Good Day ! i asked blizzard two months ago about making Warcraft 3 open source, but they did not respond, so what if we unit ? and ask together ? so that Blizzard will understand how much this is so imporatant for the warcraft modding communauty.
Discussed that with a friend, and found that the problem was finding how much it will cost.
so i'm gonna ask blizzard first of all.
The best way i found to contact them was on Facebook :
Good Day Blizzard ! i'm Abdeldjelil BABAHAMED also known as Kamyflex, i'm a wacraft 3 modder, check our Mod at : GetRiT.Webs.Com and I'm willing to ask about making Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 1 open source.
Actually they might not totally oppose the idea, after all many of their current development team grew up with Warcraft III. They will understand that the WC3 community is highly capable and could maintain the game open source with minimal input from them or Blizzard.
However the answer will still likely be no entirely due to licencing. Who owns the assets? Who owns the code? Chances are Blizzard does not own it all, but instead does own a distribution licence for it all.
Even if they threw in all the assets into the public domain it raises a lot of problems regarding their existing licencing policy (and companies holding licences in stock). Chances are the code would also be nothing more than a husk, with all licenced parts (compression algorithms, sound, movie playback, graphics etc) being removes as well as all comments (as they were never intended to be made public and might contain inappropriate content). They might also have to remove code from it that has been recycled in other games like WoW or SC2 for their own internal licencing reasons. It would likely be 4+ years before anything comes out of the project that resembles WC3.
The best way to get this answered would be to make a huge noise on some social network site like redit, twitter, facebook etc and keep it up until you get an official response (which is almost certainly going to be no).
It is highly likely that few people at Blizzard even know how WC3 works. That is why the Hash Table GUI wrappers were such a buggy mess capable of crashing the editor with a wrong click.
Even if they threw in all the assets into the public domain it raises a lot of problems regarding their existing licencing policy (and companies holding licences in stock). Chances are the code would also be nothing more than a husk, with all licenced parts (compression algorithms, sound, movie playback, graphics etc) being removes
A lot of the licencing is probably theirs. On the sound-side of things, considering they released every single sound with the WC3 Art Expansion for SC2 they probably own them.
"Compression Algorithms" The Mo'PaQ archive was developed by Blizzard, based off of their previously developed archive for the first WarCraft and WarCraft II, which as far as I remember is not based off of anything.
Video Playback is an issue because WC3 and SC1 both use Bink Video playback by RADGameTools. They would definitely have to strip that out before they could ship an Open-Source version of either game.
WC3's graphics uses a lot of known and free to use methods, but it also uses a lot of DirectDraw and Direct3D for the Windows versions. I don't know what it uses for the Mac or Linux versions. That is a big problem, though. Since they can't just release their usage of DDraw or D3D, they would have to convert it over to whatever system they used for Linux, as it was more then likely open-source/freeware and that could be a gigantic problem. SC1 also uses DDraw exclusively, as it was made during a time where there still wasn't as many things on computing as there was a couple years after in 2000. The Internet was also still very new and had little useful resources and thus they would've had to resort to a lot of research. They probably didn't have a whole lot of licensing to buy from other companies as well.
As for "Inappropriate Comments" come on, really? That should have about as much of an impact on it as the butterfly effect does. If you don't like their comments, don't read them. If you're worried about children reading them, that's not yours or mine or Blizzard's responsibility or liability, it's the parents responsibility and liability.
Finally, there's the issue of their source is probably built using Microsoft Visual Basic, which may or may not have to have some licensing you need to get if you build a game based off of Blizzard's source for SC1 or WC3 (I don't know for sure, though. I hope not, considering the program is already expensive af)
But also keep in mind that there is probably a lot more stuff they built by themselves or used open-source methods for then there was licensed things.
If they released the source code, wouldn't it allow hackers to look through the code for loopholes and allow them to create even more cheats, that allow them to crash the game for other people and such?
"Compression Algorithms" The Mo'PaQ archive was developed by Blizzard, based off of their previously developed archive for the first WarCraft and WarCraft II, which as far as I remember is not based off of anything.
