What an exciting time! I know we are all looking forward to this next chapter in the community story of the Hive Workshop and the role it plays in our lives and getting us all rich off of honeycomb trading!
To prepare for this future, the team here at Retera Model Studio has also paired with Hive to create a fantastic new version of the program to help Warcraft III modelers. The new version will be called Demon Retera Model Studio (emphasis on the D) which shortens to DRMS instead of RMS.
DRMS will be an exciting new chapter of our combined Warcraft III modding experience. By bringing DRM to the Retera Model Studio and requiring everyone to log in with either their
Hive Workshop account credentials* or their
Battle.net account** (whichever comes first), we will pave the road forward for supporting future updates.
Once users have authenticated and logged into the Retera Model Studio, if:
A) the program was launched automatically, such as from double-clicking an MDX file in Windows Explorer
B) this was the user's first time logging in this month
... then in such event, it will crash with the warning "You were Disco Nectared!" such as in the following diagram. This is to celebrate that time once a month when each of us uses the Test Map feature from World Editor, logs into Reforged, sees the map loading screen, then gets to the game end screen. Demon Retera Model Studio loads assets and ideas from Warcraft III Reforged, and this case has this feature intentionally added to celebrate our Warcraft III: Reforged experience:
After logging in to the Demon Retera Model Studio, the user pays for the upgrades to this software using honeycombs and their other personal data, which will be securely updated to our private site constantly while the software is open (or even if it is not!). In return for all the free data you will be giving us, we will be able to add new features such as:
Feature 1: Camera Controller
Instead of using Magos, now the Warcraft III model artists will be able to create a camera from the current view right at home in the Retera Model Studio.
Feature 2: Tracks Editor
Instead of trying to customize animations in notepad, Mdlvis, or Magos, users will now be able to customize their animation tracks in a special
Tracks tab. See the following example below of the Necropolis Birth animation, where we can see the animated color track in its GeosetAnim as it fades in from green during its birth sequence. Of course, double clicking on any keyframe in the color track will allow the user to control and configure the color at the designated time. Likewise, other keyframes of other kinds can be double-clicked and modified.
Feature 3: Built-in Text Editor
Anyone who has spent much time in Retera Model Studio will know that half of the necessary features are missing from the program, and instead of adding them I just tell everyone to save the model to MDL and use Notepad to configure the file. Now, after 20 years of Warcraft III modding innovation, I have finally decided to improve on this process by adding a text editor directly into the Retera Model Studio so that users like you can modify the MDL contents directly instead of saving the file and opening it with Notepad.
Feature 4: World of Warcraft Support
We all wish that we could import World of Warcraft models into Warcraft III, but unfortunately doing so has always been a giant nuisance. To resolve this, Demon Retera Model Studio will be able to go to "Edit> Preferences> Warcraft Data Sources" and add your
World of Warcraft installation as a data source directly!
After you add your World of Warcraft installation as the source of assets, the Retera Model Studio will let you seamlessly browse World of Warcraft assets and save them as Reforged models, so that you can easily drop your favorite Warcraft characters into your custom maps, like this Murloc shown below!
Feature 5: Cross Conversion
We know based on existing data metrics that a lot of pirates in the Caribbean have been using Retera Model Studio to convert Reforged assets into their legacy Warcraft III counterparts, using the "HD -> SD" conversion option in the scripts menu. To celebrate the world wide achievement of 3000 models converted globally by all users combined, we decided to implement a better converter that just saves the Reforged asset completely intact as an SD file. Here's an example of the HD sorceress loaded on the Patch 1.26 game engine:
This way, users of the DRMS don't have to buy the Reforged to experience the Reforged. Instead, they just pay me with their data, and that pays for everything they could ever need.
Closing Thoughts
In addition, to celebrate Warcraft III the Reforged and what it has been and what it means for us, users of Retera Model Studio will have their RMS installation automatically erased and replaced with the DRMS today, without you even having to press a key on your keyboard or even think about it -- just like how Reforged nuked your 1.31 install and replaced it with 1.32 on the release day without you needing to worry about a thing.
That way, everyone joins in harmony and moves to the latest version, just like Reforged!
* batteries not included
** Signing in with Battle.net requires OAuth2 authentication and may require you to connect your official Battle.net authenticator or your pet dog to your USB port