Wacraft 3 in Unreal Engine.

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When an "amateur" makes a better game when a multi-billion dollar company...


These are only short presentations, but look at the terrain, shadows, environment. Look at how well everything blends in, and the thing seems to run really smooth. Couldn't Blizzard deliver this with a new engine? I am sure they could have.

Supposedly the reason for not doing it was, that it would make older maps incompatible. Tell me - how many old maps are fully working in current reforged? And the maker of the videos above imported Warcraft 3 Reforged models in Unreal Engine. So it is perfectly possible to make a new engine, and make existing warcraft resources compatible.
 
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Heavy use of volumetric lightning... in a RTS. What a joke.
Could fit very well for a classic computer RPG, but that's all.
Not this crap again. It's just ported to the Unreal Engine. Looks, like it's always dawn or dusk. It's bad, like most of contemporary game visuals.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, as they say. The point of updated Reforged graphics was to make the game look more realistic, as far as it can be done for Warcraft, and this Unreal Engine presentation did it wonderfully. THIS is what I expected Reforged to look like. And while I do prefer the original graphics, it would have been interesting to experience this.
 
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Where is the game? All I see are some imported reforged models with some simple unreal behaviors in something you can hardly call a tech demo.
Alright, it isn't technically a full game, and I didn't mean it is, which you understand of course, you just decided to pick on the title, because you couldn't think of anything else. Anyways, what I meant is, that this looks FAR better than anything Blizzard did with Reforged, and it's just basic stuff. Blizzard, with all of their resources, could have easily made the entire game like this.

That's a totally different thing than it looking better or realistic which it doesn't.
And again, it is subjective. I DO find it better. Much, much better than current Reforged, or even 2018 demo of Reforged.
 
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When an "amateur" makes a better game when a multi-billion dollar company...

Alright, it isn't technically a full game, and I didn't mean it is, which you understand of course, you just decided to pick on the title, because you couldn't think of anything else. Anyways, what I meant is, that this looks FAR better than anything Blizzard did with Reforged, and it's just basic stuff. Blizzard, with all of their resources, could have easily made the entire game like this.

you can't really say things like the first quote and not expect people to have strong reactions. also, most of these points aren't saying that the Unreal aesthetic is bad, they're saying that it's an unfair comparison because it's literally just showing the time and effort put into HD rendered via a different engine. half of the work that's gone into reforged is so that it could exist in the same engine. if they had ported it to Unity then every existing custom game would immediately no longer work, and have no easy avenue to be ported

Reforged is amazing because of how much it changes while simultaneously changing so little. Ask a pro and they'll say that the engine has changed too much, but ask your average custom game player, and they'll say it could have done more. You're looking at it from an angle that doesn't give it any room to shine
 

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Blizzard, with all of their resources, could have easily made the entire game like this.

Wrong assumption. Unreal Engine 4 has been in development for literal years, and Epic Games has been in the engine-development market for more than two decades. Their primary product IS UE4, the renderer of which is the major selling point of the engine.

Implementing a renderer like this is no easy task. In-house engine development can easily balloon the budget to unfathomable proportions. What Blizzard had to do under the obviously constrained budget of the project is add a modern renderer to a 20-year old game, which in itself alone is a gargantuan task, given all the pitfalls of working with legacy code and having to write your own renderer.

Like Serenity said, you're not going to get backwards compatibility and amazing graphics of Unreal level at the same time. WC3's entire codebase would have to be scrapped if you want a renderer like Unreal's.
 
