Warcraft III - Patch 1.28.1

[Kam]

It would be far better for everyone involved to view this as an open beta. That's what it means to nearly completely remake a game after 15 years. The order ID issue was caused by a change to a completely unrelated part of the engine, no one saw it. There will be more issues, that is unavoidable within reason. If Blizzard hired 100 people to comb over Wc3 every day then sure, but that's not realistic.

You can curse Blizzard, or you can help. Your choice.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Now that you mention it, an actual open beta would be nice. Wasn't there a Westfall gateway back in the day for exactly that?

 

[Hotwer]

It would be far better for everyone involved to view this as an open beta. That's what it means to nearly completely remake a game after 15 years. The order ID issue was caused by a change to a completely unrelated part of the engine, no one saw it. There will be more issues, that is unavoidable within reason. If Blizzard hired 100 people to comb over Wc3 every day then sure, but that's not realistic.

You can curse Blizzard, or you can help. Your choice.

That surely is another way to view this, but that's not clear enough.

At least what I'm expecting is that Blizzard be more clear in what they're trying to achieve. By now the only thing they did was: "We're going to update the games, yay, be happy as well.". Breaks things and say that "it's unnavoidable, we're sorry.". Everyone gets pissed and they know jackshit of what is Blizzard flight plan with Warcraft 3.

 

[Kam]

That surely is another way to view this, but that's not clear enough.

At least what I'm expecting is that Blizzard be more clear in what they're trying to achieve. By now the only thing they did was: "We're going to update the games, yay, be happy as well.". Breaks things and say that "it's unnavoidable, we're sorry.". Everyone gets pissed and they know jackshit of what is Blizzard flight plan with Warcraft 3.

We have covered this before. For a long term view you can see our original document which Blizzard is using: The Future of Warcraft

Right now is the backend work phase to prepare the game for:

-BNET 2.0 integration
-Summer ladder/balance update. As far as balance I speak to Matt Morris often about it, there are going to be some significant changes.

You're only going to frustrate yourself if you assume there won't be more issues.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Those few programmers people are in constant contact with Blizzard. @MindWorX, @PurgeandFire, and @TriggerHappy are a part of the extended team. MindWorX having access to these things have even helped him develop WEX in various cases. If anyone of them want to elaborate more on it, it's up to them.

I am not though, I just chat with Brad when he enters chat early in the morning. (once)

You can't assume that everything is an easy fix.

Judging from what former patchers as well as the current ones say, the Warcraft III source code is like hell. If there are guidelines how to make maintainable software, Warcraft III is more towards the opposite of those and hence why patches have such big problems. Make one change to GUI to add an actions for Regions and suddenly the editor crashes because you meant to say "rect" and not "region". Make one change to the options and suddenly Polish locale installs break because the change did not propagate properly. Software development ends up like this, as seen by many open source projects.

Unlike the team that created Warcraft III, they are just here to maintain it so almost certainly considerably smaller. They do not have the man power to make huge changes in a few days.

 

[StoPCampinGn00b]

I am not though, I just chat with Brad when he enters chat early in the morning. (once)


Judging from what former patchers as well as the current ones say, the Warcraft III source code is like hell. If there are guidelines how to make maintainable software, Warcraft III is more towards the opposite of those and hence why patches have such big problems. Make one change to GUI to add an actions for Regions and suddenly the editor crashes because you meant to say "rect" and not "region". Make one change to the options and suddenly Polish locale installs break because the change did not propagate properly. Software development ends up like this, as seen by many open source projects.

Exactly.

Unlike the team that created Warcraft III, they are just here to maintain it

Not exactly

That surely is another way to view this, but that's not clear enough.

At least what I'm expecting is that Blizzard be more clear in what they're trying to achieve. By now the only thing they did was: "We're going to update the games, yay, be happy as well.". Breaks things and say that "it's unnavoidable, we're sorry.". Everyone gets pissed and they know jackshit of what is Blizzard flight plan with Warcraft 3.

Adding onto Kam's post about The Future of Warcraft

Job Openings - Blizzard Careers
Their classic game job listings are always opening and closing. Meaning people are being hired. But that's not what I'm pointing out. Classic game job listings always have this quote up top:

Compelling stories. Intense multiplayer. Endless replayability. Qualities that made StarCraft, Warcraft III, and Diablo II the titans of their day. Evolving operating systems, hardware, and online services have made them more difficult to be experienced by their loyal followers or reaching a new generation.