At least one of the compressions used by MPQ is highly licenced.
As for "Inappropriate Comments" come on, really? That should have about as much of an impact on it as the butterfly effect does. If you don't like their comments, don't read them. If you're worried about children reading them, that's not yours or mine or Blizzard's responsibility or liability, it's the parents responsibility and liability.
They are inappropriate because the people who wrote them might have written them knowing that they would never be made public. All manner of personal details and private jokes could be embedded inside the source code comments. Including comments which if made public could negitivly affect the employability of the author.
When Activision made Civilization Call to Power 2 open source they programmatically stripped all comments from it for that reason.
Finally, there's the issue of their source is probably built using Microsoft Visual Basic, which may or may not have to have some licensing you need to get if you build a game based off of Blizzard's source for SC1 or WC3 (I don't know for sure, though. I hope not, considering the program is already expensive af)
It is unknown how much of the game code is licenced from other companies and it is stupid to make any estimations about it. Any part of the game could use a licence, be it for a path finder to a scheduler or even some. For example during the start process procedure at least several licenced CD check functions are called (the no disk in drive error can still be thrown in some cases even if mostly disabled).
They might also be reluctant to give away the source because it is still relevant to their current products. For example StarCraft II or World of Warcraft could have recycled some systems from WC3. If they made them open source then they will indirectly make part of their modern games open source which could upset some manager type legal people.
The best way to get this answered would be to make a huge noise on some social network site like redit, twitter, facebook etc and keep it up until you get an official response (which is almost certainly going to be no).
Blizzard recently hinted that wc3 might be on battlenet2.0 so I doubt they're done monetizing it - be prepared for in-game advertisement from our glorious overlords
open source would be a great option, and wouldnt cause licensing issues, but blizzard hasn't historically been that kind of company, so I really don't think this will happen. sorry guys.
At least one of the compressions used by MPQ is highly licenced.
They are inappropriate because the people who wrote them might have written them knowing that they would never be made public. All manner of personal details and private jokes could be embedded inside the source code comments. Including comments which if made public could negitivly affect the employability of the author.
When Activision made Civilization Call to Power 2 open source they programmatically stripped all comments from it for that reason.
Visual Studio is completely free. You only need to pay for it if you are using it for large scale commercial operations (eg a software company).
It is unknown how much of the game code is licenced from other companies and it is stupid to make any estimations about it. Any part of the game could use a licence, be it for a path finder to a scheduler or even some. For example during the start process procedure at least several licenced CD check functions are called (the no disk in drive error can still be thrown in some cases even if mostly disabled).
They might also be reluctant to give away the source because it is still relevant to their current products. For example StarCraft II or World of Warcraft could have recycled some systems from WC3. If they made them open source then they will indirectly make part of their modern games open source which could upset some manager type legal people.
AFAIK, some of their very old games like The Lost Vikings are completely free to play, so there is some historical precedent. However, I doubt they'll open source war3 any time soon; the game is still causing lost sales for their other products - SC2, HotS, D3 even. An open source war3 could, in time, be upgraded with modern graphics and other systems that make it more appealing than SC2. If I was Blizzard, I know I wouldn't open source it.
AFAIK, some of their very old games like The Lost Vikings are completely free to play, so there is some historical precedent. However, I doubt they'll open source war3 any time soon; the game is still causing lost sales for their other products - SC2, HotS, D3 even. An open source war3 could, in time, be upgraded with modern graphics and other systems that make it more appealing than SC2. If I was Blizzard, I know I wouldn't open source it.
Your wish list is of a Big help, i think we just ask for an update.
What do you say guys ??
EDIT : My Wish list :
1 - Add a reconnection feature.
2 - Hotkey configuration for button grid and items.
3 - True 16:9 display.
4 - Give modders the ability to modify object properties at Runtime (like sight and attack range).
5 - Give modders the ability to create custom interfaces at Runtime.
6 - Add functions to retreive armor and damage values.