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you can't really say things like the first quote and not expect people to have strong reactions. also, most of these points aren't saying that the Unreal aesthetic is bad, they're saying that it's an unfair comparison because it's literally just showing the time and effort put into HD rendered via a different engine. half of the work that's gone into reforged is so that it could exist in the same engine. if they had ported it to Unity then every existing custom game would immediately no longer work, and have no easy avenue to be ported

Reforged is amazing because of how much it changes while simultaneously changing so little. Ask a pro and they'll say that the engine has changed too much, but ask your average custom game player, and they'll say it could have done more. You're looking at it from an angle that doesn't give it any room to shine
And what good did keeping the same engine give the players? Asides from abysmal performance? How many of the older fans are even playing Reforged? How many of the older maps are actually properly working? At least in my opinion, Blizzard should have just made a new Engine for Reforged, screw compatibility. If they kept the old client AND Reforged client, compatibility would not matter. Nobody would have lost anything.

And what do we have now? A game that is not even remade properly graphics-wise. Look at that terrain, shadows, portraits, etc. What is the worth of Reforged at all now? It's not improving anything, it's not even properly remaking graphics. Useless.

@mori
Pretty much the only thing blizzard did with Reforged is add some new models, that they didn't even make themselves. Oh and do away with the old game and the old bnet. That's it. "gargantuan"...
 
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If you believe making Reforged is so simple, I encourage you to do it yourself. That'll be one of the fun parts about Warsmash when I am finished. No one will ever be able to Reforge Warsmash because of how much work Blizzard had to do, and nobody but Blizzard employees would care enough to try to do that work.

In Warsmash, it'll just be impossible to do that.

You can make HD models with SD models inside of them. The Reforged format is crazy levels of backwards compatible. Yet after doing a lot rightly, they got lazy around the edges. The SD models in Reforged are stored in the new format, for example.

I'd say maps are similar. The aspiration to be backwards compatible in Reforged is crazy-dedicated. The idea that Blizzard did nothing is a hoax. Blizzard simply didn't do what certain people wanted.
 
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The idea that Blizzard did nothing is a hoax. Blizzard simply didn't do what certain people wanted.
Yes, Blizzard just "got lazy around the edges" and removed the original game altogether. But it's ok, right? It's just not what certain people wanted, according to you, isn't it? Despite the fact Blizzard promised to let players keep the old game. Despite actually good remasters allowing players to still play the old client (AoE2). Despite loads of people being against new patches and Reforged from the beginning back in 2018.

The aspiration to be backwards compatible in Reforged is crazy-dedicated.
Blizzard left the players with the option to either play reforged, or quit Warcraft 3 completely. Where's that compatibility you speak of? Does it even matter, when the old client no longer exists?

"Crazy-dedicated"? Or just an excuse to put minimal effort into this thing and sell it for a price of a full game? And they were so "crazy-dedicated", that they scrapped the entire idea of backwards-compatibility, and done away with the original game, replacing it with Reforged. Even forcing players who didn't purchase Reforged to update to it.
 
removed the original game altogether.

It is only true that the original game was removed if you make the arbitrary distinction that Reforged on classic mode is not the original game. The line is blurred.

I can give an example of how the line is blurred, too.

Don't watch this whole uncut video, but in the first two or three minutes I describe what I'm about to do and I make a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos:


Then I tried to play my creation on TFT. It was insane. Broken. Unplayable beyond belief. More broken than people think Reforged is.


So, what version of the game is your classic version? Where in the gray lines of Frozen Throne versions do you believe Blizzard stoppee giving you the classic version? 1.29? 1.30? 1.31? Or maybe like me you lost everything in 1.23 or 1.24.

People treat 1.26 like it's some kind of gold standard but I've been playing this game long enough to remember when 1.26 felt like it was Blizzard decree to break all of my maps. I remember spending hours slogging through code I didn't write to try to fix my favorite maps to run on 1.26.

People just want 1.26 because it is what they are told to want, because the people who really know what's going on can put viruses in 1.26 maps and they want to keep things that way.

