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Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Discuss the Rules of HeroQuest as set out by Milton Bradley Game Systems and Quest Packs.

Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby Kurgan » Sunday November 14th, 2021 9:27am

Yes it has many changes, some of them are useful, but many don't translate as well to the physical board game it is based upon! This is a very easy version of the game, about the only thing it is missing is a mid-quest "save state" and reload feature.


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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby theruler76 » Wednesday April 24th, 2024 1:53pm

Sorry for necroposting.
I've recently working on the italian translation of this DOS game I used to play when I was a child. The official italian translation was beyond absurd and completely different from the boardgame (another game I used to play with my friends back in the days).
The game was also plagued by a bug that prevented the player to save the progresses of any character. Only now I found out that it was a bug of the italian version only. Upon fixing it I've decided to go deeper and use the project as pretext to learn some assembly. I've already had mild debugging experiece but hey, there is always room for improvement.
So, I came across this excellent and detailed topic by @kurgan and used it as reference to understand what can be done to improve the game. I am now at a point that almost every "complaints" of this topic have been solved.
What I am at now is the hard part: monster pathfinding and shooting. Help wanted! ;-)
Monsters are really dumb and the crossbow is insanely powerful (if you find the right spot and shoot perfectly diagonal, you can take down a monster at the other end of the map even across multiple undiscovered rooms).
I've reverse engineered pretty much all the code and understood most of the functions, memory locations and variables. Every things I've mapped are now on moddingwiki page.

A (mostly) comprehensive list of the bug fixed and features added so far:

- some Walls/doors/furniture/floor tiles were in the wrong position or missing in quests
- The spell "reveal a room" of the Genie now correctly works
- Now when you happen to click on a hidden pit trap the game doesn't "warn" you keeping the hero in place anymore, you walk towards it and eventually fall into it. Before it was "legal cheating".
- In the quest 4 "the gold of the prince Magnus" the message "you can carry only one" didn't appear and it was possible to take 4 chests
- Now wrongly cast a spell (ie on an out of sight monster or on an undiscovered point on the map) doesn't waste it anymore.
- In quest 6 even if the equipment has been subtracted, the heroes kept the stats
- When looking for traps, as soon as a secret passage is discovered, all the other traps were no longer revealed
- the special event ID 0x16 (trapped chest in quest17) didn't reveal the secret port if triggered first
- In mission 9 "race against time" the second chest cannot be taken anymore if you first searched for traps and THEN treasures. Added the message "you can carry only one".
- Defeating Bellthor didn't show any text although present in the language file.
- Aligned the graphics of hero heads icons with their in-game appearance
- Restored the protection screen for preservation (just enter whatever page number)
- The witch lord could have been killed by magic in quest24
- when casting "heal body" on a monster the text "the hero is back in force" appeaered and the monster couldn't be targeted anymore and froze
- Orthogonally shoot across a tile with an opened door or a undiscovered secret door, blocked the line of sight
- Fallen rocks didn't block the line of sight as it should
- Search random events weren't always random, groups with subsequent events had high incidence (first gold events, than potions, then bad things), now they are properly pseudo-random
- unequipping a weapon now doesn't auto-unequip Borin's armour anymore
- Changed the order of monster's target priority from barbarian-dwarf-elf-mage-ragnar to the opposite
- removed unnecessary confirmation (insert floppy) when loading/saving
- added a brief description of the weapons, potions and spells in-game and in the armory
- The mage has now restricted use of the equipment (staff, toolkit and special items only)
- Special events "you find a shield" and "you find a spear" didn't assign them to the mage
- The Armory is completely revamped. You can sell items at half price or give them to other heroes
- the potions are no longer lost between quests
- the "refresh" button now only reset body and mind points, leaving all other stats/equip intact.
- the healing potion no longer cancels all effects of other potions
- When suffering the last wound if you have an healing potion in the inventory or an healing spell is now automatically used to save you from death


Some fixes are language specific (italian) but I am going to port all the changes to english too.

