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March
31, 2006
We have a new interview,
this time with H5's music composer, Rob
King. The interview with him can now be found at the
Heroes 5
Q&A/Reviews page. We also find out that HoMM5 will
feature a full 2 hours of music! Be sure to check it out ;)
Oakwarrior
March
29, 2006
The
Official Heroes 5 site published two more hero Biographies
today. Deleb, a war machines expert for the Inferno, and
Lethos, a poisoner for the Dungeon. You can find their bios
on the H5
Warlocks page and the H5
Demon Lords page.
Sir
Charles
March
21, 2006
The
French version of the Official Heroes 5 site published the
remaining Sylvan Heroes today. Unfortunately, besides the
fact that the bio's are printed in French (which I can't read)
they're also the wrong ones. The bios listed there are the
Academy ones...repeated 3 times. *grin* Well, at
least we've got the new images and names. You can see them
all on the Ranger
page at the bottom (just until we get the bios and we figure
out which hero is which...the names tend to change from the beta
version). ~edit~ I just noticed that the German
Official H5 site has the correct Bios. So I've added
temporary translations from the German bios.
Some
items I've neglected to mention on the news page are several
updates. I've added all the H5 Heroes pages and Skills
pages. The last missing pieces for the H5 section is the
buildings pages which Oakwarrior
is currently working on. From now until the release of H5
I'll be working on finishing the missing pages for Heroes 1-3
while Fiur continues
to knock out the Heroes 4 ones.
I've
also added the info I missed while at work these past couple of
days....
The
Oliver Ledroit (H5 Artist)
interview can be found on the Heroes
5 Q&A/Reviews page, the four new concept art pieces of
his can be found on the Heroes
5 Concept Art page.
Ubisoft
revealed the Heroes 5 Super Collectors Edition. Find out
all about it here.
And
lastly, Ubisoft has started a Heroes Fables Writing Competition.
Based loosely on Sandro's
long-running Fables thread on the official forums. You can
read about the rules and prizes in the stickied thread on the
official forums here.
Sir
Charles
March
16, 2006
Between
Oakwarrior and myself,
we've managed to add all the Academy Heroes and Biographies
today. You can find them here.
Also
of note, now that I've set my mind on a final site layout, I'll
be making numerous small cosmetic changes to numerous pages so
that they look good with the new layout and color scheme.
If anybody runs across any errors, please...feel free to let me
or another staff member know.
And
lastly, as the beta test winds down to a close, feel free to
write up any strategies or town development plans you've worked
out. We're still accepting strategies for the h5 towns.
Just e-mail them to me at SirCharles@the-genies-lamp.com.
Until
next time....Happy Gaming!
Sir
Charles
March
11, 2006
Fabrice
has posted his third Developers Letter yesterday. This time
he discusses the battlefield. Enjoy.
Development
Letter #3: The Battlefield
The
battlefield is the real heart of the game, the place where all
the development and recruitment strategies are put to the test,
and also the place where you can spend half of the gaming time or
more. So this is an area of the design where a lot of effort has
been made.
We have started making tests on this subject
around February 2004, which is already more than two years ago.
At that time the question was about what system we would be
aiming for, how it would be shown, how cameras would benefit from
the 3D action, and how the interface would bring in additional
gameplay or serve the action. The underlying question was about
the size of the arena.
We studied the previous games and a
worrying tendency was established : the ratio of creature size to
the whole combat screen was declining very rapidly with each new
version. If we kept such a tendency the average creature would
not be more than a speck on the screen in Heroes 5. This is
something that you can accept when you have a realtime game with
hundreds or thousands of creatures displayed, but not when there
are about a dozen. Plus, we wanted to have multiple sizes for
creatures, and that would increase this problem again, with the
smaller creatures (like the imps) being only a fraction of the
others.
