The Demo thread

[Kalah]

I heard about that zooming prob some way back; "difficult to see who's turn it is" was the argument. That falls apart, as the creature in the current turn is displayed on the bottom of the screen. I'll agree that some times, it can be difficult discerning which stack to aim at, though. Still not a big problem for me; I've got a 19" screen, see, and I know how to use it

Notes:
+ You can go directly from the "Marketplace" to "Recruit creatures". This is a good thing, since the selling of resources is often linked to the need to recruit new forces. The buttons located at the bottom right of the town screen also allows for direct access to the building center, although I use single keys more frequently.
+ Gotta hand it to the AI - it's performing well and makes the game difficult. It even puts up a fight for me (autocombat) - in H4, hitting 'A' was one of the riskiest things to do...
- The autosave is gone. I liked having that option available.
- After having been defeated I am not returned to the options screen (load, quit, new game etc.) but to a page a couple of steps after that. Makes me have to click 'Back' several times if I want to exit the game after having gotten my bum spanked.

[ThunderTitan]

- The autosave is gone. I liked having that option available.

You can enable it in the options. I haven't tested it, but the option is there.

[Caradoc]

Can someone tell me how to see a hero's inventory?

And is there a tree diagram for skills and abilities somewhere?

[ThunderTitan]

Press I for the inventory. There are tabs for the other info on the left side. H shows the bio I think. Here's the list from the readme:

CAMERA

camera zoom - 'PG_DOWN' or mouse wheel
camera zoom + 'PG_UP' or mouse wheel
camera forward 'UP'
camera forward 'DOWN'
camera strafe right 'RIGHT'
camera strafe Light 'LEFT'
camera pitch up 'CTRL' + 'UP'
camera pitch down 'CTRL' + 'DOWN'
camera rotate right 'CTRL' + 'RIGHT' or 'DELETE'
camera rotate left 'CTRL' + 'LEFT' or 'INSERT'
camera default 'HOME'


GENERAL

cancel action/close window 'ESC'
confirmation 'ENTER' or 'NUM_ENTER'
pause 'PAUSE'
screenshot 'PrintScreen'


SAVE/LOAD

save 'F5'
quick save 'F6'
load 'F8'
quick load 'F9'


ADVENTURE

game options 'F4'
esc menu 'ESC' or 'F10'
move hero 'M' or 'SPACE'
next hero 'N' OR 'TAB'
select hero 1-8 '1' - '8'
dig 'G' or 'D'
spellbook 'C'
end of turn 'ENTER' or 'NUM_ENTER' or 'E'
hero attributes 'A'
hero equipment 'I'
hero skills 'K'
hero abilities 'V'
hero biography 'H'
surface/underground 'T' or 'U'
objectives 'O' or 'Q'
objectives log 'L'
puzzle map 'P'
chat 'BACKSPACE' or 'CTRL' + 'ENTER' or 'CTRL' + 'NUM_ENTER'
chat to all 'CTRL' + 'A'
chat to team 'CTRL' + 'T'
chat to race 'CTRL' + 'R'


TOWN

town hall 'B'
fort 'R'
magic guild 'G'
tavern 'T'
market 'M'
racial building 'Q'
blacksmith 'X'
buy artifacts 'Y'
shipyard 'Z'
next town 'N'
previous town 'P'
upgrade creatures 'U'
split creatures 'SHIFT' + drag creature


COMBAT

defend 'D'
wait 'W'
auto combat 'A' or 'V'
retreat 'R'
cast 'C' or 'S'
autoplace army 'A' or 'V'
melee attack for shooters 'CTRL'
switch turn order bar/combat log'TAB'

[SpiresJRH]

Five-month-old Dell XPS M140 laptop, maxed out, and I still can't play the custom or campagin scenarios.... GRRRRRRR!!! So much for "reasonable" system requirements.

What does the Dell XPS M140 laptop have for specs? I mean...you can buy a new laptop today & if it's got a "dog" of a video card...then, well...you're screwed.

My specs (non-laptop)

AMD Athlon 64 3500 (Winchester Core)
1 GB RAM
eVGA 6800NU (128 MB) AGP VC

My rig is over 20 months old & I'm playing @ 1280x1024 (Max Details) & not even a remote slowdown. Laptops "usually" aren't gaming rigs. Yes...You can bring them everywhere..But in the end, you're paying for that convenience.

