Slashdot Mirror
Heroes of Might and Magic III Demo Released
mackman writes "Head on over to Loki Games' Web site to waste a few hours with the latest hit (but let me finish downloading it first!). " Warning: It's 93 megs. But there are several mirrors up on the site. I've played this game before - it's a huge blast to play. Have fun!
Oh, no. You think that GETTING the Amulet is your trial? Don't you recall your instructions?
That's right, chummer. You have to get the Amulet -and bring it back-. And the bearer of the Amulet, uhm, can't teleport. You gotta hoof it back up all fifty levels, with the Wizard of Yendor all over your ass and with no help from your god.
Not that you're done yet. Remember the rest? You gotta bring the Amulet -to your God-. So you'll need to take a short jaunt through the four Elemental Planes -- bring your pickaxe!
Heh. But I'm not done yet. Nothing's ever fair, is it? Welcome to the Astral Plane, home of the three High Altars of the Gods. And their attendants. And you know what? The other two Gods really AREN'T the least bit interested in your God gaining ascendancy over all things. Get ready to kick some Archon butt.
And who invited THOSE guys? For -no apparent reason-, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse want to kick your butt too, and you can't make those bastards stay dead. Fun fun fun.
And you thought -one- Wizard of Yendor was bad news...?
So fight your way back up through all fifty levels of the dungeon, traverse the Elemental Planes, and fight your way through that warzone they call the Astral, puzzle out which altar your God owns -- don't botch this one -- and offer the Amulet.
And THAT will be the last thing your character does -- except for the gloating. Lots of gloating.
Happy hacking...
Yahoo! Pipes are awesome. How awesome? http://pipes.yahoo.com/jesdynf/slashdot
Thanks. I will try it this weekend. I have cable modem so 90 meg download is no problem :)
I like your scale ;-)
I loved HOMM1 but for some reason got bored with HOMM2, and the screenshoots of HOMM3 looks identical to HOMM2. What is new in HOMM3 compared to HOMM2?
yer right, I wasnt running the latest afterall. The latest one works fine. Thanks.
It was. HOMM2 had the best music I've ever heard in a game bar none. Not only did it fit perfectly with the game, it was so good I transferred it to tape just to listen to it in the car.
Also I have the AB expansion pack, the Conflux (elemental) race is a mediocre addition (at least they didn't include the "forge" race *shudders*), but the new campaigns and creatures made it worth recommending for HOMM3 fans.
The AB pack is fun: the HOMM3 campaign didn't do anything for me (The HOMM2 campaign I've played through at least four times.) but the AB new campaigns are for the most part fun. You'll get used to the Conflux: the strategy with them is different- you've got crappy low and high end troops, but the middle is solid and you'll always move first, which is a serious advantage.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Sounds like HOMM3 is running with the DGA extensions. You may want to run it as 'heroes3 --windowed' (or 'heroes3 -w') to get around that.
Mind you, that's the full release, but I expect the demo behaves the same.
This
You're right. Great game back in the day!
Do you feel Blizzard sucks or did you accidentally leave them out?
-Vel
Well, I had a Mac for years and I couldn't ever understand it. I always said to people, "Yeah, it's a small market, but you know what? There's not as much COMPETITION for that market either."
How do you make your game stand out against 20,000 other win95 games? Lots of marketing. For linux, any new game is going to garner a good piece of that small market.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
I played I, II and III on the Apple IIe and later got the enhanced versions for my IIgs. I wonder if I still have some character disks. The gs is still running at my mom's house (I did get her over to a PC finally). I found a good emulator for the Apple IIe and having been playing it again for time to time. Anyone ever play Wings of Fury from Broderbund? Ah the good ole days.
I wholeheartedly agree!! Thief was an innovative game that is much more "the thinking man's FPS" thatn any other FPS game out there. The story, while not anything special, was presented wonderfully - I LIKE the lack of movies in the game - the still almost graphic-novelesque art conveyed perfectly the mood and atmosphere. The characters - the corrupt nobles, and Hammerites, and techno-medieval atmosphere was a breath of fresh air into the current FPS worlds of high technology(Unreal, Quake, Shogo), modern(Rainbow Six), and fantasy(Heretic, Hexxen).
