Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Succession Wars - HOMM2-style total conversion mod for HOMM3

Wow, great job. I don't think I've ever seen a mod this impressive.

 

This looks delicious, nice work.

 

You know, for a long time I thought I was some kind of minorty that hate HoMM2 to 3 transformation. I'm glad to see there are more out there.
This mod is terrific, thanks for this man. Even the soundtrack is in

 

It is indeed the minority. Heroes 3 was more advanced in many aspects, so there are a lot of reasons to stick to it. H2 graphics, I believe, was also considered "outdated" at the time, when 3D was becoming more and more popular.

Luckily (sort of), nowadays the gaming industry is different and pushing the boundaries of graphic standards is no longer that important marketing-wise. H2 has a specific art style which deserves to be loved.

 

No campaign btw as I can see, pretty understandle.

 

Sort of. They have implemented the campaign maps of H1 as stand-alone scenarios thus far. You can play those.

 

The next update has H2 campaigns as one of its primary features. No release date though. We have already converted those and made the game see them, and made sure alternative scenarios work, but the campaign award mechanics is yet to be implemented.

 

Will the new cities be integrated into the old campaign scenarios?

 

I'd rather not, but we don't have a final opinion as yet. My stance is primarily lore-based: while we add new factions, it would be a good tone to explain why they were absent in the classic game. Regarding vanilla The Succession Wars, all factions more or less belonged to somebody, be it Roland, Archibald, or feudal lords gone rebel, which was described in briefings along the way. Dervish and Witch never belonged to any monarch and are more like terrain-based factions like it is in H3 (H3 concepts were impossible to ignore completely, Heroes 2 as is was a self-sufficient game and did not need any new factions). So, they could not appear in full strength during the civil war in Enroth, because they were located in the farthest reaches (Dragonsand Desert, jungles of Bootleg Bay and marshes of Darkmoore) and/or deliberately chose not to interfere.
In H2 The Price of Loyalty expansion, the campaigns are disconnected from Enroth and the plot is generally weaker, with main focus shifted to features and gameplay extensions (and Cyberlore did a good job there, with many of their ideas inherited by Heroes 3 making it the top HoMM game for many people). New castles could be incorporated there, but I don't know if they really need to. Since both of our new factions are spellcasters, maybe they can fit good enough for some scenarios of Wizard's Isle campaign, at least.

tl;dr New factions are most likely to be introduced in full with the new lore (new campaigns, that is) accompanying them so that they feel native enough to the game. My bet is on combined H3 approach for new campaigns, where players can learn how to play these factions (RoE) and at the same time enjoy more complex character-driven stories so the gameplay will not be as boring (AB/SoD).

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Another reason is more technical: H2 scenarios usually feature pre-set towns, so there is little room for random castles to appear. What we can control is the faction heroes to appear, and maybe we can allow them to spawn in Taverns so there will be a little more variety (mind the specialty mechanics, too). Random monsters will work as expected, if there are any, and some can be joined by players.

What we will do for sure is to enhance at least some of the campaigns with the new possibilities that H3/WoG/Era engine brings. For example, the Voyage Home campaign from H2 PoL expansion features the concept of recurring hero character Gallavant (which certainly laid ground for H3 story-driven campaigns). We are currently testing the hero transfer feature there, and adjusting some conditions so that the gameplay will satisfy the transfered skills. Since one of the scenarios there features pirates, we also added them to the map so that they are better represented. This is the case where our new developments will enrich the campaigns in a more correct way.