Alex

I have a 5-month-old Dell XPS M140 with the following specs:
CPU: Pentium M
CPU Speed: 2.0 GHz
System RAM: 1015.4 MB
Operating System: Windows XP Media Center Edition, Service Pack 2 (5.1.2600)
Video Card: Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family
Video Card RAM: 128 MB
Video Card 3D Acceleration: Yes
Video HW Transform and Lighting: No
Vertex Shader Version: 0.0
Pixel Shader Version: 2.0
Video Card Driver Version (Direct X): 6.14.10.4410
DirectX Version: 9.0c
Sound Card: SigmaTel High Definition Audio CODEC
Sound Card Driver Version: 5.10.0.4633

[crislevin]

sys req as listed in readme file:

2. System Requirements
=======================

Minimum
-------

- OS: Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 9.0c April 2005
- CPU: Pentium 4 1.5 GHz / Athlon 2000+ or higher
- RAM: 512 MB or higher
- Video: 128 MB AGP GeForce4 Ti4200 / RADEON 8500 or higher video card
- CD/DVD-ROM speed: 32x
- Sound: DirectX compatible PCI 16-bit sound card


Recommended
-----------

- OS: Windows 2000/XP, DirectX 9.0c April 2005
- CPU: Pentium 4 3.0 GHz / Athlon 3000+ or higher
- RAM: 1024MB or higher
- Video: 256 MB AGP 8x GeForceFX 6600 / RADEON x800 or higher video card
- CD/DVD-ROM speed: 32x
- Dolby Surround 5.1 sound processor

[bethrezen]

It's there any way easyer to see what spell are affecting one creature during combat?? If enemy put a spell on my troops i don't know what spell it's that...

[Master LL]

I've been a fan of HoMM since the 2nd installment (played it at a friend's house and bought it all plus the expansions ever since). It is a great hot seat game although I'm not like an advanced player (enough to get through the campaign on hard difficulty).

HoMM V is excellent, at least the demo, and I was surprised it was flawlessly playable on my Athlon 1900 XP computer (considering it said Athlon 2000 or 2gig higher). My details setting was on the lowest but it's playing on 1024 at least.

The few problems I have with the demo was:

• Building
  It is VERY confusing on what you can build, not build and what is built. They should do it like the old HoMM where it has the name (or at least the whole icon) colored-coded better (and brighter) so I can see what can be build and not without having to put my mouse over for the tooltip.
• Collusion Detection
  Sometimes it's hard to see what could be gotten, controlled or what-so/what-not on the map. True the "horse" icon does help but still, sometimes I get that icon where it symbolize I could take/control something but yet, when I reach it.. nothing happens. I have to reposition myself again just to get the item/mine/etc.
• Monster Add/Remove
  A minor nickpick, I miss the button to automatically put all the monsters from your garrison to your hero's party. Now I got to drag every one of them to it.

Oh yea, unless it was stated on the readme.txt bugs.. sometimes I get a bug where it is my hero's turn.. BUT instead, it's the succumbus icon instead of my hero. It was weird and confused me if it was the succumbus or my hero's turn. heh

Aside from those problems, I love this game so far! It's been too long since I played HoMM (HoMM4, while it was fun using the heroes, it just felt.. different). I can't wait to buy this game and emerse myself into the world again.

I do miss the old heroes though...

It's there any way easyer to see what spell are affecting one creature during combat?? If enemy put a spell on my troops i don't know what spell it's that...

You right click on your monster (or their monster) to see the spell or whatnot that is effect them. Sadly, there is no way to know what that "spell" does unless you read the manual (which isn't avaliable obviously) or the spellbook.

[Llefser]

Whatever kept making the game crash yesterday wasn't happening for me today. The only changes I made were turning the resolution down, texture quality down, and turning off anti-aliasing.

The two campaign maps are a little on the short side but were fun, challenging, and showed off the game well. I really hope that scripted events like we saw in the campaign can be created in the editor.

There is a new type of adventure map creature dwelling, the fortress. It allows the player to buy more than just one type of troop, kind of like the SOD golem factory. It's keyed to a town type and potentially lets you hire a week's worth of tiers (levels) four through seven. What creatures are available appear to be random -- in one game, I could get devils, pit fiends, and succubi; in another only devils were available. The fortress is guarded, and taking control of it will mean a good fight.

It's a neat idea, I guess. But this could be a game-breaker in multiplayer if it is indeed random: one player gets tiers five through seven, say; the other player only gets tier four.

Speaking of multiplayer balancing issues, the hill fort is back and seems to work exactly as it did in Heroes III. Since the cost of building upgraded dwelling is so prohibitively expensive in HV, I fear that an underguarded hill fort would be extremely unbalancing.

[trailMix]

I have a 5-month-old Dell XPS M140 with the following specs:
[snip]
Video Card: Mobile Intel(R) 915GM/GMS,910GML Express Chipset Family
Video Card RAM: 128 MB
[snip]

There's your problem. You don't have a video card. You got a crippled Intel 2.5D video circuit embedded in the bridge chip. Pretty much any main stream video card released in last 5 years will be faster than what you have. What you should have gotten was the ATI x300 video option. Too bad laptop video aren't upgradeable.

[trailMix]

Whatever kept making the game crash yesterday wasn't happening for me today. The only changes I made were turning the resolution down, texture quality down, and turning off anti-aliasing.

Sounds like your hardware doesn't support certain 3D features.

[snip]I really hope that scripted events like we saw in the campaign can be created in the editor.

