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Games Entertainment

Heroes of Might and Magic III Demo Released 151

Posted by Hemos from the get-fun dept.
mackman writes "Head on over to Loki Games' Web site to waste a few hours with the latest hit (but let me finish downloading it first!). " Warning: It's 93 megs. But there are several mirrors up on the site. I've played this game before - it's a huge blast to play. Have fun!
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Heroes of Might and Magic III Demo Released More

Heroes of Might and Magic III Demo Released

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  • Re:the Grumpy Old Man post (Score:4)

    by jesdynf ( 42915 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:52PM (#1330161) Homepage
    } ... that stupid amulet if it's the last thing my character ever does! Oh, wait...


    Oh, no. You think that GETTING the Amulet is your trial? Don't you recall your instructions?


    That's right, chummer. You have to get the Amulet -and bring it back-. And the bearer of the Amulet, uhm, can't teleport. You gotta hoof it back up all fifty levels, with the Wizard of Yendor all over your ass and with no help from your god.


    Not that you're done yet. Remember the rest? You gotta bring the Amulet -to your God-. So you'll need to take a short jaunt through the four Elemental Planes -- bring your pickaxe!


    Heh. But I'm not done yet. Nothing's ever fair, is it? Welcome to the Astral Plane, home of the three High Altars of the Gods. And their attendants. And you know what? The other two Gods really AREN'T the least bit interested in your God gaining ascendancy over all things. Get ready to kick some Archon butt.


    And who invited THOSE guys? For -no apparent reason-, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse want to kick your butt too, and you can't make those bastards stay dead. Fun fun fun.


    And you thought -one- Wizard of Yendor was bad news...?


    So fight your way back up through all fifty levels of the dungeon, traverse the Elemental Planes, and fight your way through that warzone they call the Astral, puzzle out which altar your God owns -- don't botch this one -- and offer the Amulet.


    And THAT will be the last thing your character does -- except for the gloating. Lots of gloating.


    Happy hacking...

  • Thanks. I will try it this weekend. I have cable modem so 90 meg download is no problem :)
  • I like your scale ;-)

    I loved HOMM1 but for some reason got bored with HOMM2, and the screenshoots of HOMM3 looks identical to HOMM2. What is new in HOMM3 compared to HOMM2?



  • yer right, I wasnt running the latest afterall. The latest one works fine. Thanks.
  • That being said I've heard that the music was better for HOMM2

    It was. HOMM2 had the best music I've ever heard in a game bar none. Not only did it fit perfectly with the game, it was so good I transferred it to tape just to listen to it in the car.

    Also I have the AB expansion pack, the Conflux (elemental) race is a mediocre addition (at least they didn't include the "forge" race *shudders*), but the new campaigns and creatures made it worth recommending for HOMM3 fans.

    The AB pack is fun: the HOMM3 campaign didn't do anything for me (The HOMM2 campaign I've played through at least four times.) but the AB new campaigns are for the most part fun. You'll get used to the Conflux: the strategy with them is different- you've got crappy low and high end troops, but the middle is solid and you'll always move first, which is a serious advantage.

  • Sounds like HOMM3 is running with the DGA extensions. You may want to run it as 'heroes3 --windowed' (or 'heroes3 -w') to get around that.

    Mind you, that's the full release, but I expect the demo behaves the same.

  • What is new in HOMM3 compared to HOMM2?

    The biggest change IMHO is the new magic system. Each spell falls into earth/air/fire/water, and each hero has a skill when casting spells of that type. Expert skill often affects an entire army, not just a stack, so all of a sudden the best spells for an expert are things like Haste, Slow, Curse, Bless, StoneSkin and the like. It's an entirely new flavor to magic combat. They've added an underground area on some maps, kind of like Myrror in Master of Magic, reduced the number of artifacts a hero can carry, and greatly revamped the money from castles so that you can make a lot more if you have all the structures.

    It's a worthy addition.

  • Do you feel Blizzard sucks or did you accidentally leave them out?

    -Vel
  • Well, I had a Mac for years and I couldn't ever understand it. I always said to people, "Yeah, it's a small market, but you know what? There's not as much COMPETITION for that market either."

    How do you make your game stand out against 20,000 other win95 games? Lots of marketing. For linux, any new game is going to garner a good piece of that small market.
    ---
  • I looked at the review on LinuxWorld and they say that you need at least a "300 MHz Pentium II, 64 MB of RAM, and a 16 bit graphics card." I've run HOMM3 on a P200 laptop with 32 MB RAM and el-cheapo 2MB graphics under Win95 and had no problems at all, other than a bit of swapping when switching between towns of different types, which went away when I upgraded to 96MB RAM. Why does the Linux version take far more hardware: it's not like the OS is any bigger.

