Crafting Azeroth

[rkma]

[Update] Oct. 7th:

The beta is released! You can download it here:

BitTorrent: CraftingAzeroth-v0.1-beta.torrent (2.17 GB)
Mirror: woz.cursecraft.com/minecraft (thanks wozarib)

The files extract to ~24 GB so make sure you have enough harddrive space. The download contains map files for Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor plus two essential plugins for running a Bukkit server. Bukkit is needed to play the map properly; there are no equivalent plugins for single-player at this time.

I've marked this as a beta release, meaning that additional updates / fixes may come in the future. As much as is possible, I will try to release these changes in the form of a patch that will only modify the blocks that need to be updated. This means you can start working on the map right away, without worrying about your changes being wiped out by a later update.

If you're just interested in exploring, you can access a public server by adding cursecraft.com:1337 to your in-game server listing. You should be able to fly around (double jump) and teleport between continents (/mvtp Kalimdor or Azeroth, or /warps).

[Update] Oct. 8th

YouTube user svmgaming has made a helpful installation guide for Windows that will be useful to anyone who is having trouble getting started.

About this project:

The Crafting Azeroth project is a full-scale reproduction of the World of Warcraft environment for Minecraft. The creation of the map is heavily automated, assisted by custom software that I have developed. The continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms were the first to be generated. You can explore them in your browser by clicking one of the links below:



Screenshots of the map are also available in the galleries below. If you are unfamiliar with World of Warcraft, the "Before and After" gallery will show a comparison between specific locations in both World of Warcraft and Minecraft:



Additional information about the map and many older screenshots are available in this this archived post, and in this article by VentureBeat. A mirror of this thread is also posted on minecraftforum.net.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ):

Q. How does the conversion process work?

A. I developed software to convert the continents of World of Warcraft into Minecraft blocks using a process known as voxelization. The software converts everything in the game, including all the buildings and natural details, down to the individual tree stump. Once the parameters for the software have been set, the entire conversion process takes approximately 24 hours and requires no human intervention.

Prior to the conversion process, I needed to match textures from World of Warcraft to the appropriate material in Minecraft. For example, an object with a wooden texture might be converted into wooden planks, while an object with a mossy texture might be converted into mossy cobblestone. I created a special program to help do this assignment, but selecting materials for all 10,000+ textures in the game still required many hours of work.

Q. How large is the world?

A. The current version of the map spans approximately 275 square kilometers and contains over 68 billion blocks. The highest part of the world, the peak of Mt. Hyjal, stands more than a kilometer above sea level. Since the map exceeds the Minecraft height limit, the world had to be divided into seven altitude layers, each connected via a server-side plugin that teleports players as they approach the height limit. To be played locally, the map requires 24 gigabytes of hard-drive space.

Q. Does the world include underground areas, like dungeons and caves?

A. Yes, the map includes all caves and dungeons that are not part of a separate instance. Loosely speaking, this means that if you can only get there by portal, then it's not part of the map. So, areas like Blackrock Mountain are freely accessible, but dungeons like Blackrock Depths or Molten Core are not.

Q. Do you plan to convert any other continents, such as Outland?

A. Yes, work has already started on Outland and Northrend, and I plan to convert other regions such as Tol Barad and the Lost Isles as well. The conversion process can also be used on instanced dungeons, so they may appear at a later date, but they are not top priority right now.

Q. Where can I download a copy of the map?

A. The map can be downloaded via BitTorrent (2.17 GB).

Q. Who else is involved in the project?

A. The Cursecraft team has been very helpful in hosting and testing the multiplayer version of the map, particularly Marlamin, who was willing to setup and configure the server for me =p. I've also received much help from the team over at Overviewer.org, who adapted their software to generate and host the Google Maps view of the project.

[PetersenIII]

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...you realize that 1 block is meant to be 1 meter cubed. So a length of '1 yard' would be just under a length of '1 minecraft block'.

[rkma]

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...you realize that 1 block is meant to be 1 meter cubed. So a length of '1 yard' would be just under a length of '1 minecraft block'.

That might be what it's intended to be, but I have no guarantee that "1 yard" in WoW is actually "1 yard," since these units of measurement could be completely arbitrary.

[wartywarlock]

1:1 is too small as has been worked out by the MC:WoW project leaders. Which brings me to the 2nd point, why go alone when we are orgazing a project to do it as a team?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...rt-1-Instances!

[rkma]

1:1 is too small as has been worked out by the MC:WoW project leaders. Which brings me to the 2nd point, why go alone when we are orgazing a project to do it as a team?

http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...rt-1-Instances!

I plan to use custom build tools to generate most of the content procedurally, so I'd rather try working independently (for now).

On a related note, I took a few screenshots to compare the height of an Orc with a 40 yard distance, and I got a ratio of 37 : 719, which works out to approximately 37 * (40 yards / 719) = 2.06 yards.

So I rounded it to 2 yards, which makes an Orc 2 yards tall, which would be two blocks in Minecraft. So, 1:1 ratio of blocks to yards.

[The Madgod]

You can't accurately make the world using a 1:1 ratio, though. That's what we're saying.

[rkma]

You can't accurately make the world using a 1:1 ratio, though. That's what we're saying.

I can understand why it might be too large due to height limitations, but I don't understand how it can be "too small" as ww stated.