It is also the first shooter I have seen that FULLY integrated the sound as an active part of the environment. I mean, you had to use the sound to navigate and listening often meant the difference between life and death!
I would LOVE to see a Linux port of Thief!
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@wm.edu
http://www.gozilla.com/
http://getright.com/
They won't speed up the download but it can resume if interrupted and uses mirrors.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Oh yeah, have you found the Archon port to linux?!? It's somewhere, if you search the linux games archives. X-Archon, i believe it's called. Trying to remain true to the original.
make world, not war
-- $SIGNATURE
Have you ever tried to download something after it's gotten a write-up on here or after it's just been released? Try it sometime. The queue won't move or you'll get 421ed. And, as a rule, I do NOT hammer sites. It's just bad mojo >:^D
I've set up a mirror at
ftp://templestowe.res.cmu.edu/pub/lokiga mes/
I notified Loki of this by email, and told them if they request me to take down the mirror, I will.
Till then, enjoy.
If it's open source, it doesn't matter who wrote it, anyone can copy it.
The people who could most benefit from this situation are the CD-ROM manufacturers, who could spend their idle time burning popular open source software and passing it to the local software merchants. If they had to compete, they could sell at a loss, as long as they didn't go below the losses they'd take from having idle factories.
The key objection to open source as a base for a profitable business is not that nobody would pay for the service of delivery, but that people who don't actually produce any software will have a competitive advantage over those who do. If hypothetical company Maroon Hat does everything Red Hat does, but doesn't spend money on any software developers, Maroon Hat has the same profitability with smaller expenses.
I think profitable open source development should be viewed as more of a busking model than any sort of traditional "give me your money, or you don't get what I'm selling" model. If it were convenient to do so (say, with a web-based micropayment system), I bet people would be more than happy to send out a few bucks here and there to the authors of their favorite free software.
Regards,
matt
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
As a programmer, when I moved from Windows to Linux a couple of years ago I increased my productivity 100-fold.
I doubled it by not having the system crash from under me, and I increased it by 50 times by not having any great games to distract me.
If this trend continues, I almost might as well move back to Windows; I mean what's the point of dealing with logging in every few weeks when I reboot for a measly double productivity gain?
Heh, you aughta play System Shock 2 from the same company. Uses the Thief engine, but it's.... well a Sci-Fi rpg, I would call it. They have a demo (Win98 only :( ) at www.shock2.com i think it is (too lazy to look)
CH
That was a little ignorant. Most Windows gaming companies still run Linux/BSD on their web/ftp servers.
This is a cool game. I've played it before. I'll have to download the demo tonight and see how it compares on Linux.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
We have a 3D game engine and asset production pathway which was commercial, but has now been GPL'ed at www.worldfoundry.org We are looking for artists and designers to make some games with it (as well as programmers to help finish the linux port). Kevin Seghetti
Kevin Seghetti: kts@tenetti.org, HTTP: www.tenetti.org GPG key: http://tenetti.org/phpwiki/index.php/KevinSeghett
I picked up this game as a XMas gift to myself. I have to say that it was worth every penny. Forget the 90-something meg download, and just go out and buy it. You'll want to buy it after you play, so why bother wasting the bandwidth?
Citizens Against Plate Tectonics
Hey Frank, when you post on a personal website, personal info is included.
Frank T. Clark
230 East 9th Street #3C
New York, NY 10029
212-831-0882
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/delindex.htm
http://www.dorsai.org/~delchi/index.htm
delchi@dorsai.org
These sites always get slashdotted.
If you get it before it crashes please post a link
Well, it wasn't too bad, I just went
wget -r ftp://path/to/folder
and went do bed... this morning the nice new shiny demo was waiting for me in my home directory.
And I've only got a 33.6 modem...
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Oh, you kids today have it so good... I'll tell you one thing, young man, when I was young we didn't have all this fancy-schmancy games with, like, graphics and surround sound and all these silly effects. We had NETHACK, that's what we had, and I'll tell you one more thing, we LIKED it, and we didn't want anything more, that's for sure.
I mean, who decided that UNIX should have games, anywyay? Back in the old days, all a SysAdmin would ever want was a LART, rm, and the occasional luser and that's all we needed to have good, clean, wholesome fun.
