support
- Numerous game logic fixes including combat, spells, map, AI and pathfinding
- Improvement of music support and sound mapping, updated MIDI converter
- Add SMK video support
- Over 200 bugs fixed since 0.7 release

The original fheroes2 project was dead for many years while this project is significantly new (~11 months). However, despite of the short period of time the team made a vast amount of work trying to put the project to the right direction.



The project's growing and there's a lot of work to be done so it needs your support as players as well as some help from development and design/modding side! We're out of designers for now but we need them in order to at least fix problems with the original game graphics.

We also on a brainstorming stage for the future add-on once we fully replicate the game.

Hello ihhub,

I'm very happy with this new project, the progress compared to the last fheroes project is considerable, good job on that.

Count on me for help, I also just sent a private message to sirDranik to add a specific section to your project on this site, if you are interested and if GodRage (the webmaster) agrees.
The fheroes2 team seems to be really motivated.

I will start testing fheroes2 from late August or early September.
I also have lots of ideas and suggestions for the project.

Good motivation for the future.

Hi Unknown_Hero!

Thanks for your good words about the project Any extra information about the project is always welcome as well as any help in testing, developing, generating ideas too!

Unknown_Hero wrote:

Hello ihhub,

I'm very happy with this new project, the progress compared to the last fheroes project is considerable, good job on that.

Count on me for help, I also just sent a private message to sirDranik to add a specific section to your project on this site, if you are interested and if GodRage (the webmaster) agrees.
The fheroes2 team seems to be really motivated.

I will start testing fheroes2 from late August or early September.
I also have lots of ideas and suggestions for the project.

Good motivation for the future.

I'm very happy to see a renew of fHeroes2!!
And the work you did if very good.
The installation is a bit complex for a beginner (a setup.bat file that will open all the needed bat files would help you to get more players, but may grab some very young players ).
I hope you will find the help you need here!

We're planning to add a self-extracting archive which will execute the script to download demo version if user wants to. Any ideas about the ease for users are welcome!

sirDranik will create multiple topics today so you and other could put your suggestions and recommendations there.

GodRage wrote:

I'm very happy to see a renew of fHeroes2!!
And the work you did if very good.
The installation is a bit complex for a beginner (a setup.bat file that will open all the needed bat files would help you to get more players, but may grab some very young players   ).
I hope you will find the help you need here!

Is the game having extended options like what the android version has?

Right now our team is working on a remake of original homm2, so our goal is not to add new features, but to make a complete game without any bugs with a minor UI improvements and high resolution support.
Previous team made a couple of options, which worked not properly sometimes, and we are not going to support most of them now, as we are not going to affect game balance in current version.
Once fheroes2 is finished, we are going to publish extended add-on where new features would be implemented.
If you have any ideas, or extremley like some features, were implemented by previous team, you can always make a new topic in a proper thread, where we can discuss it.

Well, I'm about to make a new topic of the pros and cons of the original game and the recreated version of Homm2 in comparison. I'm trying to go for the details as much as possible. I have no idea what were the changes made by the former team and what changed now, but in that post of mine I will point out and highlight the major differences between the two types of Homm2.

Hi Tibor0803,

Android version is based on the old project, where development stopped many years ago. That version is extremely buggy and crashes in many places (I tried to play it myself).

We have a changelog.txt file which comes with a package (archive). There you can find an answer for your question regarding changes.

Extended options are not our priority at all till we complete the game. This is a part of modding and such changes must be done only after having a stable and correct game.

If you're trying to compare the original game and our project please note that not everything we implement in the same way in the original game. Why? Because the original game has bugs and some weird logic.

Tibor0803 wrote:

Well, I'm about to make a new topic of the pros and cons of the original game and the recreated version of Homm2 in comparison. I'm trying to go for the details as much as possible. I have no idea what were the changes made by the former team and what changed now, but in that post of mine I will point out and highlight the major differences between the two types of Homm2.

ihhub wrote:

Hi Tibor0803,

Android version is based on the old project, where development stopped many years ago. That version is extremely buggy and crashes in many places (I tried to play it myself).

We have a changelog.txt file which comes with a package (archive). There you can find an answer for your question regarding changes.

Extended options are not our priority at all till we complete the game. This is a part of modding and such changes must be done only after having a stable and correct game.

If you're trying to compare the original game and our project please note that not everything we implement in the same way in the original game. Why? Because the original game has bugs and some weird logic.

Tibor0803 wrote:

Well, I'm about to make a new topic of the pros and cons of the original game and the recreated version of Homm2 in comparison. I'm trying to go for the details as much as possible. I have no idea what were the changes made by the former team and what changed now, but in that post of mine I will point out and highlight the major differences between the two types of Homm2.

Well, thank you for letting me know this information. The things I mainly going to point out is what made the game better at the case of fheroes2 and what is missing out of it. Well, I kinda implemented things like value what the original game has.

My review post about the two games are below in this link:

https://heroes2.forumactif.com/t944-gog-homm2-vs-fheroes2-comparison-review#8515

The reason I came up with it is to give some idea of my impressions of what a nostalgic gamer look at the efforts of the game. I won't gonna expect the extended options going to be implemented as well in the future versions as of those are quite overpowered from many aspects. Instead, I go for the things what really made the game better here. So far, I only witnessed crash once, so it's not much of a problem.

Thank you for every minute spent reading my review. It means much to me.