Музей мира M&M, наиболее приоритетны — Heroes III Опции

[Roman2211]

Хорошие интервью, есть ешё дневник https://web.archive.org/web/19991013051339/...i_dd/index.html

[Amelrix]

Хорошие интервью, есть ешё дневник https://web.archive.org/web/19991013051339/...i_dd/index.html

Да, его я уже здесь выкладывал.
Сообщение #1161

[Amelrix]

Статья о создании Heroes of Might and Magic II из Retro Gamer #239.

(Раскрыть)

The Making of Heroes Of Might And Magic II

Turn-based strategy games rarely grab the headlines in the history of gaming. But for Jon Van Caneghem and Mark Caldwell, a love of chess and board games led to one of the genre’s best titles, the acclaimed Heroes of Might and Magic II

Words by Faith Johnson

Heroes Of Might And Magic II stands proud as one of the key PC games of the Nineties strategy boom. It has its roots in a less well-known game, King’s Bounty, released six years earlier by New World Computing. “Heroes was born from King’s Bounty and King’s Bounty was born from wanting to make a Star Trek game,” Mark Caldwell explains, “at the time, Gulf And Western owned Star Trek and was already making Star Trek books, games and trinkets, so they wouldn’t give us a licence. But we knew Task Force Games had made a Star Fleet Battles board game based on Star Trek. We thought we could licence that, and while they were interested, it turned out to be cheaper to buy the entire company.”

After Mark and Jon Van Caneghem bought Task Force Games, both a board game and videogame of King’s Bounty was released. Jon remembers that, “King’s Bounty was my first attempt to make a strategy game and we got a lot of praise for it. When making games in those days, we had no idea if we’d make enough money to be able to make the next game. So after the success, it was obvious we were gonna make another one. And we took the fan feedback on everything they were asking for, which I think is very important in game development, especially making sequels.”

That sequel was titled Heroes Of Might And Magic and after winning numerous awards it was inevitable a follow-up would be made. “We weren’t making a sequel for the first time,” explains Mark. “So we did as we always did. Take ideas we couldn’t use, or didn’t have time to implement, in previous games and work them into the next one. Designing a computer game, at least at NWC, was always about iterating. Just start, get something working, then get feedback, and iterate.”

After the initial design process, Jon started work on Heroes II’s map editor. “I spent a lot of effort creating the editor so players could make their own scenarios. That was a must-have and what everyone was asking for. I had a very clunky tool during the development of the first Heroes, so I wanted to build Heroes II with the same editor that we were releasing to the fans. I worked on the editor first and actually used it for many of the maps and played the scenarios over and over to balance them. It was really a passion project with the amount of time I kept putting in adjusting all the maps and making new ones.”

In July 1996, Jon sold NWC to 3DO and this gave him more time to work on Heroes II instead of running a company. “I had sold the company to 3DO and that was a positive thing for me from a time perspective. I could focus on development since we were now part of a larger company that handled everything from payroll, the HR and offices. And I think I did some of my best work in that period. It really let me put those hours into designing all of the maps, testing all the different difficulty settings and making different challenges.”

Heroes II retained the original game’s art design but added higher resolution, greater colour depth and smoother animations that improved all areas of the graphics. “Art helps a game, but sometimes it also hurts it,” Mark explains. “Our users expected iteration, not revolution, as far as art style goes. We would oversee the process, but the style and quality came from the art director and artists, and since they remained from our previous games, so did the quality and style.”

Jon explains the decision to stick with the art style as, “Two parts, one was for speed of getting a game done. Going with the 2D art was faster as we already had the engine. And secondly, we already knew we had a fan base with Heroes, so we wanted to live up to it.” Interestingly, Jon remembers a discussion that almost led to Heroes II going 3D. “We actually did some experimenting with 3D characters using a 3D engine. At the time, there were software renders for 3D and not hardware, you had to have a high-end machine and there was a huge trade-off between the detail of the polygons versus the speed of the rendering. In an experiment we did, the creatures didn’t look very good due to low polygon counts. “You also have to think about your staff. My staff was full of 2D artists, and 3D was just coming along. So we didn’t have much experience building 3D assets. I felt we could get a much higher fidelity using bitmap art than we could with the state of 3D engines at the time. And I just viewed the town screens as an inspirational point, like, ‘Wow, look at my beautiful town in all its glory.’ If we had gone 3D it wouldn’t have looked anything like what it did. Because we were just using straight bitmaps it had that hand-drawn look and I have to give credit to the fantastic artists we had at the time.”

One of the fondest memories fans of Heroes II have is its soundtrack. The music was undertaken by Rob King and Paul Romero who composed a full orchestral score that included opera singers. Mark remembers the discussion on deciding to include classical opera. “Rob King was our sound master, it was his friendship with Paul Romero that suggested to me that we use classical music. Since I was trained in classical music, I was excited about the departure from the usual game music and gave it a green light. I’d no idea how much impact it would have, but it was a perfect match.”

Jon agrees and remembers that, “There was a lot of fun and vibrant discussions around the opera stuff. My internal audio producer Rob King was Paul’s partner and we just told them to go for it. And so, they came back and showed everyone in the studio and we had such debates about the opera. We even had to make two tracks in the UI by adding an option to turn off the opera for the player. But it was fantastic pieces of music and today is just as loved as the actual games themselves.”

Heroes II’s gameplay mimics the first game but features were built upon to improve the overall experience. Two new factions, the Wizard and Necromancer, added gameplay depth and the castles now had buildings that strengthen the player’s position during siege attacks. However, these additions caused problems with the game’s balance and Jon explains that, “We had a good formula with the first four factions and it was natural to add a couple of town types but we needed a lot of tweaking on the basic gameplay. My test department and I used to joke when I’d walk in there and they’re all playing the same strategy. I knew I had to fix the balance and the moment I came back into the test group they were then arguing about which strategy would win.”

