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Comment by hnthrowaway0315 | Hacker News Reader

Played a TON of HOMM3 back in university with some friends. We played coop on the same box that is we take turns to play the game. It was so much fun. That said, I never completed the campaigns (the expansion packs are considerably more difficult). I still have a copy of HOMM3 from GOG so might click it open tonight!

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The game is actually still going strong - there’s a mod that adds a modern multiplayer lobby, with ranked competitive games, lots of new random map generators, and there are some big Twitch streamers for it; Lexiav is the biggest for English language I think, he streams full-time and gets close to 1K viewers most of the time. HOMM3 is in an amazing place right now, definitely click it open and have fun again!

What's the mod called? It sounds great!

HOTA (horn of the abyss). Adds a new town as well. Look it up. The HOTA mod plus the HD mod both combine to give you a modern experience for bigger resolutions (lots of UI improvements and stuff, without affecting gameplay).

Ahh, thank you, I did install HotA but I must have missed all the multi-player stuff you mention. Thanks, it really is great!

Heh, when I saw it on twitch it was very popular in russia and every stream was in russian :)

HOMM3 had some pretty extensive custom maps and mods available - lots of time playing those.

Never really got into the sequels as much, HOMM3 always felt like a local maximum.

Fun fact: one of the modded scripts for HOMM3 was written by the developer of Dominion: https://opinionatedgamers.com/2012/05/11/the-art-of-design-i... and https://youtu.be/i6Uc1-AR4rM

Shameless plug: if you're still into H3 there is almost complete open source implementation with mods support written from scratch in C++. Also there is built-in mods support.

Unfortunately I'm no longer actively participate, but project is still going strong.

https://github.com/vcmi/vcmi

https://vcmi.eu/

Thanks! Surprised to see this. Looks like a good chance to read some 2D game source code :)

To be honest it's mixed bunch because project started more than 10 years ago and there is both: some decent code as well as terrible one.

Good sides: it's fully client-server, AI implemented via pluggable libraries while all saving / networking implemented using serialization based off Boost.Serialization.

I love HoMM3. Someone has even ported to Android -- in case you ever feel nostalgic. I replay it every now and then. Despite the outdated graphics, the game itself has aged really well. I still enjoy it immensely.

Yep, the graphics, the writings, everything is perfect. With the HD mod it's very up to today's standard.

HoMM3 was also my main experience with the series. I tend to pick it up once every few years with the last time in early 2020. My problem with the game is that I know the AI exploits so it's never THAT much of a challenge.

If you're picking it up again, the HD plus mod lets you play on higher resolution screens and adds keyboard shortcuts for things like splitting a creature stack in half. Highly recommended.

Thanks! I probably can still have a lot of fun because I don't really remember any of the exploits! I know I should split the soldiers into N piles of 1 soldier and 1 pile of larger group but other than that I know nothing! Probably the reason I couldn't beat the campaign back then.

I played it a bit, but got turned off a bit by the random events. In particular there was an event where huge numbers of one type of critter would appear randomly on the map. If you could talk those critters into joining your armies you were guaranteed a win. If not you lose. The entire game at that point became a race to collect as many of those critters as possible and form a giant doomstack that nothing could hope to stop and crush the opposing castle.

Yeah that's the week of X event. I only play the campaign so it's kinda OK for me. What I really hate is the week of plague...

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