Heroes III. - 20 Years Anniversary
- by Pol
It's here. Heroes III. of Might and Magic were first released on February 28, 1999. Feeling nostalgic, so much time passed, so much Windows OS too, and the game is still alive. 
It's not the same game, need to say. The first released part was Restoration of Erathia, which is the only, where source codes remained to these times, to be later remasterd by Ubisoft and released like Homm3 HD. To both, good and bad. The good part of Ubisoft version is having better graphic and comes with mobile version. The bad is no propagation now, apart for discounts and not a new fuel in sight. They say, that it's too costy.
RoE originally comes with more innovative ideas, which were later cut out for balance purposes. The last remnants were removed with the first patches. Being 'Unluck' could halve your damage, imagine what Arch Devils could do with it. And having Eagle Eye allowed you to learn and cast spells at higher difficulty. So you could 'Blind' more units at once, nifty!
"But to see its occurence, you needed to play the game for months."
And without doubt it comes with one of the best intro video in the industry. It simply catch your heart, to help Queen Catherine Ironfist to led her forces against scheming Dungeon Overlords. Old world of legends defiled alive before your eyes.
Later the game was accompanied with Armageddon Blade and Shadow of Death. Featuring first assembled artifact Armageddon Blade and balanced Fortress and later everlasting hero Sandro, and his way to power and ..over.
That lore and mechanic just defined the heroes genre. Spurred talks and been an incentive for thousands of map makers. The possibility to make your own stories was so refreshing, that the game live to these days. Of course, it wouldn't be entirely possible without its predecessors.
How to celebratie it today? By playing it!
You can play it on mobile phone, either like Heroes 3 HD or H3C with VCMI. You can go 'wog' with ERA2 or 'mp' with Horn of the Abyss. And you can also try to play Heroes 2 in rather Heores 3 world in the Succession Wars. Or moving aside with VCMI. In most cases, with use of HDmod by baratorch.
No mod would be good by itself without maps, try Masters of Sighisoara or check our map archives, for much more maps in the world check our links section.
Long Live the Queen!
Mods:
ERA2 - is a successor of WoG, having many scripts which you can enable or disable to make you happy and experiment
VCMI - is another engine not a mod, still not final but very stable.
Horn of the Abyss - is spinning all about the base game and multiplayer. Definitively not any scripts to play with.
Succesion Wars mod - brings Heroes II. mood in Heroes 3 coat
HDmod - allows you too play the game on current monitors, without resolution and color depths requirements
And HDmod can be accompanied with SP Plugin - if you prefere to play single player only. HDmod is compatible with pure Heroes 3 Complete or with Horn of the Abyss or with ERA2
Maps:
New CH Maps
Thunder Maps
H3MapArchives - Part 1 + 2 + WoG
Post Scriptum: If you would like to ponder over some questions, there's a list of related interviews from 2018:
Interview with NWC: Greg Fulton about Angels, Gelu and Heavenly Forge
Interview with Marzhin (in russian only) - Part 1, Part 2
Q&A with Erwan Le Breton on AcidCave.net
Videointerviews with Tim Lang by Super Goober
Legends of Ancients - Book III. available for Download
- by Pol
After years of waiting there's finaly available Book III. This is because LotA team revived in previous year and got aboard new member - mctronic. Congrats!
And if you would be interested, contact them. They are still looking for a new volunteers, to create and test maps. Book IV is ahead!
Dear CH Community,
The Legend of the Ancients (LotA) team is proud to present Book 3 of HOMM5: LotA.
Book 3 is the work of dedicated HOMM fans that started around 2008-2009.
Book 3 features innovative ideas not seen in the previous books of LotA and in all HOMM5 Campaigns (to the best of our knowledge), and also features themes from previous games in the M&M Universe.
We are hopeful that you will enjoy playing the campaign as much as it was for the LotA team to implement it.
Please note the following for Book 3 of HOMM5: LotA:
1) It is only compatible with version 3.1;
2) Make sure that the option "No EyeCandies" is left unchecked; and
3) The game has been tested on Hard difficulty (for full AI).
Bugs, comments and suggestions may be reported on this thread.
Regards,
The LotA Team
H4:HDMod - Current Status
- by Karmakeld
In july 2016 news of a HD mod for H4 was announced.