    Eric

  • I played I, II and III on the Apple IIe and later got the enhanced versions for my IIgs. I wonder if I still have some character disks. The gs is still running at my mom's house (I did get her over to a PC finally). I found a good emulator for the Apple IIe and having been playing it again for time to time. Anyone ever play Wings of Fury from Broderbund? Ah the good ole days.
  • ...these two ftp clients:

    http://www.gozilla.com/ [gozilla.com]

    http://getright.com/ [getright.com]

    They won't speed up the download but it can resume if interrupted and uses mirrors.

  • Remember M.U.L.E.????? Hell's yeah!!! Loved that one back in '85. Last year, in fact, before I killed my windows box, I played it a bunch with my friend, using an Atari emulator (I think). If I looked hard enough, i could probably find the same emulator for linux, just don't have the time. :-)

    Oh yeah, have you found the Archon port to linux?!? It's somewhere, if you search the linux games archives. X-Archon, i believe it's called. Trying to remain true to the original.

  • I have a few scattered observations.
    • This is a great game, one that I would spend money on. The only problem is that I already did, for the Winblows version. I hope they can get their ports out sooner in the future.
    • I'd like to see a port of a game with more intense video requirements. Diablo or Might and Magic 6 and 7 (not Heroes) would be interesting to see.
    • Overall I appreciate the tendency to port strategy games. Those are my favorites.
  • Have you ever tried to download something after it's gotten a write-up on here or after it's just been released? Try it sometime. The queue won't move or you'll get 421ed. And, as a rule, I do NOT hammer sites. It's just bad mojo >:^D

  • 10mbit mirror (Score:4)

    by aheitner ( 3273 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @04:14PM (#1330178)
    I've set up a mirror at

    ftp://templestowe.res.cmu.edu/pub/lokiga mes/ [cmu.edu]

    I notified Loki of this by email, and told them if they request me to take down the mirror, I will.

    Till then, enjoy.
  • If it's open source, it doesn't matter who wrote it, anyone can copy it.

    The people who could most benefit from this situation are the CD-ROM manufacturers, who could spend their idle time burning popular open source software and passing it to the local software merchants. If they had to compete, they could sell at a loss, as long as they didn't go below the losses they'd take from having idle factories.

    The key objection to open source as a base for a profitable business is not that nobody would pay for the service of delivery, but that people who don't actually produce any software will have a competitive advantage over those who do. If hypothetical company Maroon Hat does everything Red Hat does, but doesn't spend money on any software developers, Maroon Hat has the same profitability with smaller expenses.

    I think profitable open source development should be viewed as more of a busking model than any sort of traditional "give me your money, or you don't get what I'm selling" model. If it were convenient to do so (say, with a web-based micropayment system), I bet people would be more than happy to send out a few bucks here and there to the authors of their favorite free software.

  • Re:Links (Score:3)

    by jvmatthe ( 116058 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @04:21PM (#1330180) Homepage
    Here's my review [linuxgames.com] that I did for Linux Games [linuxgames.com]. Rather in-depth and specific to the Linux version...

    Regards,

    matt

  • Now how am I going to get any work done? (Score:3)

    by TheDullBlade ( 28998 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @04:22PM (#1330181)
    As a programmer, when I moved from Windows to Linux a couple of years ago I increased my productivity 100-fold.

    I doubled it by not having the system crash from under me, and I increased it by 50 times by not having any great games to distract me.

    If this trend continues, I almost might as well move back to Windows; I mean what's the point of dealing with logging in every few weeks when I reboot for a measly double productivity gain?
  • Heh, you aughta play System Shock 2 from the same company. Uses the Thief engine, but it's.... well a Sci-Fi rpg, I would call it. They have a demo (Win98 only :( ) at www.shock2.com i think it is (too lazy to look)

    CH
  • We have a 3D game engine and asset production pathway which was commercial, but has now been GPL'ed at www.worldfoundry.org [worldfoundry.org] We are looking for artists and designers to make some games with it (as well as programmers to help finish the linux port). Kevin Seghetti
  • I picked up this game as a XMas gift to myself. I have to say that it was worth every penny. Forget the 90-something meg download, and just go out and buy it. You'll want to buy it after you play, so why bother wasting the bandwidth?

  • Well, it wasn't too bad, I just went
    wget -r ftp://path/to/folder
    and went do bed... this morning the nice new shiny demo was waiting for me in my home directory.

    And I've only got a 33.6 modem...

  • the Grumpy Old Man post (Score:5)

    by hkon ( 46756 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @02:57PM (#1330190) Homepage
    Oh, you kids today have it so good... I'll tell you one thing, young man, when I was young we didn't have all this fancy-schmancy games with, like, graphics and surround sound and all these silly effects. We had NETHACK, that's what we had, and I'll tell you one more thing, we LIKED it, and we didn't want anything more, that's for sure.
    I mean, who decided that UNIX should have games, anywyay? Back in the old days, all a SysAdmin would ever want was a LART, rm, and the occasional luser and that's all we needed to have good, clean, wholesome fun.

    *grumble*mumble*
    oh...my back's killing me...
    *mumble*

  • Do any people get turned to stone in this game?

    Yes. There are Medusas in HOMM3 which have a petrification attack. It is a temporary effect which lasts for several rounds of combat.