We’re restoring them to glory, and we need your engineering talents, your passion, and your ability to get tough jobs done.

Followed by the objectives of each job positions. I saw tons of engineering jobs, but there were anti-cheat, graphic UI, and others as well before they seem to have been full filled.

More recently, if you take a look of what's happening with Starcraft, it's not too hard to figure what could come after Starcraft Remastered. Why only remaster one classic game, when WC3 and D2, are worked on as well? Blizzard's classic team has publicly expressed that they are "Hyper-focused on the Remastered of Starcraft at the moment" which could imply that they have the ability to shift the remaster crew over to Warcraft 3. In the mean time, WC3 is being patched.

"Again once we've got this thing (Starcraft Remastered) shipped and in the state that we want it to, we'll start looking at the other games (Warcraft 3 and Diablo 2), so nothing official to say today. So uh, nothing official to say today" *nervously smiles*

Does this also imply that creating WC3:R depends on the amount of success of SC:R? It could, it could not. Anyway, I hope this answers your question to the best I could. Some parts could seem a bit vague, but I tried to be as informative as possible :]

 

[puffdragon]

@Kam Betas have separate clients. Nobody would complain if they didnt have to drop everything they are doing just to make their maps working again w/o any info of what it broke it at the first place cause there are no changelogs.

Am all for change and improvement, but you need to understand that while ppl whine most often with no reason, this is not one of those times.

They waste days after each frequent micro patch to find what caused the map to break down, if they find it (I still havent found why setunitvertexcolor is not working anymore when it is detected as a replay, used to work 10/10 at 1.27) and when they do find it waste days to fix stuff that were working fine.

 

[Dr Super Good]

They waste days after each frequent micro patch to find what caused the map to break down, if they find it (I still havent found why setunitvertexcolor is not working anymore when it is detected as a replay, used to work 10/10 at 1.27) and when they do find it waste days to fix stuff that were working fine.

This is what happens when you inherit a large program.

 

[puffdragon]

This is what happens when you inherit a large program.

I don't see how that could prevent someone to document the changes he made to say the least

 

[Dr Super Good]

I don't see how that could prevent someone to document the changes he made to say the least

You are paid to make changes, not paid to make a list of all changes you made.

Most are internal so should be invisible to the user. The bugs we got were unintentional results of these internal changes.

 

[puffdragon]

You are paid to make changes, not paid to make a list of all changes you made.

Most are internal so should be invisible to the user. The bugs we got were unintentional results of these internal changes.

... ok

 

[Kam]

At this point there's isn't much need for a change log as nearly all of the work is engine related. Right now the Classic division is mostly focused on SC with a few people dedicated to Wc3.

I wish things were moving faster, that there was more documentation, and more "road map". Wc3 was an absolute mess, with little to no internal code documentation. Perhaps you can imagine inheriting a 15 year old game with no documentation and then be tasked to make it work with BNET 2.0 and Windows 10. Brad is in our Discord so I see he is working at least 12 hours a day on this, Sundays too. There is obviously a lot of work to be done.

I'll remind everyone that no one has done this before, that I know of at least. I am willing to give them the benefit and continue to do what I am able to.

What can you do?

-When you encounter a problem document it to the fullest extent you can.
-Re-create the issue to verify how it occurs.
-Submit the report to myself, or Purge.
-We will make sure it gets to the correct person.

An example of this process:
Some of you may have seen the latest match with Fly100% and WFZ:

It highlights a lot of issues with Orc racial balance right now. I forwarded that link on and am in the process of gathering community feedback on Orc balance and discussing it with the person responsible for the upcoming summer balance patch. This is the kind of connection we as a community have. Don't squander it.

 

[Tal'Rarity]

It was already working with windows 10 before the problem patches.

 

[Kyrbi0]

At this point there's isn't much need for a change log as nearly all of the work is engine related....

I wish things were moving faster, that there was more documentation, and more "road map"...

