Blizzard releases WarCraft 3 assets for StarCraft 2 modding

I'm sorry to be the one to ask this nooby question, but what the heck is the PTR and what does it stand for? xD

 

Public Realm Testing, in your battle.net program, click on starcraft 2 and just over the big Play button there is a region select, you can select PTR there.

 

I made a few screenshots, for comparison.
Now, most will stay the same however, the starcraft II version will get a heroes, trees, and a few building revamps. Keep that in mind.
I must say, after a few gameplays, I can really notice the huge difference.. Dr Super Good, was right after all. I mostly like how the units "hide".
Note:
-there are a few things missing, example only one UI.. which is totally lame
-some missing mechanics, like selecting the wisp, while building altar or moonwell, etc.
-It is not standard to the newest wc3 patch, meaning there are differences in game balance.
-A few other things
(Both games are in ultra graphics and 1920x1080 full HD screen)

1.Starcraft II wc3 assets(not complete, yet)
2.Wacraft III normal

 

Its called a Public Test Realm, I only knew this when I was building up the news haha, I forgot to place some links.

I'll do keep up some important materials next time when I'll batch up news on upcoming articles.

 

Thank you, Orcnet && LordDz.

I'm glad Blizzard decided to update the trees. Although they look awkward, wc3's vanilla trees have shadows embedded by default. You'll notice if you rotate them around. Still, the Lordaeron Summer trees look somewhat awkward with SC2's shading because their shadow doesn't cover their roots.

 

It has both. The originals are "Wc3" while the remakes are "Wc3HD". Look more carefully through it and you will find them.

 

It probably has something to do with bones or matrix groups. Tauren Chieftain actually has less polies than most heroes but he has many more bones and matrix groups than others.
Spamming high poly doodads without animations has no ill effects however, at least not as far as I know.

It is safe to assume these models would have much more complex skinning so it could be a problem yeah, but even then we are talking about like 16,500~ bones or 30k matrix groups having to be on the screen at the same time.
As for textures, that is probably irrelevant as the game forces a maximum of 512px or below mipmaps regardless of their full dimensions anyway.
MM has no issues because there aren't many units running around really.

 

These are so beautiful compared to the original, especially the priestess of the moon and the farseer.

 

So dsg tell me how do you expect us to map in sc2 when the map limits are so small (which means no azeroth wars or gaias) and the water is simply a graphical element...

 

They are the same as the default limits of WC3? Both support 256*256 maps. WC3 never preformed well with larger maps anyway.

The building grid is half the resolution I do admit however mostly in WC3 buildings were 2*2 anyway (which is exactly 1 tile in SC2 and WC3).

A lot of WC3 maps did not have to be as big as they were. Especially RPGs I often find "waste" a lot of space by failing to re-use. For example all the "low-level" areas become wasted space if everyone in the game is beyond needing them. If such areas were recycled and re-populated with more useful content then you will find suddenly you have tons of space.

Just like in WC3. SC2 water has awesome physical effects such as rubble floating, splashes as units move through etc however it is limited to being completely flat and in large cells. WC3 water had no physical effects associated with it at all with the only some generic effects for shorlines and units however it supported per-node resolution, slopes and as many height levels as terrain nodes.

If you are talking about water pathing that is a completely different issue and is completely unrelated to any form of water visuals on he map. You could easily make water land walkable and land water walkable just by painting different pathing over that area (a feature World Edit lacked). SC2 has the issue that there is no separate water pathing map meaning that hacky work arounds are required. That said using boats are only one way of delivering units around the map, nothing stops you migrating to goblin zeppelins and other air units which are even better supported in SC2 than in WC3.

 

Ah, old Blizz finally started listening to their fans.

Most of the models do look better, but still have kind of plastic feeling to them. Probably because of the normal and specular maps. I do look that the nether dragon finally looks like a dragon. Giving the demon hunter team-colored tattoos like in the WC3 alpha is also nice. And is that team color on the infernal as well?

I'm waiting for more.

 

Not sure if we will be getting any more. There is a limit to how much resources they can devote for an update that is basically free.

 

Except SC2 cannot use mdx, only m3. They are already in a format which SC2 can use so there is no need for conversion. Besides mdx lacks many of the required containers for a lossless port.

 

I think he means for using the update heroes inside of Wc3. In that case, just convert the meshes and use the diffuse textures. No need for the normal maps and whatnot, since they're not even supported in Wc3.

 

Azeroth Wars was pretty playable. I believe BFME was also larger than 256x256, playable just as well. At least for me, the pathfinding system would sooner start bugging (that thing that happens when you order 200 units to move at the same time or so) than the game would start lagging.

I was also nearly sure that although the dimensions are the same, SC2's maps were actually smaller.

Anyhow, like I've said since 2010, 256x256 is extremely limiting, as is the 8 tile restriction.

It would be incredibly weird if, by going through some town's western exit, you ended up in a swamp or a desert where you previously had a forest.

On top of that, you'd put extra stress on generating those areas. I assume you were proposing this to be done through triggers. Well, generating terrains through triggers wasn't exactly possible in WC3, first because of that bug that happens with GetLocationZ() (was it?), then doodads were static. I don't know about SC2, but with the time it takes to get something simple done, it would be even more tedious to have to code to generate a terrain.

Closely related is the waste of processing time constantly generating those terrains. I don't know about everybody else, but my PC can barely handle SC2 as is. I doubt it'd perform well with this constant map generation.

The only benefit this could bring is random map generation, which would slightly make the processing more worth it, but it also adds extra complexity.

Anyhow, these arguments are for the RPG context. Maps such as BFME and Azeroth Wars require a larger landscape and it should be playable everywhere. These methods of recycling do not apply for these maps. This is critical, because maps like BFME and AWS have been around for years (BFME was the first map I ever played on WC3 multiplayer in 2005, so you see) and whole communities were built around them. It must be sad to realize that it's impossible to replicate these maps in SC2, even if we didn't have the no-medieval-art problem.

I think the idea of painting the pathing was awesome. Then they made air pathing rely on blockers like Wc3. Epic fail =(
Sure, sure, there's probably a good reason why they made it that way, but I'd much rather have a fully customizable pathing system than be stuck with ground and water. By that I mean something like being able to create new pathings through the Data Editor and paint the terrain with them. Then you'd go to units (or rather the movers, or whatever they're called) to assign which pathings are an obstacle to them and which ones are not.

 

The simple fact of the matter is, if you find that Wc3 and WE have become too simple for your needs and you are running into strange issues like that, the best course of action is to just transition over to game dev with something like Unity, UDK or UE4. By that point, you should have enough "know-how" to get started with those.

 

They appear smaller due to the scale used.

But it would not be weird if from fighting bunny rabbits in the forest you suddenly fight bandits, then soldiers and finally demons as you advance levels and the story advances. Most maps still force you to fight bunny rabbits even if they deal 0 damage and die by the dozen every hit.

 

Does not cache for me.

I use the editor very often, but every time I log into SC2 it will kick me off the Editor and vice versa. Very obnoxious.

 

Maybe your system is infected with a virus that constantly changes the hardware installation. Similar to Windows validation it should also reset for major hardware changes.