    Is it possible for any attractive women to be turned to stone in the game?

    I think so. I'm pretty sure that one of the troop types is female elven archers, and that said female elves are susceptible to being turned to stone. There are also harpies and probably other female creatures, though it has been a while since I've played the game, so I don't remember the complete creature roster.

  • I played the mines of moria on CDC's Plato system up through the mid 1980s, actually! Wow, this totally takes me back. I'd play until 3 am every day of the summer (3 being when the system went down)... And, another one I just loved, called...Oh, damn. Don't remember. It was a pre-wizardry type game with 3-d isometric wire graphics, hundreds of levels, multi-user parties, and a full economy, including supply and demand based shopping.

    Gameplay has not actually improved very much in the last 15 years. Anyone else want to reminisce about Plato?

  • 93 MB for a DEMO??? (Score:5)

    by TrentC ( 11023 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:04PM (#1330193) Homepage
    Maybe it's just me, but I think game designers are starting to ask a bit much. That's a hell of a long download time for people who are still largely on modem connections (and not very fast ones -- I haven't found anyone in my area who can get me better than a 28.8 speed, and I'm waiting until I move before I look at DSL).

    Maybe it's just hitting me because last night I did a full install of Freespace 2 and had that top out at 1.2 GB of disk space -- and here I thought I'd be set for a long time when I got a 13 GB drive for my PC...

    Jay (=
  • Wow.

    I believe you and I are in exactly the same gaming universe. I would rate all games on the same scale as you, in fact. Impressive!

    I played Ultima IV on the PC, but other than that.. I just played nethack tonight. (solidarity solidarity solidarity)

  • Games for Linux is good, but I'll consider it a real victory when we get games out for linux first instead of being treated like we use MacOS or something...

    Anyone have links to good open source games/development projects built primarily for linux? I would expect that there's some in the pipeline now that some of the older game engines (like quake) are being open sourced.

  • I was asking for people working on open source game projects. I don't expect to see companies putting out linux games first, but that shouldn't stop us, the OS community from developing some cool stuff ourselves.

  • We still have Nethack [nethack.org], it still runs in text mode if you want, and it's still wayyyy to addicting.

    I wish I never found it year ago on the Amiga. Every couple of months I come back to it only to find it consumes more of my time than I shoudl let it. I WILL get that stupid Amulet if it's the last thing my character ever does! Oh, wait...

  • define "full version" -- I have the game, not a demo...

    Lea
  • Why the PPC is always forget... I thought loki was doing ppc version of all their games.
  • Its not a linux/unix port but Age Of Wonders is an awsome game if you like the HOMM type of game. It is also real fun (if a bit buggy) in multiplayer. Lets you do simultanous turns and also view battles between players.
  • We had NETHACK, that's what we had, and I'll tell you one more thing, we LIKED it, and we didn't want anything more, that's for sure.

    Nethack?!? Well you *are* a young'n. Back in *my* day we had The Mines of Moria on the CDC Plato system. (Late 70's) and it was, uh, well, graphical, multi-user and you played with folks from all over the country. Anyone who plays HoMM would immediately recongize it.

    My father back in the 50's, on the other hand, got stuck with this new game called "Adventure". Plugh. (One of his roomates at MIT helped write it.)

    Actually, what amazes me is how good games just keep getting reincarnated. Yeah, they are *much* flashier now a days, but the themes are the same.

  • Sorry to the 6 people on right now, i've gotta restart the ftpserver to raise the limit from 10 to 150 users....
  • Nope, Loki games isn't opensourcing the games so far as I know, they're just porting them over. They have, however, open-sourced the library they used to port the games over. It's SDL [devolution.com], and it works on many different platforms (though I, personally, have only used it for Linux and Windows).

  • Fast mirror (Score:3)

    by slashdot-me ( 40891 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @04:36PM (#1330204)
    I have a fast mirror. My link tops out about 900 kbytes/s. Check the realtime monitor for current conditions.

    http://www.ryans.dhs.org/heroes.html [dhs.org]

    Realtime server status [dhs.org]

    Ryan Salsbury

  • Wow! (Score:2)

    by aheitner ( 3273 )
    How about that, wu-ftpd maintained the connections through the '/etc/init.d/wu-ftpd restart'.

    That's awesome!

    Go, wu-ftpd!
  • ftp://128.253.254.56/heroes3-demo-x86.sh [128.253.254.56]

    SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers

  • Loki games are licensed by Loki from the companies that write the original, and thus are not Open Source. Their Linux based installer, which they wrote, is (I belive) Open Source, and was used by the Linux version of Unreal Tournament.
  • The AI bug as well as many other game-related bugs have been fixed in the forthcoming 1.3 patch for Heroes that should be released in a few days (it's almost ready internally, now in QA).