I have oodles of patience for the process, and am not so much concerned about a "road map" (I mean, it'd be nice, but the following is more important (and anyway, if you guys are to believed, the 'road map' consists in large measure of the document in the linked "Future of Warcraft" thread)).

But I guess I disagree that there "isn't much need", especially when the stated reason is "all of the work is engine-related". As has been seen in recent weeks/months, those kind of nitty-gritty base-level engine changes have had a terrific impact, and knowing what exactly was changed would've helped us overcome/work-around it, methinks.

I suppose it begs the question: "is there a reason not to provide it?" Would it reveal trade secrets or something? And even this begs it's own assumption: "do they have it?" Are they keeping track, day to day, of the changes that are made? Like, the literal changes to the code, as well as the stated objectives?

IF there exists such a list (and it's hard to imagine a group of programmers on a project of this scale not keeping track somehow), and IF it doesn't involve some kind of negative repercussions (and "too complicated" doesn't count; that's what we're all about here)... Then why not throw us a bone (I ask of them, not so much you)?

...

I suppose the hardest part is the silence. We may have felt 'ignored' when it came to this or that, but many times/10 we have (eventually) received a response of some kind. "Game's not patching" -- "try X". "Can't find my files!" -- "Oh we moved those, check here". "Order IDs are messed up!!" -- "Sorry, mistake. Will fix in next patch".
But when it comes to our request for more clear, straightforward information about what was changed, something which (ostensibly, see above) should be handy... Nothing?

 

[Dr Super Good]

It was already working with windows 10 before the problem patches.

No it was not. D3D8 performance was rock bottom with unstable and inconsistent frame rates. OpenGL performance was fine but OpenGL itself is bugged with incorrect UV wraps for text.

But when it comes to our request for more clear, straightforward information about what was changed, something which (ostensibly, see above) should be handy... Nothing?

People often forget what was changed. Look at most open source projects. Only way to find what was changed is to browse through the 1,000+ commits since last release.

 

[Kyrbi0]

People often forget what was changed. Look at most open source projects. Only way to find what was changed is to browse through the 1,000+ commits since last release.

If we're talking about creating a more comprehensive patch list post hoc, then I'm with you. Heck, I can barely remember what I had for dinner yesterday.

But I'm talking more about one made as the issues are being worked on. Like, Mr. Programmer A is working on a certain problem, and when he solves it, writing "Fixed Problem A by changing Data Field X and migrating Data Handling to Control Structure K".

Is that not something people do? Or that these guys are doing? You mentioned commits; if they are using some kind of distributed file control system like Github or whatever, then doesn't every commit have even a little comment about what it's doing?

It'd be wonderful to have a fancy, well-written list, too... But I'm saying we'd settle for a straight copy/paste of a unformatted text log, a stream, a .txt from a Github comment trawl... Etc.

Does such a thing exist? And if so,
Can it be sent to us the modders (and if not, why not)?

 

[Dr Super Good]

But I'm talking more about one made as the issues are being worked on. Like, Mr. Programmer A is working on a certain problem, and when he solves it, writing "Fixed Problem A by changing Data Field X and migrating Data Handling to Control Structure K".

One should do that. Too bad in reality no one does. Hence why open source change logs miss most of the changes.

if they are using some kind of distributed file control system like Github or whatever, then doesn't every commit have even a little comment about what it's doing?

Yes but then you are paying someone to look through commits to make the change logs. Change logs are not really considered deliverables and should only show what directly effects the user. Things like "reduced coupling in blp reader code" is meaningless to a user but will be in the commits. Also commit messages might not be suitable for public release such as "fixed joe's drunk mistake".

 

[Kyrbi0]

One should do that. Too bad in reality no one does. Hence why open source change logs miss most of the changes.

And maybe that's the case. So let's hear that. "Hey, sorry guys, we simply don't have a more detailed change log".

Yes but then you are paying someone to look through commits to make the change logs. Change logs are not really considered deliverables and should only show what directly effects the user. Things like "reduced coupling in blp reader code" is meaningless to a user but will be in the commits. Also commit messages might not be suitable for public release such as "fixed joe's drunk mistake".

Well, I don't know about that (was hoping there was some automated process, or that it was just a part of standard job-day (not necessarily a separate employee gathering all this stuff up)).

Meaningless to users, perhaps, but what about modders? Isn't that the point?

