Disclaimer: I really do not mind buying the game actually and it is probably one of the games that really deserve to be bought. This is really just a (maybe stupid) question out of curiosity.
So, I have been interested in homm3 for a while and I recently found out that apparently there is a free and open source rewrite for the game called VCMI.
First I figured since this is a complete rewrite that I can just download and run it to play homm3 but the website did state that apparently you should buy the game to get the game files but is this really how most people go on about this? Are the game files lying around somewhere so you can easily use VCMI? I mean its just assets from what I know…
Or do I just have to buy/pirate the game?
There’s tons of stuff like that. E.g. open source Doom ports that still require the .wad files of the game.
Recently stumbled upon a remake of Dark Forces, called The Force Engine. High resolution play enabled, save games, crosshair. These kinds of mods aim to make the games better but they cannot legally provide the assets for them.
“complete rewrite” means the code was rewritten, not art/data assets
same thing with OpenRCT2 or GZDoom or anything like that, you need the game files
if they included everything you need to play the game for free with the original art assets, it would be illegal
it’s less than $3 on GOG at the moment.
And it is easily available through other means.
I still fire up HOMM3 + HD + HOTA every now and then.
I mean, they can’t really tell you “here is a torrent with the necessary assets.”
They have to pretend they don’t know what pirating is so that Ubisoft’s lawyers can pretend that’s not what’s really happening for a huge chunk of the users.
So yeah, you can buy it (it’s usually cheap on GOG) or you can pirate it if that’s your thing.
