Heroes of Might & Magic III: Horn of the Abyss

[Supreme Archangel]

is this project almost dead like WOG 3.59 ????

[XEL II]

No.

[Avonu]

is this project almost dead like WOG 3.59 ????

No.

Of course not, it's a rotting corpse.
j/k

[Spartak]

The first public version of the addon HotA came out more:
official forum - http://forum.df2.ru/index.php?showforum=90

[Iluvatar]

What to say... Happy New Year!

Waiting for the English version though

[Midas]

And there I was on the brink of losing hope. For the HotA team, I congratulate you. You have undeniably made history for being the first. Ever.

Cheers to you.

[m0sh]

No English???????

Glad its actually out... but no English is like its not really out TBH

[hydro1234]

I've been playing it for over a week, and I wouldn't let the fact that there's not an english version stop you. The only things in russian are things that are new or replaced, so new towns, new creatures and the main menu (but you probablyl have that memorized anyway). Everything else will still be english. For the most part it's a non-factor for me. There's a few buildings that I'm not sure what they do, and I'm not sure what the grail bonus is, but the rest of the stuff is easy to figure out.

The expansion itself is awesome. The quality is what I'd expect from an official expansion. The graphics, art and animation are all awesome. The new units are cool, but not as interesting as I hoped (though there may be some special abilities I don't know about). The addition of the cannon as a siege weapon is cool. I think it could maybe use a little balancing as the resource costs seem a little high for the power of the town. So far it's completely stable except that sometimes it crashes when I try to load a game, but I'm on Win7 and in the past I've had some issues with Win7 anyway.

[solitaire345]

The grail makes any terrain for Cove units to count as native terrain.
The building that is available after building upgraded pirates dwelling allows second upgrade for them.
Resource silo produces 1 sulfur/day
Grotto (third row, middle building in town hall) allows to trade creatures for artifacts
Thieves' Guild (second row, fourth building) counts as extra thieves' guild when viewing enemy info.

The resource cost is not too high i think, because the creatures have special abilities, which when played well may be devastating to enemies:
Nymphs and Oceanids are immune to ice spells (ice bolt and frost ring)
All pirates (3rd level) have no penalty for melee attacks. Both upgrades have no retaliation from enemy, and second upgrade also has ranged death-stare ability (like gorgons have).
Assids (upgraded blue birds) gain extra attack if any unit from the stack was killed in enemy's retaliation
Sea enchantresses can cast weakness or disrupting ray after their attack
Nixes reduce enemy's defence by 30% (basic) or 60% (upgraded)
Sea serpents also cast poison after their attack and their upgrade also has some ability, called месть (vengeance in english) whose meaning I currently don't understand.

[hydro12345]

I found a site that lists everything since that post. Vengeance just means that the more damage done to them, they get a higher attack bonus. Not a great ability IMO since means you have to take damage to make use of it.

I think the Assids are really good, as are the pirates, and the Sea Enchantress is quite nice as well. The Sea Serpents are a bit weak though and make for an overall just abpve average town for a rather high cost IMO.

[Crackmore]

i totally agree whit darknessfood, i can't wait either

but i can't resist commenting the nightmares have kinda oversized necks and heads in comparison to their upgrades

Great work people, if i could ( but i can't because my own computer has no internet, i've no programs i can use for modelling/animating and no experience using them, not much more experience whit binary coding than the basics and i suppose you've got volunteer conspirators and game testers
enough ) help i had surely joint the project, just for only having it finished sooner i would help 24/7 if able XD

sadly i agree whit supreme archangel to, since it is taking them 9 moths now to release a english beta

[Salamandre]

Funny, you would help 24/7 if you could, but you can't (because x reasons).

[Crackmore]

[quote="Salamandre"]Funny, you would help 24/7 if you could, but you can't (because x reasons). :D[/quote]

I've school you know how else do i want to get a job in a laboratory/ as scientist, and even due i am not usually getting any, i will still need sleep

[Avonu]

I don't belive that no one post this news here:

HotA ver. 1.3 in ENGLISH


Download is in link below:

http://heroescommunity.com/viewthread.php3?TID=39830

Introduction
So, what is Horn of the Abyss?
HotA is a global add-on for Heroes of might and magic III that extends (and fixes if needed) classical gameplay elements and adds some of its own. On a more conceptual level – HotA is an attempt to continue legendary series RoE-AB-SoD as close to the original as it could have been done by NWC team, if only they had more desire, resources or even understanding of their own game. We try to keep classical h3 spirit in every tiny detail from code nuances to overall gameplay. Be welcome to check if we’ve succeeded

So, is it official? Do you keep in contact with Heroes III developers?
Original developers, alas, no longer exist as a team and current franchise owners are not really interested in continuing old storyline. So, no, we are not that official.

Platform and installing
The whole modification is created by reverse-engineering Shadow of Death files. So, HotA is to be installed on top of clean Heroes III: SoD or Complete edition. We do not guarantee stable work on any “optimized builds” or with mods that can change original game files (except for HD mod, which is 100% compatible). The modification surely will not work on AB, RoE or WoG. No ERM (or other script language) support is available.

Core features.
- New fully playable town Cove.
- New war machine Cannon. Available at Cove's Blacksmith
- New artifacts and artifact sets
- New banks and conservatories
- New types of map objects
- New heroes
- Towns change their appearance, depending on Fort level
- Map editor
- Support for bigger map sizes (Huge, XHuge and Giant)
- A lot of balance fixes (like finally nerfing the necromancers or making life easier for Tower and Inferno)
- A lot of RMG fixes (for example, removing all sea elements from non-sea random maps)
- A lot of graphical fixes (like, really a lot… original game had plenty of graphical bugs)

[Ermelloth]

Absolutely great addon, the best so far. Super stable (no single crush happened to me while playing on latest 1.3.5 version), enjoyable, with a lot of new features and old errors corrected.

Feels like real 3rd expansion to the original game.

Great job guys.

[Panda Tar]

A question, because I got a big confused: this HOTA is something like an update, so I just need the Complete/SoD game and nothing more? Must I make any backup of anything prior to installing?

I'd like to check on it someday.

[Ermelloth]

With the new complete downloadable Russian / English HotA mirrors, you don't even need Complete / SoD. It has all the game files within!


Link to unlicensed content removed. See below.
~Pol

This is a fulll 1.3.5 version of HotA, which includes everything else and supports all classic, AB and SoD maps altogether!

P.S. Just completed playing on G (Gigantic 256*256) random map. For 8.5 months of in-game time I haven't had a single crush, freeze or bug altogether (in comparison to Heroes 3HD, which has only RoE content, but crushes to Windows every several turns).

My hat is off to the creators of this addon.

[Panda Tar]

Really? That's surprisingly pleasant to hear/read.

I'll get that home tonight then.

[Pol]

@Panda Tar
Horn of the Abyss is alternative to WoG. But with less modding approach and more content. You are supposed to just play it but not to play with it.


@Ermelloth
That doesn't make me happy and I was forced to remove your link. Reason given: That breaks game license condition and that is forbidden within our forums. You cannot just use a big chunk of another game and use it in your game, without having to legally obtain them both.

[Panda Tar]

Yeah, that's mainly what I was intending too. Creative focus is heading towards Heroic at the moment.