Hail obsessive-compulsive HOMMinacs! I hope the lack of updates hasn’t made you chew more of your brother’s Ritalin than usual. I’ve been up to my eyeballs in writing my masters thesis and haven’t had much time for much else (well, that is a lie). Of course, this doesn’t mean I’ve actually stopped playing HOMM — just that there no time left to write about it!

That said, we are well overdue for an update from Freeverse so I’ve sent them the usual form letter begging for pertinent information. Map editor? Patch parity? Timeline? Extra goodies? At this point no one knows, but with two or three months under their belt I’m sure Freeverse can throw us a bone.

Actually, I have an idea! You guys are smarter than I am (collectively at least ) so why don’t we hold a group interview? Post your most burning questions for Freeverse, I’ll pick the best ones, and send it off to them as our official Freeverse Interview #2.

Oh unworthy peasants! Our noble lords and ladies at Freeverse have heard your braying and bleating and have given you what you want — a big fat port update!

Earlier today Vice President of Awesomeness Colin Smith let HOMMV for OSX! know that “it’s still looking like around Christmas for Mac HOMM” and that “we’ll be working-in all the updates along the way so when it ships it should have nine months of Nival patches and content tweaks in there.” This is great news given that Ubi intends to regularly update the engine and content over the coming months, and should make for a very compelling gift under a Mac gamers Christmas tree.

Colin also mentioned that Freeverse intends to keep parity with whatever updates Ubi might release after the Christmas release, and sincerely hopes that the Map Editor will also get a Mac release. However, the difficult realities of Mac market mean that no amount of Mac-love can make difficult financial decisions easier. Mac gamers will remember that expense of long-term support is what killed a near-complete Half-Life port, and that editors were never ported for even games like Neverwinter Nights where they are central to the D&D experience. Said Colin:

It’s a no brainer for them [Ubi] to keep a coder or two working on it if it will sell a half million copies. It’s a different story when selling ten thousand Mac copies isn’t a total disaster… When we’re done with the game itself we’ll look at the Map Editor and then make a decision. If it’s easy to do we’ll certainly do it, we want to do it! But if it’s a difficult job we’ll have to make a hard call. What percentage of players will actually use the editor? How many of those people are the hardcore that have already been playing via BootCamp, how much is it worth delaying our release to include it? How much more dev money will it take?

I know a lot of gamers don’t understand how this business works and think publishers make decisions because we don’t care. But the Mac market is so fragile right now that we’re honestly often talking about the difference between making and losing money.

Hopefully Colin and we HOMM-fanatics won’t have much to worry about by Christmas. Apple’s products are selling better than ever in terms of absolute numbers, and given their consumer focus the Mac gaming market could well be expanding. At any rate, you know your duty: spread the HOMMV for OSX love!

Hola from Mexico. Although I’m doing some research and attending a conference down here this week, I never take a vacation from HOMMV. Other than being unable to play it.

Luckily, Ubi might have a present waiting for me when I return in the form of the 1.2 patch. Although many fine rebels died in leaking the patch notes from a secret underground German source, I will fearlessly link to the Celestial Heavens report on it. Of most interest to me are some nice UI improvements for combat and ¨two new maps¨ that will hopefully be large-scale asymmetrical mutli-player maps so we solo players can really get a feel for what the AI is (in?)capable of. What really made me happy though (is this really true??) was the option of a top-down camera! Yeah the graphics are real purdy, but when I really get into the game I much prefer the option to abstract the map and see the whole picture as I work out different strategies. I’ve long said that HOMMV should work like the map in Galactic Civilizations II which allows you to zoom from a close-up look at detailed 3D graphics all the way out to a conceptual 2D representation of the entire board. This is the perfect solution to keeping the game looking fresh while respecting the inherent value of its old 2D roots.

As I was sipping mai tai’s by a pool in Mexico and the ladies massaged coconut oil into my skin, Ubi got around to releasing patch 1.2. Although I can read stuff in the patch notes like “new Video Option: Camera Mode,” “All creatures now have a new status (Range)” and the supremely bizzare “Multiplayer now works correctly” it is all pretty vague until I can actually try out the goods when I get home in a few days.

So what is your experience? Is HOMMV getting better and more polished with each patch? Personally, I don’t think this game is going to come anywhere close to achieving its potential until the Map Editor unleashes the power of our collective creativity with patch 1.3.

One thing is definite: until the humidity and 30C+ degree temperatures of the current heatwave in Montreal abates I sure as hell will not be testing a hotseat game with anyone who doesn’t do their gaming in the back of an ice cream truck.