    Hang on :-)

    Stéphane Peter

  • Re:93 MB for a DEMO??? (Score:4)

    by Loligo ( 12021 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @04:57PM (#1330213) Homepage
    At some point the Linux game industry will reach the volume needed to justify a magazine targetted at Linux gamers (or serious inclusion in the Windows gaming mags), at which point you'll be able to get the demos on CD's that come with many magazines or are handed out at computer stores...

    Perhaps until that point, some enterprising soul could offer CD collections of assorted Linux game demos (as more become available, and as [copyrights,licenses] allow), even by snail mail. I don't know what kinds of agreements the mags make with the game companies on anything except "exclusives", but...

    If licenses allow it, charge a nominal fee for the service to cover media, labor, and shipping and maybe a little profit to support the operation (or be donated to a righteous cause, like dvd/decss defense fund?).

    Just a thought. It works to some extent in the Windows world (and probably Mac, too).

    -LjM

  • Of course, Loki has open sourced quite a bit of software, including their installer and libraries they use to port games. ie. code that someone else actually could use (Unreal Tournament for Linux uses the Loki installer).

    But yeah, there is a double standard for games :) Games rock :)

  • At some point the Linux game industry will reach the volume needed to justify a magazine targetted at Linux gamers (or serious inclusion in the Windows gaming mags), at which point you'll be able to get the demos on CD's that come with many magazines or are handed out at computer stores...

    Actually, that's sort of what Maximum Linux [maximumlinuxmag.com] seems to be. Granted, there's only one issue to judge it by (and that one has a TurboLinux eval CD bundled with it), but its headline article is "Linux Got Game!". A lot out of date now (Myth2 was the current Loki game at that point), but closer to the "mainstream" PC (gaming) mags than either Linux Journal [linuxjournal.com] or Linux Magazine [linux-mag.com].

    It grated a little on me, but I can imagine them having cover CDs with various demos in forthcoming issues. In fact, I'd welcome it. I have a 33.6 =/

    (Actually, people with fat pipes and CD burners can make demo and patch CDs for their friends ;-) )

  • the version of the demo i'm grabbing seems to be only 25 megs, not 94
  • Oh... my.... god. I can either spend the rest of my life trying to escape the dungeon or I can spend an hour hacking the source to be 50/10 levels. It's tempting, but I think I'll do it the hard way, even if it means little sleep.

    Stupid freakin' addictive games!
  • I would have to say 93 megs for a demo is a bit much as well. Although some times when you got such a good game it is hard to decide what makes the demo and what doesn't. I have to say that a 93 meg download is long even if your on DSL. Even on Campus T1 it still takes forever because everyone gets there share of the T1's speed and it is still going to take me all night. Just start it and sleep is best stragey.
  • Finally, some decent speed!

    % fetch http://www.ryans.dhs.org/heroes3-demo-x86.sh
    Receiving heroes3-demo-x86.sh (9497152 bytes): 100% 9497152 bytes transferred in 40.2 seconds (230.77 Kbytes/s)

    ...goes to test this out on FreeBSD

    -Chris
  • Nice mirror man, I'm getting 200 K/sec over my cable modem. I'll have this downloaded in 5 minutes at this rate. Sweet, keep it up :)
  • You youngin's were spoiled, back in my day we had Rogue and we thought somebody got if from the future.

  • (Slightly off-topic, but...)

    My father back in the 50's, on the other hand, got stuck with this new game called "Adventure". Plugh. (One of his roomates at MIT helped write it.)

    Given the plugh reference, I would point out that Crowther and Woods [clari.net] wrote Adventure in the early Seventies. (Reference 1: T he Craft of Adventure, chapter 2 [ftp.gmd.de] [P DF [ftp.gmd.de]]) (Reference 2: A History of 'Adventure' [delphi.com]). So, it's a little improbable that the Adventure of plugh fame was available in the 50's =)

    (You can play it on-line at any of several locations these days, including here [mlab.uiah.fi] and here [triumf.ca].)

  • Let's assume your numbers are right.
    But remember, even 2% of the market is a LOT of people. If porting can be done 45 (90/2) times faster (in total person-hours) than creating the original game, the port will have at least the same profit margin as the Windows version. Probably a better profit margin, because of linux game scarcity.

  • Umm...It's been in the stores for a month or two.

    And I'm sure the /. guys get in on the betas a lot =) (Wasn't there a blurb in Geeks in Space about one of the betas?) For that matter, so do the LinuxGames folks.

    And HoMM3 absolutely rocks! Much more fun and addictive than I expected. Now I really hope that the rumors of a port of Armageddon's Blade (the add-on) are true...

  • Darxite is a really good download manager type program it works off ftp and will resume connections automaticaly
  • \begin{CMU inside reference}
    Did you also notify your good friend and mine Mr. John Lerchey about this? Hundreds of people pulling almost 100MB apiece might garner some attention.
    \end{CMU inside reference}
  • It takes about as much time to drive out to CompUSA and buy the game as it does to download over my 256K link, and I can surf /. while I do it. It less time to order the game, but it takes longer to get it. I, of course, downloaded the demo AND ordered the game (hadn't been paying enough attention to see that it was released)

    HOMMII was one of the very, very few games I found it worth rebooting into W95 to play.

