Heroes of Might and Magic II port available!

[wildonrio]

EDIT 6/30/2009: Please see the post below (http://www.everythingicafe.com/forum/third-party-applications/heroes-of-might-and-magic-ii-port-available-40313.html#post479046) for information on a real port of Heroes II coming to iPhone.

EDIT: Upon further inspection, I don't think this port is for the iPhone/iPod Touch. Someone gave me this link from a forum of people discussing porting Heroes II to the iPhone/iPod Touch and I just assumed it was for that platform but it looks like it's for Windows (which doesn't make sense since Heroes II was written for Windows). Anyway, a port would be nice if anyone is up to it.

Alright guys, I don't know about you but I LOVED this game when I was a kid. After playing TapDefense I suddenly remembered Heroes II and longed for an iPhone/iPod Touch port. Well after one minute of googling, I found someone who ported it. Problem is, you need a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch, something I have avoided. But wow, this could change everything.

Can someone with a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch try out the port and tell me if it's any good? A YouTube video would be awesome, if possible.

Here's the download link. (http://sourceforge.net/projects/fheroes2) And here's the release notes on this build:

Posted By: revvy
Date: 2008-11-20 05:36
Summary: New fheroes2 development build released (http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=889337) It's been one month since the last build release of fheroes2, and here are the changes since then:

* AI in battle! You can now enjoy epic battles against monster armies scattered across the map.
* High resolution improvements - more map viewing, less scrolling.
* Day and month events
* Movement distance calculation improvements
* Environmental sound and music fixes
* Digging for the ultimate artifact
* Actions for many more map locations, including Xanadu, abandoned mines, graveyards, pyramids, Magellan's Maps, hill forts, foundries, artesian springs, whirlpools, and more
* Working hero trading screen
* Many graphical fixes (froth around moving boats!)
* Much, much more!

fheroes2 is becoming closer and closer to the complete Heroes of Might and Magic II package with every release, but we can always use more help! Coming up in the next few months, expect to see changes relating to localization, further improvements and bug fixes in battles, more work on magic, and castle battles. Until then, go ahead, give it a whirl!

-- The fheroes2 team

[jdm]

As it happens, I wrote that announcement, and no, fheroes2 is not a port to the iPhone. In fact, I can't even envision how such a game would work; it seems to me that the interface is simply too big to be able to fit the necessary information onto the iPhone screen. I'm a pretty poor one to pass judgement, however, seeing as I've never used one before :) If you want to toss some thoughts around, however, I'm happy to entertain the idea and see if we, the fheroes2 team, can do something about it in the future!

[fury]

If I knew what kind of game it was, I'd be more able to toss some ideas. I checked out fheroes2, but it doesn't run without the game data, and I don't happen to have the original. Are there any free maps available to demonstrate?

I don't think a big interface needs to be shrunk onto an iPhone screen - there are many ways I can think of to come up with creative alternatives. Tapping to view details of an enemy or structure, as is done in TapDefense, for example, will bring up the details in place of the bottom toolbar, and slide back out of the way when deselected. Anyways, that's just one of many. I'd need to get a feel for Heroes before I can provide any meaningful analysis

[jdm]

Unfortunately you also need all of the game assets (art, animations, etc) to be able to do anything with a map if I sent you one. This page (http://www.acorn-gaming.org.uk/index.php3?p=Reviews/HOMM2/index) has a bunch of screenshots which show the majority of the gameplay. Heroes of Might and Magic II is a turn-based strategy game in which you send your heroes around the map to collect treasure, do battle with monsters, and so forth.

[wildonrio]

If I knew what kind of game it was, I'd be more able to toss some ideas.

Fury,

Heroes II is essentially an RPG, but is basically the funnest game I've ever played and I never get into RPGs. If you're interested, drop me a PM with your email and I'll email you a copy (since Heroes II is abandonware, it is free to distribute.)

As it happens, I wrote that announcement, and no, fheroes2 is not a port to the iPhone. In fact, I can't even envision how such a game would work; it seems to me that the interface is simply too big to be able to fit the necessary information onto the iPhone screen. I'm a pretty poor one to pass judgement, however, seeing as I've never used one before :) If you want to toss some thoughts around, however, I'm happy to entertain the idea and see if we, the fheroes2 team, can do something about it in the future!

Jdm,

I know this is a little off topic from iPhone discussions, but I have some questions about your fheroes2 project:

1. What exactly is the purpose of the fheroes2 project?
2. Since Heroes II is already Windows based, what exactly are you porting?

If we can answer these questions, maybe we can spark some more interest in an iPhone port.

