Skip Hero Recruitment Animation on Click

[pazam-h2]

This is a small thing, but I always felt like recruiting a hero from a castle leaves me waiting idly for too long until the animation finishes and the UI becomes interactive again.

I decided to time it and compare it with building construction:

Building a structure: about 2.5 seconds of idle delay.
Recruiting a hero: about 3.75 seconds of idle delay.

So apparently it was not just in my head — recruiting a hero really does take noticeably longer.

Based on feedback from @zenseii - the idea is to be able to simply skip the animation by left/right clicking anywhere. The sound will still play, but the animation will immediately end, and you may continue playing smoothly.

No gameplay change, just a small UI pacing improvement.

2026-06-15.01-15-31.mp4

created a PR- #10835

[pazam-h2]

Made a 2nd version of this (#10836), where any left/right click immediately both ends the animation AND interact with whatever you pointed at.

2026-06-15.11-18-19.1.mp4

[pazam-h2]

@zenseii and @Branikolog -

I think there might be a bit of a discussion to be made here-
since I got a more positive feed back from @Branikolog on the 1st version, and @zenseii seemed like to prefer the 2nd version.

btw- I suggested a 3rd option- make the left/right clicks both end the animation and allows interaction, but have it possible after a very short idle delay (around 0.5-1 seconds).
Let me know if the 3rd option is viable in any way so I'd to know to start making it.

[zenseii]

@pazam-h2 , I will have to test both implementations before I can really say which one is better. I'd also want to check how this is implemented in Heroes 3 (if at all), and compare it to Heroes 4 and 5 to determine if there is a canonical way this works in the series, because if players are used to it working a certain way already then that gives some weight to that way.

[Branikolog]

I agree with @zenseii , that all of these options should be play-tested to say it for sure, whether I feel them comfortable.

[pazam-h2]

I see, so I will open a 3rd PR for the 3rd option. And let you guys have a feel for each.

Moreover, I'll try to research what's present in HoMM 3, 4 and 5.

[pazam-h2]

3rd option PR: #10840

video demonstration:

2026-06-16.00-25-15.mp4

[pazam-h2]

@zenseii , @Branikolog -

I did my research on the following games in the series when hiring heroes:
H3 vanilla: uninterrupted animation like H2 but shorter (maybe that's why H2 feels just too long)
H3 HotA: made the animation much much faster, like a 0.5s quick fade in. That brief animation is still uninterrupted by clicks. (so this is like my 1st iteration of the idea- just make H2 animation faster).
H4 and H5: no animation at all. You clicked to buy the hero- he instantly appears in the castle.

Please also review the 3rd option I added above.

So what we now have are the 3 options suggested above + a 4th option, the original one, to make the unskippable animation a bit faster.

So @zenseii you suggested we'll look at this in a canonical way and I think that the canonical course of action is to make the animation faster, not skipping it by clicking.
I understand your concern with the purist H2 players who want the authentic experience, but even they'll probably admit a lot of changes done to H2 by fheroes2 project is benefitting the gameplay and feel of the game, since the original may had some issues that fheroes2 project came to fix.

I'd suggest that the long hero recruitment animation is one of them- It should be shorter.

[zenseii]

Before discussing about shortening the animation in fheroes2 we need to know if the original animation in Heroes 2 is shorter than fheroes2. I suggest to take a look at both Dos and Windows versions of the original game.

Personally, I don't think shortening it any more than the original game is necessary because the goal of this work is to allow people who want to progress instantly after recruiting/building to do that. Canonically, from your research you can also see that the series made the change to allow instant progress after recruiting/building (Heroes 4). So having the forced 1 second of waiting time for everyone in my opinion misses the point of this change and tries to satisfy everyone and ends up not completely satisfying anyone really.

[pazam-h2]

Just checked classic H2 vs. fheroes2 and was surprised:
Classic H2- hero & building fade animation - both around 1.75s.
While fheroes2- building: 2.5s and heroes: 3.5s.

This is surprising. That means fheroes2 fade animations are way too long, even vs. classic H2.
Even for buildings it should be shorter, but for heroes recruitment it's literally twice the length!

[pazam-h2]

so @zenseii - what's the next step?

[zenseii]

I suggest to open a new PR that fixes the obvious bug in fheroes2 restoring the original game's animation delay.

[zenseii]

Then after that we can continue the work on which approach to use for interrupting the animation. I've tested the no extra click version and I have some observations I'll leave once I'm done.

[pazam-h2]

@zenseii -
opened #10845 ("Match castle's hero/building fade animation delay to classic H2")