7 - Add the ability to change the name and icon of "Mana" into Energy for example.
8 - Add the ability to add races to a map with custom sound sets, UI ... etc.
9 - Create new sound sets.
10 - Make the Race UI a bit smaller.
• Give modders the ability to edit ingame objects (units, buildings, doodads, destructibles, etc) in easy to use text form (like ZDoom's DECORATE). This means you could make the basic attack fire three projectiles if you wanted to.
• Ability to make and launch actual mods (with shortcut commands) that have their own subfolders. That means that you could change the menu, have your own campaigns and own melee maps and resources. I think that would eliminate the 8 MB map limit and would get rid of need for ditching everything into a single map and then compressing it to just below 8 MB. It would also eliminate copying and pasting from one melee map to another to alternate melee guys. Makes updating less of a chore.
That's it for me.
• Ability to make and launch actual mods (with shortcut commands) that have their own subfolders. That means that you could change the menu, have your own campaigns and own melee maps and resources. I think that would eliminate the 8 MB map limit and would get rid of need for ditching everything into a single map and then compressing it to just below 8 MB. It would also eliminate copying and pasting from one melee map to another to alternate melee guys. Makes updating less of a chore.
That's it for me.
that they are having hard time figuring out how to do "log back into active game" for sc2, and the fact that sc2 has a shitton more determinstic state than wc3(for instance, you can only run timers in sc2 16 times/sec, no less, but in wc3, you can eve go subframe, and the game has no problem handling that)
that they are having hard time figuring out how to do "log back into active game" for sc2, and the fact that sc2 has a shitton more determinstic state than wc3(for instance, you can only run timers in sc2 16 times/sec, no less, but in wc3, you can eve go subframe, and the game has no problem handling that)
Well, it doesn't have to be a perfect reconnection, haven't any of you see community made reconnection thing(not sure if it was a part of ghost++ or a seperate thing called gproxy)
Well, it doesn't have to be a perfect reconnection, haven't any of you see community made reconnection thing(not sure if it was a part of ghost++ or a seperate thing called gproxy)
Likely the opposite. SC2 supports saving at least unlike WC3 where a lot of trigger stuff breaks when you load (eg periodic timers). That rules out the save approach entirely.
SC2 currently does it (for Heroes of the Storm) by starting a new session with the same seed and running a replay of the session up to the current time as captured by the server. Once it reaches the current state it then goes to user mode and the game continues. This is only viable for very short sessions of simple maps as otherwise a client may never catch up.
Another approach would be to save the map, transfer the save and then load it. If the save is deterministic enough nothing should change from the point of save in the active session, to the point that other clients do not even have to load the save (only the joiner does). This requires peer to peer file transfer since the host server does not have the game state and so cannot make a save to transfer to future clients. Peer to peer is problematic due to firewalls, NATs and ISP usage policies.
Already possible for the button grid via customkeys.txt. For items a map maker could trigger hotkeys or you could use Warkeys. A easy way in the options with a GUI would be nice but not necessary.
Not that easy. It creates an unfair advantage for either the old 5:4 or the new 16:9 resolutions, as the field of view will be different. How do you want to solve that?
4 - Give modders the ability to modify object properties at Runtime (like sight and attack range).
A patch should add functionality for things that are only achievable with disadvantages or just impossible as we have to add a new native for everything. If you have more suggestions, please write them in the 1.27 wish list thread.
5 - Give modders the ability to create custom interfaces at Runtime.
6 - Add functions to retreive armor and damage values.
I think we were discussing this also in the 1.27 wish list.. iirc my stance was that there are ways to achieve this without putting Blizzard through a lot of work for this.
• Give modders the ability to edit ingame objects (units, buildings, doodads, destructibles, etc) in easy to use text form (like ZDoom's DECORATE). This means you could make the basic attack fire three projectiles if you wanted to.
Had a fast look at ZDoom's DECORATE and it seems comparable to the data driven stuff in dota 2 modding. I'm quite sure this is far to complex for wc3, as nothing like that currently exists in it. The best we could hope for would be an "uber-native" which takes a handle id, a string field which property to modify and a string data field, essentially just modifying the relevant fields in memory.
