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RoC Beta Death and Decay Effect

This bundle is marked as lacking. It fails to meet the standard requirements and may only have minor use.
This is a port of the Reign of Chaos Beta's Death and Decay spell effect. The asset originates from Hallfiry's unofficial Archive but after downloading the old MPQ of the old asset, I did conversions on it to make it a suitable model for the release version of Warcraft 3 that we play (both the model and textures are modified to try to achieve a lookalike in our known MDX format).

Here is a video -- not of this exact asset -- but of the Reign of Chaos beta asset ingame in the Reign of Chaos Beta engine, showing the way this originally looked in its original format (before I ported it, although in theory these should look the same):

Video Link

So, anyway this is very nearly an original, unmodified Blizzard asset.
Previews
Contents

DeathAndDecay (Model)

DeathAndDecayTarget (Model)

Reviews
General Frank
There are still a lot of issues with the model...
Agreed!

Here is an upload of the original Reign of Chaos Beta sound files that may have played alongside this model:

 
This is literally amazing and must be used!
If you think a spell effect model from 2001-2002 is amazing, somebody ought to upload a pack with a port of all of the unused spells from back then. There seemed to be a lot of them, especially in the orc folder. Many were not particularly challenging to make today with our modern modding tech, but they are made by the same team and in the same style as our Classic Graphics and I guess are just the "rejects" so having them in the repertoire of anybody modding seems useful.

I could've sworn I'd seen this individually publicly uploaded before...?
How recently, do you think? I showed some images of it in the last 12 or so months somewhere on discord, but also literally anybody on Warcraft 3 modding could have posted this model for the last 20 years so it's super possible that someone did upload it like you're saying. But I don't know. They would have had to have reversed the model's format -- in the state the model was in on the old beta files from Hallfiry's archive, the model would not have opened in any version of World Editor ever released, nor in Magos, nor in Mdlvis, nor in any version of Retera Model Studio ever released, nor in Ghostwolf's viewer. The binary data was a different length, but unlike Reforged models which also declare themselves as a different version of file (so that we can make computer programs that "open both Reforged or legacy format" of models), this model was in a different format with the same version information on it.

So to have a program to open these old RoC beta models of this certain category, you have to have a program tailored for that specifically, basically, because it's not physically possible to publish a duplex program that loads either this old format or the Reign of Chaos release format... unless the program did random guessing or something.
 
Last edited:
Level 21
Joined
Dec 3, 2020
Messages
508
Your work is greatly appreciated my man.
I just wish we knew even more what plans Blizzard initially had for Warcraft 3. I'm pretty sure that the Night Elven campaign (and the night elves as a whole) was supposed to be a lot more. At least somewhat different.
Especially since they're the only race that I know of that you can make in AI scripts, the structures to attack like attack units in the attack forces, like the Ancient Protectors...
I just wish we knew more...
 
Level 21
Joined
May 29, 2013
Messages
1,567
They would have had to have reversed the model's format -- in the state the model was in on the old beta files from Hallfiry's archive, the model would not have opened in any version of World Editor ever released, nor in Magos, nor in Mdlvis, nor in any version of Retera Model Studio ever released, nor in Ghostwolf's viewer.
Or they could have done what I did years ago - used Mdlx converter to make it usable and openable 🤷‍♂️
 
Mdlx converter to make it usable
Is that one of its features? Did they invent a way to determine when a RIBB chunk is the incorrect length?

Or did you just recompile a modified version with the fix?

Either way, now I want to go look for if we have the mdlx conv source around...
 
Level 21
Joined
May 29, 2013
Messages
1,567
Is that one of its features?
I guess so?
Did they invent a way to determine when a RIBB chunk is the incorrect length?
I have no idea what that even is. I'm guessing it's something related to ribbon emitters since Magos' W3ME says "Unknown tag in Ribbon Emitter".
Or did you just recompile a modified version with the fix?
Nope, I'm not a programmer. I just used the standard Mdlx converter v1.04, and although it gave me an error message, it still converted the model and fixed it somehow.
 
although it gave me an error message, it still converted the model
That's kinda cool! I would wonder if on some models, if it was giving an error, if there might have been data loss though.
The idea is that when reading a Ribbon Emitter, whenever the program would have encountered Gravity in the binary data, there's just nothing instead. So it has to just skip over that. But I find it easier said than done.
 
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