It was this constant balancing, which was so important to the team, that led to the biggest improvement in Heroes II. The Hero characters could now acquire secondary skills that were varied and ranged from increasing movement to determining the Hero’s spell powers. Choosing between these abilities added a new role-playing feature as players considered which skills would serve them better. It was at this moment the core gameplay of Heroes began to evolve.

“Something we discovered in Heroes II,” Jon explains, “was a turning point for the whole series. Heroes was originally a pure strategy game that was meant to play and feel like chess. The idea of bringing RPG elements into it was never a plan in the first Heroes and it all happened in Heroes II. We ended up expanding the audience because we added a way to play it like an RPG instead of a pure strategy game. And that was fascinating to me, so we really ran with that.”

The magic system was also overhauled and the Heroes now had spell points that deplete as each spell is cast. This allowed players to be flexible in their approach to battle strategy and Jon explains that this wasn’t planned but grew during development. “It was a system that we just figured out as we went along, it was about making more gameplay and that’s something I’ve always enjoyed putting in my games.”

It wasn’t just the magic, Heroes or castles that were changed. The maps had many new additions and this meant Jon had to contend with further balancing issues. “We had to change how often some things showed up, and this is why the maps are so important in Heroes games,” he explains. “You know how much stuff is on the map, how far away it is from other stuff and so on. That created more balance than the actual bag of tricks the players had to use. And figuring that out was more important than the actual individual items being balanced against each other. We found that if you make the map fair, the balancing takes care of itself.”

Heroes II’s story centres on Lord Ironfist’s two sons, the good King Roland and his wouldbe usurper and brother, the bad Lord Archibald. It plays out across two campaigns with each following one brother as they battle for the throne. Mark remembers some of the story’s inspirations. “There is always an inspiration to be gained from everywhere, some came from popular TV shows like Star Trek since we’re big Trekkers, movies like Princess Bride, books, and various other ideas. Heroes was always an internal collaboration and everyone had a voice.”

Jon feels the story is something added after you made a great game. “The stories in my games are more background to me than the foreground, I tend to make a game and then add story. With the Heroes story, I had help from the team and we’d sit around talking about what makes sense for these characters. A lot of it came from stories from the Might And Magic RPG series but we tried to expand it so Heroes still had its own world, it had to stand on its own, regardless of any outside forces.”

Heroes II had online and local multiplayer options and Jon explains that he was hesitant about including this. “The online was a very tough call,” he admits. “We liked the idea of local multiplayer because we had seen it in earlier games. And that proved to be pretty fun, but as the internet started to grow, it was obvious that we needed to have it online. In fact, it was so problematic, that after Heroes II, going into III, there were debates around giving up turn-based and going to a realtime game because of online multiplayer.”

Many fans will be relieved this didn’t happen but according to Jon it nearly became a reality. “There was actually a point where we were on the edge of taking Heroes real-time instead of keeping it where it was, and it was because that’s where the gaming world was going with WarCraft and Command & Conquer. I worried that it would be detrimental and had to make the call and I said, ‘Let’s keep Heroes forever turn-based.’”

The pair is proud of what they achieved and have fond memories of the accolades Heroes II received. There is also a loyal fanbase that continuously makes new maps and modifications for others to enjoy. Mark says, “It felt great, but Might And Magic also won awards and we had several bookshelves with awards, some from official places, some from fans, some from distributors.” And on Heroes II’s longevity Mark feels that, “When you have a good game, time is no threat. We spent time to make it great, and time is letting us know it was time well spent.”

And Jon echoes Mark’s sentiments. “When I hear someone tell me how it affected them it’s a wonderful feeling. I love to share that praise back with the team because I couldn’t have done it without them. It actually feels better as time goes by in terms of how many people it’s influenced. So many other game developers too, I think that’s the most flattering part. It’s influenced so many people for so long and people are still playing many years later. Anytime I have a bad day I just go think about that.”

Pocket Monsters

Grand Battle Strategies on the Small Screen

You would think that developing a grand strategy game on the humble Game Boy Color would be difficult, but the 2000 port is decent and keeps most of the gameplay intact. Oddly, it uses creatures, factions and other features from Heroes III, so isn’t really Heroes II at all. To make matters worse, the first Game Boy Color title, simply titled Heroes, has more in common with Heroes II. The confusion with names aside, this mini version is surprisingly good and has everything from the battles, resource management, construction and exploration that is synonymous with the series as a whole.

The obvious difference is the presentation, the Game Boy Color struggles to recreate the beautiful artwork and expansive design of the PC original. That’s not to say it looks terrible, just basic and not well defined in places. The other big difference is the lack of a mouse and you have to constantly keep tapping the d-pad to move your cursor around the maps. The risk was that it would all be too much for a Game Boy to handle but both Heroes games do a great job in recreating the PC experience.

Price of Loyalty

All Great PC Games Get an Expansion

In May 1997, The Price Of Loyalty expansion was released with Cyberlore Studios undertaking development. It added four new campaign stories unconnected to the main quest, additional scenario maps as well as new artifacts and creatures. The expansion also added balancing features with the most notable being a new building in the Necromancer’s castle. The Shrine would amplify any Necromancer’s resurrection skill and turn it into a much more powerful faction. The number of skeletons created after each battle increased significantly and was an effective way to build an unstoppable army.

Moving the work out of NWC’s offices to another studio allowed the team to start work on Heroes III and Jon explains that, “Cyberlore were a very talented group who also loved Heroes. I don’t remember the details but we only had limited resources to start working on Heroes III. It was a way for us to expand our development capability by hiring Cyberlore to build the expansion. Those guys did a fantastic job and expanded on the RPG elements. They added all this depth and it just made a much bigger game for more players to enjoy and the net result is it grew the audience.”