Edit:

For a better example of how this project was supposed to look ingame:
 
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It is only true that the original game was removed if you make the arbitrary distinction that Reforged on classic mode is not the original game. The line is blurred.
The offline single player like we had it before is unavailable. Constant internet access required. The old menu is unavailable. Custom games and custom campaigns are gone. Switching between RoC and TFT is gone. Essentially, only the multiplayer lobby and main campaign are there. Talking about campaign, certain aspects are lost (e.g. Dryad's "I am so wasted" line), the cut-scene dialogs seem to be off, as well, with (possibly) new voice actors, music and other sounds seemingly gone (or not working), and other things. Graphics are also altered - shadows are seemingly restricted to Reforged setting (wtf?), colors are messed up, etc. And all of this is without even mentioning numerous performance issues and bugs.

The simple fact remains, that this is NOT the old client. This is the Reforged client, only it can be played with... somewhat old graphics. But it's not the old client anymore.

I can give an example of how the line is blurred, too.
Personally, I consider it normal that some maps may be malfunctioning when transitioning from one patch to another. That is one of the few things I do not blame Blizz for. Taking the original client from people is a different matter altogether tho...

P.S. to answer your question, I have versions 1.27b and 1.30.4 saved as backup, and can switch between them. I like the new things they added post patch 1.29 (new functions, raised editor limits, widescreen support, etc.), but at the same time, patches 1.27 and, indeed 1.26 work better for most mods out there, as well as multiplayer, and even things like WEX are working for those versions, giving Function Highlighting, among other great things. The real problems began with Reforged though. When these patches no longer mattered, for the old client was gone.

@Anaxie
Fair enough, if you think so. I disagree though. For me, those graphics look amazing. That's what I expected from Reforged. Even if Blizz could not have made the entire game like that, which is debatable, they could have at least used a new engine to bring new, more detailed terrain, better lighting, shadows, more realistic trees, possibly even wind animations on grass and trees. Essentially giving us what we saw in 2018 demo, or, possibly, even something better.
 
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When these patches no longer mattered, for the old client was gone.

I don't fully understand what you mean to say with this sentence. However, I believe that you haven't quite understood the point I wanted to make. I am claiming that the distinction between 1.27 and 1.30 is as arbitrary as the distinction between 1.30 and 1.32.
You appear to be claiming (and correct me if I am wrong) that 1.27 and 1.30 are "accepted" but 1.32 is "not accepted" as being the old client. Who decides if they are or are not the old client? Why was it OK for Blizzard to make a Patch from 1.27 to 1.30, but not from 1.30 to 1.32?

Taking the original client from people is a different matter altogether tho...
This is the kind of thinking I'm referring to. In the mind of Classic Games, 1.32 is just another patch on top of 1.31. How do you define this as incorrect?

I'm not asking because there's no answer, but rather because I think whatever distinction you're making in your mind that Blizzard employees did not make is the distinction that is at the heart of why people got upset. If we wanted to make people happy again, we need to convince Blizzard to create something that falls on the other side of the distinction. Something that is "accepted" alongside 1.27 and 1.30.
 
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The offline single player like we had it before is unavailable. Constant internet access required. The old menu is unavailable. Custom games and custom campaigns are gone. Switching between RoC and TFT is gone. Essentially, only the multiplayer lobby and main campaign are there. Talking about campaign, certain aspects are lost (e.g. Dryad's "I am so wasted" line), the cut-scene dialogs seem to be off, as well, with (possibly) new voice actors, music and other sounds seemingly gone (or not working), and other things. Graphics are also altered - shadows are seemingly restricted to Reforged setting (wtf?), colors are messed up, etc. And all of this is without even mentioning numerous performance issues and bugs.

The simple fact remains, that this is NOT the old client. This is the Reforged client, only it can be played with... somewhat old graphics. But it's not the old client anymore.


Personally, I consider it normal that some maps may be malfunctioning when transitioning from one patch to another. That is one of the few things I do not blame Blizz for. Taking the original client from people is a different matter altogether tho...