Besides this visual question, there was also the
major objective of increasing the tactics during a fight. The
designers at Nival were planning to give each creature a special
attack pattern, like a breath area, or a shooting line. This idea
would increase the need to search for specific situations where
the position of enemy units would be used against them through a
death blow. But for this idea to work, the size would need to be
kept under control, to force tighter hand-to-hand brawls and
decision-making. This need was from the start in line with the
visual issue mentioned above.
Finally, a core objective on
Heroes 5 was from the start to get a faster gameplay. As the
battle screen is a place where you can spend most of the playing
time, it is also a place to try to gain some time, by reaching
conclusions faster. Most of the early fights are usually
one-sided, hence the idea to create a smaller battlefield
specifically for the first part of the game.
This is how
the research on variable battlefield started. We would have a
small battlefield, of 6 by 8, when the army was composed of four
stacks of creatures or less, and the battle would switch to a
larger one, 12 by 14 for larger armies. The early fights would be
done much faster this way. The siege battles would in any case
happen on a larger version of the battlefield.
It seemed
ok during implementation and the first internal tests. However
the larger battlefield fights seemed a bit too long though, with
less interest, as the tactical element was much more difficult to
trigger. There were much less occasions when the creatures
placement would enable a special move to become
interesting.
Another problem appeared thanks to the beta
test : the balancing was turning into a headache with multiple
sizes for the battlefield. It is not only about giving more
movement points to each creature, but also balancing area effect
spells, shooter and caster capacities, plus all the side effects
on attack, defense values or hit points. It appeared to be too
complex to try to balance close to 100 creatures efficiently.
So
we decided around November last year to come back to a single
size between the small and the large one, a medium 8 by 10 size.
This would allow quick fights with good opportunities of tactical
effects, and was also within range of the visual limits we wanted
to keep to benefit from the animations and effects.
The
objective was also to limit the strategy of creature splitting,
where you basically end up with only one type of creature on the
field, presented in several stacks. The gameplay in Heroes 5 is
built around the need to use all creatures from one’s
faction. Low-level creatures are still interesting in the late
game, and high-level creatures are very costly. So a small or
medium sized battlefield is more interesting for a mixed
lineup.
We also integrated the ‘tactics’ phase
for all heroes, so you can place your troops the way you want at
the start of any battle. This allows you to adapt to the
obstacles on the battlefield, as well as adapting to your foe. It
also avoids a very initial phase of battles where you would have
to move your troops in the configuration you want.
However
during the final stages of the beta test where this medium
battlefield was provided to the testers, the almost unanimous
feedback was that this was too small, and that the fights could
quickly become cramped. A bit more freedom was needed, increasing
width and height by one or more cell.
After quite a bit of
discussions around the christmas period and january, we decided
to increase the size to 10 by 12. This size globally retains most
of the advantages of the former one, while allowing more movement
possibilities.
All in all this issue strikes right into
the fine balancing between conflicting gameplay objectives, and
nailing down bit by bit how the game will look like in the end.
It also underlines very clearly the utmost importance of players
feedback !
It's
really nice to see that Ubisoft is willing to listen to the
desires and needs of the fans. Unlike some other previous
heroes producer. :O)
In
one other note of interest, I've finished the re-design of The
Genie's Lamp. While I loved the previous design that
Eternor made, there were
numerous limitation with that design. Mainly, the width of
the area for the main content of the site was much too narrow.
Also, I wanted to have some similarity between the Tavern
and the main site in regards to style and layout. Hopefully
everyone will like this new design.
One
last item I need to mention. I've begun working on a new
section of the Lamp. Corak's
Cavern. This area will be dedicated to all of the Might
and Magic RPG's. I hope to include walkthrus, maps, item
lists, hints, patches, rare game art and many other goodies.
Sir
Charles
March
8, 2006
The
official Heroes of Might and Magic V site posted the pics and
bios of the Necropolis heroes :)
This
time, the French page was
the first to be updated. I will add the heroes and their bios on
the site shortly ;)
Oakwarrior
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