[The Madgod]

I can understand why it might be too large due to height limitations, but I don't understand how it can be "too small" as ww stated.

Because when you are building with a cubic meter block, you won't get enough detail in a building for it to even look authentic at a 1:1 ratio. Or at least, it would be very hard to do such. Certain archetecture within the game would look rather shoddy when transferred into Minecraft.

[rkma]

Because when you are building with a cubic meter block, you won't get enough detail in a building for it to even look authentic at a 1:1 ratio. Or at least, it would be very hard to do such. Certain archetecture within the game would look rather shoddy when transferred into Minecraft.

I'm okay with that, part of the challenge is trying to create representative models using a very small number of blocks. If I have to take some artistic liberties to try to get it to work, then that's fine.

[dokhidamo]

Because when you are building with a cubic meter block, you won't get enough detail in a building for it to even look authentic at a 1:1 ratio. Or at least, it would be very hard to do such. Certain archetecture within the game would look rather shoddy when transferred into Minecraft.

Some of the finer details (like the spikes so loved by the Horde) may have to be removed. But I think you can tell Orgrimmar without the spikes everywhere.

[The Madgod]

Well fair enough, as long as you know that :P

I was just giving our point of view so you had a second opinion on what to do.

[rkma]

Let me know if you need help extracting heightmaps from the adt files though, I'm working on a program to do it as we speak. There are some older tools that do this but they don't seem to be updated for WoW 4.x.

[Marlamin]

Let me know if you need help extracting heightmaps from the adt files though, I'm working on a program to do it as we speak. There are some older tools that do this but they don't seem to be updated for WoW 4.x.

It seems like there's work being done that's already done. Mjollna has already done this and we already have a basic terrain render of Azeroth in Minecraft on the Cursecraft server. Converting WoW heights to Minecraft heights however is almost impossible and some stuff will have to be made less high (Hyjal for example will only be on a small hill at most). As soon as both me and Dinnerbone have more time we will open up the server and let people get building.

Here's some map renders (warning: huge, might want to save as) of the generated minecraft map:

http://cursecraft.com/media/maps/azeroth1_f.png
http://cursecraft.com/media/maps/azeroth1.png

[rkma]

Here's some map renders (warning: huge, might want to save as) of the generated minecraft map:

http://cursecraft.com/media/maps/azeroth1_f.png
http://cursecraft.com/media/maps/azeroth1.png

You weren't kidding, I had to resize the second image using ImageMagick before I could even open it on this computer.

It's hard to tell that the map is actually 3D. I thought it was 2D until I looked at Vashj'ir and could see there were actual cliffs. I guess that's just the way the world looks at this scale. =p

I finished my script to import the adt files, I was able to generate a heightmap for Kalimdor (below). Even if it's a bit redundant I'm glad I did it because there are some things I'd like to do with the data (beyond Minecraft) that I'll now be able to do a lot more easily.



---------- Post added 2012-01-20 at 09:03 AM ----------

One of the ideas I've also had is to make Minecraft schematics for certain WMOs (e.g. giant trees) and then automatically place them in the world based on the WMO data in the adts. That would save a lot of time building trees in Ashenvale and Feralas, etc.

[Marlamin]

Sadly the height limit is a really big issue, pretty much limiting the awesomeness.

[rkma]

To followup on the idea of placing Minecraft schematics based on wmo locations, I'm wondering if I can actually convert in-place wmo files directly into Minecraft blocks. Any wmo that doesn't have an existing template would have one generated out of a bunch of wool blocks. The "shape" of the buildings and cliffs would be there, and players would only have to replace the materials on the surface.

The principle behind this is not that complicated, as long as I can convert wmo data into a list of triangles. For each Minecraft block I would check whether a triangle from the wmo intersects it, then fill it in. It may not generate a perfect representation, but it would save a lot of time I think.

[rkma]

I'm wondering if I can actually convert in-place wmo files directly into Minecraft blocks.

Okay, yes... I can do that. My script now loads every wmo/m2 model for Kalimdor and correctly orients them in the world, so constructing the blocks from this will be a piece of cake. You can see the data set below (I apologize for the mediafire link, I can't find a better hosting service for this file):



Once this tool is finished, it will be able to recreate every rock, tree, and building in the game. It will even create complex underground cave systems. It should save a ton of time versus doing it all manually.

For materials, I'm thinking I will be able to specify certain materials based on their texture. For example, if I find a texture for tree bark, I will manually flag that material as "wood," and the tool will use the proper blocks in minecraft. I won't be able to flag everything this way, but it should take care of the obvious stuff like trees.

[Marlamin]

That's pretty damn amazing.

[rkma]

I now have it rendering solids now, zangarmarsh is pretty

[rkma]

I'm now able to scale the data to arbitrary block sizes, and render it in pretty isometric goodness:



To deal with the height limit, I have three choices:

- Attempt to compress everything so it fits in 128 blocks high (very flat!)
- Divide the world into different regions, and never have a "single" continent like in WoW.
- Use some sort of height mod to increase the height limit.

I'm leaning towards the third option, even though the mods have problems. The fact is, the 128 block height limit is just too limiting, and Mojang should really make something like Cubic Chunks standard.

Fortunately, if I don't like it, I can just throw the world out and start over. That's the luxury of generating it all with a program =p