And again, I'm waiting to hear that. "Hey guys, can't release the change log because it's too personal/discloses private info/would reveal trade secrets/etc". But nothing?

 

[Kaijyuu]

Blizz has to have dedicated employees for patch notes of WoW. It's no small task to gather and compile that information. They have version control history (hopefully... some past experience with WoW makes me doubt their version control competence), but that's too nitty gritty and bulky to just throw at players.

I'd certainly like better patch notes but that's a non-trivial increase in workload.


(side note: people are working on this overtime? That might explain some of the bugs; modern software engineering practices heavily discourage overtime since it has so little return (sometimes even negative) for a lot of investment)

 

[LordDz]

Almost all game developers use crunch / overtime.

 

[Kaijyuu]

Depends where you work. And yeah I realize game development has a few different requirements than other forms of software engineering, like much tighter schedules generally. I don't think this particular project has a tight schedule though.

And game devs are in fact getting with the times from what I've heard. There's loads and loads and loads of evidence that overtime work is not helping them make better products, just better at getting out the door for christmas/whatever.

 

[Kam]

Off topic, but eh:
I too was taught the evils of overtime, but reality (read: clients) dictate everything be done as fast as possible.

I work at a commercial architecture firm designing buildings you all probably use. Several weeks ago our interiors person worked over 90 hours. I typically work at least 8 hours overtime a week. On deadlines I'll work 24 hours in two days in Revit and AutoCAD. Things definitely blur together. My change log is a pile of redlined printouts. It is what it is.

 

[PRO3]

Just to clarify i have a fairly fresh Windows with all the latest drivers and updates. I have also reinstalled WC3 after the latest patch. I have also tried different compatibility settings.

Issues i have encountered so far:
- Even though i have all kinds of DirectX versions installed i got an error and thus game did not launch. Fixed it by changing:

Spoiler

"Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Blizzard Entertainment\Warcraft III\Video\adapter" from 1 to 0

- The "Test Map" button in WorldEdit launches the game but it is only a black screen with the mouse.

For me the installation seemed to go smoothly though.

 

[Dr Super Good]

- Even though i have all kinds of DirectX versions installed i got an error and thus game did not launch. Fixed it by changing:

You have multiple video cards?

- The "Test Map" button in WorldEdit launches the game but it is only a black screen with the mouse.

Fixed next patch. Coming soonTM.

 

[PRO3]

You have multiple video cards?


Fixed next patch. Coming soonTM.

1: No, I have Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 with the latest driver. (Unless they have updated it the past week)
2: Great !

Also should i post any bugs i encounter here? I noticed some weird shit in Trigger Editor.

 

[Dr Super Good]

1: No, I have Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 with the latest driver. (Unless they have updated it the past week)

Strange that it defaulted to adapter 1... When I installed WC3 back on Windows Vista (this is an old PC...) it was set to 0.

Also should i post any bugs i encounter here? I noticed some weird shit in Trigger Editor.

It is good to get them out in the open. However I think there are dedicated bug report threads. You could always report it as a separate thread as well.

 

[PRO3]

Strange that it defaulted to adapter 1... When I installed WC3 back on Windows Vista (this is an old PC...) it was set to 0.


It is good to get them out in the open. However I think there are dedicated bug report threads. You could always report it as a separate thread as well.

Come to think of it, the CPU's internal graphics HD 4000 is on, perhaps that's the reason.
I'll create another thread for the WE bug, probably for the best.

 

[Toxiii]

At this point there's isn't much need for a change log as nearly all of the work is engine related. Right now the Classic division is mostly focused on SC with a few people dedicated to Wc3.

I wish things were moving faster, that there was more documentation, and more "road map". Wc3 was an absolute mess, with little to no internal code documentation. Perhaps you can imagine inheriting a 15 year old game with no documentation and then be tasked to make it work with BNET 2.0 and Windows 10. Brad is in our Discord so I see he is working at least 12 hours a day on this, Sundays too. There is obviously a lot of work to be done.

I'll remind everyone that no one has done this before, that I know of at least. I am willing to give them the benefit and continue to do what I am able to.

What can you do?

-When you encounter a problem document it to the fullest extent you can.
-Re-create the issue to verify how it occurs.
-Submit the report to myself, or Purge.
-We will make sure it gets to the correct person.

