Heroes of Might and Magic II

Heroes of Might and Magic II
Developer: New World Computing Publisher: 3DO Company Platforms: Windows, DOS Released internationally: October 1, 1996 This game has unused graphics. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has debugging material. This game has revisional differences. This game has a prerelease article

Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Succession Wars is the second instalment in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, and later received an expansion, The Price of Loyalty.

Unused Graphics

Adventure Map

Alternative Graveyard

Seemingly pitiful versions of Graveyard for different terrains. The rumour is that it can be generated by random maps generator, but unconfirmed. The snowy version can be also found on one of standard maps - "Peasants".

Alternative	Final

Ultimate artifacts

Four of the ultimate artifacts — Ultimate Shield, Ultimate Staff, Ultimate Crown and Golden Goose — have miniatures for adventure map screen, but left unused. Ultimate artifacts that were present in Heroes 1 don't have such icons, although there are empty bitmaps for them. All eight Ultimate Artifacts and a Spell Book can be added to an adventure map via hex-editing of scenario, they can be also normally picked up by a hero. Dialog box will show only a big icon of an artifact without a typical short story about circumstances of aquiring an item.

Artifacts placeholders

Game contains Art32.icn, file that is leftover from HoMM1; it was also going to be used in HoMM2, but all the artifacts graphics were decreased for some reason (see one of the adventure map screenshots from prerelease article, fragment below) and eventually removed. Only this placeholder graphic with two "x" was left.

Battlefield

Graveyard Battlefield

With 3 specific obstacles.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Unfinished Lava Battlefield Obstacle

Unused mouse cursors

Spells

Adventure Map

Battle

Unused spell Icon

There are no other remains of this spell in the game files; its purpose is unclear.

Non-glitched Dwarf Death

Due to a bugged frame count, dwarf death animations contain two frames from idle animation and lacks two final frames. Because of this dwarves animations end earlier, leaving their dead bodies with upraised hand and two final frames left unused.

Non-glitched	Glitched, used in-game

Non-glitched	Glitched, used in-game

Uncut Waterfall

Centaur dwelling and Waterfall graphics in Warlock Town have wrong order on a townscreen and because of that Waterfall is truncated in a final release.

Uncut	Cut, used in-game

Heroes of Might and Magic 1 Leftovers

Alternative Random Hero Placeholder

An alternative placeholder can be found together with files of icons from monsters category of map editor, just like in HoMM1.

Alternative	Final

The victory screen

Different bars and buttons

Catapult Button

Button that also remains unused in HoMM1; in early demo version of H1 player had to push this button in order to fire boulder off

Tents and Flags

In HoMM2 Heroes found enough courage to come out of their tents.

Death Animations

Unused Sounds

	New sound of "Protection" spell known from HoMM1 before it was decided to make shield and stone skin spells instead?
	Unused looped sound of a seagulls on a sea rock.
	Leftover sound of an end of creature teleportation from HoMM1. Meant to be used for Dimension Door spell? - in some versions of the game during hero teleportation plays the beginning of battle track instead.

Alternative Stone Skin Sound

Alternative	In-Game

Unused Mass Shield Sound

Unused	In-Game sound shared with "shield" spell

"Wait" Function in Battle

The "wait" button can be seen on of some prerelease screenshots. It's possible to bring this functionality back to the game, however only human players can use it, getting a great advantage against AI. Still it can be an interesting addition to a multiplayer game. Restoring this function allows the player to press the W key and place a unit into the bottom of the turn order for a round, effectively making them go last. However the trouble is, that units can wait for the second time (e.g. two player's monsters waits, slower and faster, then enemy monsters moves, then slower creature waits again while faster moves and the slower cretaure is moving eventually) and that these units could get positive morale twice! (e.g. creature moves, gets morale, waits, moves again, receives morale once again and moves for the third time). This functionality wouldn't see proper implementation until the next game and has been a staple of gameplay ever since.

This line for hovering mouse over the "wait" button can be found in Heroes2W.exe:

Wait for other units to go.

And this is probably info under right click on the "wait" button:

{Wait}
Have the current creature wait to take its turn until all the other creatures have gone.  The creature does not lose its turn.

In order to give "wait" function back to the game change bytes in HEROES2W.EXE as described below (works only with PoL v2.1, GOG version won't work).

Hex address (offset)	original byte (hex)	changed byte (hex)
3BF3E	8D	C7
3BF3F	45	05
3BF40	C8	98
3BF41	50	4C
3BF42	8D	52
3BF43	45	00
3BF44	CC	07
3BF45	50	00
3BF46	8B	00
3BF47	0D	00
3BF48	00	EB
3BF49	31	07
3BF4A	52	90
3BF4B	00	90
3BF4C	E8	90
3BF4D	3F	90
3BF4E	1D	90
3BF4F	09	90
3BF50	00	90

The last two hexes are further away!	original byte (hex)	changed byte (hex)
3C14D	00	0D
3C15C	0D	00

Unused Morale Modifiers

Battle cowardice

There is only this one line of text in the game, that mentions battle cowardice. Probably surrending or fleeing the battle would decrease hero's morale as much, as many times he left the battlefield infamously.

