Congratulations to the VCMI team. This has been a long time in the making and I hope will help keep HoMM3 community vital for decades to come.
Currently, and for quite some time now, Horn of the Abyss mod has been the premier way to play single player and the most popular way to play multiplayer HoMM3. Really excited to see how the mod (HotA) and the engine remake (VCMI) projects will interact. Will they find a way to work together or will they split the community?
Thanks. While I not personally actively working on VCMI itself I can still say we have amazing contributors right now. They did a lot of work on project in 2022 and there are a lot of features coming in next release that we plan to make for Christmas.
HotA and VCMI we are not competitors. Main goal of VCMI is support for proper modding, scripting, different AIs, platforms and preserving unique gameplay for new generation. Reverse engineering project that work using memory patching and a lot of assembly magic can't really compete here.
At the same time no one on VCMI team is actively working on multiplayer or some crazy UI features that competetive multiplayer audience would care about. So for foreseable future we are not competing for an audience.
PS: Unfortunately one of primary developers behind "HotA the town" has died so I have no idea if it still being actively developed. In any case VCMI now support almost all of HotA assets so if you just want a town it's should be fully playble.
Currently, and for quite some time now, Horn of the Abyss mod has been the premier way to play single player and the most popular way to play multiplayer HoMM3. Really excited to see how the mod (HotA) and the engine remake (VCMI) projects will interact. Will they find a way to work together or will they split the community?