Heroes of the Hot Bucket: Beat the Opponent with Your Mobile!

And then I gave him a punch in the face

Did you dream of pulling out your iPad, hitting like, tweeting, and posting about playing the warm transistor Heroes of Might and Magic, part three, canonical? Forget it! Only for Android, only from June this year, but it's really here. Your favorite game is now on smartphones!

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To the point. The third part [Heroes of Might and Magic](/games?search=Heroes of Might and Magic) - a timeless classic. Since the release of the "heroes" by New World Computing\3DO in 1999, 12 years have passed, and their work lives on and triumphs. Children, women, elderly, the insane, politicians, and everyone else joyfully launch the resurgence of the blade of death on their computers, laptops, and calculators, ignoring both the ambiguous fourth part and the fifth: the domestic online game operator manufacturer, Nival, although it translated the series into quality 3D, the heroic spirit transformed into Russian, instead of Erathia and other Jadam and Grails, they provided us with the Tears of Husky, and in place of the pixelated, yet just as pompous pathos, a categorical cartoon style has emerged, which Nival's designers adhere to - from Cursed Lands and Demiurges to the almost ready [Prime World](/games?search=Prime World).

Demiurges and other Lenins of Russian origin

An equally important and already mentioned factor is the quite modest system requirements of the "third", running smoothly even on budget netbooks, as well as "hot-seat": a mode, no worse than consoles, allowing you to hit a friend on the head with a chair, accuse the opponent of peeking, break a hand, seduce a girl (the author of these lines had the pleasure of making love to music from the heroes running on the laptop), as well as spend time on a bus filled with gamers, migrants from Asia, and other visitors of Gamer Live 2011.

It's so nice to hide out in the Swamp. Two cells of row, upgrades for attack and defense, mmm!

Now all this is also on your Android. More precisely, almost all of it.

Meet - VCMI.

VCMI is an open-source project that allows you to play the third Heroes of Might and Magic on any suitable Android device. In fact, I could end here, giving a link to download the distribution and telling you about the installation process, but there are some features that need to be mentioned:

VCMI itself is not a “version of Heroes for Android.” This project is an attempt to write an open-source engine of the third part from scratch, adding many new features and other joys of modding that have turned the game into a cult. The gameplay is based on the well-known but ambiguously perceived by hardcore players mod Wake of Gods (WoG). Currently, the VCMI version proudly waves its flag with the number 0.86, which, firstly, tells us about its beta nature (those understanding psychology can confirm that betas are generally more pleasant than alphas; somehow, they are easier to deal with; even if they don't look into your eyes sweetly, they are just minor details), and secondly, hints at a not-so-soon release - the last iteration was released on September 1, and the entire development has been lasting for about three years. New versions roll out approximately every three to four months, which is not surprising - the project team is small.

So, VCMI itself is a parent project; we are interested in its version for Android devices. So, what is there:

1. Warm, cozy Heroes, version WoG.

2. Hotseat. Yes, yes, there are no campaigns and battles with artificial Deep Blue. There is a quite decent AI for neutral creatures, which the guys are improving (the latest changes occurred in version 0.83 released in March 2011). Multiplayer is in development; in June, the team wrote, I quote:

Campaigns are partially done (no hero crossover yet), hotseat is done, but MP over network not yet (although a lot of progress has been made in this area). The main reason why single player is not playable is lack of adventure map AI (but it's going to change in a few months - Tow will create one). You can hire heroes, build buildings in castles, etc.

Rough translation: multiplayer is in development; when it's done, there's no single player because writing non-combat AI is hard.

3. Actually, enumerating what is available would take too long. It’s easier to say what isn’t. The original todo is stored in VCMI-wiki; you can take a look. Briefly, among the currently unfinished key features, only magic appears to be missing for now. So heroes currently rely more on swords. If the author’s memory serves correctly, a similar map exists in the "vanilla" version - something about an evil sorcerer who took all the magic power; every week, all the gold disappears, with a mocking note that the levies go "for the needs of the army".

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Here and after - VCMI for Android

In any case, you need to download and see for yourself, fortunately, it is not difficult at all. I provide the installation order from the topic on 4pda.ru, as well as from the article by our compatriot, Artem Rusakovsky, on the wonderful portal Android Police, by the way, that’s where I learned about VCMI.

1. Download VCMI from Android Market or via the web Market. Run the program, it creates the necessary directories on the SD card. Exit\the application closes by itself\you drop the phone if you’re a fan of extreme use of your device.

2. You will need the English version of the third Heroes. Russian localizations, including the Platinium edition from Buka, will not work. In the future, the VCMI team promises to add language support, but for now, you will have to master the language of Shakespeare and Wayne Rooney.

Heroes can be purchased on GOG.com for only 10 dollars, or... well, you know what to do. In short, install it.

2. Download WoG. You can get it here. Just in case, the WoG version should be numbered 3.58f. Also install it. On your computer. Surprisingly, yes. Did you think you could just download it?

3. Copy all the Heroes files to the memory card in the app-data/eu.vcmi directory.

4. Run VCMI again, which starts whirring away at your processor. If you get an error, it’s likely because it can’t find some files. Download the aLogcat program from the Market, check the outgoing logs to see what exact polymers are.. sorry, missing.

5. Have fun.

By the way, VCMI is also available for download on your computer for testing; the latest version is 0.86. Link (4.9MB, ZIP Archive).

\- Unzip the contents of the archive into the Heroes folder.

The WoG version is 3.58f. The authors recommend the English version.

If the game is in Russian, the archive can be unzipped into the Data/ subfolder - but this will change the language of the game to English.

For all bugs, fitness trainers, cracks, download for free without registration - visit the official forum.

Yes, one more thing. You will need an Android device with a large screen. Less than 4 inches - forget it. 4 - 7 inches is tolerable, but problematic. So your device should be larger than those 7 inches, it will be more pleasant for the girls and the gaming experience will be better.

By the way, Pelya (the main author of VCMI) has already managed to gather many laurels and other honors due to his port of Heroes of Might and Magic II - also on Android. It’s called Free Heroes 2 and is available in the Market. This port can download the demo version of the second heroes directly to the mobile device, while the full version will also need to be copied from a computer.

Update. In the comments, Grokhi aptly points out that there is a version of the second Heroes for iOS. You can download it, for example, here. A quick search in the App Store shows that it's not there (not surprisingly, copyrights and all that), so you have to install it with some sidesteps. I won’t describe the procedure here; if you've installed third-party applications on iOS devices at least once - you know how to do it.

In short, Heroes always, Heroes everywhere, and for peeking during a turn - see the quote at the beginning of the article. Always yours,

The Unchanging Leader of the Gamezdev clan.