Current Morale Modifiers: Battle cowardice %d

Knight bonus

It's probably leftover from HoMM1, where having +1 to morale was Knight's exclusive quality. In HoMM2 it was replaced by Leadeship secondary skill - every Knight starts with basic Leadership, granting them +1 to morale.

Current Morale Modifiers: Knight bonus +1

Third creature stack

The game code reveals (just like in HoMM1 early stages of development) that it was planned to give a hero starting army level 3 creatures. In the final release however heroes can start with 1 stack of level 1 creature only or with 2 stacks of level 1 and 2 creatures.

Class	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
Knight	30-50	0; 3-5	0; 2-4
Barbarian	15-25	0; 3-5	0; 2-3
Sorceress	10-20	0; 2-4	0; 1-2
Warlock	6-10	0; 2-4	0; 1-2
Wizard	6-10	0; 2-4	0; 1-2
Necromancer	6-10	0; 2-4	0; 1-2

Prerelease Heroes Names

First issues of HoMM2:SW contain a game save from "TUTORIAL" map, seen in a manual; the save was made in a late stages of development of the game. When looking closer, one can find that in this map heroes that weren't present in HoMM1 were given a different names. The old names have nothing to do with New World Computing, while the new ones are often references to a Might and Magic series.

Old name	Vanilla name
Auroc	Flint
Demonum	Halon
Samantha	Kalindra
Mektin	Mandigal
Markesha	Myra
Myrini	Myrini
Sortu	Sarakin
Jofuluk	Wilfrey
Kenya	Celia
Cavenessa	Charity
Jodea	Darlana
Cirivan	Ranloo
Oornashevlik	Rialdo
Moora	Roxana
Rogrog	Zam
Logrim	Zom
Sandro	Sandro
Gwenneth	Gwenneth
Ruby	Ruby
Sither	Jaclyn
Jezebel	Jezebel
Skoran	Alamar

Old Campaign Names

Changing the campaign maps extensions from .HXC to .MP2 let us open them in a map editor. Three of the Succession Wars maps descriptions contains an old names for campaigns

Campaign	Old name	Vanilla name
Archibald's, Scenario No 6	Peasants!	Rebellion
Roland's, Scenario No 9	Act of Desperation	Corlagon's Defence
Roland's, Scenario No 10	Our Finest Hour	Final Justice

Campaigns Transcript

H2CAMP.txt contains transcript of the Succession Wars campaign. It differs in one place from the intro :

Fade to portraits of three other seers.

Final intro doesn't contain portraits of the seers. There are also short descriptions of voices from the campaign:

Voice Descriptions

Narrator:  Old man, historian sounding, kindly, blah, blah, blah.

Roland:  Good guy knight type.  Deep voice.

Archibald:  Evil wizard type.  Think of Tim Curry, or John Hurt 
in the role.  Cultured, faintly British accent.

Command Line Commands

Cheat Menu

Running the game with the "/NWC" parameter enables debugging "cheat menu" in the world map and Town/Castle screens if the game is run in windowed mode. It works both for The Succession Wars and The Price of Loyalty.

The options are pretty self-explanatory. The Free Creatures and Secondary Skills have sub-menus enabling the player to add them to the currently selected hero for free. Free Spells also gives a vast amount of spell points.

Again, most of this speaks for itself. However, Build All Buildings doesn't complete the Mage Guild; it only builds the next level of it. Likewise, Build Mage Guild constructs the next level, and it can be used consecutively to get all five levels. Docks cannot be built in Towns/Castles not adjacent to water.

Debug Mode

• /p[n] - enable debug mode (n - detailing level), where:
  • /p0 - disabled (default),
  • /p1 - provides additional information about the cell under the right click,
  • /p2 - the minimum level from which the game starts logging the actions of the game and players (a text file KB.LOG is created in the game folder),
  • /p4 - turns on Quick Combat (when attacking monsters, the game crashes if at least one army has shooting units.)
  • /p9 - maximum log detail.

Other Commands

• /d0 - disable digital sound
• /m0 - disable MIDI music
• /r0 - disable Redbook music
• /i0 - skip the intro
• /s0 - disable sound and music
• /w0 - disable waveOut

Any number can be used instead of zero, for example /D1. In this case, the key will enable the option (if it is not enabled by default).

