Short Public Beta Preview

[Pol]

[q="Irina"]"Don't worry. I clean up nice."[/q]

• The one thing which BH mastered perfectly is the Water effect. The widget system is the second one. See the helmet right down - which serves as a quick shortcut.
• Windowed mode is also in.
• Max speed for the battles it's quite fine. The war dance for the winning party or lucky strike is however always presented. Hopefully we will get an option to sort them out in the final game.
• Quick battles work good, offering you chance to replay it manually. Huge plus.
• Pressing the ALT key switch between ranged and hand-to-hand attack. Obstacles can be destroyed.
• The music is excellent.
  
  [-] The graphic is sometime blend, especially to be seen on battlefields. The ground count with effects but without them it doesn't contrast them, instead it does merge. Depends on terrain. Better colors please, more distinctive, more unique.
  [-] Edges of the objects, or parts of objects are pixelated. Very often or they are blinking. AA needed and some optimalization.

[q="Irina"]"Tactic Phase"[/q]

• You can garrison units. Which is great! - Having the Tactic Skill.
• The secondary skills system for the hero is very diverse and powerufll. The tree looks like inspired from KB. And not only that - will you find the similarites?

[q="Irina"]"That's not a bug!"[/q]
To be continued..

[Blocks100]

For the uninitiated, what on earth is the Widget system?

And by 'Water' do you mean the graphical effect or the new faction which is tied to this element?

Puzzling, but welcome update - keep 'em comin'!

[Pol]

Save the Scroll! Save the Scroll!


An Overimportant Naga Lord Who See If You Are Blessed. And lost his four swords.


Fire?


These are our crystals! - Always say that with broad smile.


Someone reminds Mecha here.




Shadows straight from Babylon5.


The Widget system, thereof, part of it.




Dancing on the battlefield is bombastic!


Lifted finger!? I think not!


Dance, pwetty please?


Kappas are not gentlemen.


Loading.. with errors.


If you want the text, look at the name of the picture. Of course, 'Skip' button is useless.

For the uninitiated, what on earth is the Widget system?

And by 'Water' do you mean the graphical effect or the new faction which is tied to this element?

Yes, the water effect is quite nice. One of the best in the entire game to be said.
The Widget system, well, you now see a part of it. The game is constructed with widgest, shortcuts, windows, chat windows etc.. in mind.

As for the time, by a game time it's same like for H3. But in real time - game is slow.

[Pol]

The Battle System is explained in this thread - linked.
Abilities and Blood and Tears here and principle described in the video from Irina Kassina - just abilities.
Official place, where to discuss the Beta on the Ubisoft board.

What is left to cover:

• Siege Battles
  Blood and Tears
  Spells
  Balance
  AI (but not much of it, sigh)
  Overall Impression

The Music is a bit repetitive after times - more songs is needed, reminds Barbar Conan though.

As for Castles, here you may build Fortress I.-III. (How unimaginative name.) The highest type of fortress adds production, tower, where you may hid your shooter unit and shooting towers.

There is also some special building left, usually for racial gauge or some sort of 'protection.'

..you may also build Town Portal.

Edited 6/7/2011

[Pol]

You will find the current Beta version in the right bottom corner on the main screen. The current version, as of date 7/6 is 1.1.30440


The Spells are coming from abilites. No longer Mage Guild and Libraries.


Very illustrious picture of Siege Battle.


The first introduction campaign is very well done. Counting videos and messages.


Mighty classic screen. Note please, hero leveling is slower now.



Squash the bugs!


Quick save is in, two shortcuts may be assigned for any action.

Perceptions:

• Hybrid between MoCh and KB, much less the KB. This engine is advanced version of the same which Mark of Chaos was build upon. So it's nothing new on place.
• The controls feel easy. You can just double-clik on money or experience to quit the dialog. Double-click the event log to display newly added event - like a quest!
• Use ALT key + arrows to scroll map, battle screen or switch between hand-to-hand or ranged attack. Use CTRL to rotate. Press ALT if you locked the moving.
• ALT + Enter to switch to full screen.
  
  [-] The enemy hero moves fast but your AI ally move often just sluggish.
• In Beta is presented:
  As first campaign 'The Emperor's Will', as second 'The Fury and the Mire' - with Irina and as a last drop to taste, under Multiplayer menu, Broken Alliance map - Heroes 2 inspired.

[ThunderTitan]

This reminds me, anyone else find the mini-cutscene with the Skip button distracting? At it's current speed you don't even have enough time to press Skip (by mouse).

[Metathron]

You will find the current Beta version in the right bottom corner on the main screen. The current version, as of date 7/6 is 1.1.30440

Mine says 1.2.29991?

[ThunderTitan]

Mine says 1.2.29991?

Well there was a new upgrade since i last played (the weekend), but i can't tell you if that's the new number, because 5 min after using it my net went down... and i didn't get a chance to play the game...