[jdm]

Jdm,

I know this is a little off topic from iPhone discussions, but I have some questions about your fheroes2 project:

1. What exactly is the purpose of the fheroes2 project?
2. Since Heroes II is already Windows based, what exactly are you porting?

If we can answer these questions, maybe we can spark some more interest in an iPhone port.

fheroes2 is a complete rewrite of the game and editor in an open source, portable fashion. Yes, Heroes II works on Windows, but it doesn't work well - music can be glitchy, CD audio almost never works, the resolution is limited, etc. We're adding the abilities to play on any OS that supports SDL (ie. Windows, Linux, MacOS, and more!), plus supporting both 32 and 64 bit architectures, and allowing higher resolutions (1280x1024 and greater).

I saw originally that you questioned the legality of the project. I'm not a lawyer, but to my mind, since we're not distributing any original game content, all we're doing is adding value to the original publishers. There is more reason than ever to buy a copy of the game, because it's no longer limited to old hardware or operating systems.

[wildonrio]

fheroes2 is a complete rewrite of the game and editor in an open source, portable fashion. Yes, Heroes II works on Windows, but it doesn't work well - music can be glitchy, CD audio almost never works, the resolution is limited, etc. We're adding the abilities to play on any OS that supports SDL (ie. Windows, Linux, MacOS, and more!), plus supporting both 32 and 64 bit architectures, and allowing higher resolutions (1280x1024 and greater).

I saw originally that you questioned the legality of the project. I'm not a lawyer, but to my mind, since we're not distributing any original game content, all we're doing is adding value to the original publishers. There is more reason than ever to buy a copy of the game, because it's no longer limited to old hardware or operating systems.

Yeah I deleted my question about the legality once I did a little research and found out that Heroes II is abandonware :). Great news!

When you say that you are rewriting the code in an open source, portable fashion, does that mean it should be fairly straight forward to make an iPhone port as well? Since it's abandonware, you could make a free version and submit it to the App Store, which has attracted over 300 million downloads in the past 5 months...a great place to showcase your work.

[jdm]

Well, it would theoretically be as straightforward as porting any other SDL application to the iPhone. Currently, there's an SDL implementation for the iPhone in the SDL 1.3 repository, which is at an early preview quality. Then there's the whole matter of actually coverting the gameplay to be iPhone friendly, which is probably quite a bit more challenging.

[fury]

I don't have any experience in video game coding (AI, graphics, 3d work, etc), but one thing I do have a knack for is the interface. (I have the iPhone itself to thank for that, really) If somebody can get the code working on the iPhone, I'd love to take a crack at making the interface work for touch control.

[wildonrio]

I don't have any experience in video game coding (AI, graphics, 3d work, etc), but one thing I do have a knack for is the interface. (I have the iPhone itself to thank for that, really) If somebody can get the code working on the iPhone, I'd love to take a crack at making the interface work for touch control.

Did you get a chance to play the game?

[jim-ph]

hello everyone, I'm Jim, the team-leader of the project "Palm Heroes". I will gladly answer your questions.

It's a all-original heroes project, everything developed from scratch, and we're porting it to iphone now. We're hoping to keep it FREE when the game is ready, and therefore began to collect donations for development:

http://www.iphone.palmheroes.com

About the donation stuff: I know, a freeware with donations-beforehand sounds absurd at first. Let me put things clear: the final app will be FREE - no ads, no lite-versions, no locked levels. Just the game with over 100 maps to play. We don't want to spoil the gaming experience - the app will be absolute freeware. But to make this port we need to work hard on the code and spend a lot of time and effort on that. We just need something to get by...

Check out the game video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3o78U8lVN0

I'll be posting here news on the development progress. If I miss anything, you can check out our forum thread devoted to the iphone version:
http://www.palmheroes.com/viewforum.php?f=32

The iphone donation page is here: http://iphone.palmheroes.com/
Our team will be glad if you help. It is CRITICAL for the project development!

To moderators: you can copy this post to the top of the thread - all the info I provided here is accurate and up-to-date.

[wildonrio]

Wow man, this looks awesome. I don't think we can jailbreak the 3GS yet but once we can, I'm gonna check this out and if it's good I'll be donating for sure, thanks!

By the way, any chance of releasing this on the app store? A lot of our users are becoming more and more adverse to jailbreaking since it really slows the phone's response time down. As far as I understand, Heroes is now freeware so I don't see why you should run into any legal issues.

[jim-ph]

we will, once the port is complete.

[wildonrio]

How close do you think you are to being done?

[jim-ph]

about 50% through... would be nice to be able at least to buy test devices for the whole team...

