Preference of classic or reforged model for your map?

[doomsdayzone]

As you guys know reforged supports classic and reforged models. Which type of models would you prefer to put in your map? The classic look or the reforged look?
My personal preference is classic as I know not all of the community bought reforged so using classic would support both.

 

[Macadamia]

As a Warcraft 3 player, from the old times I have always dreamed about being able to have higher poly models in the game.
now Reforged is out, even if it is disappointing on many aspects, I see no sensible reason to use low poly models unless you're a ladder player !

Please guys, I know Blizzard has messed up completely, but at least argue on the messed up parts, not on the only positive aspect of the game !

 

[Amigoltu]

I always knew I would prefer the older models. Not because of nostalgia, but because that's the style of the game. At the same time, I was curious about how it would look with more realistic graphics. Now I can say for sure, that I still prefer the old graphics. And I've deleted Reforged altogether.

Please guys, I know Blizzard has messed up completely, but at least argue on the messed up parts, not on the only positive aspect of the game !

What positive aspect? Graphics you mean? Those high-res graphics do not even fit in an RTS game like Warcraft 3. Especially not with that terrain and those trees, etc. Old models were more convenient to make, edit, had smaller file size, and looked good.

 

[Macadamia]

I agree on the fact that the new models are a bit off style wise. But it is still an improvement. We can't simply prefer a group of 4 triangles considering it is a character.
I like some of the new models. I don't like some, taste is a matter that cannot be discussed, but you can not find all new models worse - even those really looking like the old ones, like let's say the Dryad - just based on the fact that they have higher definition.
In that state of mind, the sole idea of a reforge of the game would never have made sense at all.

As far as I can read around, the wrath Reforged has caused is rather due to the huge amount of ruined hopes from people who had real high expectations.

I don't know, honestly, but some of the faces of the hate I see spread around towards Blizzard sometimes becomes so braindead that it completely looses its credibility.

I am actually really disappointed at Reforged, for a list of reasons I could explain and detail endlessly. But not the models, oh no not these. And nor would I reject some of the improvements I can find in World Editor. I mean come on, vJass !!! I didn't even know it existed 3 months ago

Anyways, with this state of mind, at least you are making sense by removing Reforged completely. Does the old client work on Battlenet ?

 

[Amigoltu]

We can't simply prefer a group of 4 triangles considering it is a character.

A hyperbole. Look at those models. Look at some of the custom classic models here on Hive. They still have more than enough detail and yet, are simple and compact.

In general, higher res models =/= better models in an RTS. New models may look better if you zoom in. But how much do you play the game zoomed all the way in? And when zoomed out, it makes no difference. In fact, new models are even worse then. Because it's also sometimes difficult to tell apart team colors.

the wrath Reforged has caused is rather due to the huge amount of ruined hopes from people who had real high expectations.

Sorry for rudeness, but that is straight bullshit. It's not that people had "high expectations", it's that Blizzard made promises, that they heavily advertised, but never made real. At the very least, they had to update graphics. They did not. Terrain, trees, spell effects are all the same, or even worse than they were in original. The lighting and saturation (especially in portraits) are all over the place.

Blizzard also promised to preserve the original game. From the beginning, they spoke about how much they care for the communities such as Hive, that kept Warcraft 3 alive so long. And they said they'd preserve the old game for them. Look how that turned out...

And nor would I reject some of the improvements I can find in World Editor. I mean come on, vJass !!! I didn't even know it existed 3 months ago

Ehm... vJass was created by fans back the early patches of Warcraft 3. By the man, the legend - Vexorian. And we had vJass on patches long before Reforged. Blizzard did not create vJass. They merely adopted it.

Does the old client work on Battlenet ?

No, but there are other ways to play online. Entire communities out there still doing it without Bnet. Besides, personally I prefer single-player.

 

[Macadamia]

We definitely won't be able to agree.
Yes resolution doesn't make models better, except when such a scale is implied. Classic models cannot be considered as proper models in 2020. I mean I'm an getting old and I sometimes tend to resist progress, but not to that extent. With the exception of a few models in reforged that are really messed up, I cannot prefer the old ones. The amount of detail on them simply don't exist.

Next point : I don't understand what you're saying there as to me it is the same thing.
When that demo was showcased, it lead people to raise expectations quite high, and in the end it was never delivered even slightly as promising as the demo.
As for bullshitting the fanbase I have to agree though.

I know about vJass. Well it didn't exist in my time, and I admit this Vexorian guy did something freaking awesome.
The fact that Blizzard made it a part of the Editor is at least a minimum of recognition. Back in my Warcraft time that would never have happened. Blizzard would have never recognized the accomplishments of a fan and make it an official part of the game or its tools. full stop.