An example of this process:
Some of you may have seen the latest match with Fly100% and WFZ:

It highlights a lot of issues with Orc racial balance right now. I forwarded that link on and am in the process of gathering community feedback on Orc balance and discussing it with the person responsible for the upcoming summer balance patch. This is the kind of connection we as a community have. Don't squander it.

Sorry if I come off as rude, but this comment alone made me want to create an account and answer you. Please know that I have no stakes in this - I am a RoC player and don't play either ORC or UD in TFT, but basing your report on this single game to say ORC is somehow imbalanced is insanely short-sighted and frankly stupid. At least look at how the UD player was dominating the game and put himself in an unlosable position until he f'ed up really badly (losing hero with pact + invul).

Even towards the end of that game, when he revives all his heroes, he makes the incredibly stupid mistake of rushing everything he has to kill the orc buildings - there was no reason, as ORC was not gathering gold nor could ever start mining again. Instead, he just had to run his 3 heroes to his main, and with the help of the mana aura and haunted ground, he could at least hit 100% hp/mana before engaging the ORC. If anything, this game showed that brilliance aura as an item is insanely overpowered, and it was in the undead's hands too...

I think that you should not take it upon yourself to somehow ask for balance changes based on games you've seen casted by Neo (no offense to him, but his game knowledge and understanding is way below the average w3a player). As a moderator, your role should be to redirect the people on the Blizzard side to the right people on the community side, who have a good understanding of the game (such as Foggy, Happy, Worker, Hawk, Cechi to name a few european ones).

Nothing personal, thanks for reading.

 

[LordDz]

Toxiii, regardles of the video of the game, it is widely known that the orc race is a bit OP considering their Blademaster has almost infinite stealth at the early levels and can creep still and item steal very easily.

 

[Kam]

Welcome to the community @Toxiii

We, myself and Blizzard, are aware of the numerous mistakes made in that game. If he had gone for Aboms instead of Destroyers it would likely have been game.

Orc is balanced around having BM. Both the original game balance designer whom I often speak with as well as the pro players he speaks with concur on this issue. Take BM away, Orc is crippled. UD has it's own issues.

 

[chusrubi2]

Welcome to the community @Toxiii

We, myself and Blizzard, are aware of the numerous mistakes made in that game. If he had gone for Aboms instead of Destroyers it would likely have been game.

Orc is balanced around having BM. Both the original game balance designer whom I often speak with as well as the pro players he speaks with concur on this issue. Take BM away, Orc is crippled. UD has it's own issues.

No. There was no need of that. It's just like Toxi said, he just had to play more defensive, he had done enough aggressive playstyle making the orc exhaust and allowing himself to expand at right.

It was then, a matter of playing with time and economies. Game was 100% won.

 

[Rui]

And maybe that's the case. So let's hear that. "Hey, sorry guys, we simply don't have a more detailed change log".

An issue of communication, just like I said earlier.

The destructive criticism going on is indeed excessive. Delving through what seems to be poorly structured and documented code in a huge project is hell. I don't envy whoever has to do it. Have some compassion.

 

[Kaijyuu]

I think a lot of the problems would be alleviated if the changes were put out as a beta first instead of interrupting everyone's playing of the game. There are lots of dedicated players around the world using every locale and system imaginable that would be happy to give feedback, and there are lots of people who just want to play legion td or whatever. Separate them. Bring back the Westfall gateway.

 

[Fingolfin]

They updated the format of crash reports!!!!!!!!!

Now it contains ZERO useful information for map developers! So exciting.

Man, i just checked out a new crash log, and i get what you're saying... they are just absolute gibberish now. At least we still get to know what kind of error it was, although ACCESS VIOLATION is rather broad.

What would be cool is if they made it so that the JASS interpreter kept a cyclic buffer of the row indices of the last few lines it executed, so that you could look up the last statements and print them in plain text inside the crash dump.

 

[Dr Super Good]

although ACCESS VIOLATION is rather broad

No it is not... It means that a virtual memory address was read/set that did not have the appropriate permission set, eg as part of an unallocated address range, null pointer dereference or writing to the ROM program code part of the application

What would be cool is if they made it so that the JASS interpreter kept a cyclic buffer of the row indices of the last few lines it executed, so that you could look up the last statements and print them in plain text inside the crash dump.