[Mefista]

“We actually did some experimenting with 3D characters using a 3D engine. At the time, there were software renders for 3D and not hardware, you had to have a high-end machine and there was a huge trade-off between the detail of the polygons versus the speed of the rendering. In an experiment we did, the creatures didn’t look very good due to low polygon counts.

Вот бы увидеть эти попытки.

‘Let’s keep Heroes forever turn-based.’”

Ах если бы

In May 1997, The Price Of Loyalty expansion was released with Cyberlore Studios undertaking development. It added four new campaign stories unconnected to the main quest, additional scenario maps as well as new artifacts and creatures.

Существа? Где?

[tolich]

Существа? Где?

Скорее всего, речь о призраках. Но даже если бы их не было в ванильной игре, "почему вы говорите о ней во множественном числе"?

[Mefista]

Вот именно.

Я некогда видела среди какой-то форумины англоязычное заявление, что-де Cyberlore накосякали графикой, поэтому часть их наработок просто завернули, теперь интересно, уж не в монстрах ли было дело.

[Amelrix]

Превью Heroes of Might and Magic III.

Источник: PC Gamer, October 1998, 58-59

(Раскрыть)

David Mullich, the Director of Heroes of Might and Magic III: The Restoration of Erathia, isn't surprised that Might and Magic is the most popular turn-based series ever. "It's easy to get into, and easy to get out of," he says. "By 'easy to get into' I mean it's easy to learn — you don't have to be a die-hard gamer to understand how to play it — although it is deep enough to satisfy die-hard gamers. By 'easy to get out of' I mean you have the option of sitting down and playing the game during lunchtime. Since Heroes is comprised of scenarios of varying length, it's the perfect game to play when you only have an hour available."

Some HOMM basics: players control a cast of fantastical heroes and roam the land, taking over and fortifying various towns (each of which produces different types of troops), searching for magical artifacts and engaging enemies in hex-based combat. It sounds simple, and on the surface it is, but the depth of the underlying game balancing is fantastic, and every element has been consciously designed to get players immersed in a fantasy world, instead of having them concentrate on what's happening in a complicated PC game. Explains Mullich: "In combat, for example, most of the monsters are based upon familiar fantasy-mythology, so most players have a good sense going into the game of what their units are capable of," he says. "And we've deliberately made the combat area non-scrollable, so that players can effortlessly assess the battle situation. As far as the combat mechanics go, much of the game-play has the familiarity of Chess — except that players have the fun of watching a Dragon turn an Orc into a crispy critter."

Heroes II was so well designed, in fact, that even the design team initially had trouble coming up with new ideas for the sequel. "We examined many ways of expanding the Heroes universe, only to discover that there was no way to improve upon the way certain things were done originally," says Mullich. "Nevertheless," he continues, "we did find ways of increasing the depth and variety of the gameplay without breaking Heroes' fundamental rules."

The biggest addition will be new subterranean areas, which feature new creatures to fight, new artifacts to discover (there are now 128 in all), new environments like tunnels and caverns to explore, and, most excitingly, a new dungeon city. HOMM III will feature a total of eight cities, five of which (Castle, Rampart, Tower, Necropolis, and Stronghold) are similar to towns in Heroes II (Knight town, Sorceress town, Wizard town, Necromancer town, and Barbarian town, respectively), and three new city types. In addition to Dungeon, there will also be Inferno, a fire and brimstone environment filled with demons and devils and Fortress, which Mullich describes as "a swampland filled with all manner of reptilian beasts." Each town will also feature more buildings and unique structures, including escape tunnels, HabiTrail-type structures (building these requires a special artifact), and creature generators.

Each town type can spawn seven upgradable types of creatures, for a total of 118 unique creatures when you count the two gollumns and four elemental creatures which can be recruited. Many of those 118 creatures will be new — a lot of HOMM II characters, like peasants and ghosts, have been discarded in favor of new creatures, some of which sound very exciting. Although there will be several types of dragons, the most powerful creature in the game is likely to be the Archangel. According to Mullich, other interesting new creatures include Pegasus (mounted by a sword-wielding elf), Gremlins (a wizard wanna-be with a ball and chain) Imps, Efreets (from the Fire Plane), Troglodytes (found, of course, underground), Gorgons, and Behemouths (made of living rock).

HOMM III will also feature 16 heroes, one "Might" and one "Magic" type for each city. Castle features the Knight and Cleric, Rampart the Ranger and Druid, Tower the Alchemist and Wizard, Dungeon the Overlord and Warlock, Inferno the Heretic and Daemonick, Necropolis the Death King and Necromancer, Stronghold the Barbarian and Battle Mage, and Fortress the Beastmaster and Witch.

But why so many changes to the creature town and heroes list? Well, in an attempt to provide something different to gamers, New World has set this game on an entirely new (and, as it happens, rougher, darker, and more dangerous) continent. "In the campaign game," says Mullich, "our protagonist is Queen Catherine, wife of King Roland from the Might and Magic series. She sails to Erathia to attend her father's funeral, only to discover that evil forces have conspired to use her father's death as a vehicle for overtaking Erathia. Players lead armies in the struggle to restore Erathia to its former glory."

When battle inevitably comes, players will notice that New World has again upped the number of hexes on which to wage it (now 15x11 versus the old 11x9). This enables players to bring bigger armies (consisting of seven creature stacks, versus five for HOMM II) into battle. It also allows new obstacles, including magic-created ones, on the battlefield. There are also new combat options, including the ability to have weak units stand and defend, instead of attacking. A new siege machine, the Balista, will join the Catapult, as will first-aid tents and an ammo cart, which gives unlimited shots to shooting creatures. The number of spells has also been upped to 60, fifteen for each of the four elemental schools.

