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I actually disliked that mod. While there is a lot of works and quite a lot of ideas, it looks more lke an accumulation of mini-mods than a well-designed maxi-mods. I could do without 90% of the stuff, the quality of the "new creatures" is EXTREMELY irregular, and finally the new campaigns are absolutely horrible (I only tried 2 of them, though).
Finally, I carried on playing without the mod. I d like to just add a few creatures and maybe type of towns without having all the crappy units (all the "UNIT XXX painted white : ICE XXX. Unit YYY painted red : Fire XXX)- but I believe it is impossible.
Too bad.
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Narwhal: I could do without 90% of the stuff...

Me too. Actually, I played only with commanders and creatures experiance. All other crap was unnecessary for me.
From the website, they have these installaton instructions: "There is a bug in Windows sort function that may make WoG install incorrectly if your system language is not an English. For sure it happens for Swedish. So we recommend you:
- check your system language and if it is English or Russian, all is fine;
- if not, change your local settings to English (Russian) language and country for Canada, Great Britain, Russia or US.
"
but this is ambiguous. What do they mean by "System language" exactly?
Do they mean something from the Rgional Options dialog box/tab or the Languages one (see attached screenshots)?
I'm asking because I don't want to needlessly fuck with my OS settings. I also don't want to hose the HoMM III installation.
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Post edited February 03, 2010 by gscotti
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gscotti: What do they mean by "System language" exactly?
Do they mean something from the Rgional Options dialog box/tab or the Languages one (see attached screenshots)?
I'm asking because I don't want to needlessly fuck with my OS settings. I also don't want to hose the HoMM III installation.

They mean the Regional Options. There, you have to change both "Standards and Formats" and "Location" to one of the specified ones.
Does the features of WoG appear in the original campaigns too?
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gyokzoli: Does the features of WoG appear in the original campaigns too?

Well, you can play the original campaings with WoG settings, but it can mess it up. For example, starting the very first one, I had some stacks of hostile pikemen and archers surrounding my hero, making it impossible to reach the castle (I recall they should join you). Guess it was one setting or an other that caused this...
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gyokzoli: Does the features of WoG appear in the original campaigns too?
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DrIstvaan: Well, you can play the original campaings with WoG settings, but it can mess it up. For example, starting the very first one, I had some stacks of hostile pikemen and archers surrounding my hero, making it impossible to reach the castle (I recall they should join you). Guess it was one setting or an other that caused this...

Yes, because I played with WoG and didn't have your problem... But very soon afterwards, I uninstalled WoG as it was not HoMM anymore to my taste...
I would like to pass on to fellow HoMM 3 players that over at Celestial Heavens we have been translaing foreign languaged maps to English. As of this post, we have over 150 maps translated so far. So, if you ever wanted to play great Foreign maps to in English, this is where you want to go:
http://www.celestialheavens.com/viewpage.php?id=747
We have been translating, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, Russian French and Latin maps to English, and te original text is also included. It may be good to check the site out every now and then, because we keep ading newer maps all te time.
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Narwhal: I actually disliked that mod. While there is a lot of works and quite a lot of ideas, it looks more lke an accumulation of mini-mods than a well-designed maxi-mods. I could do without 90% of the stuff, the quality of the "new creatures" is EXTREMELY irregular, and finally the new campaigns are absolutely horrible (I only tried 2 of them, though).

Finally, I carried on playing without the mod. I d like to just add a few creatures and maybe type of towns without having all the crappy units (all the "UNIT XXX painted white : ICE XXX. Unit YYY painted red : Fire XXX)- but I believe it is impossible.

Too bad.
It is a terrible mod. I could speculate all day about why some (I think it is mostly younger players) like this mess but it's problems are many.
First of all, the whole thing comes off as a 'duct tape and chicken wire' expansion. Like they ran with any and all ideas that were ever sent their way or proposed by anyone without really asking whether a 'feature' was needed or added anything or could really be pulled off in a way that did not jar the senses.
Imagine someone wants to make their bicycle go faster so they take some twine and super glue and add a go kart engine to the bicycle. A very heavy, barely not falling apart engine that frequently shifts direction sending the rider into curbs and light posts without warning.
THAT is what this 'expansion' is like.

But it is even WORSE than that because the bicycle guy decides it is not enough to just go faster right into curbs and brick walls. He decides to add a half dozen mirrors, (using more duct tape to do so), a solar powered flashlight, a car bumper, vinyl hand grips...and so forth, using yarn, scotch tape, duct tape, chicken wire, rusty nails etc.

Just too much 'meh' stuff that is strapped to the game with very shoddy workmanship.

And the campaigns...my word! They are so bad that you will honestly wonder if the whole project was not an elaborate troll by some hackers! I cannot even call these badly designed and badly scripted because that would be an insult to bad writers and bad level designers all over.
I agree entirely.

Good mods have a coherent design and a vision. Some examples :
Fall from Heaven : Play Civ IV in a fantasy world, with magic, very different "races" and an Armaggeddon counter.

Magna Mundi : Europa Universalis with "historical outcomes", i.e. more limitation to the freedom of waging war, changing everyone's religion and so on.

Obscuro Oblivion Overhaul : Oblivion without (much) level-scaling, and in which you can really join evil factions.

Poor mods are just an accumulation of random ideas, with the main focus being "more" : more units, more spells, more features,... The final result is poor, because different "more" may contradict and breaks what would work very well on its own, because no redundant features are ruled out (example : experience for heroes AND experience for units), because the original design choices are not understood (typical : no change of town type). The final result is confuse, tough to understand, and usually gives random results. Plus the AI most of the time don't use all those new stuff.

WoG is the best example I know of such a mod. Other examples are all the "more units" mods of various games, Civ IV especially (what is the point of having 5 types of Armored Units ?)
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Narwhal: I agree entirely.
Good post
.
WoG is not HoMM 3 anymore.

HoMM 3 (like HoMM 2) is a very complete, detailed and well made game.
WoG is a mess.
WoG seems unfinished.. and the graphics doesn't really seem to honour the original graphit and sprites....
Horn of the Abyss seems to me, like one of the most executed yet.. especially in graphics.. but i havent tried it.. is it even downloadable yet? anyway.. ima graphics and design guy.. so i thats mainly my focuspoint when i judge it.. but am i the only one who thinks that it is much more awesome when a usermod/add is soo darn handsomly executed that you can't tell the difference between the add and the original game, at least not by looking at it?

IMHO HoMM 3 Horn of the Abyss looks damn promising
Edit : Answered at the wrong place
Post edited December 29, 2010 by Narwhal
I somewhat agree. I mean, campaigns are certainly horrible but maps not necessarily. Nonetheless, I still have a feeling too many things are packed together, it doesn't feel like a unified product.

I like some minor WoG modifications, though. Like that right-clicking an enemy troop seems like left-clicking our unit - you can see the details like how long a particular spell will last. I also like an option to give up on a resource pit; it could be also extended to castles. Especially for the castles it would be useful - if your ally loses their last castle you cannot fight for it because then you can't return the castle to the original owner and they lose the game.

If such minor things from WoG (without all these excessive options) were backported to the original it would be nice. :)
WoG has caused too many instability issues for me. As fun as a lot of the options are, the looming threat of crashes just isn't worth dealing with when it comes to a game like HoMM3.