  • Small problem; linux gaming companies run linux. Thusly, their pipes are a bit more stable, and not quite so easy to clog as them NT boxes.. ;-)


    James
  • I have this but my computer is too lame to run it smoothly. Please e-mail me [mailto] if you are interested.

  • I know that feeling. Now that my wife is getting hooked on the games on my Linux box, she's demanding her own Linux box. It'd be a lot easier if we could actually afford one...

    Ah well...

  • the version of the demo i'm grabbing seems to be only 25 megs, not 94

    The copy from the tux ftp site is perhaps incomplete. The complete download should be about 93MB.

  • Loki [lokigames.com] has released several [lokigames.com] Open Source projects:

    In addition, they are quite supportive of SDL [devolution.com] (no surprise -- Sam Latinga co-founded Loki)
  • Ah crap. I forgot to replace that partial dl. Everything should work now.

    RYan Salsbury
  • While we're all having fun with the newest member of the series, don't forget to pay homage to what I consider one of the best games of all time: King's Bounty. It was the first HOM&M before it was called HOM&M. I believe it came out around 1991, +/- 1. You can pick up a cracked copy at
    http://underdogs.gamingdepot.com/
    It's for dos, but it'll probably run under dosemu. I haven't tried, though.

    This was also the first game I tried "hacking", albeit in very limited ways. Mainly, I messed around with the saved game files in a hex editor. I was young then... don't laugh at me :)
  • According to the web page, the processor requires a Pentium-class processor or better. I know that my PPC 604e is definitely much better than a Pentium. Since I'm running linux 2.2, does this mean I can play HOMM3?

    ...bummer.

  • Why would you want to have multiple connections open to a single site?

    Your TCP/IP stack isn't that bad, is it?
  • Man u outta it :) Loki is WORKING on AC right now I also Like SC but I now refuse to buy/play it as there is no linux version and Blizzard are not allowing Loki to port it. Blizzard lost me as a customer
  • You must realise, that game companies are just that, companies that are in it for fun and muney, money most probably being the first on the list. Now, with Windows holding a 500+ billion dollars market share, now dare I say it that Windows will be the first OS game companies will create games for, MacOS next, and maybe, juuuust MAYBE they would consider Linux as an after thought; and dont expect many game companies to relese the source either.
  • Download manager? You mean like Go!Zilla type thing, equivalent to a reget? Yeah, there's a KDE program called Caitoo.
  • TheDullBlade wrote:

    The key objection to open source as a base for a profitable business is not that nobody would pay for the service of delivery, but that people who don't actually produce any software will have a competitive advantage over those who do. If hypothetical company Maroon Hat does everything Red Hat does, but doesn't spend money on any software developers, Maroon Hat has the same profitability with smaller expenses.


    This is an interesting point, but could another company do "everything Red Hat [or whomever] does" without spending any money on software developers?

    Mandrakesoft seems to do just this -- and Mandrake Linux is well-respected. They obviously spend some money on software development, but I bet much, much less than Red Hat. As you point out, why should they? Red Hat's doing most of their R&D for them, then they do some tweaking. OK, no skin off anyone's nose -- Red Hat beats them with some features, and can wrap Mandrake additions into upcoming versions.

    Red Hat, TurboLinux, and several others are doing well ... yes, you can buy CDs from cheapbytes, but for many people (new users, or businesses that need outside support), a CD in a blank sleeve is a lot less than they need. By sponsoring software development, the Big Linux Distributions make themselves more valuable as sources of service. And since for software companies, the old "perception is reality" kicks in -- Red Hat and a few others are making themselves look good in the community and in the larger world by sponsoring software development. Whether it will work out long term, well, let's see what Red Hat stock will fetch in 5-7 years! And I wish I knew the answer to that, of course;)

    timothy




  • I really don't understand the gaming programmers reluctance to move to Linux. w/the popularity of the Quake series, etc, etc, don't they see the market expanding?

    I say forget about Office and other MS products, we need more serious games to be ported. Do you really think that people bought the Commodore64 so that they could write papers w/the GEOS word processor?

  • HOMM3 is one of the best games I've ever played. (Score:3)

    by Rotten168 ( 104565 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:05PM (#1330259) Homepage
    It's funny. I SHOULDN'T like this game. No 3d graphics. Cardboard cutout figures in the fight scenes. Yet this game had something that other games lack. It's weird but every game I play is like a story that tells itself. Even on the same map. It also has a bewildering variety of creatures and random events which really add to it.

    The music is also fantastic. The tower and desert land music is the best. Also the amount of detail they put into regular sounds is also quite good.

    For me it was totally the atmosphere of the game which put the hook in me. Castlevania3 is only game which can compare in terms of excellent atmosphere.

    That being said I've heard that the music was better for HOMM2. Also I have the AB expansion pack, the Conflux (elemental) race is a mediocre addition (at least they didn't include the "forge" race *shudders*), but the new campaigns and creatures made it worth recommending for HOMM3 fans.