On the technology side, New World has re-done the graphics in pre-rendered 3D, the screen resolution has been upped to 800 by 600 (making fitting in those extra combat hexes easier), and everything is now in 16-bit color. Additionally, the art for the towns is all new, and the combat animations have been redone to take maximum advantage of the new resolution and color depth. Up to eight people can play at once in multi-player mode, and a new alliance feature system enables allies to trade material, but prevents them from attacking each other.

Although some might have expected HOMM III to add a real-time mode as everyone else is doing these days, Mullich is content to stay with turn-based play. "Heroes is the most popular turn-based strategy game of all time," he says. "Making it real-time would turn it into a different game, and quite possibly a lesser one." Has the tidal wave of real-time games affected the HOMM III team at all? "Not really," Mulluch says. "Heroes is such a success unto itself; there's very little reason to look to other games or game genres to help define its evolution."

[Mefista]

Behemouths (made of living rock).

А я и не знала 0_о

Death King

Интересно, это косяк автора или что.
Судя по

gollumns

у него какие-то божественные опечатки.

[Amelrix]

Интервью с Jon Van Caneghem, данное им в 1993 году.

Источник: Caroline Spector. Might and Magic Compendium: The Authorized Strategy Guide to Games I-V. Secrets of the Games (Rocklin: Prima Publishing, 1994), 361-370.

An Interview with Jon Von [sic] Caneghem

CS: Let's start with a little background. What kinds of games did you play before you got into computer games? I notice you have a lot of board games, role-playing games, that sort of thing.

JV: My hobby is collecting games, so I was playing every game I could find. Did a lot of role-playing, mostly D&D. Also did a lot of wargaming, things like Star Fleet Battles. I also did a lot of Avalon Hill gaming as well. Went to all the game conventions and played in tournament after tournament.

CS: Win any?

JV: Yeah. I won Star Fleet Battles; I was the national champ in '86. Same with 1830; I won almost every time. It's an Avalon Hill game. And another one called Titan. I played a lot.

CS: So it was a natural progression from board games into computer games?

JV: Yeah, well, what happened was I was playing with a bunch of friends, D&D and some other board games, on a regular basis. As people got older and started to get responsible, getting together was more and more difficult. Then a friend of mine showed me an Apple II, and he was playing a bunch of simple games on it. I was just amazed. This was great! I could play any time I wanted and didn't have to wait for anyone to get together. So I immediately got one. For about a year and a half all I did was play games on it. The two I probably played to death were Ultima I and Wizardry I. I think I went through each one of those about seven or eight times.

CS: So how long was it before you started trying to figure out how they worked?

JV: About a year and a half. Then I started to get tired. Everyone started to tell me, You're always complaining about these games. Why don't you make your own? And I said that I didn't have the slightest idea how to program. But it intrigued me. I switched from being a pre-med student to a math and computer science major at UCLA and just started delving into my Apple II, absorbing every magazine and piece of information I could find. That was about 1983.

I started this undertaking of trying to write my own game, teaching myself all along how to program the computer, programming the Apple II. Everything I was learning at school was just ancient history as far as the computer was concerned, with punch cards and mainframes. There was nothing about personal computers. So I pretty much had to teach myself everything.

When I started on Might and Magic, my first project, I went at it from a gamer's point of view. I was trying to make this game and the computer was just getting in my way. I wasn't a programmer who knew a neat graphic routine and then turned it into a game. I think most people at the time, except for a few, came from that end of it—it was mostly programmers making games. I wasn't, although I pretty much became a programmer at that point.

CS: What game influenced you the most while you were working on Might and Magic? D&D keeps coming up…

JV: Yeah, that was a heavy influence. Wizardry and Ultima games influenced me a lot. They showed me that this type of game was popular enough to actually sell and make money doing it. That encouraged me.

CS: Did you write Might and Magic by yourself, or did you have other people helping you?

JV: I wrote the whole thing by myself. I did almost all of the computer graphics myself. Towards the end I had a friend help me with some of the graphics. But I'd say I did about 90% of it—wrote the story, did the manual, pretty much did everything. But it was a three-year undertaking.

CS: Did you self-publish Might and Magic?

JV: After about two years it was coming together, starting to look like something. I went to a bunch of publishers at a game convention, some of the big names now who were up and coming then. I asked them, "I have this game that I'm almost done with. If I gave it to you to publish, what would I get for it?" And they gave me these ridiculous hem and haw stories about, "Well, if you were an established author and you had two or three games under your belt, you might get as much as a dollar a game." and on and on. Pretty much made me say "Okay. Fine. I'll do it myself." So I begged, borrowed, and stole and took out a couple of ads in A+ Magazine, the Apple magazine at the time, with an 800 number, and had the phone installed in our apartment, and the phone started ringing off the hook. It just took off. This was around November of 1986. By the end of December I was getting calls from all the major publishers again, this time with a lot more lucrative offers, but by then I had got myself enough in debt that I couldn't take just an author's position on a product like that. I had already done so much in advertising and the packaging and production and everything else that being an author for someone wasn't that much of an option at that point.

That's when Activision called me. I was in the shower one morning and had a call from Chicago, from then-president Manny Levy, I think his name was. He said he loved the ad, and loved the product, and wanted to talk about his new concept—affiliated label distribution. I visited all the other publishers again, made the rounds, but wound up signing with Activision.

CS: So Activision helped bankroll you?

JV: Yeah. They gave us some help, both in getting the product translated to other formats like Commodore and IBM, and they also got us some huge pre-orders that we were able to go out and get financing for.

CS: And they could get you great distribution, too, since they are everywhere…

JV: Which made the difference between selling a few thousand units out of my apartment to going into the 100,000 category with mass distribution.