A few days before the announcement a teaser-puzzle was posted as Picture-Of-The-Day displaying the adventure map in 16:9 ratio. Since then we've been trying to keep up with development of the project. Sadly not many updates have followed the announcement from the Equilibris team, but that hasn't prevented the community from keeping the discussion alive.
HDMod - Game Settings and new resolutions
Fans are asking for the lastest news about the Equilibris HD mod. Is the project still alive? What's the status?
Rumors, on the Russian forum, says that project leader Dalai has traveled to Europe, which might explain his absense - althought Internet is somewhat widely accesable in most parts of Europe (but mind that's just a rumor)..
Meanwhile we can confirm that Equi programmer Max is still working on implementing the new UI for the HD Mod and although news has been somewhat scarce since the announcement of the HD Mod, progression has been made.
Below you can see the original 1024x768 townscreen, for comparison you can drag each of the images below, into your browser window to view them in full scale:
1024x768 original townscreen
This early version, posted at the announcement, displays a large Equilibris logo in the lower left corner (as well as mirrored edges 
). The Equilibris team were asking artists for help, in creating better looking townscreen.
Equilibris HDMod - Early Screenshot
MM Merge - A talk with Rodril
- by Pol
For some time you can watch developing of MM Merge, which is merging Might & Magic 6-7-8 on MM8 engine. And we felt that there is a right time to ask a few questions about the mod, current state and purpose.
Were you thinking about putting MM Merge to MM8 engine even before?
Yes, when I played MM6 and suddenly it turned out that the characters could not become liches, and the enemies, raised with dark magic, kept being agressive, then I wanted to somehow bring in these features. Back then I was finishing school and I did not have enough time to try. The desire came back when I first saw Grayface's MMArchive - extractor of game files. The choice between engines 7 or 8 did not cause me to think much, I've immediately chosen MM8, simply because this is my favorite part of the series, although now I am more attracted by the content that came from MM7. I think that the choice of the MM8 engine is the right decision due to the more flexible management system of the party and a larger size of the game window.
How did you get to the series?
The games showed me my elder brothers. In fact, the first such game of similar genre that interested me was "Betrayal of Krondor", I sat and watched my brother play, and all these pixel cutscenes, pixel people, made a big impression. The most valuable for me was and remains a certain balance of naturalism and fantasy in these games: the characters have the proportions of real people, the monsters are created to look natural. At the same time, even though the pixel world was not densely populated, behind each object there was a story: if there is a tombstone in the middle of the field - come and read the epitaph, dig there and be killed by swarm of ghosts. Later, when I started to play myself, I liked the opportunity to ignore the main story and go explore the world. These two points are what I really lacked in MM10: everything looks like a completely unrealistic cartoon, and I have to go through the “corridors” of the plot before I can just walk around and explore the world.
What all limits do you removed? What all is moddable now?
The presence of limits was a surprise to me. If you have MMArchive, you can open the EnglishT.lod and see that information, for example, about monsters, is stored in a simple text table. The first thought that arises: "Hey! I can just change existing or add new lines!" - but not. The game is able to reserve parts of the computer’s memory for its own purposes, but for some reason, text tables are not located in the reserved areas, but in the data section of the executable file. Therefore, the increase in any table leads to the fact that it's rows "climb" on the rows of the next table, which in most cases leads to critical errors in reading. The task was to calculate the amount of memory for each table, reserve it, and then write the table there. It doesn't sound very difficult, but add here the fact that the game is already compiled and all pointers and references to the table should be searched for in the disassembled version and corrected by hand. If you downloaded the modification, open the folder "... Scripts\Structs", all scripts with the name "Remove" in the name is the removal of limits. I will briefly describe them in order of creation (I hope to make detailed documentation in the future).
Succession Wars - Released
- by Pol
H3SW beta v0.8 came out.
