Trivia / Horn of the Abyss

• Development Hell: Much like its original counterpart, Factory's development pace slowed down over the years to a crawl post-2018. Despite being announced in 2019 and projected for a 2021 release, version 1.7.0 wouldn't be released until the last day of 2023. The death of one of their leaders and other external factors probably didn't help.
• Dummied Out: Prior to Factory's release, a few unused game objects could still be found in the files and even appeared on a few maps. These included waterfall and fire doodads, a collapsed Subterranean Gate, an alternate version of the Ancient Lamp with a sprite pulled directly from Heroes II, and a special building called the Ancient Altar that contains the Horn of the Abyss for use in the Cove campaign. These objects were all either cleaned up and added to the map editor or removed from the game in 1.7.0.
• Outlived Its Creator: Docent Picolan, one of the leaders of the HotA crew as well as the composer for all of the mod's music, tragically passed away in a car accident in 2020. The original composer for the Heroes games offered to finish the Factory town theme as a tribute to him.
• What Could Have Been: There were many, many features promised in the original pitch for the mod, which have either been abandoned or indefinitely frozen. The official announcement from 2008 can be found here, although many of the images are broken.
  • The most major thing were the two other towns promised alongside Cove. With the reveal of Factory as the second town, the status of these is uncertain.
    • The Kronverk was an "alliance of the northern nations – dwarves, highlanders and nordlings." It would've been a defense-oriented faction that incorporated special Rune Magic, just like the Fortress of Heroes V. It was intended to be added in version 2.0.
    • The Cathedral was a Church Of Evil based on the inquisition, with Gothic architecture and a focus on torture and offense-based magic. It was meant to be added in 3.0.
    • The post mentioned that version 4.0 would likely add a Roman style town, although there were no solid plans that far ahead. An official adaptation of Forge was also considered, which quickly evolved into Factory.
  • The mod would've originally added alternate dwellings to some towns, similar to Heroes IV. For example, Rampart could build Satyrs instead of Pegasi. Similar alternate creatures could be seen in many early screenshots. This feature was seemingly dropped some way into development, since Satyrs are fully playable (albeit as neutral creatures).
  • Desert would have received its own dedicated terrain type at one point. This was scaled down into a set of terrain overlays, and was replaced with the more visually-distinct Wasteland terrain. There were also supposedly going to be three new types of terrain, although none were named.
  • Since Horn of the Abyss began as a spinoff of In the Wake of Gods, it would've featured its own take on a few of the mechanics from that mod. Commanders would have been redesigned with better graphics and a revised role in combat. Stack experience would have also been implemented. In the final version, none of the WoG features made it in.
  • Each faction would have featured its own special war machine, including the towns from the base game. While Cove does have a unique war machine, this was not implemented to the existing towns and was not continued for Factory.
  • Datamining reveals an unused building for Factory called "bofcship.bmp". This building was intended to be an in-town Airship Yard, as confirmed in a Q&A. It was cut because Airships have the potential to be extreme Game Breakers without heavy restrictions, so being able to build them anywhere would probably make Factory busted.
  • It was initially suggested by the HotA crew that Factory would be moved from Neutral alignment to Good in a future update, to reflect their role in the campaign and even up the alignment numbers. It was decided however that Neutral fit them better from a flavour perspective, as a refugee town that has both heroic and villainous outcasts and places more emphasis on progress than morals.