*grumble*mumble*
oh...my back's killing me...
*mumble*
Do any people get turned to stone in this game?
Yes. There are Medusas in HOMM3 which have a petrification attack. It is a temporary effect which lasts for several rounds of combat.
Is it possible for any attractive women to be turned to stone in the game?
I think so. I'm pretty sure that one of the troop types is female elven archers, and that said female elves are susceptible to being turned to stone. There are also harpies and probably other female creatures, though it has been a while since I've played the game, so I don't remember the complete creature roster.
Maybe it's just me, but I think game designers are starting to ask a bit much. That's a hell of a long download time for people who are still largely on modem connections (and not very fast ones -- I haven't found anyone in my area who can get me better than a 28.8 speed, and I'm waiting until I move before I look at DSL).
Maybe it's just hitting me because last night I did a full install of Freespace 2 and had that top out at 1.2 GB of disk space -- and here I thought I'd be set for a long time when I got a 13 GB drive for my PC...
Jay (=
Wow.
I believe you and I are in exactly the same gaming universe. I would rate all games on the same scale as you, in fact. Impressive!
I played Ultima IV on the PC, but other than that.. I just played nethack tonight. (solidarity solidarity solidarity)
Games for Linux is good, but I'll consider it a real victory when we get games out for linux first instead of being treated like we use MacOS or something...
Anyone have links to good open source games/development projects built primarily for linux? I would expect that there's some in the pipeline now that some of the older game engines (like quake) are being open sourced.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
I was asking for people working on open source game projects. I don't expect to see companies putting out linux games first, but that shouldn't stop us, the OS community from developing some cool stuff ourselves.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
define "full version" -- I have the game, not a demo...
Lea
Why the PPC is always forget... I thought loki was doing ppc version of all their games.
Its not a linux/unix port but Age Of Wonders is an awsome game if you like the HOMM type of game. It is also real fun (if a bit buggy) in multiplayer. Lets you do simultanous turns and also view battles between players.
Sorry to the 6 people on right now, i've gotta restart the ftpserver to raise the limit from 10 to 150 users....
Nope, Loki games isn't opensourcing the games so far as I know, they're just porting them over. They have, however, open-sourced the library they used to port the games over. It's SDL, and it works on many different platforms (though I, personally, have only used it for Linux and Windows).
-Denor
I have a fast mirror. My link tops out about 900 kbytes/s. Check the realtime monitor for current conditions.
http://www.ryans.dhs.org/heroes.html
Realtime server status
Ryan Salsbury
How about that, wu-ftpd maintained the connections through the '/etc/init.d/wu-ftpd restart'.
That's awesome!
Go, wu-ftpd!
SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers
SlashMirror: Where to put files for fellow /.'ers
Loki games are licensed by Loki from the companies that write the original, and thus are not Open Source. Their Linux based installer, which they wrote, is (I belive) Open Source, and was used by the Linux version of Unreal Tournament.
My wife got the game for our Mac last Friday. We spent the entire weekend playing it. We were up unit 8am sunday morning before we had to quit.
It's AWESOME. You should probably just forget the download and buy the game... But if you're like me, and you just HAVE to try something before you even consider buying it, go ahead. The demo is quite fun. :-) Now, if my copy would just hurry up and get here........
Umm...It's been in the stores for a month or two.
Anything more than 2 players is really slow, just in terms of waiting for the guy to finish his turn. If they get in a multiplay patch, that would be nice. Allies should be able to take their turns at the same time.
The AI bug as well as many other game-related bugs have been fixed in the forthcoming 1.3 patch for Heroes that should be released in a few days (it's almost ready internally, now in QA).
:-)
Hang on
Stéphane Peter
Stéphane Peter
Codehost, Inc.
But what I really want to know is if there are any download manager type things in linux. I'd want something that'll automatically resume if it times out. I'd want it to get multiple connections to the same file (no reason I can't start in the middle of a file if I don't have the first half). I'd want it to act as a http proxy, so it does all this for my browser (using 127.0.0.1 as it's proxy). Yeah, and other stuff. Maybe speed limits on downloads. And, and... scheduling and stuff.
You can get programs which do this for windows. But then you'd have to use windows.
