Heroes of Might and Magic II

[meynaf]

Wow, some people at last ! I felt sooo alone in here...

Originally Posted by Boo Boo

Missed this project sounds very good you reSourced the Mac68k code to work on AGA Amiga

As soon as I can get the Data files ill try - Do the Data files have to be from the Mac version or can they be from any version?

They can be from any version. Maps and saved games are compatible, too.
But this is the original game, not the extension (yet).

Note that it'll work with foreign data files (making the game half english, half the other), even though some problems have been reported with polish national characters.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Tried it today, and there was one solvable problem: The game data from HOMAM2GOLD PC version doesn't include one of the intro anims. The game says it can't find sh2intro.smk, so I just cloned snwclogo.smk (I think it was that file). Problem fixed

Might be better to clone shx2intr.smk from expansion.

Originally Posted by Thorham

It might be a good idea to simply skip those non important anim files if they're not found, and display a message if it can't find an important one, and just continue the game.

It's not really easy to do, because code is quite dirty here. PC version just crashes in case of missing anim !

Would a "skip intro" option (that one's easy to add) suit you ?

Originally Posted by Thorham

Could you send me a list of expected anims so I can see which ones are missing? Maybe it's not as bad as it looks.

In theory just that one is missing, as long as you have the "good" and "evil" series of anims.

Originally Posted by Thorham

Anyway, I only tried playing very briefly, and although combat seems to be fast (I only tried AUTO, and died ), moving around the map is just too slow, but you probably already knew that.

You bet right

Originally Posted by KillJ0Y

Hi I test your version 0.1 and its amazing!
It have few bugs, but its realy much better then some freeheroes2 via sdl (I hate sdl).
Hope you'll do a newer version soon can't wait for it
I used the PC version datafiles.

Right, I hate sdl too, especially because no sdl stuff at all accepted to work on my machine

If you have a few bugs, please report them.

Originally Posted by Cammy

I like the idea of resampling the CD audio tracks to stereo IFF samples (or another easily played format) that can spool from the hard drive, leaving two channels free for sound effects. If you have a look at the old game Labyrinth of Time, it uses the same method for playing back its awesome atmospheric soundtrack.

But Labyrinth of time is HUGE (>200MB). HOMM2 is already quite big, and I don't see doing this as a good idea.

Besides, two channels aren't enough for SFX when moving outside (4 are often needed).

Now I would certainly prefer Protracker. No musician in here ?

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Wow, some people at last ! I felt sooo alone in here...

Don't worry, you're not alone, mate

Originally Posted by meynaf

It's not really easy to do, because code is quite dirty here.

Although I probably can't do much (or anything ), could you make the source code available? Just for fun?

Originally Posted by meynaf

PC version just crashes in case of missing anim !

That's as dirty as a sewer, good job those programmers did

Originally Posted by meynaf

Would a "skip intro" option (that one's easy to add) suit you ?

Not needed if there's only a single anim name different.

Originally Posted by meynaf

In theory just that one is missing, as long as you have the "good" and "evil" series of anims.

Good

Originally Posted by meynaf

But Labyrinth of time is HUGE (>200MB). HOMM2 is already quite big, and I don't see doing this as a good idea.

If possible (read: easy enough to do) it would be a good idea to add this as an option. That way if people want to resample the CD audio and use it with the game, they can, without it being mandatory to do (that would be a bad idea indeed). Also, CD audio resampled to 28 KHZ 16 bit stereo sounds really good when you use proper software to do it, much better than Protracker will sound, so please consider it.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Thorham

Although I probably can't do much (or anything ), could you make the source code available? Just for fun?

Is a 4MB source 'fun' ? I don't think so

Originally Posted by Thorham

That's as dirty as a sewer, good job those programmers did

Many programs behave like that, you know

Originally Posted by Thorham

If possible (read: easy enough to do) it would be a good idea to add this as an option. That way if people want to resample the CD audio and use it with the game, they can, without it being mandatory to do (that would be a bad idea indeed). Also, CD audio resampled to 28 KHZ 16 bit stereo sounds really good when you use proper software to do it, much better than Protracker will sound, so please consider it.

That would mean using the 4 channels and imply mixing to add sfx, not that easy.
Besides, the game is already constantly hitting the hd and I don't want to add streaming audio on top of that.

