Interview with Jon Van Caneghem, HOMM 2 Designer 

Reviewed by: Chad Hanson & Richard Gershwiler  

How did the Heroes of Might and Magic genre come about? Was Heroes the creation of one mind, or many?

The basic goal was to create a compelling strategy game which utilized the monsters and characters from the Might and Magic series. We wanted to bridge the gap between the 'classic strategy gamer' and the 'classic FRP gamer'.

Was the overall atmosphere of Heroes I and II something that came about naturally, or were there ideas for different kinds of atmospheres?

The Heroes atmosphere was always fantasy-based, being an offshoot of the Might and Magic series. Fantasy settings are compelling to a broad range of people; they make the simplest settings for people's natural escapist tendencies. What's difficult about a fantasy setting is making it cohesive, making it make sense. You can't just throw a few dragons into the woods outside your house without providing a logical means of defeating them. As an example, J. R. R. Tolkien made Smaug a powerful creature, but gave him a powerful weakness that could be taken advantage of.

Was the music for the game produced in-house or externally? Was it composed by one individual or many? If produced in-house, what kind of technology was used?

The music was produced in-house by Rob King, our full time Sound Engineer. He has produced the sound tracks for most of our titles over the last few years.

What development software was used to create Heroes I and II, and how would you compare the development of these titles?

Microsoft Visual C 4.0 (for the Windows versions), Watcom 10.0 (for the DOS versions), Miles Sound System, DirectX, and Smacker were our primary tools. All other tools were internally developed. Heroes I took quite a bit longer to produce than Heroes II, for a number of reasons. We had fewer people working on Heroes I, and all of the content had to be developed from scratch. With Heroes II, we only had to make tweaks (some minor, some major) to the content. Another element, though, was that the original programmer on Heroes I left the company a little less than halfway through the project. Most of his original code had to be scrapped because it was poorly written. Interestingly, even though Heroes I contained about 85,000 lines of code and Heroes II had about 165,000 lines of code, Heroes II took only about a third of the time to develop as the original.

What major improvements were you going for with Heroes II over Heroes I? How successful do you feel you were?

The major focus for Heroes of Might and Magic II was: MORE, MORE, MORE. We wanted more game play, more re-playability, more multi-player support, more monsters, more towns, more battles, etc. I guess we really were just trying to give the gamer more fun. Yeah, I think we were successful but that's not really what matters; what matters is whether the public thinks we were successful.

Is NWC going to try its hand at a real-time strategy game any time soon?

We're already well into development on one right now.

Are there plans to use the basic Heroes gaming environment and adapt it to another theme, like Blizzard's StarCraft cropping up from WarCraft?

We've played around with the idea, and have been contacted by several outside developers wanting to do just such a thing, but we haven't found the right concept/design that we want to put the engine into. As for a Heroes of Might and Magic III, we really want to improve upon the whole game, not just segments of it.

Are there any patches available for the game, and what plans do you have for future patches/add-ons?

Yeah, we have a patch that fixes some minor IPX and sound problems, and we've added a 'random map generator.' We are releasing an expansion pack (Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Price of Loyalty) which will add 4 new campaigns and a ton of new stand-alone and multiplayer maps. The expansion may also add a new unit type for each hero. I'm really hoping to see a slew of gamer add-ons in the form of posted maps.

Are there plans for more games in the series? If so, can you give us any details about the next project?

Heroes of Might and Magic III really needs to have that "quantum leap" feel to it. We're floating ideas around the office right now as to what the leap should be and how it should be implemented, but we don't have anything set in stone yet.

What can we look forward to next from NWC in general? Where do you see NWC going as far as computer gaming in the future?

We have several pending releases, including two action games and a realtime action/strategy title, and we're working on a Christmas 1997 release for Might and Magic VI. As for the future, we're not Microsoft. What we want to do is make games that are fun to play, not dictate the entire future of the gaming industry. We will continue to develop our technology base and hone our game design skills. And along the way, try to make the majority of gamers happy.

Gamezilla wishes to thank Jon Van Caneghem and New World Computing for making this interview possible.
Interview Posted 1996.