Of course, Loki has open sourced quite a bit of software, including their installer and libraries they use to port games. ie. code that someone else actually could use (Unreal Tournament for Linux uses the Loki installer).
:) Games rock :)
But yeah, there is a double standard for games
At least, that's what it looked like when I just caught a glance of the headline.
the version of the demo i'm grabbing seems to be only 25 megs, not 94
I downloaded 3 times from 3 different sites and all have different checksums and one is a different size.
Does anyone have the correct checksums?
48925 93269 heroes3-demo-x86.sh1
50803 93269 heroes3-demo-x86.sh2
22070 93269 heroes3-demo-x86.sh3
Finally, some decent speed!
% fetch http://www.ryans.dhs.org/heroes3-demo-x86.sh
Receiving heroes3-demo-x86.sh (9497152 bytes): 100% 9497152 bytes transferred in 40.2 seconds (230.77 Kbytes/s)
...goes to test this out on FreeBSD
-Chris
Nice mirror man, I'm getting 200 K/sec over my cable modem. I'll have this downloaded in 5 minutes at this rate. Sweet, keep it up :)
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Some people (a lot of people) actually agree with what your saying. I'm not a big fan of trolls, but some of you deserve it.
Let's assume your numbers are right.
But remember, even 2% of the market is a LOT of people. If porting can be done 45 (90/2) times faster (in total person-hours) than creating the original game, the port will have at least the same profit margin as the Windows version. Probably a better profit margin, because of linux game scarcity.
Ack, of course it doesn't look like you've finished :-).
downloading it
-Chris
Do any people get turned to stone in this game?
Please describe. Details.
Is it possible for any attractive women to be turned to stone in the game?
Thanks.
Apologies for noting this, but why is this marked Redundant? I don't see any other Hot Manly Love comments here.
Maybe I'm just not looking hard enough.
Umm...It's been in the stores for a month or two.
And I'm sure the /. guys get in on the betas a lot =) (Wasn't there a blurb in Geeks in Space about one of the betas?) For that matter, so do the LinuxGames folks.
And HoMM3 absolutely rocks! Much more fun and addictive than I expected. Now I really hope that the rumors of a port of Armageddon's Blade (the add-on) are true...
This
www.emux.com
It takes about as much time to drive out to CompUSA and buy the game as it does to download over my 256K link, and I can surf /. while I do it. It less time to order the game, but it takes longer to get it. I, of course, downloaded the demo AND ordered the game (hadn't been paying enough attention to see that it was released)
HOMMII was one of the very, very few games I found it worth rebooting into W95 to play.
Small problem; linux gaming companies run linux. Thusly, their pipes are a bit more stable, and not quite so easy to clog as them NT boxes.. ;-)
James
I have this but my computer is too lame to run it smoothly. Please e-mail me if you are interested.
The Root Of All Evil: that "mom" on 7th Heaven.
I know that feeling. Now that my wife is getting hooked on the games on my Linux box, she's demanding her own Linux box. It'd be a lot easier if we could actually afford one...
Ah well...
This
Loki has released several Open Source projects:
- SMPEG
- Setup
- SMJPEG
- Fenris
In addition, they are quite supportive of SDL (no surprise -- Sam Latinga co-founded Loki)This
Ah crap. I forgot to replace that partial dl. Everything should work now.
RYan Salsbury
sleep? what is this concept of which you speak?
While we're all having fun with the newest member of the series, don't forget to pay homage to what I consider one of the best games of all time: King's Bounty. It was the first HOM&M before it was called HOM&M. I believe it came out around 1991, +/- 1. You can pick up a cracked copy at
:)
http://underdogs.gamingdepot.com/
It's for dos, but it'll probably run under dosemu. I haven't tried, though.
This was also the first game I tried "hacking", albeit in very limited ways. Mainly, I messed around with the saved game files in a hex editor. I was young then... don't laugh at me
...bummer.
Man u outta it :) Loki is WORKING on AC right now I also Like SC but I now refuse to buy/play it as there is no linux version and Blizzard are not allowing Loki to port it. Blizzard lost me as a customer
You must realise, that game companies are just that, companies that are in it for fun and muney, money most probably being the first on the list. Now, with Windows holding a 500+ billion dollars market share, now dare I say it that Windows will be the first OS game companies will create games for, MacOS next, and maybe, juuuust MAYBE they would consider Linux as an after thought; and dont expect many game companies to relese the source either.