    Anyway don't take my word for it. Download the demo and find out for yourself.

  • High quality game (Score:3)

    by Kirby ( 19886 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:07PM (#1330260) Homepage
    I picked up the commercial version of this about a month ago, and have spent far too many hours locked in its entrancing spell.

    Technically, this is a solid achievement. I haven't had a single crash. It looks and sounds as good as in Windows.

    And gameplay is superb. It isn't dramatically different than HOMM2, really - but that's not much of a complaint. This is, no doubt, one of the premiere strategy games on the market, regardless of platform.

    Another nice note - if you do the full install (which is, I grant, huge), you don't need the CD to play. You could probably play it remotely over X, if you want to. It put an icon in KDE under games, which I thought it should do. I installed it as root, and can play as myself - which is better than some things, like Star Office.

    Kudos for Loki for an exceptional port of an unusually addicting game. I'm becoming decreasingly interested in even keeping a windows box around for any reason.
  • For all of you who've played this game on windows, you'll understand what I mean. I doubt linux users will want to just jump into this game without trying it first, but it's definitely a worthwhile download. Many of us have spent hours playing this game, all night even, and haven't gotten tired of watching your the little man on the horse gallop around collecting resources and slaughtering creatures and enemy heroes. The grand strategy lite is the perfect blend of action and resource management. The game recieved an 86% from PC Gamer (though it deserved more) if that kind of thing sways your decision. Also, I wouldn't mind a process-killing mod for this (like the doom process manager)...

    So a baby seal walks into a club...
  • 3D Downloads LinuxGames [3ddownloads.com]

  • Open Source and pricing models (Score:5)

    by timothy ( 36799 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:10PM (#1330263) Journal
    This post interested me because it speaks to my interest in pricing models ...

    drig suggested buying the game, not downloading it (and at 90 megs, it is a huge download!). If you ever hear Free / free software impugned with the increasingly silly rhetorical question "But how can that stuff stick around? How can anyone make money off it?" you've got one more data point to fling. Even on a fattish pipe, most people are not interested in downloading 90 megs at a time, but pop in a disc and 90 megs is no sweat.

    (Of course, this could go either way -- in 3 years, will you be on a DSL2* line with no metered charges and 90MB is three minutes whistling? Or will you be on a clogged cable modem loop with by-the-K download charges and a meter outside the house? I certainly hope the first trend is winning ...)

    CD-burners may not be DVD-RAM, but they certainly constitute a great way to pass around big files, and for a well-done manual, brand assurance and support, I think Loki is offering great deals for Linux games.

    Whee!

    timothy

    *Strictly hypothetical. Not real. Restrictions apply. See local dealers for details. Not availabile in all areas, terms and conditions apply and are subject to change without notice or obligation.
  • take it from a DSL kid-- while the difference seems great at first, it's still going to take a hell of a long time (especially if your lines suck as badly as mine).

    personally, i'm going to go home and crack open my copy of warlords III: darklords rising and play that for awhile until i finish the download... once i get bored with that, i'll start going through my mp3s and deleting the adam sandler ones so i can make a little more room-- 93 megs is more than i can afford at this point, and the install is going to wreck me! once i'm done with that, i'll read some slashdot posts about this very subject for awhile... then i'll go kick around the frisbee... then i'll take the Citation out for a spin... then-- i'll finally be ready to install.

    YEAH!

  • Hemos has played it before! (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That means he must have used

    *gasp*

    Windows!
  • I don't care so much if a game isn't free software (although having as many libre low level libraries as possible, as Loki's games and Unreal Tournament do, is a huge plus) because I don't depend on a game. If a game maker goes out of business next year, I don't care that their game will never again see another upgrade. If I'm feeling security conscious, I think it's crucial that my daemons running as root are open source, but I'm not so concerned about games running as a user account. And if a game crashes every so often, it doesn't worry me much as long as the save game files aren't corrupted.

    Besides, games are (or should be) about *content*. Graphics, level designs, sounds and music, story line, character development, interactivity... these things are often aided by improved software engines, but they primarily aren't part of the software. In fact, I can't think of a game besides half-life that took an existing software engine and made it heavily better. Some games license an engine and use it to run new content, some games have an engine written from scratch, but how many games are subject to the steady, incremental improval process which free software so benefits?

    And starting with Quake (to my knowledge; I'm probably wrong), a heavy component of game development has been driven by almost-open source: the code-level mods that the user community puts out so enthusiastically is made possible by the release of a significant chunk of source code for the base game.