[Thorham]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Is a 4MB source 'fun' ? I don't think so

Four megabytes? I'll pass for now

Originally Posted by meynaf

Many programs behave like that, you know

Yuk And what the hell is so difficult about shutting down the program properly when mandatory files aren't found? I mean, what the f

Originally Posted by meynaf

That would mean using the 4 channels and imply mixing to add sfx, not that easy.

Not the most difficult thing to do, either.

Originally Posted by meynaf

Besides, the game is already constantly hitting the hd and I don't want to add streaming audio on top of that.

In that case, it might not be such a good idea after all.

[meynaf]

I have made an achive containing the .SMK that are missing in the GOLD edition of HOMM2 and needed here :
http://meynaf.free.fr/tmp/homm2-gold-smk.lzx

[meynaf]

Release 0.2 is out now. Check the readme for bugfixes.

[KillJ0Y]

oh perfect, I must go and test it

[ZedKei]

@ meynaf

I've tried your homm2 0.2 engine and encountered a bug.
When I press end turn button game exits with following message:

Pas pu ecrire fichier games/AUTOSAVE.GM1

I wasn't able to test game much because there isn't much to do
in 1 turn.

I did try the game on my real Amiga 1200 with blizzard 040/40,
32 MB Fast and it was sluggish but that's probably due to FFS.

Much bigger problem is usage of interlaced screenmode which is
flickering really bad on my tv, unfortunately my flicker fixer
died so I'm stuck using tv.

I would like to note my appreciation for your work homm is one
of those jewels that never made it to amiga even tho it would
run well on it. Regretably there are quite a few very good pc
games like that that we never got to play.

Hopefully you'll continue to improve engine until it's perfect.

Regards,
zk

Btw. I've tried to send bug report to your mail address but it
bounced as spam.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by ZedKei

@ meynaf

I've tried your homm2 0.2 engine and encountered a bug.
When I press end turn button game exits with following message:

Pas pu ecrire fichier games/AUTOSAVE.GM1

I wasn't able to test game much because there isn't much to do
in 1 turn.

I did try the game on my real Amiga 1200 with blizzard 040/40,
32 MB Fast and it was sluggish but that's probably due to FFS.

Much bigger problem is usage of interlaced screenmode which is
flickering really bad on my tv, unfortunately my flicker fixer
died so I'm stuck using tv.

I would like to note my appreciation for your work homm is one
of those jewels that never made it to amiga even tho it would
run well on it. Regretably there are quite a few very good pc
games like that that we never got to play.

Hopefully you'll continue to improve engine until it's perfect.

Regards,
zk

Btw. I've tried to send bug report to your mail address but it
bounced as spam.

This is just autosave failure, because it can't save for some reason.
You must have a games/ directory, and it must be writable - and the disk not full, of course.

About FFS, try using the AddBuffers command, e.g. addbuffers dh0: 4000. This eats memory, but could help.

[ZedKei]

Thanks. You were right, game exited because there were no games
directory. It would be a good idea to add this piece of information to
read me file. Addbuffers also helped, game was much smoother.

zk

[meynaf]

My mistake, I forgot to talk about the saved games dir in the readme

[Shoonay]

Cool stuff, tested it out a bit today on my real A1200 with a Blizz 030/50MHz 32MB.

It didn't want to work with a RIP version where the movie files are 0 bytes in size. The original game works with those.

The movies are flashing like hell, my eyes hurt.

The ingame graphics are quite enjoyable, especially on a CRT tv with a super high-tech blur intensity option. Even though some fonts are hard to read.

The gameplay is quite-quite, almost there, moving on the main map could be a bit faster.

The game exited when I pressed the cursor option in the options.

PS: Would it be perhaps possible to convert & implement the music as raw IFF stereo samples playing in the background? There aren't that many in-game sounds anyways, so 2 channels left for those is more then enough.

[Lord Riton]

Homm 2 is a great game, loved it !

But my favorit game will always be Homm 3 !! The best game ever made for me, especially with the fan made W.O.G. expansion that puts it to 3.5

I play a homm3-wog game, on a large random map, alone against 7 oponents who are together, on impossible difficulty, with random heroes (for me too), almost everyday. I win arround 30% of these games, I don't reload if i do a mistake. For me it's a real fun challenge, like chess to others i guess

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Shoonay

The ingame graphics are quite enjoyable, especially on a CRT tv with a super high-tech blur intensity option. Even though some fonts are hard to read.

On PAL monitor it flickers like hell. I guess the best is with a flicker fixer.

Originally Posted by Shoonay

The gameplay is quite-quite, almost there, moving on the main map could be a bit faster.

