Concerns on the future of Reforged mapping

[deepstrasz]

So, I've been having this autistic chat with @Moonman (here: https://www.hiveworkshop.com/media/emerald-nightmare-preview-2-0.128950/#comment-98277) [he's doing a wonderful job, by the way, supreme programmer bless his soul] and I've come to the obvious realization that mapping Reforged will be problematic because of resources size.

Indirectly, ActiBlizzard's EULA works in that no sane person would create maps, albeit campaigns, with tons of custom imports like for Classic because their size would potentially overwhelm that of the game itself. Thus, for sanity's sake, the company probably thought it would be proper to microtransaction its way bit by bit with skins/models so that everyone would have the stuff on their HDD and only need the maps using the game's resources to download and play.

Now, now, @Moonman found a way to compress these models/skins so that they'd take half of their original size with little to no quality loss. What, I'm babbling is that the devs should find a way to further compress these resources, at least in a way that they will only be uncompressed when needed during the time the map is loaded/plays (buffering or not). Not sure how harmful this would be for the HDD, though.

 

[SpasMaster]

That's a pretty fair concern that I've thought about myself.
Their artistic direction with high-poly models turns into something more than mere art preference, but also a matter of size weight per asset.

I don't see them changing their art/visual style into one that is not only more in tune with the Warcraft style, but also one which would reduce model complexity, yet it seems like the only solution.
I am no expert on the subject, but I believe that compression can only get you to a certain point. I can't imagine models going down to reasonable sizes, but I may be wrong. I hope I am.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

I think most people who aspire to make huge maps with lots of custom imports have to restrict themselves to WoW, Dota 2, HOTS models and such. A custom campaign or huge offline single player RPG at 1gb is fine, but anything over that will start to get too much. For a smaller map I would say 400 - 700mb should be doable.

For online play I have no idea what they are thinking though, as the limit is 256... Maybe they simply don't want people to use custom imports online, idk.

Some people with poor connections will struggle to download the new content, but I do believe that is the minority of players. I personally download 1gb in 10 minutes or so (actually maybe closer to 5 minutes, or lower). At least from Blizzard's, Valve's or any other major gaming company's servers.

 

[deepstrasz]

For online play I have no idea what they are thinking though, as the limit is 256... Maybe they simply don't want people to use custom imports online, idk.

One could get some custom stuff in for sure within those 256mb.

 

[FeelsGoodMan]

One could get some custom stuff in for sure within those 256mb.

For sure, but again, you would have to be extremely limited if going by Reforged model sizes. They're all from 5-30mb, so if you're gonna have say, an altered melee map with many new races in the same style as ultimate battle then you will probably break the size cap by far.

 

[deepstrasz]

For sure, but again, you would have to be extremely limited if going by Reforged model sizes.

I meant, one would use the opportunity to meme them

 

[~El]

What I'm more concerned about is that all maps are currently completely stand-alone files with no ability for any kinds of delta updates or anything of the like. So if you have a map with 200+ mb worth of content, even a simple code change will require all players to redownload the entire thing whenever the map is updated. This simply isn't an option for a lot of people who have limited bandwidth, nor is it really desirable for maps with really short update cycles.

I can see a solution that has the players download and install an external HD model pack via the Local Files functionality, but that's hardly ideal. With the new skin system, though, it should be possible to dynamically change the model of a unit dynamically depending on if the user has a model pack or not... So the map could potentially be distributed with low-fidelity models for custom content (or just reuse existing reforged assets), and the users wishing for a more HD look could opt into it by adding an external addon.

Just my two cents on the discussion.

 

[Barorque]

So, I've been having this autistic chat with @Moonman (here: https://www.hiveworkshop.com/media/emerald-nightmare-preview-2-0.128950/#comment-98277) [he's doing a wonderful job, by the way, supreme programmer bless his soul] and I've come to the obvious realization that mapping Reforged will be problematic because of resources size.

Indirectly, ActiBlizzard's EULA works in that no sane person would create maps, albeit campaigns, with tons of custom imports like for Classic because their size would potentially overwhelm that of the game itself. Thus, for sanity's sake, the company probably thought it would be proper to microtransaction its way bit by bit with skins/models so that everyone would have the stuff on their HDD and only need the maps using the game's resources to download and play.

Now, now, @Moonman found a way to compress these models/skins so that they'd take half of their original size with little to no quality loss. What, I'm babbling is that the devs should find a way to further compress these resources, at least in a way that they will only be uncompressed when needed during the time the map is loaded/plays (buffering or not). Not sure how harmful this would be for the HDD, though.

Oh hello there, thanks for calling me an autist, this is partially true. As with most people here (who the hell plays vidya when you can have a life?).
Now fun out of the way, that ¨trick¨ to compress skins might just be a fuck-up by me saving them in default state in the first place.

Here's what I'm talking about, but more autistically:
- In Photoshop, saving a skin as .dds gives you compression options such as DXT5 per default.
- Don't do it! Go with the DXT1A option instead, looks just as crisp at normal zoom.
- You have to literally zoom the damn picture after taking a screenshot to notice some pixels here and there being darker or what not.
- Also, never use custom normal maps if not actually needed (scars and stuff like that can be 2D, nobody will care).
- Same goes for emissive I guess, unless you really want a different glow effect.
- Basically just go for diffussive and call it a shot, your skin will be like 2-5 MB, that's ok. better than 30 MB for sure.

Here's the comparison again (also I removed clothes because it's set in Sunken City, too hot you know

P.S. Bless Blizz outsourcing model making to Asians, they're not as cucked as the west, hence the sloooty models. Asians are honorary indeed. No seriously, screw everyone who doesn't like the Reforged models, they did a great job on that part.

 

[anufis]

Well, it probably doesn't apply to anyone except me but I've always put all models into file archive which is downloaded separately from map pre-reforged (used *.mix archive for that but in reforged only folder is possible). There is also a way to make this model archive optional and not necessary thanks to
1. GetLocalPlayer()
2. native BlzCreateUnitWithSkin takes player id, integer unitid, real x, real y, real face, integer skinId returns unit
3. native BlzSetUnitSkin takes unit whichUnit, integer skinId returns nothing

Basically what you do is create 2 units in object editor and give 1st unit standard model and 2nd unit your custom model and then use unit's skin depending on if player has archive with models in their warcraft folder ("model's folder" existence can be detected by putting small mp3 file into this folder and running "native GetSoundDuration" function, after which you will need to sync it betwwen players).
Same can also be done with items, icons, custom music, custom voiced dialogues.

The only thing you need to do is to make it so all your imported resources go into same folder (for me it's "anuf\*all imported stuff*") and not all over the place so it's easy for player to install/delete it

 

[DracoL1ch]

how do you think you can check if the player has the archive?

 

[anufis]

local sound s = CreateSound("anuf\\version\\001.mp3", false, false, true, 12700, 12700, "")
local boolean hasArchive = GetSoundDuration(s) > 0