*WOW* someone else who loves the game!
I own the ORIGINAL version - made by Several Dudes Holistic Gaming (who now does Pen & Paper RPGs) and published by QQP (too bad they didn't survive the early 90's) - It was called "Merchant Prince".
The best part about it is the whole political offices part (and abusing them), and I just get a sadistic kick out of hanging opposing families' senators!
I would LOVE to help you on your project, but I'm just a poor ol' college student who is just beginning to learn Linux programming. I CAN reccomend some libs to consider in the project nonetheless..
OpenGL might be a bit of an overkill! Some good graphical/game API's for Linux are:
SDL - Loki uses this API to port many of it's games - it's quite low-level and designed for cross-compatibility.
URL - http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/
ClanLib - Not quite as advanced or mature as SDL, but it's in C++ and designed for easy portability of code.
URL - http://www.clanlib.org/
Allegro - I am currently using this library to programm a few game projects of my own. It is a C/C++ compatible library (written in ASM/C) and can be used in DOS, Linux(both console and X), and WinXX. It has a lot of nice features, but the GUI stuff is a bit primitive, so GTK/QT/FLTK is probably a better idea instead of its native GUI functions.
URL - http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/index.html
Hope this helps a bit! And I wish you luck with the project - I know I would love to play it!
Respectfully,
Kevin Christie
kwchri@wm.edu
Yeah, cool games. As far as Bards Tale, I worked with a guy (Bill Whitson...) in Seattle who was way into it, and he managed to coax some of the mod tools that the original developers used to make it for the PC (I played it on the C64). I was thinking today that BT would be a cool game to try and move into a Quake engine game with some mods, of course... you'd probably need a little "radar" window or something like DukeNukem has, but one cool thing could be flipping between the views of the chars in the party. Then there is the spells, and the variety of weapons... But imagine going into the non-important buildings in the city, with sort of a random building interior program (like Nethack's level generator)? Of course, you'd have to do somethings different (like the BT experience points hack: the spot in the castle with 4x99 baddies, where if you had a bard with the frost horn and a couple of strong fighters in front you could wack them off for 200000 xp, then exit the castle, and go right back and do it again)... and then the network version would have 4-6 players in the party working together... (could the party split in two? would fratricide be allowed?) etc...
I really don't understand the gaming programmers reluctance to move to Linux. w/the popularity of the Quake series, etc, etc, don't they see the market expanding?
I say forget about Office and other MS products, we need more serious games to be ported. Do you really think that people bought the Commodore64 so that they could write papers w/the GEOS word processor?
It's funny. I SHOULDN'T like this game. No 3d graphics. Cardboard cutout figures in the fight scenes. Yet this game had something that other games lack. It's weird but every game I play is like a story that tells itself. Even on the same map. It also has a bewildering variety of creatures and random events which really add to it.
The music is also fantastic. The tower and desert land music is the best. Also the amount of detail they put into regular sounds is also quite good.
For me it was totally the atmosphere of the game which put the hook in me. Castlevania3 is only game which can compare in terms of excellent atmosphere.
That being said I've heard that the music was better for HOMM2. Also I have the AB expansion pack, the Conflux (elemental) race is a mediocre addition (at least they didn't include the "forge" race *shudders*), but the new campaigns and creatures made it worth recommending for HOMM3 fans.
Anyway don't take my word for it. Download the demo and find out for yourself.
I picked up the commercial version of this about a month ago, and have spent far too many hours locked in its entrancing spell.
Technically, this is a solid achievement. I haven't had a single crash. It looks and sounds as good as in Windows.
And gameplay is superb. It isn't dramatically different than HOMM2, really - but that's not much of a complaint. This is, no doubt, one of the premiere strategy games on the market, regardless of platform.
Another nice note - if you do the full install (which is, I grant, huge), you don't need the CD to play. You could probably play it remotely over X, if you want to. It put an icon in KDE under games, which I thought it should do. I installed it as root, and can play as myself - which is better than some things, like Star Office.
