Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

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DreamcastUK
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#71 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 5:45 am

The multiplayer option would be amazing if it was online multiplayer
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Krootox1986
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#72 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 10:39 am

DreamcastUK wrote:The multiplayer option would be amazing if it was online multiplayer


Is the game that good? I was going to wait for the dreamcast version but if its as good as everyone says I might just grab it. I think it's like £1.50 on GOG

frdasa
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#73 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 12:34 pm

In 2004, a member (Artchi) of a german board stated that he worked in the development team of HoMM3.

https://www.nexgam.de/forum/thread/16497-heros-of-might-and-magic-iii/

Short summary:
He wrote that they worked twelve months on the game. The game wasn't cancelled because Sega stopped the production of Dreamcast. The game was cancelled because Dreamcast wasn't able to run the game properly (the main memory of Dreamcast was to small). You could play with four players for one hour if the map wasn't too big. But sometime the game crashes ("OutOfMemory"). Dreamcast couldn't handle big maps. Ubi Soft insisted that the development team port the game 1:1 from the pc version. They even planned online gaming so that you could play with pc players.

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Wombat
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#74 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 12:51 pm

Really happy to see that despite these troubling times the fundraiser is going strong, just 40$ shy of reaching the goal. We are so close to playing this one!

cloofoofoo
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#75 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 4:14 pm

frdasa wrote:In 2004, a member (Artchi) of a german board stated that he worked in the development team of HoMM3.

https://www.nexgam.de/forum/thread/16497-heros-of-might-and-magic-iii/

Short summary:
He wrote that they worked twelve months on the game. The game wasn't cancelled because Sega stopped the production of Dreamcast. The game was cancelled because Dreamcast wasn't able to run the game properly (the main memory of Dreamcast was to small). You could play with four players for one hour if the map wasn't too big. But sometime the game crashes ("OutOfMemory"). Dreamcast couldn't handle big maps. Ubi Soft insisted that the development team port the game 1:1 from the pc version. They even planned online gaming so that you could play with pc players.


Ehh thats strange. I wonder if they could have compressed it more or maybe changing to a dc native texture format or just lowering the assets rez.
Considering the dreamcast had games that required 64 mb ram on pc like soldier of fortune or kiss psycho circus and 32mb ram +4mb vram also on pc like bang gunship elite, those ran withoi issue is strange they struggled with this one.

thedoctor45
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#76 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 4:28 pm

cloofoofoo wrote:Ehh thats strange. I wonder if they could have compressed it more or maybe changing to a dc native texture format or just lowering the assets rez.
Considering the dreamcast had games that required 64 mb ram on pc like soldier of fortune or kiss psycho circus and 32mb ram +4mb vram also on pc like bang gunship elite, those ran withoi issue is strange they struggled with this one.


I've translated a few lines from the developer that should answer your question:

The crux of the matter are the 2D graphics and the data structure of the maps, may sound strange to some now, BUT fact of the matter is that even the DC (which could handle Shenmue without problems) failed in this case due to the complexity of the 2D graphics.

For example, Quake for the Saturn is far from being as complex as HoMM3. Quake is a joke compared to HoMM3 in terms of data structure. I think that is also reflected in the gameplay ... it's just that the player does not notice that.

moi
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#77 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:00 pm

frdasa wrote:The game was cancelled because Dreamcast wasn't able to run the game properly (the main memory of Dreamcast was to small). You could play with four players for one hour if the map wasn't too big. But sometime the game crashes ("OutOfMemory"). Dreamcast couldn't handle big maps.


Complaining about lack of memory, yet still using overhead monster wince as a base...

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Anthony817
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#78 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:11 pm

Also, don't you guys forget that Soldier of Fortune AND Half-Life BOTH had their maps split up into smaller chunks to be able to even run within the Dreamcast low amount of memory. That right there is the secret key to making games with larger environments work. Now, open 2D maps, or open 3d maps can;t be cut down like this. So linear shooters are mostly what would benefit from this really. That is why they are best suited for this form of optimization. Good luck doing that on a 2D game like this. Also as moi pointed out, Windows CE is basically taking up precious memory from the get-go, so no wonder this was canceled.

Katana libraries are really the best for making streamlined optimized ports, if a bit more difficult than directly porting assets. The good thing about Windows CE games on Dreamcast is the modability. Half-Life and 4X4 Evo are great examples of this. The bad thing is it comes at a cost of performance especially when the memory is already so damn small to begin with. If only the DC had at least 32mb memory, so much more could be achieved.
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thedoctor45
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#79 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:37 pm

Using only 16MB of memory was definitely a bad choice since HoMM3 wasn't the only game that didn't make it due to the consoles memory limitations. Commandos 2 comes to mind among others.

Maybe the community will be able to mod the games resources to the point where it runs a bit more stable at least.

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Bob Dobbs
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Re: Heroes of Might and Magic III Dreamcast unreleased community fundraiser

Post#80 » Wed Mar 25, 2020 6:46 pm

Well, from what I read, it can never "realistically" work on a Dreamcast unless someone can do what the professional programmers couldn't do in 12 months.

Make it work.
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Bob Dobbs

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