P.S. to answer your question, I have versions 1.27b and 1.30.4 saved as backup, and can switch between them. I like the new things they added post patch 1.29 (new functions, raised editor limits, widescreen support, etc.), but at the same time, patches 1.27 and, indeed 1.26 work better for most mods out there, as well as multiplayer, and even things like WEX are working for those versions, giving Function Highlighting, among other great things. The real problems began with Reforged though. When these patches no longer mattered, for the old client was gone.

@Anaxie
Fair enough, if you think so. I disagree though. For me, those graphics look amazing. That's what I expected from Reforged. Even if Blizz could not have made the entire game like that, which is debatable, they could have at least used a new engine to bring new, more detailed terrain, better lighting, shadows, more realistic trees, possibly even wind animations on grass and trees. Essentially giving us what we saw in 2018 demo, or, possibly, even something better.

There is a big problem though.

This is AN RTS not an RPG
 
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I am claiming that the distinction between 1.27 and 1.30 is as arbitrary as the distinction between 1.30 and 1.32.
Who decides if they are or are not the old client? Why was it OK for Blizzard to make a Patch from 1.27 to 1.30, but not from 1.30 to 1.32?
It is not that I "don't accept", as you keep saying, but that Reforged client is literally a different client. The "remastered" version of the game. One that took away a lot of stuff the older ones had, which I laid out in the first paragraph of my previous post, already:

The offline single player like we had it before is unavailable. Constant internet access required. The old menu is unavailable. Custom games and custom campaigns are gone. Switching between RoC and TFT is gone. Essentially, only the multiplayer lobby and main campaign are there. Talking about campaign, certain aspects are lost (e.g. Dryad's "I am so wasted" line), the cut-scene dialogs seem to be off, as well, with (possibly) new voice actors, music and other sounds seemingly gone (or not working), and other things. Graphics are also altered - shadows are seemingly restricted to Reforged setting (wtf?), colors are messed up, etc. And all of this is without even mentioning numerous performance issues and bugs.

There is no such thing as a client being "accepted", or not, as the old one. There is the old client (patches leading up to Reforged), and there's the new one (Reforged). All the older patches were merely adding tweaks to the same game here, and there, but Reforged was a full "remake".

[...] heart of why people got upset.
People got rightfully upset because Blizzard removed the Warcraft 3 game as they knew it, and replaced it with Reforged.
 
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It makes me sick that at an earlier point I was also playing the "New-Update-Betas" (Public Test Servers) to see how it performs 'n stuff and with reforged you just see that it was a hollow and void PR-thingy that it was even there. It just didn't matter.

anway
@Amigoltu I'm currently using 1.29 (widescreen) without online requirement. I believe you when you say that there is maps that work better under 1.26 / 1.27 , in fact, I stuck to 1.26.xxxxxxx for over 5 years, until I decided to go updated, I think at 1.28 (If I recall 1.26 was the last big patch before WC3 was not updated anymore, right?). So - I know this is Off Topic, I apologize, but among the early versions, which one do you recommend for most Campaign/RPG/Alternative-Maps to be playable?

Oh, and I don't necessarily need a Re-Port to Unreal, but I wouldn't have minded it much. I would've understood their need to go to an updated engine, especially 5 Windows-systems later, and therefor ditching compatibility of "Classic" (this whole rethoric stinks of people who to this day genuinly believe that WoW was a good game. To each their own).

What it would've led to is the older "Elite" of Classic-WC3 Modding sticking to Classic, maybe for the lack of Internet-access requirement, maybe for the old artstyle, maybe out of disinterest in learning the newer engines quirks, with some definetly picking up the task and treading the waters of how to bring "My Awesome RPG-Map" to the newer engine.

While an actually refreshed and (ported to Unreal for example) new-era looking WC3 would've drawn the attention of younger modders and modders of different games, some of which then might not even have heard of where it all came from, or how long WC3 modding has been a thing, so "fresh blood". They would've had a different approach, don't ask me how not-transpired shit would look like, and there would've been a different community with a different core and lead in a WC3 ReMade.