Kudos for Loki for an exceptional port of an unusually addicting game. I'm becoming decreasingly interested in even keeping a windows box around for any reason.
-- Kate
For all of you who've played this game on windows, you'll understand what I mean. I doubt linux users will want to just jump into this game without trying it first, but it's definitely a worthwhile download. Many of us have spent hours playing this game, all night even, and haven't gotten tired of watching your the little man on the horse gallop around collecting resources and slaughtering creatures and enemy heroes. The grand strategy lite is the perfect blend of action and resource management. The game recieved an 86% from PC Gamer (though it deserved more) if that kind of thing sways your decision. Also, I wouldn't mind a process-killing mod for this (like the doom process manager)...
So a baby seal walks into a club...
3D Downloads LinuxGames
:wq
This post interested me because it speaks to my interest in pricing models ...
...)
drig suggested buying the game, not downloading it (and at 90 megs, it is a huge download!). If you ever hear Free / free software impugned with the increasingly silly rhetorical question "But how can that stuff stick around? How can anyone make money off it?" you've got one more data point to fling. Even on a fattish pipe, most people are not interested in downloading 90 megs at a time, but pop in a disc and 90 megs is no sweat.
(Of course, this could go either way -- in 3 years, will you be on a DSL2* line with no metered charges and 90MB is three minutes whistling? Or will you be on a clogged cable modem loop with by-the-K download charges and a meter outside the house? I certainly hope the first trend is winning
CD-burners may not be DVD-RAM, but they certainly constitute a great way to pass around big files, and for a well-done manual, brand assurance and support, I think Loki is offering great deals for Linux games.
Whee!
timothy
*Strictly hypothetical. Not real. Restrictions apply. See local dealers for details. Not availabile in all areas, terms and conditions apply and are subject to change without notice or obligation.
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
That means he must have used
*gasp*
Windows!
I don't care so much if a game isn't free software (although having as many libre low level libraries as possible, as Loki's games and Unreal Tournament do, is a huge plus) because I don't depend on a game. If a game maker goes out of business next year, I don't care that their game will never again see another upgrade. If I'm feeling security conscious, I think it's crucial that my daemons running as root are open source, but I'm not so concerned about games running as a user account. And if a game crashes every so often, it doesn't worry me much as long as the save game files aren't corrupted.
Besides, games are (or should be) about *content*. Graphics, level designs, sounds and music, story line, character development, interactivity... these things are often aided by improved software engines, but they primarily aren't part of the software. In fact, I can't think of a game besides half-life that took an existing software engine and made it heavily better. Some games license an engine and use it to run new content, some games have an engine written from scratch, but how many games are subject to the steady, incremental improval process which free software so benefits?
And starting with Quake (to my knowledge; I'm probably wrong), a heavy component of game development has been driven by almost-open source: the code-level mods that the user community puts out so enthusiastically is made possible by the release of a significant chunk of source code for the base game.
For an operating system, on the other hand, having it crash every month, much less every week, is not acceptable. Security issues for OS and daemon software are critical, and ongoing, steady development on top of the same code base should be as fast as possible without compromising stability.
Man, theif has got to be the creapiest game I have ever played. The level with the zombies was almost too much excitement for me. I was playing in the dark with the sub woofer turned up. I had to wipe my hard drive to do a clean install (while installing Linux.. imagine that ) and now I am afraid to play the game again because I don't want to have to go through that creepy zombie level.
"I can hoist a Jack. I can lay a track. I can pick and shovel too. I'll do anything you hire me to." - John Cash "Legen
has anyone who preordered quake3 received their "limited edition" box yet (and the other packaging)?? if i'm going to shell out 55 bucks for this and not the 40 i could pay for the win32 version at best buy, i at least want the cool box!
bye,
-jimbo
Archon, Mule, and ultima IV ate my choldhood. And do you remember Bard's Tale? I had to give up comptuer games after that. Whew. Why aren't games that addictive anymore?
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Funny you say that, did almost the same thing: the level called "Down in the Bonehoard" is downright eerie. I've never got that kind of sensation from other games, not myst, not Tomb Raider, not even Resident Evil does it so well.
And the best part is that there are other, even creepier level later on, like the ones that take place in the ruined quarter of the city.
I only hope Thief II: The Metal Age is done as well as the original.