[Avonu]

There is also some special building left, usually for racial gauge or some sort of 'protection.'

Here is one from Inferno (tier 3 Wake of Chaos unique building):

[ThunderTitan]

Mine says 1.2.29991?

Well there was a new upgrade since i last played (the weekend), but i can't tell you if that's the new number, because 5 min after using it my net went down... and i didn't get a chance to play the game...

Tested it and it's 1.1.3xx for me too... you wouldn't happen to have the internal beta client, would you?

[ThunderTitan]

Did you hear, znorkish is an actual language in Ashan:

[Pol]

Some more images..
( Stronghold Campaign - No Country For Orc Friends )


There are noticeable improvements in the graphics.


Some objects still not perfect though.


The details of textures and shadows, have they been worked on?


Or just driver compatibility? Who knows, but it's better.


Hmm.., solid statue .


[q="New build perceptions:"]

• version: 1.2.30658
  
  + Smoother graphics
  + Faster loading
  + Offline mode
  
  - You can't load game in the offline mode. Although you can continue campaign and you can save your game. Also you can't retreat in offline mode or flee - that's need to be fixed. You can't decide to calculate quick combat again, if you decided to play it manually first.
  - Conversion can't be yet stopped by retaking your town back, in the same (or next) turn.
  - Animations on the battlefield, for example stone for Cyclops-Catapult, are just popping up, unnatural walls destruction. That's remained the same.

[/q]

[Pol]

Nuff Stuff or Necessity?

Beat me, but some of previous build were better. More fun, that is it. Exactly.

[Avonu]

Do these bonuses even work in game? I choose some in campaign (and I can't do it in normal game) and they didn't work at all.

[Panda Tar]

I see there's a lot of stuff in Conflux. It's an eerie thought though. It makes suspicious that HALF of the game will be Conflux-directed. And the other half got way too simple and easy to be fun.

[Pol]

My Settings:
ATI HD5750

Code: Select all

Catalyst 11.7

SMOOTHVISION HD:Anti-Aliassing
Use applications settings: Yes
(Picking no and setting Level 8x and Edge-detect gives you superior image quality for rendered models but order and placement of indiviual submodels is all vexed, high distortion of fonts and another graphics - as the game itself can dictate properly for what it must be use only, it's a mess)

Morphological filtering: Yes
SMOOTHVISION HD: Ansotropic Filtering
Use applications settings: No
Per-pixel samples 16x

Tesselation
AMD Optimized: Yes

Catalyst A.I.
Texture Filtering: High Quality

Enable Surface Format Optimization: Yes
Mipmap Detail Level: High Quality

Wait for vertical refresh:
Off, unless application specifies

Anti-Aliasing Mode: Super-sample AA

Game Settings:

Code: Select all

Might & Magic Heroes VI - Public Closed Beta 1.4.31451

Windowed mode: On
VSync: Off
Animation Quality: Low
The rest on the Video Tab settings is set to: High

Gameplay:
Unit Movement Speed: Max.
Show Grid: Yes
Use Magic in Auto Combat: Yes
Player Movement Speed: Max.
AI Movement Speed: Middle
Battle Camera: Off
Always Show Health bars: Off

[q="Troubles:"]

• * Often you can't connect to Ubi servers and thus start the game. You need to try it several times for a success.
  * Some textures are very little detailed (leafs) and shaky, also blinking terribly.
  * For ATI HD5750&possibly HD5770 Custom profile must be applied. For nvidia cards is probably working out of box, not tested.
  * Lightning, shadows and overall light distribution is still iffy - bad for eyes

.[/q]


[q="Good Things:"]

• + Once set up, it's relatively fast. (By a wide margin not enough though to my taste, overall game pace is moat but the problem is in design. Sigh. See "Bad Things", point one.)
  + Atmospheric illumination-lights. (Curious how it will be looking in the game editor)
  + Free view focus on the map, when enemy is having turn.
  + Terrain Water and Fire animations are 1st class!
  + Overall good impression and splendid music

.[/q]

[q="Bad Things:"]

• - Displaying of artifacts description (story if any) abilities is uninteresting. Better frame and font perhaps..
  - Still broken widget's icons (Clicking on created shortcut cause no effect.)
  - Not immerse game play, deep thinking, strategic moves..
  - Not finished. Still a beta.

[/q]


& Still a promising

Note: Tested on "Wheel of Hate" and "The Emperor's Will"

[Pol]

Link to official screenshots >>

And to the thread about unofficial manual, travel this way. >>

Official product pages:
http://mmh6.com
http://www.blackholegames.com/#/game/heroes

[Pol]

Again some more images:


Path around the Putrid Lamasu.


Splendid graphics but placement of units is not exact. Some of them look like floating..

It comes to my mind that I'm missing the replay enemy turn feature. Big loss.

[Panda Tar]

New Trailerafter closing the Beta. Check it out.

[Mirez]

faceless look pretty cool, didn't see any nagas in the trailer though