Then those 2 communities obviously would've ended up kongregating and who knows where it might've gone from there. In fact, the "newer" people who would be figuring out the new "Unreal Engine Based" map Editor could probably then provide insight and help to the "oldies" as to how to port their Classic map to it.

The ultimate result of it all would be: New maps with New Visions on a New Enging, Old maps working as intended with no need to constantly update (which is one of blizzards biggest crimes in my opinion, never taking the care to make sure that people can go and work on newer or other stuff and instead need to go back to their old stuff, again and again , to change triggers and pathings and codings, that should only ever have happened in a proper Remake) This shit would've been alright in an 0.7 release of an Open Source Game, but not with a already-20-years-finished 1.26 Warcraft 3.

But then again, if they can make a rexxar campaign (way to late) to release the last 2 parts of it (way to late) and still make a World of Warcraft (look at them run o.o ) they may as well by now have made Warcraft 4.... or 5 for that matter.

As a finish, here is my Conspiracy-theory on why reforged actually sucks so bad:
"Maybe if we make sure people can not properly port their older stuff to the new engine and shit and also make sure that the game runs like a car with bricks where the wheels should be, the modding community will make our WC3 reforged a better game for FREE and therefor we'll make moneys with no need to employ an experienced developement staff. Tell them that it will work however! Then we can say that we really, really tried. Oh and just in case this doesn't work out, make sure we charge the people who already bought (partly multiple times) Warcraft 3 and make them pay for reforged as well. At least we'll have that money"

Greetz

Krolan
 
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Are these videos of the Reforged client, or videos of the Classic client?
I assume you will claim they are Reforged, but they are not. That is the old client menu. Both of those clips were uploaded before the Reforged client was even out, too. (Officially released 2020.01.28, though wasn't available till the next day, at least for me.)

This is the Reforged menu:

This menu is actually a chromium web app, as shown down here:
Colin Cornaby on Twitter

I don't know if you are purposefully being disingenuous here, but that's what it looks like. Unless, of course, my initial assumption is wrong, in which case I apologise for jumping to conclusions.
 

~El

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Looks to me like the reforged beta client. I can see the HD textures and the models.

This is such a silly distinction to make. Most of the code is still the same. Under the hood 1.32 is just another (rather major) patch. It's decidedly not a "different client" because most of it is still the same.
 
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Looks to me like the reforged beta client. I can see the HD textures and the models.

This is such a silly distinction to make. Most of the code is still the same. Under the hood 1.32 is just another (rather major) patch. It's decidedly not a "different client" because most of it is still the same.
What he showed in the video indeed not a different client. It's the old one. The video was uploaded on YT before Reforged was out, and before even the official Beta was released (which was November of 2019).
Which is what I pointed out. However, the actual Reforged client I showed in the video of my previous post IS a completely different client. Not only it's code is not the same - it's another fucking language altogether. The entire main menu is a web app.

Arguing about Reforged, while showing pre-official-beta client, is making both of you look disingenuous in this conversation. Of course that client looks like old one. Because it is. Now compare the old client to the actual Reforged client. It's like night and day.
 

~El

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Well, they changed the main menu. Does that suddenly make it an entirely different client? Despite the fact that:

- 1.32 can still parse and execute JASS code (functionality from 2002)
- 1.32 can still run old maps
- 1.32 can still render using the old renderer (which, if you want to get pedantic, started getting reworked way before reforged got released, when it was moved to DX11)
- 1.32 still supports old command-line arguments like `-loadfile`, `-windowmode`, etc.
- 1.32 still has all the old limitations of the WC3 engine that weren't rectified
- 1.32 still has a lot of the bugs from 1.31 and before...
- and so on...

I dunno mate, seems like we're still stuck with the old for the most part. Yeah the UI got changed and there's now a new renderer, but most of the stuff is still the same. I'm still not convinced that it's a different client.
 