CS: It sounds like a real rags-to-riches story. Basically this all happened in a pretty short amount of time.

JV: Yeah. Like a roller coaster, or a rocket ship. It just took off.

CS: What happened after you became an affiliated label of Activision?

JV: We were with Activision for two years. Then they became Mediagenic. We left there rapidly after our deal was up. We joined Electronic Arts as an affiliate label. They were the best affiliated label situation at the time. We were there for three years and that started to deteriorate. It got too crowded. They got into cartridge games and signed up too many other developers. We left them in June of 1992 and signed on as an affiliated label with Broderbund. We've made the complete rounds now, and hopefully at some point in the near future we'll be able to do it ourselves.

CS: It sounds like you've done awfully well. What games besides Might and Magic do you produce?

JV: First there was Might and Magic, just called Might and Magic. Then we immediately started on the next one, Might and Magic II, which was done originally for Apple. Right after that we did a strategy adventure game called King's Bounty, a simpler game, although it turned out to be very popular. It's a little like Titan, one of the board games I used to play. That was a fun game to do. And we took on a project called Nuclear War.

CS: Was that based on the card game, Nuclear War?

JV: That's right. It was a very fun card game. A lot of our employees had met at game conventions and all of our roots were in gaming. At 5:30 the office would shut down and the gaming would start. Everyone was always there until all hours of the night, playing games. We were so hooked into board gaming that we wanted to get into it. So we bought a company called Task Force Games. We moved it out to California. They are the ones who did all the Star Fleet Battles projects, and that was the game that I was a fanatic about. We had that company for about two years. We really wanted to make a big deal in the board game industry. It just kind of muddled along for a couple of years. Didn't make much money, but it was certainly a lot of fun.

CS: When was this? Sometime in the late 80's?

JV: Yes. There was a decline in the industry, and cartridge games were just tearing dollars away from everyone from toys to hobbies to everything.

CS: Unfortunate timing for you to get into that.

JV: Yeah. It was fun, though. We really had a good time with it. I had a partner, Ron Spitzer, who signed on in 1987 when I joined with Activision. He was a friend I was gaming with at the time when I first released Might and Magic. He helped negotiate some of the contracts when I went from company to company in 1987. He was real instrumental in the whole Task Force thing. We also had John Olson with us. He was president of another board game company, GDW US (Game Designers' Workshop), and we hired him to come out and run Task Force for us. We had a lot of fun with it.

We really made a go at the board games, but compared to the dollars and profitability of software… There was just no comparison. It didn't make any sense. Task Force kind of sidetracked us from software during that period. So, at that time we had only one product coming out, which was Tunnels and Trolls, which again was another license from the board game business, and very popular. It was brought to us by our Japanese affiliate, Starcraft. Tunnels and Trolls was extremely popular in Japan. It's a huge success over there, all the books and the board games. They wanted to do a computer game, and we said we'd publish it for them in the U.S. if they did it. So they did the whole product over there, and the original T&T designers, Liz Danforth and Mike Stackpole, wrote all the scenarios. So we published it here. It didn't go over all that well. The technology for the product was a couple of years behind the times. I think that's been the story of our industry. If the level of technology isn't right, the strength of the game won't save it. That was unfortunate, because it was a really deep and involved product that the die-hard people really liked it, but it didn't have the whiz-bang goods that it needed the year it came out.

CS: Did it do well in Japan?

JV: Yeah, they did pretty well with it in Japan. For them it was a successful product. For us it was not so good. But, a lot of people liked it. Then after that we got rid of Task Force. John Olson took it back to Texas. Another dead Texas game company. But, he's revived it, and it's doing pretty well now.

CS: So after Tunnels and Trolls you went back to Might and Magic.

JV: Yeah, we went real heavily back into software. That's when I spent the time designing Might and Magic III, and that's when I was working initially a lot on Planet's Edge, which got to be too overbearing at the time so Planet's Edge got passed off to other people in-house. I just concentrated on Might and Magic III. Those two products were our next two catch-up releases into the world of technology and whiz-bang stuff on the PC. That was the first product I did that was originally designed for the PC. I think it brought us from a catch-up position back to a leading position in games and technology. Might and Magic III did terrific. It won a few awards. Might and Magic III has probably been the most successful award product I've had. Although we've had so many in so many different countries now that I've totally lost track of them. It used to be that I'd scan every piece of literature just for the mention of the name of Might and Magic and now there's just so much, you just kind of wait for the more important ones. Which is kind of sad.

CS: Actually, that says you're successful, that you know you're going to be mentioned fairly often, and that you are fairly secure in an insecure business.

JV: Right. I look back, and we've been around for a fairly long time in this industry. We've survived some real ups and downs. I started on this in 1983, but we didn't really launch a product until 1986. So that's like seven years from today. That's quite a long time in software.

CS: I noticed that you've got some Sega games here. Do you develop those yourself or are those licensed products?

JV: We've started doing a lot of Sega and Nintendo work, but not as a publisher. The economics just aren't right for a company our size to get into it. But we did things through Electronic Arts and a number of other Nintendo companies and Sega companies. We went ahead and either coordinated or developed products for them. So that's been pretty good. We've done six Sega cartridges and two Super Nintendo cartridges and one NES cartridge.

CS: Yeah, I noticed your Fairy Tale cartridge over there. The graphics look great.

JV: That one did pretty well. I was always a fan of David Joiner, who happens to be down the street. He's the original designer of Fairy Tale. When Micro-Illusions went out of business there was an opportunity. We picked up the title and put it on the Sega. And that was all fun.

CS: And then you came out with Might and Magic IV.