As for the last part, I hear you there, and I am pleased to see there are viable private servers running around.

 

[Oliver]

Only downside I see to new models are:

Confusing for reading units in comp play.
Make old maps look ugly as sin
Incompatible with many custom models making the options somewhat lower - especially for rpg type games with attachements.
More models have flags indicating their allegiance like the human town hall, making it less usable for other things
Since the models are more explicit in what they are it's harder to use models in context they're not meant to be - eg classic spiked barricades are spikey plants.
More models for different tiers of units like the giant skeleton makes it harder to get away with a recoloured/rescaled model as a boss
The shifting of the bar toward high quality models means it's harder to reskin and make models and imported models will be much larger.

All that said I'ma use the reforged models since they look pretty good and the new variety gives many options, stuff like the new plagued murloc models, the new slimes and the new bandits are really great.

 

[Macadamia]

This is what I call constructive criticism !
You can see the bad in the new models as there are definitely many as you just pointed out, without completely rejecting them.

I like that approach much better.

 

[deepstrasz]

I like that approach much better.

But I don't think you'll like the splitting of the communities->less players.

 

[Oliver]

But I don't think you'll like the splitting of the communities->less players.

That's a real sad irony about the whole reforged fiasco, they tried to make the two games compatible to not split the playerbase, and those changes they made/features they broke were themselves a major factor in dividing people.

 

[Soulofthedead]

ask again in a few months when they've had time to patch things back to a semi working order lol

 

[Macadamia]

Well nobody would complain about that for sure !

 

[Amigoltu]

ask again in a few months when they've had time to patch things back to a semi working order lol

I wonder about it. Reforged has many... downsides, or changes, if you will.

♦ Higher res models = larger file size. I wonder how that affects custom map making. Is it going to limit modders?
♦ Also, new models have an entirely different way of applying textures, as far as I am aware. And it sounds... needlessly complicated. Again, how will that affect modding?
♦ CASC files instead of MPQ... MPQ was a more convenient file type for the modders, I imagine. Another minus for Reforged?
♦ Again, new models are sometimes hard to tell apart, in terms of team color, etc. In competitive, this is a serious problem. As far as I've heard, this is one of the reasons why competitive players stick to classic graphics.
♦ If that's true, it means less competitive players using Reforged graphics in the future too. Yet another minus.
♦ Nostalgia/esthetics preference. A large amount of Warcraft players are those, that played the original. And this very poll shows, that (at least) a good amount of them prefer old graphics. I myself prefer the older graphics. As I said, they feel more like Warcraft 3 style.
♦ Tool availability. Most of the tools out there are for older game versions. SharpCraft (function highlights), MPQ browser, Wc3ModelEditor, etc. All of these work with older versions, and since they've been made a long time ago, it's highly unlikely they are ever going to be updated for Reforged. Massive minus for Reforged.
♦ Higher system specs req. Reforged runs on the same old engine, while trying to implement all the changes. It's performance is abysmal, and hardly very much can be done for it. And one of the advantages of Wc3 was, that it wasn't very demanding on computer systems.
♦ Terrible reputation. Even if Blizzard really fixes Reforged, the damage has been done. Reforged is now known as one of the worst releases out there, and that's not attractive to new players. Let alone veterans, who refund in rows. Blizzard literally offering instant refunds without any proper check. Look at official forums. These people are not returning for Reforged.

I could probably list many more things, but the point is clear, I believe. Even if Blizzard fixes Reforged bugs, I highly doubt, that Reforged will ever have a big audience. In fact, I'd be more willing to question if Reforged will have any audience in a few months or so. Certainly not, if Blizzard is as slow to fix things, as it was for now. Terrible release, and after an entire month, they barely fixed anything at all.

 

[Macadamia]

Oh yes I am aware of all these points you are mentioning, and there are still a few giving me headaches.
As for the size it's not pleasant as we have always been used to optimize this part of the maps. But giving it some thought why should a let's say 20Mb map be too much to handle for clients, servers and hardware in 2020?

Maybe we are just having a difficult time to adapt to something we did not ask for.

In the end, with the tools the community has created, we are exactly standing at the same position today as my colleagues from 2002-2004 were when WinMPQ was released.

Every attempt I have made to replace a blizzard file such as a texture or a SLK, it has only failed when i used the wrong path or because I have yet to read that post explaining what make Blizzard's DDS files so allergic to change. So we're not too bad there in the end - I admit it is a pain though.

