Hi everybody, I'm here to take a little of your precious time (playing games).
I know that Heroes I run in DOSBox and that DOSBox is available on Mac OS X.
Since the version available here at GOG is an installer with the game already embedded with DOSBox for Windows, Boxer (DOSBox front-end) tell me that the application is a Microsoft Windows Program and not a DOS one.
So is there someone who knows what file(s) to extract from the exe (if possible) to give to Boxer/DOSBox?
Or should I just run the installer on Windows and take interesting resulting directory(ies)/file(s)?

Well, first sorry for the time to reply...
There's really no easy way to get Heroes to work on Mac (until GOG gives you a zip instead of an exe).
So you have to install the exe, either with Windows or Wine (I don't know much about this one), and then fetch the installed directory from Windows (a la C:/Program Files/GOG.com/Heroes ...).
Once you've got this directory, you can follow my post up there. Install and fetch of the directory is the step one of my post ("Unpack/install GOG's setup executable").
If you've got any question, don't hesitate to ask.
On my system (MacBook, Snow Leopard 10.6.4, DOSBox 0.74, I've got this warning too :
<<<
DOSBox version 0.74
Copyright 2002-2010 DOSBox Team, published under GNU GPL.
---
CONFIG:Loading primary settings from config file dosboxHOMM1.conf
"vga" is not a valid value for variable: machine.
It might now be reset it to default value: svga_s3
MIDI:Opened device:coreaudio
>>>
... but, the game launch without any problem, with sound and all the usual stuff.
Now the thing I doesn't have is :
<<<
[000:019] MagicCam 0: Current process: DOSBox, Flash is loaded: no
[000:019] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 0: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
[000:000] MagicCam 1: Current process: DOSBox, Flash is loaded: no
[000:000] Error(magiccammac.cc:276): MagicCam 1: MagicCamOpen: Not an allowed process!
>>>
You may want to look at this (and others magiccam related google results =) : http://timesinker.blogspot.com/2009/05/weird-magiccam-error-message-from.html . It's seems fishy and may be the root of your problem...

I just bought & downloaded HOMM3, didn't realize it was a Windows installed (I have a macbook :( --- I see the directions for HOMM1 and HOMM2 here, any idea how to get HOMM3 working on MAC?

I'm really new to terminal programming...just copy pasted the first sections of your guide, but the whole part about:

5 - Run DOSBox with GOG conf in parameter:
/Applications/DOSBox/DOSBox.app/Contents/MacOS/DOSBox -conf dosboxhomm2_macosx.conf

really doesn't make sense to me...could you spell it out in layman's terms please?

I'm able to launch the game using dosbox, but it says i need to insert the CD-Rom...i've tried playing this on bootcamp and it won't stop crashing!!

help!

Any way to run homm3 on mac?

I'm also trying to achieve this. Currently I've tried installing/running it with wine and wine-crossover-games from MacPorts. Both are giving me a DirectDraw related error (DDERR_UNSUPPORTED).

I have read your post on installing HOMM. However I dont understand what you do in the terminal. I followed your instructions but nothing happened. Could you be more clear in your instructions? Thank you.

i have also tried your instructions. nothing happened. and i really didn't understand this one:
5 - Run DOSBox with GOG conf in parameter:
/Applications/DOSBox/DOSBox.app/Contents/MacOS/DOSBox -conf dosboxhomm2_macosx.conf

The game launches in dobox, but it says i need the cd...

HELP! I spent 10 dollars on this.

did you ever figure this out? DOSBOX makes almost no sense, I have been working on it for ages now it seems...

I've managed to run it properly in DOSBox in Linux and it's also a UNIX-based OS so my config files should work for you, too. Just replace your original files with this ones (you might want to make a backup of original files first):
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10200888/gog.com/dosboxhomm1.conf
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10200888/gog.com/dosboxhomm2.conf

P.S. Two small changes - you have to locate (in both files) the line that says:
mount C "~/dos/D"
and change it into the path to the folder where your HoMM1 copy is located (on a Mac it will probably be just /Applications, but I'm not sure) and you also have to change the line:
cd HoMM1
to:
cd YOUR_HOMM1_FOLDER_NAME
For example, my HoMM1 folder is ~/dos/D/HoMM1 (~ meaning the home directory, /home/my_login, in Mac it's sth like /Users/your_login - but you probably have it in a different place anyway).

Try and write here if it works!

i got HOMM2 from gog.com today. i got a macbook pro im trying to get it to work and i had to install it on a windows computer just to get the resulting directories horus speaks of. i have reached the point in dosbox where the line you would type on reads
C:\GOG.COM\Heroes~1>
this leads me to believe i am inside the heroes of might and magic folder. if i use the directory i get a list with some names that are similiar to the names of the files and stuff that is located there as seen in a regular window. if i am at the line listed above what do you do from there. what specifically do you type, i have tried exactly what you wrote, i tried variations of it. what is it supposed to do, cause ever time i enter the line it just does nothing. is it supposed to let me know something happened?
Please help why is dos so damn complicated??

There are if you are in this directory it means that you've already mounted drive on which you have the HoMM1 directory.

Did you try doing IMGMOUNT? I forgot about one thing - DOS doesn't like extensions longer than 3 chars, that's why I changed the name homm3.inst to homm3.cue and mounted only after that.

What commands did you type? What errors did you get? I can't help you without information!
It should work. What exactly do you have a problem with? You didn't actually describe your problem...

Hi, I'm in China right now so I'll try to answer when I come back from the trip (10 days).

@ZycloneValkyrie: Try to PM me to explain me your problem. I'll try to reply.

@bsteintun: The line is used to call DOSBox with the specific configuration file. If it says No CD, it may be a problem of path. Did you do the 'sed ...' thing? If yes, try modifying conf files at the hand to replace '\' by '/' or try the files uploaded by mgol.

@nfmustakas: See PM.

@mgsedgwick: Alas, Heroes III is definitely not going to work because this is not a DOS game. It runs only on Windows (95 by the time it was launched).

HoMM3 works perfectly in Wine, though. I'm playing it with HoMM3HD mod (resolution 1440x900 instead of 800x600 rocks!) and the only downplay is that it crashes every hour or so (not too often, fortunately). But my friend playing in WIndows 7 has the same problem, so it's the game issue.

I tried to play HoMM4 through wine and battle sequences on my Intel Core2 Duo P8600 2,4 GHz with Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics goes soooo slow... But HoMM3 works OK.

EDIT: I see you're talking about the Mac OS X. Wine can be compiled for this system, too, though. AFAIK it's unofficial, but if you have some money to spend you can order Crossover - a supported and configured non-free version of Wine with some improvements, it should handle HoMM3 perfectly.