Moving on the main map could be *a lot* faster. (sigh)

Originally Posted by Shoonay

The game exited when I pressed the cursor option in the options.

Known fact. I will hunt that one, one day.

Originally Posted by Shoonay

PS: Would it be perhaps possible to convert & implement the music as raw IFF stereo samples playing in the background? There aren't that many in-game sounds anyways, so 2 channels left for those is more then enough.

Well, i wouldn't say 2 channels are exactly enough. On the map you have a lot of different sources of sound. Oh, ok, less important when it's covered by music.

I'd have prefered the midi files being converted to regular protracker. If you want, i can send them to you.
Some other coder could also do a direct cd track replay, for those who have original cds (personnally i no longer have a cd drive on my a1200).

Originally Posted by Lord Riton

Homm 2 is a great game, loved it !

But my favorit game will always be Homm 3 !! The best game ever made for me, especially with the fan made W.O.G. expansion that puts it to 3.5

Strangely, having tried HOMM3, i still prefer HOMM2. Matter of taste perhaps, but units seem more "logical" to me.

[Shoonay]

Originally Posted by meynaf

Well, i wouldn't say 2 channels are exactly enough. On the map you have a lot of different sources of sound. Oh, ok, less important when it's covered by music.

Well it's definitely more then converting MIDIs to MOD which would take all 4 channels
Perhaps you could implement some fast 8 channel sound mixing into the game's engine? TFMX? DigiBooster?
I dunno, I'm just guessing, not a programmerer I am...

Originally Posted by meynaf

I'd have prefered the midi files being converted to regular protracker. If you want, i can send them to you.

I wouldn't know what to do with them
Besides, Don Adan asked me some time ago to convert them and I asked for help here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43470 but not much came out of this...
Perhaps ask the people at AMP forums?

Originally Posted by meynaf

Strangely, having tried HOMM3, i still prefer HOMM2. Matter of taste perhaps, but units seem more "logical" to me.

Mine too.
Well, I did get a PC pretty late, in December of 1998, but played the heck out of HoM&M2 for a good few months.
And then blam! - HoM&M3 came out, where everything looked, sounded (hell yeah at the bass tune at the Necromancer's place ) and played better.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Shoonay

Well it's definitely more then converting MIDIs to MOD which would take all 4 channels
Perhaps you could implement some fast 8 channel sound mixing into the game's engine? TFMX? DigiBooster?
I dunno, I'm just guessing, not a programmerer I am...

Audio mixing would add some deal of cpu use, and the machine's already at its knees on this program. But option of music without sfx can be used.

Of course, if we had 8 hardware channels it would be different

Originally Posted by Shoonay

I wouldn't know what to do with them
Besides, Don Adan asked me some time ago to convert them and I asked for help here: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43470 but not much came out of this...
Perhaps ask the people at AMP forums?

I wonder why nobody can do that. After all, it's just about remixing the music. An audio wizard certainly can.

[Asle]

Where are the XMI/MID files ?

-- never mind

[TTD]

This project sounds interesting, how is it going had it stop?

Is there anything I can do to help with test it.

I have a classic desktop A4000 with 060 (MMU+FPU) and 144MB fastmem and gfxcard 4MB.

About the audio, as I remember there was also a midi player for amy then simple just use the .mid files - have forgotten the midi player name, maybe others have source or know which one.

Maybe I should check that out.

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by Asle

Where are the XMI/MID files ?

XMI are inside HEROES2.AGG file.

Originally Posted by TTD

This project sounds interesting, how is it going had it stop?

It's somehow stopped due to laziness. But i'll return.

Originally Posted by TTD

Is there anything I can do to help with test it.

I have a classic desktop A4000 with 060 (MMU+FPU) and 144MB fastmem and gfxcard 4MB.

It's not really testing i need. I already know of several issues that need to be fixed. But this code is enormous ; coders are perhaps more wanted - if they dare to have a look and are good enough to find something, that is.

Originally Posted by TTD

About the audio, as I remember there was also a midi player for amy then simple just use the .mid files - have forgotten the midi player name, maybe others have source or know which one.

Maybe I should check that out.

No player that i found plays that correctly, even GMplay (plays them but ugly result). And Timidity always refused to work on my machine.

[Toaks]

WOW, impressive project.
Didnt know about it before now.


As for Timidity, it works fine but its a bitch to set up, i am sure we can find time and space to help you install that if it so be.