I am completely aware of how the warcraft 3 eSport community was really disappointed with reforged and this time I have nothing to oppose to them, as I happen to watch these tournaments and when you see an ancient protector just next to an orc building without even attacking it, it makes you wonder how did Blizzard even expect Reforged to be competition proof.

Another point we will agree upon : considering how old the engine is, they can not afford to let it make high end Gaming PCs struggle, this is not acceptable in any extent !!!

Now as fore the models a,d the tools. Remember I just got teleported from 16 years ago, and I had no choice but read and read endlessly until i could find what you guys had done when I was away. I am very serious here, you have to understand that every little success back the the old days what like a revolution. We used to protect maps with WinMPQ and probably the ancestor of Vexorian's Map Optimizer but that was very basic. We had tons of customized World Editors as everyone was testing their own sets of SLKS.

We only had GUI or Jass2 that's all. We had very limited tools for modeling and converting from 3DSMax to MDL was not a piece of cake by then.

After a lot of research, I have found tools in this very forum, tools I would never have dreamed of :
- Retera Model Studio Reforged Hack..... come on Retera if you read this mate just the fact that you put so much effort (and whoever helped you in the oricess), you are some kind of hero like Vexorian was I suppose. I couldn't keep on mapmaking without your amazing software. (By the way thank you for making java embedded in the package, didn't like installing the runtime)

- I have found an MPQ program that works better than any other one I ever tried back in my days, simply called MPQ Editor

- Then I tested this Vexorian Map Optimizer. Guess what it works a treat when your map only uses Jass2 !!!

-BLP Laboratory was another amazing discovery for me. If is efficient and produces BLP or DDS files actually compatible with reforged

- Ok now there was a disappointment with button manager as its BLPs tend to make reforge crash sometimes, but in all fairness with a few layers, exporting to PNG and then converting the result to BLP with BLP Lab ans voilà !


THE ONLY thing we had and you did not improve was Zepir's World Editor. I haven't found any other third party World Editor, and as you know The Hive WE and all others, although I suppose are really nice tools (I am eager to see a functional reforged version) as you know they're just mods of the original WE.

Zepir was completely standalone, didn't even need Warcraft 3 installed at all. But the project died unfortunately. I used it a bit to paint my own pathing on the terrain but that messes up everything else in the map and I have had little success forcing new environment files back in the map with MPQ editor.

See the situation isn't bad at all, we just have to adapt to most of blizzard stupid ideas. In the long run, whether we stay within Battlenot or go somewhere else, I am sure we could benefit from a better mastering of reforged and fix what we hate ourselves. Think about how easy it is to change team colors with Retera's MS !

Never lose hope

 

[deepstrasz]

As for the size it's not pleasant as we have always been used to optimize this part of the maps. But giving it some thought why should a let's say 20Mb map be too much to handle for clients, servers and hardware in 2020?

It's more like 20x10(x10xetc. depending on how much custom stuff you need/want in).

 

[Ceday]

Please guys, I know Blizzard has messed up completely, but at least argue on the messed up parts, not on the only positive aspect of the game !

They just added new textures/models to game (if I exclude bugs and performance issues), with high-poly stuff. Its not like something old developer team could not do, they just had to work with hardware of those times. I even think if they would hire a team from this website (or from some other W3 modding sites also) those people would surely do a better job, and this is my opinion about only "positive" aspect of the game.

Never lose hope

I also had hopes before reforged launch, did not say much negative stuff about 1.28, 1.29, 1.3+ patches or beta phase, but I don't have much hope anymore after seeing what they have done with release.

 

[Macadamia]

I understand you're all having a hard time with how things turned out.
But please don't forget where I stand from. I stopped wc3 in 2004 to invest in Wow. Seemed like an amazing game at first sight, and then I slowly realized I would get nowhere in Wow if I did not enter a "premium" guild. So I did, I found one of the top french guilds by then and played my typical frustrated paladin - heal and buffbot (and of course secretly wannabe damage dealer). Then I realized if I wanted to get DPS gear I had to keep doing these instances (40 people by then) every night, including non stopping wipes because the guild leader was an anti-spoiler fanatic.. Let's say we were raiding from around 8pm till 2-3am... Anyways, after a year working more hours on my Wow character than with my real job, sleeping an average of 3h a night for so long I was on the edge of sinking.
Trust me when I quit Wow i was angry about Blizzard. And not the owned by the devil activision Blizzard !!! I mean we were still under Burning Crusade !
Anyways life calling me back to duty, reminding me that I could not pay my rent with bars of Mythril.

