How can I help and more?

[Kesselring]

Okay so four questions:

First: Why are you guys so awesome? (This project is incredible)

Second: When do you predict that the multiplayer will be done?

Third: How generally playable is the game now?

Fourth: What can I do to help? Keep in I am not very literate in making computer games or writing code.

[Zamolxis]

Hi Kesselring and welcome to the forum!

I’ll try to answer your questions, but as I’m not one of the programmers (unfortunately I’m not literate in that area either), take the below as a “temporary” answer, until one of the devs will correct/complete it:

First: It’s the Chernobyl effect. What most people know about the generation born in that part of Europe just before or soon after the Chernobyl accident, is that many were not (visibly) affected by the radioactive cloud, while some did suffer (really) unfortunate effects. What is less known however, is that there was a selected group of very few kids born back then, whose organism actually displayed a positive reaction of the contact with the radioactive energy, as they grew up developing far-above-average skills and talents. This was pretty much kept under the radar all these years to not give people ideas about running radioactive experiments, but if you can keep a secret, those kids - now in their 20’s - have decided to put their talents to good use and started this project.
[size=75][disclaimer: no, I’m not one of them - although I was exposed as a child to the radioactive fallout - but all I got “at best” is some of the negative side effects, hence the reason I’m just a poor mod here, incapable of real coding :p][/size]

Second: I predict some time next year, if all goes well. We may see the first (alpha/beta) attempts later this year, but really playable not before 1-2 years from now I guess. But I’m not one of the devs to vouch for that (and prolly even for them it’s difficult to commit to certain deadlines, as with projects like this priorities tend to change every now and then due to change in resources, opportunities and RL external factors).

Third: Single Scenarios are pretty much playable now, except the AI part and a couple of spells & creature abilities. There’s basic AI in battles only, but AI heroes don’t actually play on the Adventure Map or in town. So let’s say the game now is only for those who like to play it for the sake of the story, of exploring the map and of hero leveling & town/army development.

Fourth: Check out this link. In short, if you’re not a coder, you can:

• Download and install the latest build over a standard (English) version of H3+WoG3.58f
• Browse the list of implemented items , to see what should be there and working already (to avoid creating bug reports for items which we know they aren’t there yet)
• Use the bugtracker to report bugs you encounter, but only after running a search to make sure it hasn’t been reported already
• There might be other things that one could help with (for example if you have graphic talents). See the I want to help… thread pages for this. You can repeat your question there. Maybe specify if you have any particular skills/training that you believe could even remotely serve such project and the devs will say if it’s something that they would need (at this stage or a later one).

[Tow]

Hi Kesselring, thank you for words of support. Zamolxis hasn’t left me much to add, just a few words on AI and MP.

The multiplayer code development is pretty advanced: VCMI uses client-server architecture for a long time and 0.83 brought most of needed pre-game code for setting up game. Game over internet is not possible yet… but you can try running two clients side-by-side to preview the feature. (Don’t report bugs there, that’s still work in progress.) However I have no plans of making online game possible soon. I want first to have single player game well-tested and fix possibly many bugs. Debugging on multiple machines is a pain, so I’d want to have all non-network related bugs filtered before.

As for AI, I may have a good news here. Implementing adventure AI has been tentatively accepted as the subject of my engineering degree thesis. If everything goes well, I’ll start its development pretty soon. The whole thing should be completed by the end of this year.

[Warmonger]

^That may be the best news in a long time

[Kesselring]

I tried to install WoG but it has an error when I direct it to the original Heroes directory for install…it keeps coming up with a new window after I press okay for the correct directory…It is like I it is rejecting when I give it the right path.

Anyone have this error?

[majaczek]

probably unicode error
you named the directory with leters nont in ascii, resulting unicode notation (fixme it’s not ansi)
the wog instaler is based on ansi, and requires to work english or russian language settings to force ru/us ansi and ru/us notation of text based files.
so now if you have localized directory path AND letters you use not fit into ANSI instaler is based of - it calls for conflict
moreover even ru/us ansi chars which are not in ascii range may cause bugs. so please install wog on top of heroes3 directory which would have path containing only ‘:’, ‘’, ‘0’-‘9’ and latin letters

or if only you havent changed language settings to ru/us do it now and check if it works… this is if you don’t read manuals, above is about why u can’t install if you follow manual

[Kesselring]

Yeah I read on the download page that those characters can make a difference but I did not use any of them.

Is their any other distinctions between folders other than certain letter/characters?

I am having a hard time understanding what is required from the orginal files because it says

3. Make sure that you removed all other MODs and other files from all Heroes folders (especially from Data folder). We recommend you:

• make a full copy of your SoD or HC;
• uninstall SoD or HC;
• delete all files in ex-Heroes folder (if any) manually;
• install SoD or HC again to the same folder.

So does that mean you can just install WoG anywhere then dump in the standard files after?

This is the page I got it from:
maps4heroes.com/heroes3/in_the_wake_of_gods.php

[Zamolxis]

If you don’t mind you can uninstall whatever you have related to Heroes3 (or maybe you already did so?). But that is not entirely necessary.

You could also try a clean install on a different drive (at least it worked for me):

• Pick another location and install SoD or HC there
• Then install WoG 3.58f over it
• If the above WoG works afterwards, then you’re ready; you only need to copy the contents of the VCMI archive into the game directory (with overwrite if asked).