If you want to help or betatest please feel free to do so!
Last edited by theruler76 on Thursday April 25th, 2024 4:00am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby Kurgan » Wednesday April 24th, 2024 11:11pm

It would be really cool to see what someone could do making a homebrew game that included all of the best features and options of the various editions (NES prototype, DOS and Amiga/Atari ST editions). If that's what you're planning I wish you the best!


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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby theruler76 » Thursday April 25th, 2024 4:15am

Kurgan wrote:It would be really cool to see what someone could do making a homebrew game that included all of the best features and options of the various editions (NES prototype, DOS and Amiga/Atari ST editions). If that's what you're planning I wish you the best!

I've never played any other version rather than the DOS one. I am curious to know which are the best part of those games, if anyone would chime in.
My goal with the DOS version was to correctly implement all the rules of the boardgame and fix the original bugs (so many!).
at the link above there is a fully functional build that can be tested.
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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby Kurgan » Thursday April 25th, 2024 6:58am

The Amiga/Atari ST versions have some extra sound effects not present in the DOS edition if I recall correctly.

The European (PAL) NES edition prototype adds some additional features (such as the bracers and cloak from 2nd edition, but also the Kellar's Keep quests... of course this is a completely downgraded engine graphics-wise).

This is a big deal, but maybe a new post devoted to your program should be next? Probably some text should be added indicating that it is a fan patch?

Which version of the board game rules are you seeking to imitate, the 1990 NA/remake rules?

Already it sounds like an improvement on what was released previously.


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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby theruler76 » Thursday April 25th, 2024 8:13am

We can modify the graphic and the code but adding bracers and cloak for example would be very difficult.
When modifying the assembly code the caveat is to do not mess with the surrounding codE; you have to change it to make this more efficient so to have room to fit your new code in. Or if you're lucky enough to find an "unused" spot in the exe to cram the code in (like I did for the sell-exchange routine).
Adding new sounds is beyond my skills, I think.
Probably some text should be added indicating that it is a fan patch?

I've added a line in the cedits.

Which version of the board game rules are you seeking to imitate, the 1990 NA/remake rules?

What I am trying to do is to take the best from the three worlds (US/EU/remake). It is anyway a balance between room and original code.
ie the genie(reveal) spell code was alrerady there, they simply disabled it because it was bugged and they probably had no time left to fix it for the release (I suspect it was the same for the many other bugs I've fixed).
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Re: Hero Quest PC: game rules

Postby theruler76 » Tuesday May 7th, 2024 6:22am

Kurgan wrote:37) Unarmed combat: I checked Legacy of the Orc warlord, and it's all goofed up. Even though you're supposed to be without your equipment, your character sprite is still carrying a weapon, and you still have your "base" attack, meaning you only lose spells and any purchased equipment.

This quest was a total mess, now fixed:
- unarmed attack is 1 die only
- all stolen equipment and gold is now correctly removed from heroes' profile
- all gold and potions found during the quest is retained when the gear is found.
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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby Kurgan » Wednesday May 8th, 2024 12:24pm

Very interesting... I will have to try the latest version soon!


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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby Kurgan » Wednesday February 12th, 2025 11:28pm

Any progress on this update of the game?

Looking back I am realizing a lot of the "Weird" things about the PC version was just because I was less familiar with the 1st and 2nd EU edition of HeroQuest it was based upon, and some things are clearly done due to limitations of the technology at the time. But some are still odd!


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Re: Hero Quest PC: rule differences

Postby theruler76 » Thursday February 13th, 2025 4:43am

Kurgan wrote:Any progress on this update of the game?

The project is still running! Due to the amount of changes in the language file structure I still developing it in italian, but the english version is definitely on the roadmap.
If you still want to try it in italian: https://www.oldgamesitalia.net/forum/in ... opic=27582

The changes/fixes count is now at 79.
Sorry for the roughly translated rest of the changelog:

Magic spells have no description except in the manual. You only learn their effect after casting them.
 FEATURE

The Stone Skin spell vanishes after the first defense. It should remain until the hero takes damage. The text for the Recovery Potion is the same as for the Stone Skin spell.
 BUG

The Courage spell vanishes after the first attack. It should remain until there are no more monsters in the room.
 BUG

