People have been re-creating old games for much longer than AI has been around. This project, fheroes2, started development over 7 years ago and published it's 1.0.0 release 4 years ago. So it's safe to say it's made by humans.

I'm not sure if meant to ask if this project is an ai-recreation. I just wanted to say that the fheroes2 project is much older than that. I was playing with it during covid (if I remember right).

I suppose it's possible that they have changed development practices recently, but I think you can probably enjoy it without guilt if that worries you!

In general terms, the machine can do the coding, you have to provide the soul. It's no different from the tons of human-made shovelware with no clear direction.

Adding 2c, because I am building stuff with near zero previous game building experience.

I don't think you are that far off. It did get remarkably easy to get to a working prototype and get ideas you carried all those years in your head, but then you get to see how well they fare in reality. Worse, some combinations of those ideas don't mesh well with others.

Example, among other things, I am building a.. protest simulator based on Chicago riots ( not plopped anywhere.. it is still not balanced based on AI vs AI results so far). The basic location, sprites, system is in place, but the overall .. dunno.. there is something missing ( edit: though atm, violence is minimal by design and I wonder if that needs to be present even if it is rare ).

I guess what I am saying is: AI can you get pretty far with the initial build, but your guiding hand is still what counts for making it good.

If anything, things are harder now.

> Or am I wrong?

I don't know what kind of answer you're looking for. There's no soul and games don't have them.

You have some kind of subjective feeling of nostalgia (or something else) and want to pin it on AI-assisted development. That's real for you, but not objective.

fheroes2 predates the era of vibed AI recreations which get abandoned in a week or two.

You’re not wrong but there are only so many game designers out there who have a distinct style and an art director who is a bit unhinged. Moreso when it’s a style that isn’t obviously trying to sell you something, which is unfortunately a pit many indie games fall into as they race to be a better version of what they saw other successful indie games do. It was already a saturated product before AI

The ick is the lack of passion for the game and making sure it is accurate and faithful.

Instead it is: hey I burned some tokens on this... I dodn't test it or give you any indication thereof, so it's probably a waste of your time, since it's legacy is well known enough, it'll get some attention.

Get used to it!

Maybe civ 5 is more reactionary than strategic, so simple strategy that doesn't look too much into future works reasonably well. Or maybe civ is more mainstream and models absorbed more knowledge about strategies that work reasonably well.

The Polish HoMM III Championship is happening right now, with last semi-finals match scheduled for 30/31 October, ahead of Grand Finals in Gdańsk 13-15 November.

h3.gg for anyone interested

They had a reveal for the remake on Gamescom Opening Night Live and it was pretty prominently marketed there as well

The best games when you were around 10-12 years old.

I've actually never played Wesnoth, although I've heard good things about it. I want to say that combat plays out more like the Civ series rather than having a dedicated "battle screen" you'd see in HoMM - at least based on the gameplay footage I've seen [1].

OTOH, can never have enough turn-based strategy games though so I should give it a shot!

[1] - https://imgur.com/a/Kgqz2tx

That's my point: as a child/teenager I could dive deep into those worlds, and fill the gaps in graphics/gameplay with my imagination, and just like yours my time was pretty much unlimited. Today I feel alergic towards any kind of game that feels like a job, and requires work and some effort. HoMM from adult perspective is this type of game, it's not a hop-in hop-out type of experience, it's fully opposite.

I tried BG3 but found it strongly encourages savescumming and I got overwhelmed keeping track of the saved state tree

I remember using a hex editor (Copy II+ Sector Editor?) to max out both characters and items in the Apple version of Ultima III & IV. The glory days of green and amber