Reforged Compatibility Questions

[Serenity09]

Hi all, I'm trying to check compatibility on my map between Vanilla and Reforged. I think the Reforged team did a great job on backwards compatibility, but I've got a two wrinkles to my original plan that I'm trying to look into:

Some scripted sound effects play multiple times, like in this thread

Is anyone having an issue with some sounds playing multiple times in custom games? I have a trigger that creates a special effect at a point (thunder clap) and then destroys the special effect to remove the memory leak. The animation works well, but the thunderclap sound plays 2-3 additional times.

Is this something that we think will be to be changed to work in my favor, where i don't need to worry about some sounds playing multiple times, or should I compensate for it from within my map by choosing VFX/SFX that don't repeat?


Map defined / custom terrain texture is overridden by Reforged reskin, like in this thread
(This might be true for any skin overriding a vanilla path, but I'm mostly wondering about custom terrains textures)

Example: Map overrides the entire Cityscape Tileset with modern roads & pavement (using “import file” in World Editor to use exact texture paths as Cityscape tiles). Playing such map in reforged mode will use the default Cityscape tiles instead of the custom modern ones, thus breaking the map theme.

New reforged graphics override these since I think there is a conflict/priority there for the HD textures to override whatever’s in the map. This is an issue with old maps with authors that are no longer around to update them (i.e. re-save map to comply with new texture definitions).

Does anyone know if Nova's suggestion is the intended direction in a future patch?

Solution: Give map-specific files priority over any default graphics (right now HD > MapDefined > SD, make -> MapDefined > HD > SD).

Otherwise, is there a way to create a new terrain tile without overriding an existing one?

 

[Pyrogasm]

Otherwise, is there a way to create a new terrain tile without overriding an existing one?

No, but you could overwrite the Blight tile which is in all maps but doesn’t count to the 16 tile limit.

 

[Serenity09]

Some scripted sound effects play multiple times, like in this thread
Is this something that we think will be to be changed to work in my favor, where i don't need to worry about some sounds playing multiple times, or should I compensate for it from within my map by choosing VFX/SFX that don't repeat?

This seems to be a wide spread issue, and seems to be at least occur when playing certain SFX via CreateSpecialEffect. Some special effect models will loop their sound when played this way, whether you immediately destroy the effect, destroy it after a bit, or just leak it. I'm hoping that this will change in my favor in future patches

Map defined / custom terrain texture is overridden by Reforged reskin, like in this thread
(This might be true for any skin overriding a vanilla path, but I'm mostly wondering about custom terrains textures)
Does anyone know if Nova's suggestion is the intended direction in a future patch?

It turns out my original problem was actually just a misunderstanding. Custom tiles with SD and HD versions are very possible in Reforged, but each mode support different file types.
SD wants the blp version that i was used too, while HD wants at least a _diffuse.dds file. You can see an example HD terrain texture here Reforged Wood Texture. Terrain variation can be shared between SD and HD by matching the two layouts in the source files, but you can also have a different number of variations. If a mode's tile doesn't support a variation, then the game seems to default to always rendering the first variation in the tile (variation 0). Random variation is defined on tile change rather than on tile render

No, but you could overwrite the Blight tile which is in all maps but doesn’t count to the 16 tile limit.

I've never thought of using the blight tile. I could probably do something cool with that, and how it interacts with other tiles. Thanks for suggesting it

 

[Solcius123]

There are definitely some issues that came with Reforged.

The sound effect infinite loop is one of them. Some sound effects bear this curse. Not all. And if it is attached to a special effect, the effect becomes unusable. The revive hero is one of them, the effect calls the sound that will loop forever. I had to use something else.

 

[Dr Super Good]

between Vanilla and Reforged

What is "Vanilla"?

Is this something that we think will be to be changed to work in my favor, where i don't need to worry about some sounds playing multiple times, or should I compensate for it from within my map by choosing VFX/SFX that don't repeat?

Sound very much like a bug. I have not noticed it in maps like SWAT Aftermath. If you can recreate the issue in a demonstration map I can forward it to William.

Map defined / custom terrain texture is overridden by Reforged reskin, like in this thread
(This might be true for any skin overriding a vanilla path, but I'm mostly wondering about custom terrains textures)

One can import "HD" versions for Reforged graphic to use. When playing with Classic graphics the "SD" assets will be used while Reforged graphics the "HD" assets will be used. These is a dedicated field in the asset manager to control this on a per asset basis.

In theory if the same texture is used for both Classic and Reforged one could save on file space using a hacky MPQ trick that would sensibly be called "file aliasing". This is when the same block data is referenced by multiple hash table entries for different file path strings. The end result is that the same asset data could be given multiple file paths to access, such as both a SD and HD one. This is not a World Editor supported feature as far as I am aware and may require custom written third party software to pull off.

SD wants the blp version that i was used too, while HD wants at least a _diffuse.dds file. You can see an example HD terrain texture here Reforged Wood Texture. Terrain variation can be shared between SD and HD by matching the two layouts in the source files, but you can also have a different number of variations. If a mode's tile doesn't support a variation, then the game seems to default to always rendering the first variation in the tile (variation 0). Random variation is defined on tile change rather than on tile render

Classic supports DDS as well.

It is recommended that DDS be used over BLP for all future custom textures. This is because the DXT1 and DXT5 modes supported by DDS are real-time friendly compression so keeps down video memory usage and more importantly video memory bandwidth usage. This will help anyone running on integrated graphics (low end laptops, the sort of system that will likely keep running classic graphics) where GPU and CPU share the same memory bandwidth.

 

[Serenity09]

What is "Vanilla"?

oops, SD

Sound very much like a bug. I have not noticed it in maps like SWAT Aftermath. If you can recreate the issue in a demonstration map I can forward it to William.

alright i plan to make a a simple sandbox this weekend. hopefully others will contribute broken VFX paths to it as well...

edit: well that was optimistic, i ended up working on v1.3 of my map instead. let's see about this upcoming weekend...

One can import "HD" versions for Reforged graphic to use. When playing with Classic graphics the "SD" assets will be used while Reforged graphics the "HD" assets will be used. These is a dedicated field in the asset manager to control this on a per asset basis.

In theory if the same texture is used for both Classic and Reforged one could save on file space using a hacky MPQ trick that would sensibly be called "file aliasing". This is when the same block data is referenced by multiple hash table entries for different file path strings. The end result is that the same asset data could be given multiple file paths to access, such as both a SD and HD one. This is not a World Editor supported feature as far as I am aware and may require custom written third party software to pull off.

thats a good explanation of your idea, and im slowly getting a better picture of how the asset system works. i think that the current WE sorta supports a limited version of "file aliasing" for assets which are expected to have the same filename in both SD and HD, though you could also look at this as a defaulted value. i imported a model asset awhile ago, just for SD. post Reforged release, there is still only one instance of this asset, now set to support SD, however the same asset is also shown for HD users without any additional effort. i think this hits the wall for terrain textures, due to the different filename between SD and HD (_diffuse, etc)

Classic supports DDS as well.

It is recommended that DDS be used over BLP for all future custom textures. This is because the DXT1 and DXT5 modes supported by DDS are real-time friendly compression so keeps down video memory usage and more importantly video memory bandwidth usage. This will help anyone running on integrated graphics (low end laptops, the sort of system that will likely keep running classic graphics) where GPU and CPU share the same memory bandwidth.

that's cool, i love knowing how these things actually effect the end user and their hardware. it'll be interesting to see how custom texture packs start support SD and HD (both or just one)