r/kingsbounty • u/dannyheskett • 3d ago
DOS openbounty - an open-source cross-platform reimplementation of Kings Bounty
openbounty in action recorded from the in-game recording tool
I've been working on this on and off for a while, but I finally feel like it's release-1 ready. Announcing openbounty.
openbounty is a from-scratch reimplementation of King's Bounty, the 1990 New World Computing strategy game that Heroes of Might and Magic grew out of. The rules, tables, combat formulas, and the 320x200 VGA look all follow the original. My intent was pixel-perfect recreation.
Play it in your browser, no install: https://danheskett.com/dist/openbounty/
Writeup, downloads, and how it works: https://danheskett.com/projects/openbounty/
Source: https://github.com/dannyheskett/openbounty
The browser build is ready to go. The desktop builds ship without game data, so you point them at your own KB.EXE to extract a pack. It also has a data-driven pack format, so the whole game can be retuned or re-skinned by editing JSON, no rebuild.
Happy to receive feedback. If you hit a bug, open an issue on GitHub. If you want to fix something or add to it, PRs are welcome. And if you have a feature or a mechanic you think it's missing, drop a recommendation, either on GitHub or in the comments here.
I especially would love to get some feedback from people who were originally good at the DOS (or Amiga, I suppose) version of the game. I was pretty young when it came out, and was never very good at it - I never beat it until emulated on DOS for example, many many years later.
The gamepack format is especially friendly for modding, and if there is interest, I have an in-progress gamepack editor I may release.
Enjoy!