• /v - video setting ("Normal"/"Interlaced") is reset to "Interlaced"
• /x - used by developers (When the game was launched with this key, some SMK videos were loaded locally (from a specific folder on the developers' computer).
• /z - not used (previously held memory diagnostics)

Keys for multiplayer game via TCP/IP protocol:

• /ta[Host_IP_Address] - host IP address
• /tn[Player_Name] - player name
• /tp[n] - number of players (n = 2..6)
• /ts{h, g} - player status (/tsh - host, /tsg - guest)
• /tt{n, l} - game type (/ttn - new, /ttl - load save)

Development Text

Developers' Hard Drive

These strings can be found in Heroes2w.exe.

c:\TEMP\Z.DIF
c:\heroes2\anim\voy24.smk      F:\h2xsrc\Base\Soundmgr.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Source\dpnetwin.cpp  F:\h2xsrc\Source\TOWNMGR.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Source\GAME.CPP      F:\h2xsrc\Source\KB.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Source\COMMAND.CPP   F:\h2xsrc\Source\ADVMGR.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Source\Newgame.cpp   F:\h2xsrc\Source\Wsnetwin.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Source\Overview.cpp  F:\h2xsrc\Source\FINDPATH.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Source\REMOTE.CPP    F:\h2xsrc\Source\netwin.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Source\EVENTS.CPP    F:\h2xsrc\Source\wingraph.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Source\SPELLS.CPP    F:\h2xsrc\Source\PHILAI.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Source\comwin.cpp    F:\h2xsrc\Source\CURSOR.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Base\WINMGR.CPP      F:\h2xsrc\Base\BITMAP.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Base\Misc.cpp        F:\h2xsrc\Base\RESMGR.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Base\MOUSEMGR.CPP    F:\h2xsrc\Base\ICON.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Base\TEXTWDGT.CPP    F:\h2xsrc\Base\Bzip.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Base\PALETTE.CPP     F:\h2xsrc\Base\Blur.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Base\Textntry.cpp    F:\h2xsrc\Base\listbox.cpp
F:\h2xsrc\Base\droplist.cpp    F:\h2xsrc\Base\TILESET.CPP
F:\h2xsrc\Base\SAMPLE.CPP

Miscellaneous

Heroes2W.exe contains these strings, it looks like they were adressed to Phil Steinmeyer, Heroes 2 programmer and designer.

AI encountered object type %d and doesn't know how to deal with it.   Tell Phil

Data miscommunication in hero position, first %d, %d, second %d, %d.  Please give Phil a copy of  your Autosave and, if possible, instructions to recreate this error

Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Price of Loyalty

The first and the last expansion to HoMM2. It added four new campaigns, new scenarios, new adventure map objects, artifacts, heroes portraits and music tracks. The later "Gold Edition" release was simply PoL expansion with additional fan-made maps and no new features.

Artifacts Placeholders

There are four artifacts placeholders (bigger for Hero Window and smaller for Kingdom Overwiev and Trading Window), the most probably the creators of the expansion were planning to add more artifacts.

Artifacts can be put on map via hex-editing just like Ultimate Artifacts. When picked up, such info will occur and artifact will fall into equipment:

Revisional Differences

Glitched Ultimate Staff

In PoL 2.0 Ultimate Staff's icon was replaced by a strange item, that appears to be a part of Legendary Scepter. It has transparent background, thus part of underneath window can be seen.

Towns Music Tracks

There are three different sets of town music for HoMM2: for "The Succession Wars" vanilla, The Price of Loyalty expansion and Millenium Edition. Moreover, SW and demo versions contain swapped MIDI versions of the files; PoL also received MIDI counterparts, but in a correct order. PoL game files also contains swapped SW MIDI versions, but unused. In the GoG release the files for both the Succession Wars and Price of Loyalty town music are included with the game, with the PoL version being the default. Main menu track also differs between MIDI and CD Stereo version.

Town	SW CD Stereo	SW/Demo MIDI	PoL CD Stereo	PoL/Mill.Ed./GOG Midi	Millenium Ed. CD Stereo	GOG CD Stereo
Knight	A	e	G	g(e)	Castle theme from HoMM3	G(A)
Barbarian	B	a (the same as Wizard)	H	h(a)	H (the same as PoL)	H(B)
Sorceress	C (no MIDI)	d	I	i(d)	M - completely unfitting Arabian-like theme	I(C)
Warlock	D	f	J	j(f)	J (the same as PoL)	J(D)
Wizard	E	a (the same as Barbarian)	K	k(a)	Tower theme from HoMM3	K(E)
Necromancer	F	b	L	l(b)	Necromancer theme from HoMM3	L(F)

Strange theme for Sorceress from Millenium Edition.

M&M VI Trailer

HoMM2 Gold received a trailer with a few new images from early M&M VI cutscenes.

Trailer from H2 SW & PoL	Heroes 2 Gold

Links

• [1] - HoMM2 museum on Forums of Enroth