Introduction of the project on main page

[Branikolog]

Currently, our main page is lacking the description of fheroes2 project. People sometimes even don't know what is that, what is it for and what is the difference, comparing to the original game. I believe people would like to know main goals of our project too, as well as the list of features we've already implemented, which couldn't be found in the original game.

[Branikolog]

So, I propose to add some text about the project on the main page.

Here's some sort of draft of this description:
(Sorry for mistakes :) )
Free Heroes of Might and Magic II (fheroes2) is a recreation of HoMM2 game engine. This open-source multi-platform project written with C++ from a scratch is aimed to fully replicate the original game with meaningful changes for gameplay, graphics and logic, bringing a new life to one of the most anticipated turn-based strategies.
Final release will be a full faithful remake with high resolution support, improved AI, numerous UI fixes and improvements. (Here we can place a link to a separate list of new features and fixes, which I provide in the further post.)
With the help of fheroes2 open engine new creatures, spells, game mechanics, skills and even castles could be added. Also improved video quality, new sounds and extended multiplayer can be implemented using the capabilities of the engine. Many of this and even more is expected to appear in the future expansion by our team called "Resurrection".

[Branikolog]

It will be nice, if we have a list of new features and fixes of the original game bugs. So visitors could clearly understand the amount of work we've already done in this project.
I'm concerning on the form of this list... It could probably look like our change logs from github wiki, but I'd like to provide a screenshots to the most of new features, describing each improvement there.
I'm still in a process of creating a full list, but I can already provide a few dozens of screenshots of the improvements. Later I'll add even more of them.

[Branikolog]

Hero army could be reorganized for joining creatures via special button.

Hero info could be checked while choosing new skills on level up.

Available gold and needed experience for level up are shown while obtaining treasure chest.

Unavailable buildings are shown in gray color (H3-like).

Visited and unvisited status of multiple objects on adventure map.

Once visited, Witch Hut indicates the skill, could be obtained.

Magic Shrines show the spell, that could be learned inside after visiting.

[Branikolog]

Hero info window shows disabled "Dismiss" button in a castle plus info that explains why player cannot dismiss a hero.

Marketplace button allows hero exchange some resources during creature joining dialog.

A tower of Knight Castle no more overlaps a flag on a main gates.

Status information of shipyard changed from "Dock" to "Shipyard".

All info windows in game are placed exactly in a center of the screen.

During castle selection a "Spell Cast" button is in a disabled state.

Capital letters are used for creatures names in a status bar.

[Branikolog]

Save files have creation date.

Optional Army order boxes.

Morale modifiers in hero info window show the name of each grade. (While in the original there were only "Good", "Bad" or "Neutral"

[Branikolog]

Fast creature splitting into several equal stacks.

Higher resolution support.

Game setting via "config" button in main menu.

If creature inflicts damage on two hexes they are both shadowed.

Each map in the list has PoL or SW label.

Active spell duration in creature characteristics window during battle.

Spell description in creature characteristics window during battle.

Save file info.

Captain Quarters in Necromancers town is drawn without bridge to nowhere.

Added missing part to a farm in Knight castle.

[Branikolog]

Added missing shadow for a spell book.

Freeman's Foundry window shows all upgraded types of creatures. (Originally only two creatures' icons fit the window.)

[oleg-derevenetz]

Hi @Branikolog I added an introductory description in this way:

https://oleg-derevenetz.github.io/fheroes2/

I suppose there is already A LOT of things works fine enough, so there is just no need to use promises in the future tense to draw attention to the project, let's leave that to some kind of endless game project that has nothing but screenshots, preprocessed videos and promises (I think anyone can give an example of a couple of such 😊). All we need to do is just present the already existing game features in a flashy way. I have an idea to make some screenshots from the OG and from the fheroes2 in similar situations to show them side-by-side ("before and now") to demonstrate some of the UI improvements. Also we may advertise some game mechanics that is just absent in OG - such as showing turn order in battle, castle guardians, maybe something else.

@ihhub How do you think, are screenshots from OG on fheroes2 website are fine in terms of potential copyright issues?

[ihhub]

Hi @oleg-derevenetz , personally I do not know the impact of placing screenshots from OG on the website so I can say that we should try to avoid unless it's unavoidable. Some features is hard to show on screenshots so we'll need video for this.

[ihhub]

@Branikolog , small remarks about screenshots:

• town portal doesn't need screenshots from OG
• the arrow in hero's meeting dialog should be pressed
• remove larger creature's counts (not worth to mention)

[Branikolog]

@oleg-derevenetz
Everything would be better than nothing, we had before. ;)

@ihhub
I think everything is worth to mention. ) I even added to my list some pixelfixes of buildings in castles. Larger counts - is nice improvement, as in the OG they were too tiny and in future, at mobile devices this will really help users to distinguish these counts.
Also, why shouldn't we show the original "Town Portal" implementation? Lots of people trying fheroes2 could never played the original game so they would even don't know, if this spell had such a primitive UI.

edit: Arrow in hero meeting window IS pressed. ;)

[ihhub]

Hi @oleg-derevenetz and @Branikolog , let's go with adding the description of the project first as it's an obvious change.

[ihhub]

As discussed I've created a new wiki page Features-and-enhancement-of-the-project where @Branikolog will populate with all these images and brief description. This is needed to avoid images being a part of git as they will occupy a lot of space. Once the page will be population a little we can add a separate *.md file to be used for generated website.