Someone earlier was mentioning great games that should be ported. I actual have a question. Does anyone know if "Machiavelli the Prince" has been ported to linux? It was made by microprose in the early nineties. It was for ms-dos. It has to be one of the greatest games of all times.
I have logged hundreds of hours playing it and I still spend many long nights playing away. It was a hot seat politcal intrigue/ trading game. Very cool. I would also be interested in a web version. Is anyone interested in an open source version of this game, or maybe something similar so we wouldn't step on Microprose's feet? I've been contimplating this for a while now. I'd need some help moving my develoment mindset into Linux (I'm a prof. windows programmer but I know OpenGl) but using a proper setup we could bust a linux version of this game out in no time.
"I can hoist a Jack. I can lay a track. I can pick and shovel too. I'll do anything you hire me to." - John Cash "Legen
First there was homm1 and it was good. Strategy was refined, no unnedeed bells and/or whistles, the only problem was that it was a bit too easy to beat. Only one campaign that took perhaps 10 hours if not less.
Then there was homm2 and it was a bit better: while there were more bells and whistles that made strategy a bit messy, and there was unneeded variety of units and artifacts (they were too specialized to be useful, at least some of them - consider one that increases sea movement by 2 on a level with no sea), but it was REALLY TOUGH. homm1 fans sure had alot more fun with this one, even if only because it took much longer to beat. Exp pack was even tougher, perhaps a bit too tough: I could only beat one campaign and the last level took me longer than whole of homm1. Basically homm2 and exp pack was targeted at fans.
Lo and Behold, homm3 is out and all the fans who've been reading about all the new perks, finally get to play with it. Big disappointment: it starts out so easy you get bored before getting any worthy challenge. Beleive it or not I couldn't get farther than a few levels because of that. On top of it, there's much more units, spells, artifacts, this abundance basically kills refined strategy of homm1 and 2.
This might have been fun for new comers, but I'm sure most series fans were somewhat disappointed. A contributing factor might have been that the game was way too slow for a non-3d game: on my p200 it was almost unplayable at some places, like animated magic fields where you first get archangels. One more minor gripe: instead of cool black dragons that really looked impressive and powerful (no game ever gave me the feeling of having 50 black dragons... mmm) you get dorky-looking archangels. Blah.
3 my favorite game series were civ, homm and fallout. 2 out of 3 ported to linux, how about the 3d, the best of three too?
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No. They do the ports on contract with Hasbro/Activision/MicroProse, which are definitely not open-source oriented...
All I want is Alpha Centauri and Starcraft. It doesn't look like SC will ever happen, but I thought I heard some talk about an Alpha Centauri port. Anyone know the details?
Yeah yeah I'm offtopic.
I've mirrored stuff before (the Star Wars trailer ... served like 8 gigs the day the first one game out). Never had a problem.
...
Except if Loki gets cheesed at me for IP violation, i'm not breaking CMU's guidelines. I can run nonprofit websites as long as the use isn't excessive. We're talking about small bursts here over a day or so. It's not a big deal. At least I hope he doesn't think so
I agree, the Conflux race isn't that great. However, you should check out the new 'extra' creatures that they have added. The fairy dragon, azure dragon, rust dragon, and crystal dragon are pretty cool.
Soldier of Fortune and Nortune demos were huge as well! Ugh! I am stuck with 26400 modem connections due to crappy phone lines and no high speed bandwidth services are in my area (e.g. cable modem and DSL).
Anyone want to let me borrow his/her T1? =(
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Ahhh, Temple of Apshai on a TRS-80 Model III. Heaven!
it's been out for quite a while now -- I'm going to reinstall everything and then install it. *drool*
and if you look at EB games, you can probably find it for $30 still -- $20 off what the list price is, which is about $15-$20 better than everywhere else!
Lea
well, there's always the sort of support that involves money. personally, I'm not dl'ing the demo, perhaps because of this nice shiny box next to me that says "Heroes of Might and Magic III"... and the other one labeled "Civilation: Call to Power".
:)
Lea
Has anyone seen any oddities when running the demo under sawmill?
