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In my experience VCMI already feels like a proper Heroes 3 game, even if it doesn't fully support HotA mods, etc. It's certainly the easiest way to play Heroes 3 casually e.g. on an M1 Mac, and it has no wine-related crashes, and doesn't require a virtual machine with Windows's x86 emulation workarounds (like having to limit the game to a single CPU as otherwise units wouldn't do any damage in combat :))

VCMI is an acronym of the Quenya phrase "Vinyar Callor Meletyo ar Ingoleo", meaning "New Heroes of Might and Magic".

I wish it worked with HotA but it is nice to play natively; though even run through emulators HIII is fast enough.

For people that are nostalgic to HOMM2, like me, there is also fheroes2 [0].

0 - https://ihhub.github.io/fheroes2

Very cool project. An interesting note is that this makes HoMM III available to play on Android. That being said the game has had such a community revival surrounding the excellent Horn of the Abyss (HotA) mod that I can't really see myself playing VCMI (outside of Android) unless they fully worked together. Nevertheless, I am always stoked to see these community projects because they illustrate the pure passion people have for these games.

Interesting post timing. At the airport lounge before a long int'l flight and in preparation I'm installing bottles + homm3 GOG + HOTA.

While I played and wholeheartedly commend the developers' effort in making VCMI I still prefer the original + HD/HOTA.

Very cool! I have one non-technical friend who occasionally wants to play HOMM, and she often has issues getting it working (specifically non-hd, non-hota on intel mac). This could be a remedy.

> add new towns, creatures, heroes, artifacts and spells without limits or conflicts

If the original game had these features, it would likely have gotten me into programming at an even earlier age!

Lost couple of evenings to nostalgia because of this recently :)

how's the AI (as in computer opponent) these days? last time I played vcmi, that was my only gripe – the bots were so stupid.

This is awesome, going to check it out. I've been playing HotA on and off for years now.

how stable is the game?

I see a HoMM thread, I upvote.

One interesting use I’ve found is installing the Android version on an Oculus Quest. Very weird experience at first, but it’s really really cool.

Did HoMM series ever get popular outside Eastern Europe? I am yet to meet a person born and raised in the US who have heard about it, but maybe i am just unlucky or targeting a wrong demographic.