[SD/Modeling] Fix for Broken Naga Buildings

[Kam]

If you have not noticed this is the current state of Naga buildings since August. I don't expect this will be fixed soon at all, so here we are.

This affects custom Naga buildings as well, such as Naga Royal Vault (The orb no longer renders correctly.)

 

[General Frank]

@Retera can give some information on it.
I remember something happened that Blizzard accidentally removed a way how animated textures can be made.

 

[Retera]

When I researched this issue, I found that there is a new 1.33 exploit model format that displays correctly. So we can create models that will "display correctly" only on Patch 1.33 and 1.34 via the exploit, but they will not work on any other game version and possibly might not work in the future either. I have been putting off publishing what I found because it's bad and shortsighted for us to do that even though we can.

Do you guys want me to publish a tool that can port all the ingame models to the exploit format, or perhaps a bundle with all of them fixed? But do you really want that? It gives them an excuse to fix the game itself more slowly

EDIT: Also, sidenote, I don't totally understand the exploit format, and discovered it by accident.

Is there anyone ELSE who knows more than me and can please explain why Rising Water Doodad works as given ingame?

I did not reach a conclusive understanding by trial and error why that doodad model's animated texture surface still works, but if someone understood why that one works then there might be a "valid" way to fix all these models that isn't an exploit format.

 

[Kam]

When I researched this issue, I found that there is a new 1.33 exploit model format that displays correctly. So we can create models that will "display correctly" only on Patch 1.33 and 1.34 via the exploit, but they will not work on any other game version and possibly might not work in the future either. I have been putting off publishing what I found because it's bad and shortsighted for us to do that even though we can.

Do you guys want me to publish a tool that can port all the ingame models to the exploit format, or perhaps a bundle with all of them fixed? But do you really want that? It gives them an excuse to fix the game itself more slowly

EDIT: Also, sidenote, I don't totally understand the exploit format, and discovered it by accident.

Is there anyone ELSE who knows more than me and can please explain why Rising Water Doodad works as given ingame?

I did not reach a conclusive understanding by trial and error why that doodad model's animated texture surface still works, but if someone understood why that one works then there might be a "valid" way to fix all these models that isn't an exploit format.

While I am interested in this wizardry, I think a better solution for this is to create custom models that are identical to the pre-1.33 models, but not susceptible to the bug.

 

[Retera]

custom models that are identical to the pre-1.33 models

This does not exist. You can try importing the old models into the new game engine, but they would still be bugged. The game is itself bugged.

Or at least, that is what my tests led me to believe. Do you have reason to believe otherwise?

Edit: But if you import models that have HD surface information on an SD model, and tagged as SD so it loads when the game itself is on SD mode, you can spoonfeed it to load something that looks visually like you want. And that is why I call it an "exploit format" since it might not even work in future game versions.

Or, some models like Rising Water Doodad randomly still work and I don't know why.

 

[Kam]

I mean create custom models that work and resemble the vanilla models as much as possible.

 

[Retera]

The only way I found to do that was the jank "exploit format" I created on accident while somebody had asked me to look into it. That does not mean it is the only possible way, though. I'm away from the computer but ping me on here if I forget and I could upload some sample models later.

 

[Retera]

Here are some sample models made with the "exploit format":

(I still think this is a bad idea! These models will lose their exact binary structure and quit working if you open & save them in Retera Model Studio or any similar tool!)