Visit their forums for downloads and bug reporting or make your note down. Enjoy when it's fresh! ;)
INSTALLATION note by Orzie added 5.1.2019
1. Install clean Heroes 3: SoD or Heroes Complete (without HotA, HD, WoG, ERA, etc.)
2. Download and Install H3SW v0.8.0
3. Install HD Mod if you have troubles with h3sw.exe.
4. Check if <Fix.Cosmetic> = 0. Write this line manually if it isn't there.
If you have the unlimited resources bug + Dragon Tower bug:
0. Delete the game+mod+HD directory completely.
1. Re-download H3SW v0.8.0 Installer from the same links.
2. Install clean game, install the mod, install HD Mod.
3. Make sure that <Fix.Cosmetic> = 0 in HD Mod launcher. Write this line manually if it isn't there.
3. Enjoy!
Unknown Mod - H2:Project Ironfist
- by Pol
Unknown Mod
This is just the beginning, a small tweaking script over H2: Project Ironfist. Changing this and there, a little reminding WoG in its purpose. Yet stable but with (known) bugs.
How to use:
* You will have to rename this script with the name of the scenario each time you want to play another scenario, for example, rename "_MapName.MX2.lua" to "ENROTH.MP2.lua" to use the script with ENROTH scenario.
* Small maps are suggested as saving tends to be long AND atm you should be able to play the scenario in one go otherwise the game is dead (saves are useless)
Name? There's why, Uknown Mod is done by Uknown_Hero. Check the original announcement here!
(But be careful links are displayed only for registered members.)
Click to see What it does and brief list of changes. :: Unknown Mod - H2:Project Ironfist
HotA 1.5.4 - Bug fix release
- by Pol
Horn of the Abyss
New version 1.5.4 was released, this aims to be a bug fix release. Fixing quite plethora of bugs and bringing on the table just small (albeit nifty) improvements. It's not quite clear, if that will be the last word from HotA team in this year. It could be, it could be..
Release changelog is available here.
What is New (excerpt):
Graphics
[+] New Conflux town sprites (Fort, Citadel, Castle, Capitol) have been introduced for the adventure map
Interface
[+] Hints has been introduced to be displayed when targeting a stack, showing the effect of damage spells, healing and resurrection spells and First Aid Tent healing, along with the number of remaining shots for caster creatures
Miscellaneous
[+] New map Daggerwin Valley have been introduced
[+] Templates mt_Andromeda, mt_Antares and Clash of Dragons have been introduced
They also completed EN FAQ section and Documentation, with description of new creatures, heroes, templates and additional game changes.
EN template section si currently under construction, if you desire to see description of existing templates you need to check it in russian only. Once it will be done, just switch the flag. A guide how to create a new templates is here.
For the lurkers after a long time, it would be good to acknowledge, that there's still only one new town and that's Cove and plans for the other towns were moved aside, for better times. And if you are interested what Cove brings, just see it here.
We would also like to invite you to HotA International Community Discord server. The area is divided into three rooms, for EN, PL or RU languages. Just hit the flag down to appear in the right section. Above chat the community also streams a lot, yt too. If you love Heroes 3, you cannot make a mistake being here. Clickety, click. 
Merry Christmas 2018
- by Pol
Dear CH fellows
we wish you Happy Christmas. Spend with your Family & Friends.
Lots of Happiness and Joy!
And something for your soul too - Carol of the Bells
~Your CH Team
Heroes V - The Long Tale of Legends of the Ancients
- by Karmakeld
Back in 2006 Marzhin announced that he was working on a Heroes V project named 'Legends of the Ancients'. A four-part campaign for Heroes V taking place in the old universe (of Heroes IV - Axeoth). The campaigns takes place after the original stories in Heroes of Might and Magic IV, and were to follow the stories of iconic characters such as Nicolai Ironfist, Lord Harke, Lysander, Malustar and Gauldoth Half-Dead to name a few.
The first 2 campaigns, also refered to as 'Book 1 & 2', were released back in 2007-2008.
The project recieved Ubisoft's 'Seal of Approval' earning the acknowledgement of being Approved Might and Magic Content.
Having to admit time had become scarse, Marzhin released Book 3 as a digital version in Decemeber 2009. The following year 2010 still beared hope that Book 3 & 4 would be released as campaigns, as others like, Corlagon/Cepheus had stepped in to help finish the project.
The last hope of seeing Book 3 & 4 released as campaigns, were buried near the end of 2012. Shortly after, the last part, Book 4 was released by Marzhin as a digital book, complete with art work.
Read more: Heroes V - The Long Tale of Legends of the Ancients