VCMI: An open-source engine for Heroes III

In my experience VCMI already feels like a proper Heroes 3 game, even if it doesn't fully support HotA mods, etc. It's certainly the easiest way to play Heroes 3 casually e.g. on an M1 Mac, and it has no wine-related crashes, and doesn't require a virtual machine with Windows's x86 emulation workarounds (like having to limit the game to a single CPU as otherwise units wouldn't do any damage in combat :))

For people that are nostalgic to HOMM2, like me, there is also fheroes2 [0].

0 - https://ihhub.github.io/fheroes2

VCMI is an acronym of the Quenya phrase "Vinyar Callor Meletyo ar Ingoleo", meaning "New Heroes of Might and Magic".

I wish it worked with HotA but it is nice to play natively; though even run through emulators HIII is fast enough.

Very cool project. An interesting note is that this makes HoMM III available to play on Android. That being said the game has had such a community revival surrounding the excellent Horn of the Abyss (HotA) mod that I can't really see myself playing VCMI (outside of Android) unless they fully worked together. Nevertheless, I am always stoked to see these community projects because they illustrate the pure passion people have for these games.

I see a HoMM thread, I upvote.

Very cool! I have one non-technical friend who occasionally wants to play HOMM, and she often has issues getting it working (specifically non-hd, non-hota on intel mac). This could be a remedy.

how stable is the game?

Interesting post timing. At the airport lounge before a long int'l flight and in preparation I'm installing bottles + homm3 GOG + HOTA.

While I played and wholeheartedly commend the developers' effort in making VCMI I still prefer the original + HD/HOTA.

Lost couple of evenings to nostalgia because of this recently :)

One interesting use I’ve found is installing the Android version on an Oculus Quest. Very weird experience at first, but it’s really really cool.