[wildonrio]

Is there any way you could let us beta test what you've got so far using non-jailbroken phones? I know there's a way to manually load apps on without them being in the app store yet.

[jim-ph]

testing 'the Apple way' (adhoc) just DOES NOT WORK. We've re-built the code 11 times, and the app doesn't load up.

[styfle]

testing 'the Apple way' (adhoc) just DOES NOT WORK. We've re-built the code 11 times, and the app doesn't load up.
Bummer. Plenty of us here at EIC would beta test it for you :)

[jim-ph]

I hate to say this, but if the donations go on the same way, we'll have to make the game $2. We already have debts.

[wildonrio]

I don't think anyone would mind paying $2 for it. Hell, I'd pay $10 or more if it worked well. I'd just really like to test it out before I donate to make sure it's the real deal, and I don't want to jailbreak.

My sister's got a jailbroken one, I'll get in touch with her.

[wildonrio]

jim-ph,

Having trouble getting the alpha version to install. I followed your instructions from your dev page:

INSTALLATION:

1) JAILBREAK YOUR DEVICE.
If you haven't done this yet - I suggest that you use 'expert mode' when doing it and install only Installer, without Cydia. You will get all its stuff later by installing Icy from Installer. This will make your device 2x faster than a Cydia-device.

2) Install Icy and InstallerApp Support from Installer
3) Start Icy, choose SOURCES,
add http://ripdev.net/palmheroes/ to the sources. Refresh sources.
4) Install PalmHeroes from Categories/Games
5) If you are impressed enough, support our project by donating something;)

When I do this, it says that it is not a valid source in both Cydia and Icy.

[jim-ph]

sure thing - our new source for Icy is

http://iphone.palmheroes.com

[wildonrio]

sure thing - our new source for Icy is

http://iphone.palmheroes.com
Ok thanks. Next problem.

Now the source is considered valid, but "PalmHeroes" is nowhere to be found. I looked in Categories/Games like the instructions, and when it wasn't there I tried running a search for "PalmHeroes" and just "Heroes", both yielding no results beyond some wallpaper apps for the TV Show "Heroes". Now what?

EDIT: Problems solved. Had to do a manual refresh, sorry, I've never used Icy before.

[jim-ph]

you haven't reloaded sources. Hit the button in the upper-left-hand corner.

[wildonrio]

Ok I got it working. It looks very promising! My problem now is, every time I try and load it it says "Preparing for Battle..." for a few seconds and then quits. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling and the problem remains. I realize it's still an alpha build.

[jim-ph]

betatesters wanted!

1) register at palmheroes.com/bt (that's our bug-tracker) - read the whole instruction first to make sure you HAVE TIME for it!!

2) PM me your bt login, I will activate your account

3) Download the latest build from Icy: http://iphone.palmheroes.com

4) read the WHOLE bug-tracker

5) check the GREEN tickets first (resolved) - is the bug really fixed? was anything broken during the fix?

6) check BLUE and RED tickets (assigned, new) - mabe you'll be able to reproduce a bug, or gather additional info on it.

7) check whatever can be checked

[jim-ph]

we're in the appstore. The donation progrem didn't work great, but it sustained the project from extinction. 2$.

We wanted to make the world better...
Thanks for help to all who helped!

[wildonrio]

Bought it, looks good! How are sales going? Also, did you purposefully avoid mention of "Heroes of Might and Magic" in the description on purpose to avoid legal battles?

[jim-ph]

HOMM is a tm that we have no relation to. So there's no need to mention someone else's TM.

[wildonrio]

HOMM is a tm that we have no relation to. So there's no need to mention someone else's TM.
I would at least put it in the description or as a tag. That way people searching Heroes of Might and Magic will find your app. You are trying to attract the fans for that game, since that fanbase is already established and huge. Nobody will see "Palm Heroes" and instantly know what it's about unless they look at the screenshots. But that's assuming you've already gotten them to click on it to read the description. Just my two cents. Thanks again for your work, I'll tell my friends about the app.

[jim-ph]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geIPk2UGheU

Some explaination of controls for those who never look in the help section. This video was initially made for another forum, but I'll post it here too.

[jim-ph]

follow us on twitter!
http://twitter.com/palmheroes

[wildonrio]

Any plans to add music to the game? Also, graphics inside your castle instead of just menus?

[jim-ph]

yep, I've paid for the castle gfx and battle sfx. Music will come a bit later.
We're finishing a MAJOR update. You will all be just AMAZED at the new controls. Stay tuned.

[jim-ph]

Palm Heroes LITE 1.1
Submitted: 25 Aug 2009
Status: In Review

[jim-ph]

Grab the LITE from the appstore!

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=329060575&mt=8