JV: Right. After Might and Magic III and Planet's Edge I had a parting of the ways with my partner, Ron Spitzer. The company had gotten to the size where there could be one head, and it was going to be me. We had a difference of opinion on direction. He saw a different future than I did for the company. So we had an amicable parting, and he went to Electronic Arts. That's when I kind of changed directions with the company in opening the doors more to outside developers, for us to be more of a publisher, and less of a giant development house, in doing everything internally. So we started to take on quite a few outside products, which are starting to show up now. You'll see a lot more this year and next.

CS: So now you have development groups working independently and then bringing their work to you to publish?

JV: Exactly. We did Spaceward Ho!, a strategy game that way.

CS: Who developed that for you?

JV: Some guys called Delta Tau, in San Francisco. A really neat, fun game. We shipped the Widows version in November of 1992 and the DOS version just this January. We just shipped Empire Deluxe. There was a famous game called Empire and I had been friends with Mark Baldwin, the original designer/programmer on it, for a long time. When Interstel went out of business he got the rights to it back, and I said, "Hey, let's do the next Empire." He said, "Great." So he developed Empire Deluxe and we published it and it just came out February or March. We did Vegas Games Pack for Windows with an outside developer. That's been doing really well.

As far as outside developers coming to us with products, it's been real exciting. I really like doing that. I like seeing people who are where I was a few years ago and this time being on the other side of the fence, I'm trying to be a lot more fair and a lot more giving towards them.

CS: It sounds like you are really getting things going now.

JV: Yeah. At the same time we're working with outside developers, internally, we're working on the Might and Magic series. We did Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen. I didn't want to use the number anymore. I felt strongly that everyone wants to see the next James Bond movie, but no one wants to see Rocky IX. So off came the numbers.

CS: So, what is the next Might and Magic game, the one after Clouds of Xeen, called?

JV: Might and Magic V is called Darkside of Xeen. It's something I don't think anyone else has done before. The story behind Clouds and Darkside is that one game's set on one side of the world and ones on the other side of the world, and if you put both games together on your hard drive, you can freely walk back and forth. There are extra quests that you can't complete unless you have both games and there's a third endgame that you can't get to unless you have both games. But you can play either one by itself. It's huge.

CS: I'm overwhelmed by Clouds of Xeen—its a big game.

JV: And we get so much criticism, both from the fans and the critics. I hear everything, from, "It was so short! I finished it in 35 hours. I felt disappointed." to "I've been playing it for 200 hours and I still haven't finished it." You have to say to yourself, where do you draw the line here? There's umpteen thousands of people playing it out there, and I've really found that every one of them played it for a different reason. There's no two people who have the same desire. So I guess you try to please as many of the people as much of the time…

CS: Do you still create the games to please yourself, the way you did when you started?

JV: Yeah. I think so. That's what I started out with—I wanted to make a game that I would like, taking elements of games that I liked and adding all the stuff that I thought of and putting it all together. I still do that now. In fact, the games are getting shorter because I don't have 300 hours to spend playing something. So if I can finish something in forty hours, I think that would be more enjoyable.

CS: So, what's the fastest play-though [sic] on one of these games?

JV: There's two ways of saying how you finished it. One is to say, "I got to the end game in fifteen hours or twenty hours because I knew all the answers." Or you can say, "I did everything in the game and it took me forty hours." Reviewers ask us about this, too.

I even added a feature when you first start the game where you're asked if you want an Adventurer game or a Warrior game. This was my wife's idea. She really liked the game, the adventure. But she wasn't into combat. She was like, well, you know, monsters are fun, but let's get on with the story. I said, "OK, well, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there, just like you, who aren't into the numbers and the hit points. They just want to get on with the story." There's a lot of quests, a lot of fun things to do. So I put the choice in, and what Adventurer does is it makes it easier to win all the battles. So you get through that part of the game a lot quicker.

CS: I was really glad you had that. Combat is great every once in a while, but there's other stuff to do.

JV: There's other stuff to do and we want to expand our audience, to bring in more and more people who wouldn't normally play this kind of game.

CS: What's in the future? Where do you see the company going in terms of new games?

JV: We'll keep doing Might and Magic as long as it's popular. It keeps getting more popular, so that's a good sign. We're mostly looking for outside talent now to develop product, whether it's just an idea or a finished product. Being a publisher with roots in game design and development can really help a lot of people. We have a bunch of groups now who are very talented and just never really got a chance to do an original. They were always stuck doing ports (conversions of existing games from one computer to another) to pay the bills. They have fantastic ideas, so I'm really trying to go with those people and give them a chance at it. I'm really excited at what's going to come out of it. We have a couple coming this year, and a couple in early 1994, as well.

We're seeing so much of the same old same old because the market is tight and in tough times and you can count on selling X units of Game XYZ 14, but how many units are you going to sell of some new Whiz Bang thing? Will it be the next Sim City, or will it be the next bomb? That's real tough. Still, I want the new guys.

CS: I think that sounds like a really neat place to go. We've got your background in terms of board games and computer games. In terms of fiction, would you say you have any favorites that you draw on, like Tolkien, or are you one of those classic computer game guys who didn't read.

JV: To tell you the truth, I was one of those kids who didn't read. I was a television kid.

CS: Any favorite TV shows?

JV: I'm the ultimate Star Trek nut.

CS: Old and new?

JV: Old. I've tried to force myself, but I just haven't gotten too excited over the new one. I've always thought it was the USS Loveboat with Captain Stuebing. To boldly run away from anything we find. But Star Trek was a big influence on me. I just grew up watching everything. All my background has come from B movies, before Star Wars.

CS: Comic books?

JV: No, no comic books. I'm not a reader.

CS: Not a reader at all. That's amazing.

JV: I don't have the patience. I was never a fast reader, which really bugged me. I could never get through. I would always start books, but cheat and skip ahead and read the start of each chapter and then the end and then I'd go on to the next thing.

CS: I bet you read the end before you started the book, right?