The videos that I linked, which were posted one day before Reforged Beta released, were made by getting a totally new computer only for this project and then on this separate computer (for security reasons) installing Reforged Beta from Blizzard then running a program, and I don't know what it does, so that when Reforged opened up to the doors and the web UI menu, then this EXE took over Reforged and ate the web UI menu and launched it into the menu shown in the video.
I know nothing of how it was possible. It might still be possible on Reforged.

To me, the fact that the code for that old menu exists in the game highlights how it was one continuous codebase with spaghetti code where they tacked on the web UI but didn't make a totally new UI and didn't make a totally new codebase.
 
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@mori
So what if it can run jass and, to an extent, run older maps? It still lost most of the functionality of the game, as I mentioned twice before:
The offline single player like we had it before is unavailable. Constant internet access required. The old menu is unavailable. Custom games and custom campaigns are gone. Switching between RoC and TFT is gone. Essentially, only the multiplayer lobby and main campaign are there. Talking about campaign, certain aspects are lost (e.g. Dryad's "I am so wasted" line), the cut-scene dialogs seem to be off, as well, with (possibly) new voice actors, music and other sounds seemingly gone (or not working), and other things. Graphics are also altered - shadows are seemingly restricted to Reforged setting (wtf?), colors are messed up, etc. And all of this is without even mentioning numerous performance issues and bugs.
It's no longer the same game. Warcraft 3 as we knew it is gone, replaced with this poorly optimized and buggy mess, that looks and runs worse than the 2002 original. And it has only online lobby and main campaign.

@Retera
It was a very early stage of beta, probably a bug. You could try it again, and I would applaud you if you succeeded, but I highly doubt it would work.
 
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@mori
So what if it can run jass and, to an extent, run older maps? It still lost most of the functionality of the game, as I mentioned twice before:

It's no longer the same game. Warcraft 3 as we knew it is gone, replaced with this poorly optimized and buggy mess, that looks and runs worse than the 2002 original. And it has only online lobby and main campaign.

@Retera
It was a very early stage of beta, probably a bug. You could try it again, and I would applaud you if you succeeded, but I highly doubt it would work.


Its only a matter of time before some one makes a hack pack to enable single player, or blizz themselves do it... i feel like it was quite anal to remove a huge part of WC3 like that...
 
to enable single player

Obviously I agree it's not the same, but one time I unplugged my internet and then clicked "Play Offline" on Reforged. With the internet unplugged, I was able to click the "Custom Games" button and create a game.
I'm not sure what "create a game" means anymore since the internet was unplugged.
But I pressed play and I was able to play this thing offline. So it is like Confusing Single Player.

But it makes sense to me that you are asking for the Straightforward Single Player button.
 
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Obviously I agree it's not the same, but one time I unplugged my internet and then clicked "Play Offline" on Reforged. With the internet unplugged, I was able to click the "Custom Games" button and create a game.
I'm not sure what "create a game" means anymore since the internet was unplugged.
But I pressed play and I was able to play this thing offline. So it is like Confusing Single Player.

But it makes sense to me that you are asking for the Straightforward Single Player button.


Does that work well? i was going to try it but never did I would like a Single player button just for the idea to have one there.... same with a damn exit button... i hate hitting the menu to have to click exit.
 
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Does that work well? i was going to try it but never did I would like a Single player button just for the idea to have one there.... same with a damn exit button... i hate hitting the menu to have to click exit.
Reforged allows you to play against bots offline - like Dota 2. And main campaign, as far as I know. Take in mind though, that playing against bots in a multiplayer lobby is not like old Custom Game Skirmish - there's no cheats, there's no save/load function.
 
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Yeah, they should have made a new engine to support Warcraft 3 stuff. But they didn't. Why? Re-writing codes for all stuff specifications makes a new engine support to Warcraft. They just didn't get enough resources put into Warcraft 3 Reforged.
 
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