Editing Greg Fulton/Fanstratics Newsletters/15 (section)

== HoMM3 Questions ==
'''Hey love the work you are doing.  My only complaint is that Heroes 3 needs an HD Rework for the whole Series, and Chronicles.  H3/ AB/ and SOD should be at least the minimum HD project or remastered.  Just having HOMM 3 in HD is a let down.  I know it isn't your fault and is most likely Ubisofts fault.'''

Unfortunately, I haven’t had any involvement in HoMM3, since I left [[New World Computing]], more than 20 years ago.

On top of this, I have no contacts at Ubisoft, and if I did... I strongly doubt they would listen to me.

While I wish there was something I could do, I simply have no power to instigate change (which is one of the reasons why I am making Fanstratics).


'''While nobody can deny the success of HoMM3, it has always been largely a single player game with the exception of Local Hotseat.  Online play was infamous of dropping connection, out of sync errors, etc. Recently, passionate fans made not only an unofficial, now de facto expansion of the game, [[Horn of the Abyss]], but also a working online lobby with Elo rating system and stable multiplayer features. And that's not all, what I think is the single biggest feature is the addition of sim turns, so effectively, up until the meeting point, players can play their turns simultaneously, thus cutting the play time by nearly a half, which is huge when it comes to competitive heroes (2-3 hours in some occasions).  Do you plan to add something similar to Fanstratics, to support online play?  Thanks in advance!'''

‘Yes’ is the short answer.

Regarding network play, I expect Fanstratics’ to be technically ‘competent’.  Thankfully, Unity will go a long way to preventing past issues: dropped connections, out-of-sync errors, etc.

When it comes to an online lobby, with an Elo rating system, I’m still looking at this.  My first instinct is to create the server technology, hand it over, and let players setup their own leagues, house rules, etc.  I know most companies want to run a central server and control everything, but I don’t foresee us running Fanstratics as an ongoing service.  Supporting the game is one thing, running online ladders and leagues is a different beast.

As far as simultaneous turns go, I am looking to implement it, in some form, to help compress play time.  I am also brainstorming a couple other alternatives.  I don’t know if they’ll make the final cut, but I understand the need to make network games shorter and more play friendly.