I doubt it. You need to render cut scenes using the game engine. That's typically not something you can do with a campaign editor.

[Master LL]

[snip]I really hope that scripted events like we saw in the campaign can be created in the editor.

I doubt it. You need to render cut scenes using the game engine. That's typically not something you can do with a campaign editor.

To me, it looks just like Warcraft 3 in terms of how it is executed and scripted (when creating your own campaign).

If anything, if there is a way to place camera angle, access to the models and their action plalatte and text, it should be possible to create scripted events like that.

Just my opinion though, but if there is such a feature to create timed-events like Warcraft 3, oh man... the possibilities is tremdous for a huge storyline and such.

I'm assuming you mean like the event after saving the female hero in Save the Queen campaign at the beginning (sorry, her name is out of my mind right now).

[Campaigner]

Have anybody bested the campaign map on Heroic difficulty??

I have tried 4-5 times now and that fat fireball flinging excuse for a demon toasts me with his spells and 8(!) Balors. The Castle towers hardly doesn't help at all either in this lvl.

Gonna try a LAST time with another strategy which will exploit the scripts on that lvl.

Overall I'm overjoyed.

[xerobull]

Ah, HOMM goodness. Downloaded the demo yesterday. Absolute eyecandy! I was so blown away by the menu screen animation that I watched it for a few minutes before I started.

My impression- this game is great. I'm not an avid reader of the beta news nor did I play the beta (never got my beta invite email), so I went into the demo with no expectations other than the screenshots I've seen. It instantly feels like a HOMM game. Bravo Ubisoft. I was worried that they were going to create a whole new game with just the established mythos, but they went the correct route and made it a true HOMM sequel. I can't say if this game will take the series crown from HOMM3, but I'm definately buying it next month.

The 3d maps took a little getting used to, but it was just a learning curve. The town interface is great! If you're used to clicking on buildings, then just forget about that. You really need to use the menu buttons in the lower corners or learn the hotkeys. I love the building paths too.

Combat was pure HOMM. My only gripe was the lack of a 'Wait' feature, but after reading this thread, I see that it's a hotkey. I love the spell and battle animations- they aren't so drawn-out that I get bored and want to turn them off to save time. It's a nice touch that your troops give a little cheer when the battle is done.

I see a lot of complaints about the lack of caravan. The caravan was nice, but to be honest, it was one of the things that took away from the 'life' of the game in HOMM4. HOMM4 was a little underwhelming, to be honest. Don't get me wrong, it's a decent game, but it just didn't capture the 'magic' of the previous games and was kind of soulless. I know all about the demise of 3DO and how HOMM4 was their last game and that Tripp Hawkins gave 10mil of his own money to keep the company afloat, and I forgave some shortcomings because of that and all of the previous great games that 3DO published. I could never get into it and HOMM3 will always be the measuring stick that HOMM games are compared with.

A couple of small negative points (that won't effect me buying the game):

-'Wait' and 'Split' buttons. I know about the hotkeys, but these are integral parts of the game, and a new player who doesn't have access to a button that activates these will be missing out on a huge piece of strategy. Devs, PLEASE add these in as buttons before you go gold!

-Travel on the map is a little clunky. When i double-click on a destination for my hero, sometimes the destination is changed by one spot. Likewise, clicking on destinations or resources is similarly handicapped. I've tried both cursors, and I find that the smaller one works better, but if the clicking could be refined, it would improve the game experience somewhat.

In all, it's an awesome game, and it isn't even the finished product. Thank you, Ubisoft, for releasing such a great demo!

Now, can we U.S. players get a pre-buy special edition with a contest? I know that we're evil Americans and all, but we love HOMM too!

[Bandobras Took]

Hate to register a differing opinion (well . . . not really), but:

I didn't find the build screen that hard to use or that confusing. It's only a little different from what I've been used to in the other Heroes games. I'm finding it hard to see where the gripes are coming from.

[Falsted]

Is anyone unable to save? Every time I go to save a game it crashes on me

[Bandobras Took]

Here's another hotkey you might need from time to time:

Ctrl-Q in the battle screen exits the game.

[Caradoc]

Press I for the inventory. There are tabs for the other info on the left side.

A keyboard interface. How quaint. (Thanks, though.)

[ThunderTitan]

You can also double click the hero icon, and use the tabs to look around.

[Orfinn]

I have one problem at the end of the first campaign scenario. Agrael appears at the end to attack Nicolay, the objective says I must stop him before he reach Nic, I do so after I have defeated him and the missioin should end so what,it dosent end Nic is just standing there at the south-eastern enterance in the ashlands, hes teal so I cant control him at all and theres nothing more I can do, the cuscene with all those paladins just repets after each turn, thats all. maybe I was too early out to defeat AG? because I went together with Godric at the gate. Any clue wahts wrong?

Its not a big deal I guess it will be all fixed up in the original game but anyway its a bit frustrating after 4months of in game play and victory so close.