JV: That's right. I meet a lot of people who have grown up not reading very much and they have this same impatience with things that get slow. They are much more visually oriented than text oriented. Which is now lending a lot more to computer games. Text is not popular anymore. It's the TV generation who are buying these games, now.

CS: So Star Trek was a big influence—do you see yourself doing science fiction games or other non-fantasy games?

JV: Yeah. One of the reasons I did Planet 's Edge was because I was such a sci-fi fan. There was a game that took forever to develop and came out too late as far as technology, but… All these projects, we say "Yeah, eight months." Yeah. Two years later…

CS: Do you just reach a point where you're doing all this cool stuff and you have to fight it to get the game out?

JV: Yeah, that's what happens. Also, a lot of times we'll spec a product all the way out and we'll just start working on it. Six months into it you realize it will take two or three years to complete it. Too many worlds, too many things, too many characters you have to develop. You multiply it all out, and you go, "I need eighteen million man hours to finish this." To cut it is a real hardship because you've designed the whole thing, all those specs. It'll drive you crazy.

And when you're dealing with new technology you say "Eureka! Now we've got this new technology. What can we do with it?" It's pretty infinite. When we first moved over from Apple to IBM, it went over the top.

CS: Do you still support Apple at all?

JV: No. It's a shame, but I don't think we even have any in the office. We do support Mac. We do most of our product on the Mac. Might and Magic III was just released on the Mac. And it's doing real well. It's being received real well. We put most everything on the Mac. It's been a good platform for us but now our DOS products are getting to the size that it's not becoming practical to put them on the Mac, technology-wise and the size…

I'm just holding my breath until CD is the standard. I'm really pushing for it. I'm actually going to stick our neck out this year in putting out a title on CD, and next year we may release a title or two on a CD, that you have to have it. It may be a little early. I know people are talking 1995, but I think we are going to push it in 1994. Just cost of goods, with all the diskettes that we have to put in the box, is really hurting us.

CS: It's amazing to me that games take up an entire hard drive…

JV: With the CD you don't have that. We will finally recoup some of those supposed pirated copies that we all know about. No one I know pirates software, but I've heard estimates—it's two to ten times the number you sell. Sometimes you start to believe it. With CD's you don't have that, at least not initially, at least not until you make it cheap for people to duplicate them.

CS: What do you see, once you go to CD?

JV: For me the most exciting thing is going to be sound. Sound and voice. I think that's an area that's not too expensive to develop, yet can add so much to the experience of the game. A lot of people talking about promotions and having actors do that kind of stuff. I don't buy that yet. I don't think we can compete with TV and movies. I think there are other areas that we can do better in.

CS: So are you saying that you are not into interactive movies?

JV: No, it hasn't done it for me. I've seen a bunch of them now, and they just aren't good.

CS: How many platforms do you support in your games? With all the different PC sound boards and graphics cards, and memory configurations, I don't know how any software company manages to make stuff that can actually work.

JV: Just in DOS alone, the sound cards, the mice, the memory amount, the configuration, the clones—you have to spend zillions just to have enough equipment to test it on. A lot of people complain, "Your testing is terrible; your game didn't work on this machine or that machine." What do we have to do, spend two million dollars to buy every piece of equipment that's out there to test it?

CS: It sounds really frustrating. I've always had this fantasy that I could drop a CD in and it would run, just like that.

JV: Yes, that's what it should be like. That's why so many people love the cartridge machines, and that's why they do so well.

CS: So, is that where you guys are heading—simplicity?

JV: Oh, absolutely. The simpler, the better. The more they are actually playing and thinking, and the less they are dealing with the problems of interacting with the machine… My goal is to get away from huge manuals and have a player card tell you all you need to know to play—tell you the basic start-up stuff, and then let you play. That's what I do. I play a game and never look at the book. I start the game and start pushing. If I can figure it out, then it's a pretty good game.

CS: Do you ever feel trapped by your success? Do you feel that you now have an obligation to do things a certain way for players? Do you feel restricted at all?

JV: Not really, I don't think, not too restricted. About the only thing I feel is pressure to always work. It's been real tough relaxing after finishing a project. It's been like, I should be working. I should be thinking about the next one. I should be thinking about this project or that project. I should start designing because every day that I'm not designing the next product is another day it's not coming in. That, I think, has been the hardest.

[XEL]

Behemouths (made of living rock).

А я и не знала 0_о

Это сэр Мюллич (или автор этой статьи, пересказывавший известное о грядущей игре) перепутал.

[Mefista]

Мясные :3

[void_17]

Названия героев, городских построек, существ и пр. из бета версии Heroes III

Источник: Отладочная информация Dreamcast RoE, слитая несколько лет назад. Ссылка:
https://github.com/void2012/HoMM3-Dreamcast-Dump

Rampart:
Storytelling Flora -> Spirit Guardian

Inferno:
Eternal Effigy -> Deity of Fire

Necropolis:
King of Terror -> Soul Prison

Dungeon:
River of Blood -> Guardian of Earth

Stronghold:
Weapon Array -> Warlords' Monument

Здесь только граали + названия построек генераторов существ ниже

Rampart:

• Treefolk -> Dendroid Guard
• Briar Treefolk -> Dendroid Soldier

Tower:

• Apprentice Gremlin -> Gremlin
• Caliph -> Master Genie
• Naga Sentinel -> Naga
• Naga Guardian -> Naga Queen

Inferno:

• Single Horned Demon -> Demon
• Dual Horned Demon -> Horned Demon
• Pit Foe -> Pit Lord

Necropolis:

• Zombie -> Walking Dead
• Zombie Lord -> Zombie
• Nosferatu -> Vampire Lord
• Black Lord -> Dread Knight

Stronghold:

• Goblin Wolf Rider -> Wolf Rider
• Hobgoblin Wolf Rider -> Wolf Raider
• Cyclops Lord -> Cyclops King
• Young Behemoth -> Behemoth

Fortress:

• Primitive Lizardman -> Lizardman
• Lizard Warrior -> Advanced Lizardman
• Copper Gorgon -> Gorgon
• Bronze Gorgon -> Mighty Gorgon

Из интересного: Горгона раньше была Медная и Бронзовая, Вампир Лорд был Носферату, а Мастер-джин был Халифом

Castle:

• Gier -> Orrin
• Rislav -> Valeska
• Desslock -> Edric
• Hester -> Cuthbert
• Galdwyn -> Sanya
• Engle -> Caitlin

Rampart:

• Clova -> Uland
• Kyriell -> Malcom
• Rugard -> Josephine
• Khem -> Iona

Inferno:

• Aragorn -> Rashka

Стало больше женщин...