Like
Though probably it's just better to implement some specific new natives the modders need, as this means crash crash crash when not putting a lot of work into it.
• Ability to make and launch actual mods (with shortcut commands) that have their own subfolders. That means that you could change the menu, have your own campaigns and own melee maps and resources. I think that would eliminate the 8 MB map limit and would get rid of need for ditching everything into a single map and then compressing it to just below 8 MB. It would also eliminate copying and pasting from one melee map to another to alternate melee guys. Makes updating less of a chore.
This could change the whole appearance of wc3 (main menu) by an easy selection process done by the user, not requiring to copy .mpq's and files in and throwing others out of the wc3 folder. If you could place .dll's in the mod folder which the mod uses this would be an easy integration for something like Sharpcraft. Great idea, but:
If you think longer about this problems arise. How are file updates handled? Do I have to download the whole mod again if something changed? If not, there needs to be a system to kick not longer required files out and to bring new ones in. I guess every mod will then have its own maps/replays/save folders, which probably means unpleasantness for the user for updates as he has to know folder structures/compatibility to older versions/etc? If you can present a simple elegant solution in detail I will happily take it in the 1.27 wish list.
The simple alternative is a rise of the maximum map size in multiplayer. This won't make the wc3 main menu more configurable and Sharpcraft will have to be manually added but everything stays in one file.
I'll update the 1.27 wish list thread and try to make it a bit more clear and concise. If you have more good suggestions, go ahead and post them. And if you can create social media buzz or chain yourself to the leg of an important Blizzard employee do it.
• Ability to make and launch actual mods (with shortcut commands) that have their own subfolders. That means that you could change the menu, have your own campaigns and own melee maps and resources. I think that would eliminate the 8 MB map limit and would get rid of need for ditching everything into a single map and then compressing it to just below 8 MB. It would also eliminate copying and pasting from one melee map to another to alternate melee guys. Makes updating less of a chore.
That's it for me.
Which is? As far as I know you cannot save WC3 maps due to the save destroying the deterministic state.
Not that easy. It creates an unfair advantage for either the old 5:4 or the new 16:9 resolutions, as the field of view will be different. How do you want to solve that?
Keep display area the same by adjusting distance is the best approach. SC2 does not solve it as far as I can tell and instead stretches the field of view of one axis appropriately relative to 4:3 so you will get different area of view in camera. In RTS games it does not really mater that much compared with FPS games where it can give an unfair advantage..
LoL does this, when you have wider screen resolution, the camera will be zoomed in ever so slightly so that you still see the same things as you would with narower screen(I guess Y axis is squashed a bit then tho)
The bot acts as a proxy sending continuous pings to keep the connection alive, so that for the host the connection is never lost. That can ofc only work when the game remains paused until the disconnected player reconnects but that's not too much of a downside. edit: I never used this but I guess additionally the disconnected player must not close wc3 to keep the gamestate. Eh.... still useful in certain cases..
Keep display area the same by adjusting distance is the best approach. SC2 does not solve it as far as I can tell and instead stretches the field of view of one axis appropriately relative to 4:3 so you will get different area of view in camera. In RTS games it does not really mater that much compared with FPS games where it can give an unfair advantage..
The bot acts as a proxy sending continuous pings to keep the connection alive, so that for the host the connection is never lost. That can ofc only work when the game remains paused until the disconnected player reconnects but that's not too much of a downside. edit: I never used this but I guess additionally the disconnected player must not close wc3 to keep the gamestate. Eh.... still useful in certain cases..
The issue is mostly when people lose the state and not simply reconnecting. EG they could lose power, or the client could crash, or even just Windows Update restarted without them noticing.
Heroes of the Storm does support reconnecting in such a case but to do so it requires running from the session start until the current time. This might never be done before end of session depending on his system specifications.