The Sleep spell cast on a hero does not vanish after an attack. The monster defends the first time it is attacked, when it shouldn’t.
 BUG

In Quest 6, the entire inventory is now removed and returned to the hero when found. The hero also keeps any gold and potions found during the mission.
 BUG

Now the option to refresh body and mind points from the menu works like a paid HEALER. Adjust the HEALER section (heals with cancel).
 FEATURE/BUG

The Strength Potion incorrectly displays the same text as the Courage spell.
 BUG

Reviewed once again the random events of the treasure hunt by applying the modern Fisher-Yates algorithm.
 FEATURE/BUG

Treasures are left in the deck, unlike in the board game (potions are removed correctly).
 BUG

Casting a spell without moving sometimes also allows a melee attack.
 BUG

Falling into a well or another trap still allows the hero to attack and does not end the turn. (FIX2 in case of Wand of recall.)
 BUG

The Heroic potion allows you to cast a spell and self-heal with the spell.
 BUG

It is now prohibited to search for treasures in corridors. Also added: a per-hero search per room.
 FEATURE

Attacking or defending from inside a well does not remove a die.
 FEATURE

In the mission “The Manor of Mystery” (Quest 10), monsters do not move onto the teleportation square.
 BUG

The witch Kessandria can be killed by all spells, whereas she should only be harmed by fire spells.
 BUG

In QUEST08, once Balur is defeated, all heroes (even those not in the game) receive 150 coins, and the hero who defeated him collects them again upon exit.
 BUG

In the mission “The Gold of Prince Magnus”, the message “all the heroes have fled!” does not appear when the last hero leaves the quest.
 BUG

In some missions, it is not checked whether all heroes have exited.
 BUG

Restored content in Quest08: “magic has no effect in this place.”
 BUG

Monsters can now have more body points like in the more advanced US version. It is still possible to change the quests by modifying the individual monsters’ body points.
 FEATURE

Align the monsters’ attributes (body, mind, attack, defense, movement) with the US board game.
 FEATURE

If Manfred dies before the heroes, no text is displayed and the coins are still awarded to the hero who freed him.
 BUG

In Quest 11, if you already have the shield and find it, the other heroes lose the opportunity to find it. (In Quest 3, it’s the spear.)
 BUG

When you step on the stairs, instead of ending the mission, it asks for confirmation, in case it brings you back in.
 FEATURE

The spear trap only displays the scroll for the loss of a life point, but not the one for a save.
 BUG

The Wandering Monster is always only one, even if more are discovered while searching for treasures. Now no more.
 FEATURE/BUG

Changing weapons should cost an action.
 FEATURE

Sometimes the second potion is not assigned by the event in the treasure search.
 BUG

Now the talisman and the wand are equipped by default (they have a white border, but it changes nothing—it’s just cosmetic).
 FEATURE

Upon the death of the bosses and the WitchLord, a scroll appears that rewards the player's feat.
 FEATURE

The three trap events all have the same text as the “string on the leg.” The other two texts have been restored.
 BUG

The movement of monsters is now no longer blocked by traps; they can step on them without triggering them.
 FEATURE/BUG

Blocked situations have been removed; now it is possible to remove a rock that has fallen from outside a room or corridor.
 BUG

Monsters can attack and move through different sections of corridors. Fixed: trap detection when the monster changes sections.
 FEATURE

The Veil myst does not allow the hero to move through monsters. Removed the invisibility and the possibility to end the turn on a monster.
 BUG/FEATURE

The falling rock trap did not correctly calculate the failure probability and now shows the text when you save by wearing the helmet.
 BUG/FEATURE

Attack spells, if casted INSIDE the room, do not follow the line of sight.
 BUG

The special ability of the Orc Slayer now also works against goblins.
 FEATURE

Fixed the bug that allowed diagonal attacks to hit through a wall.
 BUG

Finally adjusted the line of sight for thrown weapons and attack spells. Now the projectile no longer passes through walls and no longer executes impossible hits.
 BUG

The map does not correctly display the leftmost vertical corridor north to the hero
 BUG

Corrected the misdisplay of two corridors in Quest 07.
 BUG
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