Until recently I was a very casual gamer, including in Black Desert Online - the most beautiful game I had ever played - not necessarily the best though) Anyways as I hated Kakao Games's greed, I switched to a private server called Gamez (they're doing a pretty neat job btw). But for some reason my guild there kept getting stupid issues between members (often caused by young age, but the real reason is always stupidity, whatever the age is). SO I still have my character doing some afk-lifeskill for reasons I don't even understand as I am alone.

And one day, I find an old folder on one of my external HDs, containing all my old files from wc3 mapmaking years !!!
So I though :"hey that should be funny, let's see if I can learn back what I was able to do by then and finish my old maps ^^
Except the serial numbers were unreadable on my old RoC and TFT Boxes. So I search the web, find a random private server for warcraft 3 and install their client
It bugged, the client version was confusing so I first gave up. Then I find my legit keys in a txt file, so I say let's go !!!!
I edit the registry, enter my legit keys and ... get banned from battlenet as it seems they detected my attempt to play on the private server.

I was about to completely give up until I see Reforged + preorder. So I just went for it.
Installed the beta.
Opened World Editor
Tested my map
Of course nothing worked as intended unlike what they pretended : custom terrain was dug underground, custom units (not even custom models) suddenly had stupid odd scaling, every single funny customized thing refused to work (custom loading bar, custom tiles, custom ubersplats, most of the whatever.SLKs)

So I decided I would beat this FFS.

And guess what, I probably slept more in my wow days, but I made it.

I made my aMazing map even more amazing as what I had dreamed of in 2004 when It was chain de-syncing (remember tracking de-syncs and leaks what not a common knowledge back in the day !!!).

Yes It works, no bugs very few crashes currently investigating the matter by reading the post about this ON THIS VERY UNIQUE FORUM !!!

And as I chose the models, the custom models, worked my ass off to make everything look unique and polished, I don't see how I could even consider going back to classic for a nanosecond.

Sorry guys I understand my life is no adventure, and has nothing of great interest, but I just gave you my background and let you understand why I am not angry with Blizzard, considering they already had disappointed me when I was a Wow zombie-ladin.

In other words (thx Illidan) "I was totally prepared!".

But I swear I am not selfish guys, and I feel sorry for all of you faithful people who must really feel betrayed in an extensive way. And yes thats anything but funny.

Don't give up !!!!

 

[deepstrasz]

Sorry guys I understand my life is no adventure, and has nothing of great interest, but I just gave you my background and let you understand why I am not angry with Blizzard, considering they already had disappointed me when I was a Wow zombie-ladin.

I'm understanding you're being happy with all the impediments and time wasting you've gone and still are going through.
For a moment there I could have slipped an I envy you message.

 

[Macadamia]

Well, sometimes happiness is just about how you are wasting your time ^^

 

[deepstrasz]

Well, sometimes happiness is just about how you are wasting your time ^^

Gautama knows best.

 

[Macadamia]

Buddha has always been overrated

 

[deepstrasz]

Preference of classic or reforged model for your map?

I think there needs to be at least a third option to say: imports from other games.

 

[Macadamia]

You know what, it would really be awesome if we could.

We probably don't have the right tools for that yet though

 

[doomsdayzone]

Preference of classic or reforged model for your map?

I think there needs to be at least a third option to say: imports from other games.

I added the option but one thing about importing from other games there's a risk your game would get ban in reforged as you may infringe copyright. Example if use dota models would violate the Eula. Unless the game itself has given permission to allow open source use of its models.

 

[deepstrasz]

I added the option but

we also need multiple choices.

 

[doomsdayzone]

we also need multiple choices.

Done

 

[coolyoshi1]

Reforged models might look nice but they're harder to read. Also why did they not keep the same scaling for reforged and classic? Some of the models in my map are way bigger in reforged than they are in classic. Boggles my mind how they didnt keep scaling consistent

 

[Macadamia]

I completely agree on this point. Even If I still like many of the new models. As for the scaling, it was the first thing that shocked me when I tried my old map, and the towers suddenly gained erratic scaling. That and the custom tiles not working anymore, and other specific settings from custom SLKs.

Anyways I never pretended I was 100% happy about what Blizzard did. This said, after countless hours of hard work I overcame 99% of these Reforged bugs, and crossing fingers the remaining ones with end up catching their attention (like the new incompatibility between certain models and certain UnitSoundSets).

Honestly, if they had been more consistent, used their 2018 Demo as a start and followed that route, they wouldn't have needed to work as much and they wouldn't have ended up with so much fanbase disappointment.

As far as I am concerned, I am disappointed too, but I can still feel an improvement on many aspects of the game (if I keep a blind eye of the NEW bugs).
I suppose a change does not mean it's a good change, but after leaving wc3 for 16 years, coming back doesn't only feel like nostalgia.