What you are suggesting is simply suspending the "waiting for player"/"waiting for host" dialog a few minutes longer.
how about Dota 2, that supports reconnection even if you turn off your computer and jump to another and start steam with game. Surly blizzard is capable of implementing such thing
how about Dota 2, that supports reconnection even if you turn off your computer and jump to another and start steam with game. Surly blizzard is capable of implementing such thing
how about Dota 2, that supports reconnection even if you turn off your computer and jump to another and start steam with game. Surly blizzard is capable of implementing such thing
Heroes of the Storm does that as well. In SC2 3.0 engine it supports such a feature as I have described above. It uses the "in progress" replay to reconstruct the game state for the client which lost it. The problem is that running the game until the current time from the start in a deterministic way is very resource intensive so a 15 minute session might take 2-3 minutes to catch up and that is for something quite simple. Slow systems might never catch up as they may never be able to run the session at full speed in the first place.
Another way of implementing it (which I described above) is to dump the current deterministic session state, serialize it, transfer it to the dropped client, deserialize it and then load the state allowing the client to then resume from the current instant. The problem is then that of a peer to peer data transfer as only another client has the state and the state itself could be considerably sized (several megabytes). It also likely requires pausing due to the resources required to dump deterministic state. This approach is used by open source games like Simutrans for persistent multiplayer worlds however in Simutran's case the peer to peer problem is solved by the server maintaining a copy of the session state (something too resource intensive to do in the case of SC2/WC3).
Which approach is used by DotA 2 I do not know. The game was built from the ground up with AoS gameplay in mind so might even use different synchronization techniques from SC2 and RTS games.
This sounds like it will also allow jumping to certain times in replays, or is it too slow?
Yes it uses the same mechanics. In SC2 you can run a replay with other players and even jump in and play before the end. The problem is that it has to compute the game state deterministically which can take considerable time for complex maps with long play times.
and of course lets make a "feature request list" ready to be sent by all of us to blizzard.
They are not interested in feature requests as WC3 is not actively maintained. It is pretty much mothballed and only sees maintenance if something serious breaks (eg, it stops running on an OS like Windows 10). Simply put there are no resources available to add any extra features to WC3.
To make the game open source there would need to be some form of trustable and skilled community who can work on the code in the first place who will put considerable effort into both maintaining it and assuring a high standard of quality. That said even if you manage to set up such a body there is still a slim chance for them to consider it.
What is wrong with this->When a player tries to reconnect, the game pauses and one of the players in game or server itself transfers saved game to the reconnecting player.Since it is possible to save/load multiplayer games.
What is wrong with this->When a player tries to reconnect, the game pauses and one of the players in game or server itself transfers saved game to the reconnecting player.Since it is possible to save/load multiplayer games.
Works, but here is the Cons :
- Transfering the save may have some problem with firewall, as Dr Super GooD sad.
- The game has to be paused for all players.
- Some things still not be loaded correctly, things like Periodic timers, correct me if i'm wrong.
I can not find a good counter example in my mind now, but if periodic timers wouldn't work in saved/load games I assume I would know?(maybe=))
Edit:I remember if you save a dota game lets say at 27th second, the creeps would still get created at 30th second.
What is wrong with this->When a player tries to reconnect, the game pauses and one of the players in game or server itself transfers saved game to the reconnecting player.Since it is possible to save/load multiplayer games.
The main problem is that the saves are not an accurate representation of deterministic state (as I mentioned). What is needed is that if one saves and then loads the game progresses exactly as if it just continued without loading.
- Transfering the save may have some problem with firewall, as Dr Super GooD sad.
Technically not, it can progress however the player who just joined will have to fast forward the time spent joining (something that might be impossible for poor performance systems) and that the client doing the transfers will be subjected to raised resource usage so might itself start to show signs of poor performance (especially lag due to latency from the upload congestion).
Technically not, it can progress however the player who just joined will have to fast forward the time spent joining (something that might be impossible for poor performance systems) and that the client doing the transfers will be subjected to raised resource usage so might itself start to show signs of poor performance (especially lag due to latency from the upload congestion).
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