    For an operating system, on the other hand, having it crash every month, much less every week, is not acceptable. Security issues for OS and daemon software are critical, and ongoing, steady development on top of the same code base should be as fast as possible without compromising stability.
  • Man, theif has got to be the creapiest game I have ever played. The level with the zombies was almost too much excitement for me. I was playing in the dark with the sub woofer turned up. I had to wipe my hard drive to do a clean install (while installing Linux.. imagine that ) and now I am afraid to play the game again because I don't want to have to go through that creepy zombie level.
  • has anyone who preordered quake3 received their "limited edition" box yet (and the other packaging)?? if i'm going to shell out 55 bucks for this and not the 40 i could pay for the win32 version at best buy, i at least want the cool box!

    bye,
    -jimbo
  • Archon, Mule, and ultima IV ate my choldhood. And do you remember Bard's Tale? I had to give up comptuer games after that. Whew. Why aren't games that addictive anymore?
  • Someone earlier was mentioning great games that should be ported. I actual have a question. Does anyone know if "Machiavelli the Prince" has been ported to linux? It was made by microprose in the early nineties. It was for ms-dos. It has to be one of the greatest games of all times.

    I have logged hundreds of hours playing it and I still spend many long nights playing away. It was a hot seat politcal intrigue/ trading game. Very cool. I would also be interested in a web version. Is anyone interested in an open source version of this game, or maybe something similar so we wouldn't step on Microprose's feet? I've been contimplating this for a while now. I'd need some help moving my develoment mindset into Linux (I'm a prof. windows programmer but I know OpenGl) but using a proper setup we could bust a linux version of this game out in no time.
  • First there was homm1 and it was good. Strategy was refined, no unnedeed bells and/or whistles, the only problem was that it was a bit too easy to beat. Only one campaign that took perhaps 10 hours if not less.
    Then there was homm2 and it was a bit better: while there were more bells and whistles that made strategy a bit messy, and there was unneeded variety of units and artifacts (they were too specialized to be useful, at least some of them - consider one that increases sea movement by 2 on a level with no sea), but it was REALLY TOUGH. homm1 fans sure had alot more fun with this one, even if only because it took much longer to beat. Exp pack was even tougher, perhaps a bit too tough: I could only beat one campaign and the last level took me longer than whole of homm1. Basically homm2 and exp pack was targeted at fans.
    Lo and Behold, homm3 is out and all the fans who've been reading about all the new perks, finally get to play with it. Big disappointment: it starts out so easy you get bored before getting any worthy challenge. Beleive it or not I couldn't get farther than a few levels because of that. On top of it, there's much more units, spells, artifacts, this abundance basically kills refined strategy of homm1 and 2.
    This might have been fun for new comers, but I'm sure most series fans were somewhat disappointed. A contributing factor might have been that the game was way too slow for a non-3d game: on my p200 it was almost unplayable at some places, like animated magic fields where you first get archangels. One more minor gripe: instead of cool black dragons that really looked impressive and powerful (no game ever gave me the feeling of having 50 black dragons... mmm) you get dorky-looking archangels. Blah.
    3 my favorite game series were civ, homm and fallout. 2 out of 3 ported to linux, how about the 3d, the best of three too?
  • I've mirrored stuff before (the Star Wars trailer ... served like 8 gigs the day the first one game out). Never had a problem.

    Except if Loki gets cheesed at me for IP violation, i'm not breaking CMU's guidelines. I can run nonprofit websites as long as the use isn't excessive. We're talking about small bursts here over a day or so. It's not a big deal. At least I hope he doesn't think so ...
  • I agree, the Conflux race isn't that great. However, you should check out the new 'extra' creatures that they have added. The fairy dragon, azure dragon, rust dragon, and crystal dragon are pretty cool.
  • Soldier of Fortune and Nortune demos were huge as well! Ugh! I am stuck with 26400 modem connections due to crappy phone lines and no high speed bandwidth services are in my area (e.g. cable modem and DSL).

    Anyone want to let me borrow his/her T1? =(

  • it's been out for quite a while now -- I'm going to reinstall everything and then install it. *drool*

    and if you look at EB games, you can probably find it for $30 still -- $20 off what the list price is, which is about $15-$20 better than everywhere else!

    Lea
  • Has anyone seen any oddities when running the demo under sawmill?

    The X server zaps to 800x600 and then the title bar with a solid black window covers the actual game. I can kill sawmill and run without a wm and I dont have this issue. I spose I should report it to loki or maybe the sawmill team? I havent tried wit hany of the other windowmanagers yet because once I got the game in a playable state I am now realizing it's 2 am and I have to be up in 4 hours ;)

    Needless to say if anyone can point me to who would be a better person to get notice of this tiny problem, I'll document for them straightaway. I know a few of the loki guys peruse slashdot on more than a regular basis.

  • Anyone have a partial T3? (Score:3)

    by Elbereth ( 58257 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:26PM (#1330287) Journal
    This is probably my favorite game in recent memory. It ranks up there with the best of the mid 80s Commodore 64 games: Archon, M.U.L.E. (anybody remember that one?), Pool of Radiance, Temple of Apshai, and Ultima IV. PC games suck, except for id, Origin, and New World Computing.