Doubt it tracks lines as it is. Would require a lot of programming to implement the required symbol table feature and that will also slow down map loading and prevent any option of optimization.

 

[neven1]

I wonder how much of useful thing(s) are going to come out from these new patches for Wacraft 3 and the community itself.

 

[Fingolfin]

No it is not... It means that a virtual memory address was read/set that did not have the appropriate permission set, eg as part of an unallocated address range, null pointer dereference or writing to the ROM program code part of the application.

Like I said... Quite broad. At least if you have hundreds of lines of script in your map.

 

[A]mun]

Well, here to report that the "cannot load map data" bug can occur, even if saving the map in the new correct folder \Documents\Warcraft III\Maps\Test ...
Now i'm at a complete loss, no map testing whatsoever anymore. Any ideas?

 

[Kam]

Try deleting the maps folder in your wc3 install folder.

 

[A]mun]

It looks like wc3 suddenly tries to use the game folder again for testing maps, instead of documents.
Registry editing of "Test Map - Copy Location" didn't help.

Mysterious.

Nevermind, it was a faulty trigger, missing unitgroup variable after trigger merge.

 

[Apheraz Lucent]

Patch 1.28.2 is live. This patch is focused on more bug fixes for live issues.

Bug Fixes

• Wetlands map added back to the map pool data
• Raise Dead ability no longer desyncs players in a game between Windows and OSX
• WorldEdit’s Test Map function will write unsaved maps to %APPDATA%\Temp
• Aspect ratio checkbox available in Polish again
• Fixed a crash on Mac when displaying the CD Key dialog in the Russian, Polish, Korean, Traditional Chinese, or Simplified Chinese

Known Issues

• If the error, “Something went wrong...” while patching occurs, run “Warcraft III Launcher.exe” within the installation directory to complete the update
• During XP installation, if the error, “Cannot validate version” occurs, run “Warcraft III Launcher.exe” within the installation directory to complete the update
• Tabbing out of the game doesn’t mute game sounds
• The Mac client is having some problems playing audio files that will be addressed in a future patch

The known sound bugs will require a considerable amount of work to correct; they will be fixed in a future patch, but we wanted to address that we were aware.

Cheers,
Classic Games

~As expected, fixes now come at a faster pace. What the future may bring in next patches is yet to be seen, but there's rumors of updates on ladder map pool, which I can't confirm yet. Nonetheless, there's more to come from where this one came from.

 

[Kyrbi0]

Woo!

 

[A]mun]

Hm surprisingly quick this time, even if the patch is small.

 

[M1ndK1ller]

1.28.2 seems to have broken the game for me once again, 2 fresh installs, I'm still stuck at 64% patching for 2 hours, same for 2 of my other mates.

Logfile is saying this:
[I 2017-05-10 18:37:12.0316] Changing Request for handle 01AA4438 to http://eu.patch.battle.net:1119/hero/blobs?nocache=199534199 [I 2017-05-10 18:37:12.0320] Proxies resolved for eu.patch.battle.net:1119: [I 2017-05-10 18:37:25.0003] Proxies resolved for us.patch.battle.net:1119: [W 2017-05-10 18:38:00.0450] CurlError 7 from "http://eu.patch.battle.net:1119/s2/blobs?nocache=1094891847" with message "Failed to connect to eu.patch.battle.net port 1119: Timed out

 

[Dr Super Good]

[I 2017-05-10 18:37:12.0316] Changing Request for handle 01AA4438 to http://eu.patch.battle.net:1119/hero/blobs?nocache=199534199 [I 2017-05-10 18:37:12.0320] Proxies resolved for eu.patch.battle.net:1119: [I 2017-05-10 18:37:25.0003] Proxies resolved for us.patch.battle.net:1119: [W 2017-05-10 18:38:00.0450] CurlError 7 from "http://eu.patch.battle.net:1119/s2/blobs?nocache=1094891847" with message "Failed to connect to eu.patch.battle.net port 1119: Timed out

You cannot connect to battlenet to download the patch. Try logging into the US servers (eg Azeroth) and downloading from the USA.