ENB for WarCraft 3

[Spellbound]

For people with category OCD: I believe ENB, although not specific to WarCraft 3, technically is a third-party tool and so I've decided to post it here instead of the Artist's Section, for instance. Please don't bite my head off.

ENB?
Alright, why ENB? Because WarCraft 3 is pretty dated and I for one like pretty graphics. If there was an HQ remake of this game with new engine and stuff I'd be the first to buy it, but as we all know, that has as much chance of happening as a million dollars magically landing on my lap.

This said, I have extremely limited knowledge of editing ENBs and so I wasn't able to accomplish quite what I intended, but to me there is a definite improvement. If you are familiar with editing ENB, please please please please try your hand at it! I'm very curious what other people can do with it to make Wc3 look better

DOWNLOAD

Comparison

Old Version

DOWNLOAD THE ENB

Menu

In-Game 1

In-Game 2

Now, some of you might think it the reverse of an improvement, that it's too dark and maybe the subtle bloom annoys you. That's perfectly understandable, and the beauty of it all is you can customise it to your own preferences if you know how. In fact, I'd actually love to see what you can do with it since I haven't really seen anything particularly impressive as far as ENB is concerned for wc3.

There's rudimentary documention on the website, so go check it out if you're interested.

Credits

I should also mention that the initial setting are not mine. I got them from an add-on for a WarCraft mod, which I then modified. So credits goes to them, and of course the ENB developer Boris Voronstov.

 

[Eleandor]

1. Fatal Error. (edit: sorry, scrap that. I forgot I was already injecting my own crap into d3d9, and enb doesn't like that)
2. Sorry, but it looks like crap.

 

[Spellbound]

Lol, well I mainly posted that so people who actually know how to edit ENB would make one that didn't suck, and make the first post like a repository for people's settings and such. I modified my own settings a bit since uploading and I'll keep tweaking it to see if I can't get better results.

Altho 'crap' isn't very constructive and doesn't tell me what you don't like about it. If you mean it's too dark, then yes, I kinda agree, altho I was aiming for a moody feel.

 

[Ragon.Slear]

Can you make tutorial to install it??
I always failed, in NFSMW, GTASA, and now this
Its not work, so please make it

 

[Adiktuz]

Maybe define what ENB is and what it means?

 

[Spellbound]

Can you make tutorial to install it??
I always failed, in NFSMW, GTASA, and now this
Its not work, so please make it

To install it you just have to extract the contents of the RAR file in your root WarCraft 3 folder (the same folder where the Warcraft III.exe file will be). To uninstall, delete the files that were extracted

Maybe define what ENB is and what it means?

Oh, my bad, I assumed it was popular enough that people already knew what it is. Here's the description from its website.

the tl;dr version is that ENB adds new graphical effects to a game, like SSAO, depth of field, bloom, HDR, and so on. For the ENB I provided it only has bloom (and possibly HDR, I'm not sure lol), and I also provided a palette that enhances the contrast and darkens the overall view for a moodier feel, altho it does intensify lights.

 

[Adiktuz]

oh... I see... so a graphics enhancer...

 

[Dr Super Good]

So basically this makes the visuals "better" by messing up lighting so I can hardly see anything and need to up screen brightness? Something tells me I prefer the sharp visuals of standard WC3 as they are not only less resource intensive but also clearer.

The tool seems to perform histogram adjustments on the resulting image. Similar to what I did for my avatar, this increases the range of brightness in an image letting it appear sharper as there is a greater gradient in brightness.

Games generally avoid using full brightness ranges since players often have their displays set incorrectly resulting in darks being invisible and brights hurting viewer eyes. That said, a lot of well made games do come with a brightness testing image to allow you to adjust display settings so the game can take advantage of a full brightness range.

The reason Warcraft III night time is so bright is because players need to be able to see what they are doing. If you make realistic nights such as what StarCraft II can do you can often find yourself completely blind, not a nice situation for an RTS game which is micro orientated. The map Undead Assault 3 in StarCraft II shuts off all ambient lighting during some missions forcing the players to use light sources or fumble around in the dark with only health bars to tell monster locations.

 

[Spellbound]

Updated the ENB. The changes are very subtle now. Check OP.

 

[Dr Super Good]

That still does not fix the problem that making stuff have a greater variance on the histogram does not make it look better.

Just look at what it is doing to the minimap, making that darker when the entire purpose of the mini-map is to be bright and visible.

 

[Spellbound]

Well it depends what you mean by better. If you mean more effective, then maybe it doesn't, but it does make it look prettier - more vibrant, if you want specifics.

Personally don't find it handicapping - I barely notice a difference with the newer settings. If anything, the version without the palette actually makes the minimap icons stand out more. and the terrain is still very much visible.

ENB isn't to everybody's liking, I get that. I posted this for awareness more than anything since making a good ENB can be pretty challenging.

 

[RandomPogi]

How do I make this work for macs? I can't make it work with Shift+F12. Is there some way to change the toggle button?

 

[TriggerHappy]

I think some ENB configurations update shaders so the game is rendered better.

Does this do that? If it's just effects then I'll pass..

 

[GhostWolf]

Shaders didn't exist (as core feature) at the time WC3 was created, so I think not.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Shaders didn't exist (as core feature) at the time WC3 was created, so I think not.

Direct3D 8.0 introduced programmability in the form of vertex and pixel shaders, enabling developers to write code without worrying about superfluous hardware state. The complexity of the shader programs depended on the complexity of the task, and the display driver compiled those shaders to instructions that could be understood by the hardware. Direct3D 8.0 and its programmable shading capabilities were the first major departure from an OpenGL-style fixed-function architecture, where drawing is controlled by a complicated state machine. Direct3D 8.0 also eliminated DirectDraw as a separate API.[5] Direct3D subsumed all remaining DirectDraw API calls still needed for application development, such as Present(), the function used to display rendering results.

Video: A 3D accelerator video card with support for DirectX® 8.1 and at least 8 MB of video memory is required*.

Since it required Direct 3D 8, I would believe that it did use shaders. Just they used a much older shader language version which lacked many of the features we take advantage of today.

 

[GhostWolf]

Ah, I wasn't aware that D3D had shaders before GL (even as extensions), you learn new things every day!

On a side note, assembler shaders...so bloody old.

 

[Strikest]

It's too dark. Look at what you did to the icons, can you honestly say it looks better? And as mentioned before it's not practical for gameplay purposes.