    Heroes of Might & Magic is one of the best series of games I've ever seen. And I've been playing computer games longer than some Slashdotters have been alive. :)

    On a scale of 1 to 10, where Ultima 8 is a 1 and NetHack is a 10, I would give HOMM3 an 8.5 (9 with the additional scenarios).
  • The Heroes of Might and Magic series has been great, and I'm eagerly awaiting HMM3 for Linux. However, at 93MB for the demo, I'll have to give it a miss, and just wait for the full game. Even with my ISDN, it's just too big to be practical. Until BT get off their fscking backsides and sort out ASDL, those of us in the UK are stuck with comparatively slow net access :-(
  • Yes, a newbie can definitely play this game. It has an excellent tutorial that explains everything in detail. Really, the rules are quite easy to understand. Getting a good strategy might take a little longer, though. The manual has many hints and tips on gameplay.

    You'll definitely want to bump up the difficulty level once you start winning scenarios. It defaults to "easy mode", despite what they call it ("normal" or something).

    I've won scenarios at "impossible" difficulty, and it surely is not impossible (though the first week or two is very, very difficult).

  • Re:games on Linux... (Score:3)

    by edunbar93 ( 141167 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:35PM (#1330290)
    I really don't understand the gaming programmers reluctance to move to Linux.

    Because they've already written the program once already? Personally I hate it when I'm writing something (software or text) and I lose today's changes through either my own stupidity, or some software screwup, even if it's only like, 15 lines that I've lost. I've already put all my creative blood and sweat into doing the thing that I'm going to have to do all over now. I've already done it perfectly,(or not... even so it was good enough) and now I have to remember how I did it, or reinvent it. And if I don't think it's all that important, it's simply not going to _be_ redone, and the entire project gets set aside, never to be finished.

    Then you also include the fact that most gamers who use linux at home dual boot anyway. (porting office apps is a different thing, especially when a computer is being used almost exclusively for a small number of applications at most workplaces.) This does not impress the boss or the accountant, especially when it comes to the cost of porting the game.

    I suspect the reasons that games get ported to linux at all are things like "because the programmer really wants to," or "because there's not much to change," or "because the boss has been fooled into thinking there's a really big market for linux games." The first reason is the reason Doom was ported at all. Management didn't think it was a good idea, and didn't really want the programmer doing it to waste his time.
    ---
    I can't wait for proper speech-recognition.

  • I've seen a lot of posts here that say "see, everyone should port to linux!", but I'd like to point out that mere days ago the Soldier of Fortune demo was released. It weighed in at over 95 megs, and it still had something ridicioulous like 500,000 downloads. All 5 mirrors were clogged. Now I know that it's a different game genre, perhaps a more popular one. But if we want companies to port games to linux, we have to support them when they put out demos like this. I know 90 megs is large, but from what I've been hearing, it looks like a great game. Let's see if we can clog a few pipes with this one.

  • Links (Score:4)

    by turg ( 19864 ) <turg@winston.CHEETAHorg minus cat> on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:40PM (#1330293) Journal
    Thought I'd share some bookmarks,

    Tips, Cheats, Hints

    Fan Pages

    • BOG [heroesdragon.de]

    ========

  • Good Enough to make my wife want Linux! (Score:4)

    by Black Art ( 3335 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:41PM (#1330294)
    I recieved a copy of Heroes 3 for Christmas.

    Soon after my wife and daughter got a chance to play it, they demanded accounts on my Linux box.

    After playing Quake III Arena, she wants Linux on HER box!

    A seriously adicting game. I would enjoy it more if they fixed the AI player bug involving regenerating armies... But even then, it is still a hell of a lot of fun to play and worth the money. (Loki did a fantastic job on the port.)

    I can't wait to see what they do with Alpha Centari.
  • As of Monday, Tux Games [tuxgames.com] will be offering a CD with all of the Loki demos on it. This will be sold at break-even price (about $7 shipped anywhere in the world). If you are from a country that charges you for local calls, it would probably pay you to hold off on the download and pick up the CD on monday.
  • it's been out for quite a while now

    Yes, I know it has. I already have the Windows version. I'm just waiting for the full version to be released on Linux. BTW, here in the UK, EB don't tend to sell stuff at a discount (apart from second hand console games).

  • I installed a SBlive a couple of days ago, just in time to use it for this demo. Didn't have a problem at all. I'm using the latest (As of a couple of days ago) code off opensource.creative.com and the 2.3.40 kernel.

  • Re:games on Linux... (Score:3)

    by goldenfield ( 64924 ) on Thursday January 27, 2000 @03:43PM (#1330305) Journal
    I think at some point linux gamers will reach some critical mass point, and companies will almost have to start pumping resources into developing for linux. Hell, its only been relatively recently that video card makers have started releasing linux/XFree86 drivers, or even better open sourcing them.

    I think that linux gaming is now where PC gaming was in the late 80's/early 90's - B.W95 (Before Windows 95). Too many different computers, graphics possiblities, etc. Microsoft came and established a standard API for graphics, sound, and PC games took off. I think SGI open sourcing OpenGL will really help establish a graphics standard for linux games.

    Just give it time...

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