Can confirm, had no problems running the GOG version with Horn of the Abyss (HotA) and the unofficial HDMod with Wine under several distros. The map editor works as well.
"HotA adds two new towns to the game, a number of new artifacts, neutral creatures and objects, as well as new campaigns and maps. In addition, HotA fixes a large number of bugs and many balance flaws of the original game, improves the game interface and the random map generator, adds new map editor features. HotA crew is scrupulous about the quality of all elements of the project and ensures that all innovations fit the spirit of the original game."
The HD launcher (built into HotA) also adds support for free, online multiplayer!
When using Heroic Launcher you need this process:
- Install Heroes 3 Complete Edition. The choice of your Wine/Proton runner doesn't matter, since this is an old and well-supported game.
- Open Winecfg in the game settings in Heroic, and choose Windows 7. It may not be necessary but I had a problem with HotA installer being invisible. Changed to Windows 7 and tried again, and it worked...
- I also used Winecfg to set "Graphics: Screen resolution" to 216 DPI to get a good launcher GUI rendering size on my 4K screen. 144 DPI is suitable on 1440p screens.
- Another thing that's worth doing in Heroic's game settings: Go to the Advanced tab, scroll down to "Environment variables", and add one with the name "PULSE_LATENCY_MSEC" and the value "60". This is actually something I've defined in my defaults for all games in Heroic, because it stops the game audio from crackling. But I only use "30" for other games. For some reason, Heroes 3 needs a larger audio buffer size.
- Download Horn of the Abyss (includes HD mod) from h3hota com. Seriously, everyone should play with it. It fixes so many game bugs and makes the game better in every way.
- Go into the game settings in Heroic, click on "Run Exe on Prefix" and choose the HotA setup exe.
- It will find the game folder (it will say something like "Z:\home" and the path to your Heroic game folder where Heroes 3 is). Run the installer with default settings.
- Now go into the "advanced" tab of the game settings in Heroic, and click on "Select an alternative EXE to run".
- It should bring up a file browser for your game folder. Choose "HD_Launcher.exe", which is a special launcher that allows you to configure the game and the HD mod's rendering.
- Note: There's also a file called "HotA_launcher.exe", but this one is only useful if you want to force new HotA updates to be downloaded. You could periodically check it via the "Run EXE on Prefix" feature, but it's not meant to be your main launcher at all! And considering that there's usually several years between HotA updates, you can just ignore it.
- After setting the launcher EXE, you can now run the game normally in Heroic and you will see the HD launcher.
- Important: The HD mod/HD launcher frequently gets updates and is independently updateable. Click on the "Main Settings: Update" button in the launcher to check for new updates and install them if you see new versions of the HD mod. For example, at the time of this writing, they came out with a critically important update for users on Wine (Linux/Mac users). So definitely check updates before playing! :) The updater runs automatically without needing to fiddle with any EXE files yourself, so just click and enjoy!
- Some tips: Look up the HotA/HD Mod quality of life keybinds, such as spacebar to immediately go back through the teleporter you just used, and lots more. HotA even adds a "Visit object" GUI button for this useful feature. There's also "E" to end turn and "M" to continue moving. You can Alt-click on hero portraits to change their order. And there's hotkeys for most other GUI areas. It's also worth knowing these town shortcuts: Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Click on a troop to swap all troops to the other side. Ctrl-Click to split 1, Shift-Click to split half. And you can hold Right-Click on most things in the game for an in-game explanation of what it does.
- Changing the game's zoom amount (resolution): The launcher's "Source size" controls how zoomed-in the game is, with lower values being more zoomed-in. The game came out at a time when most people had 800x600 screens. The dropdown offers some auto-generated suggestions (which always includes an option for "X x 600" at your main monitor's aspect ratio), but you can manually type in a different resolution. I recommend forcing the game to render at a resolution that matches your current aspect ratio. For example, if you have a 16:9 screen and you want the height to be 600 pixels (for accurate nostalgia), then you can use this formula to calculate how wide it would have to be to match 16:9: `600*(16/9) = 1066`, meaning that you would use `1066x600`. The game will literally render at that resolution, and any stretching/filling will never be able to escape the aspect ratio you have chosen, so you need to ensure that the aspect ratio matches your screen.
- Hiding the OS taskbar: Enable the "Full screen mode" checkbox to avoid the hell of constantly seeing the OS taskbar while playing.
- Better graphics quality: The launcher has a "stretch filter" dropdown, which is organized from worst looking (top) to best (bottom), but the better looking choices will use more processing power. The pixel upscaling filters such as SAI and BRZ act by upscaling the original image to create sharper, higher-definition graphics. The scaling filters after that (such as Lanczos, Linear, Bilinear, etc) are only responsible for stretching that to your screen's aspect ratio (which will involve either enlarging or shrinking the image to fit your screen's actual resolution). There's also a rendering "Mode" dropdown where I would recommend "(stretchable) 32-bit OpenGL by Verok", which uses the GPU more and offers much better-looking scaling filters (the default GDI option is entirely CPU-based rendering and can be very slow, but is possibly more stable). Choosing OpenGL mode changes the available stretch filters. I use "xBRZ x4" with "Lanczos" scaling, which is the best upscaler and the sharpest scaling filter. The "xBRZ x4" filter enlarges my "1066x600" source size to "4264x2400", and then shrinks it to 3840x2160 (my 4K screen) via Lanczos scaling (which is the best scaler for preserving sharpness). The game runs at full performance for me with these settings, and looks fantastically sharp and beautiful.
- Avoid pressing F4 in game. It's supposed to switch between windowed and fullscreen, but for me it just makes the game window invisible. ;)
- If you want to play the normal Heroes 3 campaigns instead of Horn of the Abyss's campaign, you need to do this simple process: In the top left of the launcher, select "Heroes3.exe", and then press "Create HD Exe" and save it in the pre-selected game folder, then choose "Heroes3_HD.exe" in the launcher menu. Then set up your renderer and scaling settings again. Now you can play the standard game with its campaigns. Pretty sure that you don't get the Horn of the Abyss game fixes and tweaks that way, but at least you get the HD mod's game fixes and tweaks!
- I would recommend disabling the "Save all days (for tournaments)" launcher option, by the way, unless you like having 400000000 save files. ;)
- Have fun playing the best version of Heroes of Might and Magic ever made! :)
Post edited January 09, 2025 by TinyMessajah
