Hero6 source

[DrJones]

The source for Hero6 is up for grabs. The last remaining member threw in the towel a few months ago and chose to share the source code with everyone. There might be missing some resources that didn't make into the last build of the game, which could be accessed by asking deltamatrix. There's a brief mention to AGDi in its last post. It's too bad the very project that spawned the interest in fan adventure games went nowhere, but at least not everything got lost. Maybe someday some developers will take the mess and produce a cool game out of it.

http://visitors.hero6.com/

[Emily]

This is sad news.   

Maybe someday some developers will take the mess and produce a cool game out of it.

Hmm... it certainly would make for a cool game.  Just needs a great deal of organizing... and perhaps a great deal of editing. 

[ChamberOfFear]

Sorry for the bump.

The development has gone open-source and is taking place at www.hero6.org.
It's been brought to our attention that some fellow that goes by "Wookie" at AGDI was the last person to work on the plot of the game, if someone knows of a way to get a hold of him it would be much appreciated.

[MusicallyInspired]

That would be Daniel Stacey and he's right here at Himalaya.

[ChamberOfFear]

Does he have a user I could send a PM to? Alternatively he could send me a PM if he would like to get in touch.

[navynuke04]

WriteOh (Wookie) has his hands pretty full with Mages right now. I doubt he's going to volunteer any time to other projects.

[GameDevChris]

Well, there's that, and the fact that we'd invested significant time to collate and streamline the plot/puzzles for a Hero6 redesign circa 2008-2009 (at the request of the Hero6 team at the time) taking resources away from our commercial projects to do so. The Hero6 files were pretty much released, open-source (our new work included) without any forewarning, consulting, or mention that this was going to happen, which wasn't exactly met with cheers of "hoorah" by our dev team members who had invested months of time and work to help the struggling project.

Good luck with the game. It would be good to see it pick up steam and eventually be released, but unfortunately we're unable to contribute anything more to it. (I say that not only from a risk standpoint, but also because, as Navynuke mentioned, we have our hands full with Mages' Initiation).

[ChamberOfFear]

Well I wasn't exactly going to harass him into picking up work on Hero6 again, I've already predicted he might be busy with Mage's Initiation. But what I've heard is that he already has invested some work into it, and I'm wondering if he would like to share that work. Assuming that he would be willing, and it wouldn't be stepping on anyone's toes.

[robertkety]

It's very exciting to verify who's worked on the Hero6 project previously.  We were reaching out to WriteOh (Wookie) just to get his blessing on using anything he may have contributed and perhaps forwarding any previous work he completed for the project.

As mentioned previously in this thread, the state of Hero6 as of last year was chaotic.  ChamberOfFear and I have been working on getting everything organized.  Part of that is centralizing all content that has been created and also building the credits for previous contributions.  Currently, we have a very short list of names and a lot of uncredited content.

Now that the program is open source, we're accepting contributions, but we don't expect anyone to contribute if they're busy on commercial projects.  I can understand that what happened in the past may have left a sour taste, but we're a new push on an old project.  I'm sure we can iron out any hurt feelings for past transgressions.

On a side note, I'm really excited for MI.  I wouldn't dream of pulling anyone away from working on it.

_________________
Robert

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"What good is knowledge and wisdom if you can't use it?" - Erasmus

[GameDevChris]

Are you guys a completely new development team? Are any of the old/original Hero 6 members still involved or has the project changed hands entirely?

I'm not sure if Daniel's screenplay was released alongside the source code. I'm assuming that it wasn't, based on what you've said. But considering that the design doc was written and redesigned with the aim of making a commercial game out of Hero6, I'm not sure he'd want to release it, as it's possible we could still rebrand the design doc as a new title, or roll some of the ideas and puzzles into a future Himalaya project.

[robertkety]

We are a completely new development team, in that we were not part of the previous Hero6 development efforts.  We have had some visitors from previous development efforts on our forums and they've been very helpful providing us with a great deal of information and content.  Several people have expressed interest in assisting development, but many are waiting in the wings until ChamberOfFear and I get the ball rolling with our own development documentation.

Gronagor stopped by the forum recently and mentioned Daniel's rewrite and the possibility of a previous agreement with AGDI.  We located the Wookie rewrite and are extremely impressed - it's very well thought out and organized.  Since we're working open source, it's important to us that the information we receive is available for our use.  Before reading it in detail, we agreed to seek Daniel's permission first.  As for the AGDI agreement, we don't have any information on that and no one has contacted us.

GameDevChris has a great point, the design document represents sufficient information that it could be used to rebrand the game or salvage content for future projects.  We recognize this and it's the reason we're reaching out the Daniel.  We don't want to move forward with someone else's intellectual property.  Obviously there will be some crossover since the rewrite focuses on the same theme and characters from the previous development.  We just want to iron out the details and appropriately credit him for any of his work that he wants in the game.

Also, the only reason we didn't pursue commercial over open source is because we don't own the content.  Even though the source wasn't released under a license, we would have encountered plenty of push-back had we tried to appropriate the work of others for our own financial gain.  As I stated in our forums, the Hero6 project was dead.  Currently, our site is the only existing hub of Hero6 content still available on the web. Several people have Hero6 content saved in old folders, and we'd love to hear from them, but all the old forums and ftp sites are either shut down or have limited access. 
We are trying to reinvigorate interest in the project and see it through to release; otherwise, all that work would go to waste.  The trick was to do this without stepping on anyone's toes.  Unfortunately, we can't set up a site, begin development, and expect people to actively seek out a project that they worked on a decade ago and claim ownership.  From time to time we've reached out to previous contributors and they've been very receptive.  Despite our attempts to control content sourcing, we have started to receive content and documents from third-party sources.  Until we can verify the authors and gain their permission, we aren't willing to add them to the project.  Rest assured that we're not just stumbling through this haphazardly without consideration for the rights of anyone who worked on the project.

The next time you speak with Daniel, please let him know we're reaching out and we'd love it if he'd drop us an email.

_________________
Robert

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"What good is knowledge and wisdom if you can't use it?" - Erasmus

[ChamberOfFear]

If anyone is interested, I believe I've found all the demos that were ever made of Hero6. They are available on the Hero6 Sourceforge page, as well as the current prototype. The following demos are available:

• 2001 Greenleaf Demo
• 2002 Forest Demo
• 2006 MAD Demo Alpha 14
• 2009 AGS Demo

So if you feel nostalgic and want to look at old stuff, help yourselves.

[Blake00]

Thanks guys. I'd been hunting for that 2002 Forest Demo for years!

I just discovered you've made a new Hero6 forum too! Have signed up!

http://hero6.org/forum/index.php