As reported at InsideMacGames.com, Freeverse has promised a “Big Week” of software announcements. One is tempted to speculate that testing for HOMMV has been progressing rapidly and that an announcement on a release date is immanent. Perhaps a little Cider is adding to the Christmas cheer?

Whatever guesses we make about that, today’s announcement that the Legions arena expansion pack is being released as a cheap digital download is even more encouraging. Mac ports have a terrible history of supporting expansions within any reasonable amount of time, if at all (it took years to see all the CivIII expansions, for example, and the Sims expansions are delayed by months). I fancy that Freeverse’s endorsement of digital distribution at a very reasonable price could spell good things for potential HOMMV expansions getting ported, especially where Freeverse needs to maintain patch-parity anyway and/or where Cider makes patch and expansion pack updating a snap to convert.

So, damnable Freeverse, IMG gets an early preview while we’re left out in the cold eh? Bah! They don’t love HOMM like I do! They never will! But hey, if an exclusive is the price for them to pimp your “Big Announcement” week, all the power to you.

The Preview

Anyone who reads this blog prays at this shrine can skip the first 2/3rds of the preview as it’s a rudimentary gameplay primer. The juicy bits confirm that HOMMV is the work of Cider. Presumably this means the Russians originally contracted to port the game got the boot and HOMMV will only be running on MacIntel hardware. Now there is a piece of “big news” that should have had its own day this week! Thanks for coming out G5 owners, enjoy chewing on your wingnuts instead.

While we are making demands, it is a bit of a wonder then why the game hasn’t been released sooner. Cider promised conversions in just a few days (not that anyone actually believed this claim). Perhaps a little more time was needed to port the map editor? Eh? Freeverse? Or to get the small matter of that expansion pack sorted out? Might as well make the MacIntel gamers happy as possible since no one else will be playing HOMMV.

The preview concludes with an encrypted opinion on performance. On a “MacPro 2.66 with 2GB of RAM and the stock NVidia card” framerate is said to wander between 40-50 FPS. Of course, this actually tells us nothing about how a turn-based strategy game performs since framerate is secondary to how responsive the game “felt”, whether map scrolling and zooming were crisp, or how much time the game took to make AI turns in custom scenario maps.

Also, the previewer said that he wasn’t able to get custom PC maps working. As he is a programmer there probably isn’t much hope for the rest of us expecting success. That is a huge bummer as far as I’m concerned. Nival has only released fairly mediocre custom maps in dribs and drabs, and I’m not a huge fan of the scripted campaigns compared to a solid AI showdown as is the best tradition of HOMM gaming.

The Future of Mac Gaming?

The previewer adroitly notes that HOMMV represents the first Cider test case, and we ought not to forget that it was also the first major port announced in the post-BootCamp era. A couple of interesting points can be gleaned from Freeverse’s actions as regards potential future trends in Mac gaming and porting.

First, Freeverse doesn’t seem too concerned about BootCamp gamers as taking away from its potential Mac market. Otherwise, it would have made damn sure to include all the bells and whistles like custom map support and so forth so as to leave no incentive to simply boot up an unrestricted copy of HOMMV in Windows. Admittedly, we don’t have a final word on map support. But there is also no announcement on support for Ubi’s online component or the future availability of the expansion pack. So its not like Freeverse is feeling the pressure here to reassure its market.

Second, the mid-port switch to Cider is telling. Freeverse must have concluded that either the game would ultimately run like crap on a G5, was falling too far behind schedule to make Christmas, or that Intel Macs have been selling briskly enough to provide a sufficient market of potential gamers. If it is the later, it might not be too much of a stretch to anticipate that G5 ports in general are about to go the way of the dinosaur.

Like Charlie chowing down on a chocolate bar, earlier this week Freeverse tossed us the golden ticket to unlock the doors of their magical beta-test factory. What does one relatively robust download and one double-click make? One scrum-diddly-umptious OSX native copy of HOMMV. No word on when real chocolate will flow freely from my tap, but I’d reckon Freeverse could do that too (if they wanted).

I’d like to tell you more about the glee-filled hours I’ve already spent peeling back the wrapper on this pixel-perfect Cider port, but unfortunately Freeverse put my man-bits in a jar labeled “Non-Disclosure Act”. If I open my mouth, they keep the jar. Woe. So let it suffice to say that you wouldn’t confuse this genuine Wonka article for just a cheap knock-off. In fact, I have yet to see how you could tell the difference between the OSX and XP versions. Welcome to flavor country.

We can also have the meta-conversation about how lovely it is not to BootCamp. Though I thought I had grown quite accustomed to BootCamping over the last few months of doing so, having HOMM run natively in OSX has compelled quite a few more instances of 30-minute gaming that I never had the compulsion for otherwise. I have to admit this takes the feeling of “serious play” down a notch and gives me a more genuinely playful attitude towards HOMMV in a way that does buttress the bottom line of fun.

Now pardon me, little Oompa Loompas — I have to get back to running the factory.