;)
The X server zaps to 800x600 and then the title bar with a solid black window covers the actual game. I can kill sawmill and run without a wm and I dont have this issue. I spose I should report it to loki or maybe the sawmill team? I havent tried wit hany of the other windowmanagers yet because once I got the game in a playable state I am now realizing it's 2 am and I have to be up in 4 hours
Needless to say if anyone can point me to who would be a better person to get notice of this tiny problem, I'll document for them straightaway. I know a few of the loki guys peruse slashdot on more than a regular basis.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I played the first one, for the first time last year. Work allows me little time to play unfortunately. I LOVED the first one.
My question is can a newbie play this game or do you need experience from the previous two?
Thanks
This is probably my favorite game in recent memory. It ranks up there with the best of the mid 80s Commodore 64 games: Archon, M.U.L.E. (anybody remember that one?), Pool of Radiance, Temple of Apshai, and Ultima IV. PC games suck, except for id, Origin, and New World Computing.
:)
Heroes of Might & Magic is one of the best series of games I've ever seen. And I've been playing computer games longer than some Slashdotters have been alive.
On a scale of 1 to 10, where Ultima 8 is a 1 and NetHack is a 10, I would give HOMM3 an 8.5 (9 with the additional scenarios).
The Heroes of Might and Magic series has been great, and I'm eagerly awaiting HMM3 for Linux. However, at 93MB for the demo, I'll have to give it a miss, and just wait for the full game. Even with my ISDN, it's just too big to be practical. Until BT get off their fscking backsides and sort out ASDL, those of us in the UK are stuck with comparatively slow net access :-(
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
It's not out for Linux (alas, nor will it likely ever be) but the game that I would vote for "Best Atmosphere" would be Thief: The Dark Project, from Looking Glass (dist. Eidos).
It's an FSP that is squarely un-FSP-like, in that the object is not to just run around and frag everything that twitches. It's a game that, if you let it, will give you the same feeling you get when you leave a really good movie - like you've been "somewhere else" for the last two (or eight or 12) hours. By "let it" I mean that you shouldn't rely on saving every 5 minutes, or immeidately look up the walkthroughs, or turn up the gamma to see better (it relies heavily on both shadows and sound as plot and gameplay devices) Play it in a dark room, alone.
I highly recommend it to any serious gamer, now all we need is Eidos to take Linux seriously...
I've seen a lot of posts here that say "see, everyone should port to linux!", but I'd like to point out that mere days ago the Soldier of Fortune demo was released. It weighed in at over 95 megs, and it still had something ridicioulous like 500,000 downloads. All 5 mirrors were clogged. Now I know that it's a different game genre, perhaps a more popular one. But if we want companies to port games to linux, we have to support them when they put out demos like this. I know 90 megs is large, but from what I've been hearing, it looks like a great game. Let's see if we can clog a few pipes with this one.
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I recieved a copy of Heroes 3 for Christmas.
Soon after my wife and daughter got a chance to play it, they demanded accounts on my Linux box.
After playing Quake III Arena, she wants Linux on HER box!
A seriously adicting game. I would enjoy it more if they fixed the AI player bug involving regenerating armies... But even then, it is still a hell of a lot of fun to play and worth the money. (Loki did a fantastic job on the port.)
I can't wait to see what they do with Alpha Centari.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
Install StarOffice with setup /NET then every user can have their own mini-install.
As of Monday, Tux Games will be offering a CD with all of the Loki demos on it. This will be sold at break-even price (about $7 shipped anywhere in the world). If you are from a country that charges you for local calls, it would probably pay you to hold off on the download and pick up the CD on monday.
Tux Games. Your complete source for native Linux games.
It seems using an sblive crashes the game. At least for me. I use the latest sblive drivers. Anyone else using an sblive?
I installed a SBlive a couple of days ago, just in time to use it for this demo. Didn't have a problem at all. I'm using the latest (As of a couple of days ago) code off opensource.creative.com and the 2.3.40 kernel.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That's what sleep is for, of course.. overnight downloads :-)
Just a quick question - are Loki Games open sourced? This isn't flamebait - I'm just looking to find out. I know they support a couple of Open Source projects from looking at thier pages, but, I was more interested about the games that they provide. I assume they aren't Open Source, but, if that isn't the case, someone please correct me :-) (Correct me, not flame me ;-)
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