Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Comes to Android

Heroes of Might and Magic 3, the popular game that gained a great deal of fans over the past decade or so, is available for Android users as well, courtesy of a free engine coming from mobile app developer pelya.

The game was ported to Google's mobile operating system as the VCMI project, following the successful porting of the Heroes of Might and Magic 2 (HOMM2) game engine to Android.

The Heroes of Might and Magic 3 engine, now available for download from the Android Market, was brought to Android with support for existing graphics, maps, spells, heroes, towns, although not all parts of the game are supported as of yet.

VCMI creators were focused on bringing the Heroes of Might and Magic 3: In the Wake of Gods (HOMM3: WoG) expansion to Android. Most of the game aspects are already working, and the graphics seem great, but campaigns are not supported for the time being.

Users interested in playing the HOMM3 game on their Android devices as part of the VCMI project should know that they need to have the original game files to do that.

The entire series is now available for purchase from GOG.com for $9.99, provided that you don't have it already.

VCMI should work on large 800 x 480 phone screens, while requiring 256 MB of RAM to work, as well as a fast CPU.

Basically, this would make it compatible with most of the latest Android-based handsets, as well as with the tablet PCs powered by the OS (it would certainly offer a better experience on the larger screens of these devices).

To get the game up and running, users will need to run VCMI once to create a specific directory on the microSD card, while the Heroes 3: Complete, or Heroes 3: Shadow of Death game (only English versions) should be installed on the PC, with the free In the Wake of Gods add-on loaded on top of it.

Users will need to copy all game files from the PC to the app-data/eu.vcmi directory on the microSD card inside their Android phone, then launch VCMI again.

Provided that the software won't run, users can head to the Android Market to install the aLogcat app, then check its out-put, which will tell whether VCMI is missing files preventing it from running.

The VCMI engine can be downloaded from the Android Market here. Additional info on the project is available here. (via)