• Identify -> Visions
• Dimension Walk -> Dimension Door
• Stone Wall -> Force Field
• Decay -> Implosion
• Spontaneous Combustion -> Fireball
• Fireblast -> Inferno
• Sacred Breath -> Destroy Undead
• Firestorm -> Armageddon
• Backlash -> Magic Mirror
• Tough Skin -> Stone Skin
• Tail Wind -> Haste
• Muck And Mire -> Slow

В основном синонимы.
Кстати, под ID = 57 в RoE был Fear, и оставался там до релиза. Балванка с ID = 57 оставалось до SoD. Начиная с AB технически это не заклинание. Потом(в SoD) под этим же ID появился Titan's Lightning Bolt.
Таким образом разработчики сохранили число заклинаний равное 70, что позволило сильно не менять код и формат карт/сохранений

[Vade Parvis]

Очень любопытно. В частности, это проясняет вопрос, где раньше приходилось основываться только на догадках: почему у Имплозии анимация, извиняюсь, жидких экскрементов (а также почему она в школе Земли и её перекрашенный спрайт используется для эффекта Болезни у Зомби). Потому что изначально действительно предполагалось "гниение заживо", и лишь потом, видимо, решили привести список спеллов в большее соответствие с MM и заменили название (и, вероятно, иконку?) на более традиционную имплозию — но вот анимацию уже новую делать не стали.

[feanor]

Стоп, а с Decay же известная штука оО
Там и в неиспользуемой таблице эффектов до сих пор название такое, и у спрайтов/кадров имена от него происходят явно.

Вот герои, граали и некоторые заклы раньше не светились.

[Axolotl]

[*]Zombie Lord -> Zombie

[*]Black Lord -> Dread Knight

[*]Cyclops Lord -> Cyclops King

А бета-название игры было "Lords of Might & Magic"

[Лентяй]

Black Lords of Might & Magic

[Lizardmen]

Копался я, значит, в периодике. Итогом стал вот такой понтовый скрин, который, вроде бы, не мелькал пока ни на одном из известных мне ресурсов. Занятно использование моделек из Г3 в контексте ММ7, при учете того, что в дальнейшем для игры будут изготовлены свои модели и эльфов и ангелов. Примечательно также, что с подобного ракурса мы этих работяг пока еще ни разу не видели.

[tolich]

Видели — когда они поворачиваются. Но не в таком разрешении.

[XEL]

В частности, это проясняет вопрос, где раньше приходилось основываться только на догадках: почему у Имплозии анимация, извиняюсь, жидких экскрементов (а также почему она в школе Земли и её перекрашенный спрайт используется для эффекта Болезни у Зомби). Потому что изначально действительно предполагалось "гниение заживо", и лишь потом, видимо, решили привести список спеллов в большее соответствие с MM и заменили название (и, вероятно, иконку?) на более традиционную имплозию — но вот анимацию уже новую делать не стали.

Причем Имплозии могли оставили графику от Decay осознанно, из соображений экономии времени. Принцип действия этого заклинания, описанный в ММ 6-8, как раз и заключается в достижении, собственно, имплозии (взрыва, направленного внутрь) путем резкого уничтожения воздуха вокруг цели. И "красные булькающие ошметки" вполне можно трактовать как последствие имплозии для жертвы.

Причем, хоть из самих третьих Героях и не особо понятно, но порой у прочитавших лор Имплозии как раз возникают ассоциации с "красной массой":



Кстати, если прослеживать связь геймплея и лора, то в 3ке ведь распределение заклинаний по четырем стихиям означает не столько строгую принадлежность к той или иной школе магии, сколько то, какая стихия может усилить заклинание: навыки стихийной магии нужны не для изучения заклинаний, как навыки девяти школ магии в ММ 6-8, а именно для усиления эффекта и удешевления каста.

И хотя это, вероятно, след "превращения" Decay в Implosion в ходе разработки и отчасти условность, но то, что Имплозия (заклинание школы воздуха) усиливается навыком Земли по итогу довольно логично в контексте лора. Она уничтожает воздух, а стихия земли как раз противоположна воздуху.

[XEL]

Gier -> Orrin

Гьер остался в сюжете игры. В первой миссии одной из начальных кампаний RoE, "Да здравствует королева", его можно освободить из тюрьмы. Однако карта явно делалась до того, как в ресурсах игры Гьера переименовали в Оррина, а потом забыли задать в тюрьме кастомное имя героя. Поэтому в игре он Оррин, но в тексте Gier.

Desslock -> Edric

Десслок - эрафийский рыцарь, сопровождавший экспедицию Ксантора в одном из официальных предрелизных рассказов по RoE.

Корбак и Вердиш также впервые появляются в одном из этих рассказов, но, в отличие от Гьера и Десслока, попали в ряды нанимаемых героев RoE. И в кампанию под своими именами - в первой таталийской миссии "Трофеев войны" Корбака или Вердиш можно задать как стартового героя.