Sunwell recolors, Darkmoon Faire hotfix, Blue posts

[Kitren]

Blizzard are too lazy to change this... 15$ a month isn't enough I gess. :

As a Game Developer/Artist (no, I don't work for Blizz) I can tell you... this is NOT an issue of Blizzard being lazy. This would literally call for EVERY playable character to be re-modeled, re-rigged, re-textured, and re-animated. That would be a ridiculous amount of work to fix something that doesn't even affect game play.

I don't know about you.. but I would be much happier if Blizzard spent their budget making the game more balanced/fun than making tabards display properly for clothies.

[Deleted]

i agree with you in the time investment thing, meaning that they'd rather do something else

but man, "literally every character"? i mean, there's only 10 races, so the max would then be 20 for each model... i'd hardly call that "every character"

[Digitrevx]

As a Game Developer/Artist (no, I don't work for Blizz) I can tell you... this is NOT an issue of Blizzard being lazy. This would literally call for EVERY playable character to be re-modeled, re-rigged, re-textured, and re-animated. That would be a ridiculous amount of work to fix something that doesn't even affect game play.

I don't know about you.. but I would be much happier if Blizzard spent their budget making the game more balanced/fun than making tabards display properly for clothies.

I'm going to 2nd this statement.

It’s not worth throwing resources and labor on an aspect of the game that’s not going to make an impact on the popularity or sales of the game. As a developer for the Wii and DS the truth is games are made to make profit. If it’s not worth it we don't bother and only exception is to get publishers attention. Of course theres things we'ed like to do but theres only so much time and so much to do.

In a perfect world they would be remodeled.

i agree with you in the time investment thing, meaning that they'd rather do something else

but man, "literally every character"? i mean, there's only 10 races, so the max would then be 20 for each model... i'd hardly call that "every character"

I can't speek for blizzard but having experience on consoles something that sounds simple doesn't mean it’s simple to accomplish in the games industry. I'll go out on a limb and suspect it has something to do with their Z depth and other assets like armor that have to be remodeled.

[Pelf]

As a Game Developer/Artist (no, I don't work for Blizz) I can tell you... this is NOT an issue of Blizzard being lazy. This would literally call for EVERY playable character to be re-modeled, re-rigged, re-textured, and re-animated. That would be a ridiculous amount of work to fix something that doesn't even affect game play.

I don't know about you.. but I would be much happier if Blizzard spent their budget making the game more balanced/fun than making tabards display properly for clothies.

Does the WoW engine not support compositing two textures? Why don't they just draw the texture of the robe on the robe model and then just draw the rest of the tabard texture on top of that. There would be no modeling requirements just a change to the way the texture is calculated for the robe model.

Maybe I'm looking at this too simplistically, but it seems like everything everyone (including Blizzard) is saying about how it would require re-modeling and all that re-working wouldn't seem to apply if they just made some texture changes.

I don't personally care if the tabard lower portion "flaps" around above the robe while i'm walking like it does over pants models. We could just say that there's a lot of static in the Warcraft universe .

[Kitren]

i agree with you in the time investment thing, meaning that they'd rather do something else

but man, "literally every character"? i mean, there's only 10 races, so the max would then be 20 for each model... i'd hardly call that "every character"

Please note, I said every playable character.

[Bearnaked]

I always thought the robe and tabard was just the character tucking in the tabard for some reason haha. Not really that big of a deal to me but it would look cool if it were working how it should.

I hope Uldum would be introduced next game because that idea of "something" escaping makes it seem really REALLY intresting

Uldar is going to be in Northrend in... i forget which part, don't know off the top of my head and im to lazy to check.

[leviathonlx]

Cyclone has been nerfed in todays PTR build to 20 yards.

[Octopus]

Cyclone has been nerfed in todays PTR build to 20 yards.

Oh noes, Resto Druids have to go forward a couple of steps to Cyclone now. Poor Resto Druids, 5 second Swiftmend CD for you, and we'll buff your Warlock partners to make up for it.

Nerf it to 5-10 yards, then we're talking.

[Sulika]

Does the WoW engine not support compositing two textures? Why don't they just draw the texture of the robe on the robe model and then just draw the rest of the tabard texture on top of that. There would be no modeling requirements just a change to the way the texture is calculated for the robe model.

Maybe I'm looking at this too simplistically, but it seems like everything everyone (including Blizzard) is saying about how it would require re-modeling and all that re-working wouldn't seem to apply if they just made some texture changes.

The problem is the existing models do not have texture position information for where on the models the extra texture has to go. So they would have to go back through each model and add an extra set of texture co-ordinates to each vertex, this would probably require a change to the model file format as well as needing to have an artist go through each model and correctly set the new coordinate information for the tabard texture.

This also assumes that the vertex information is already correctly placed such that there are vertices at which the edges of the tabard texture will be placed, if not they would need to further tesselate each of the robe models to add this information at which point you need to remodel each animation frame rather than make a single texture positioning change which applies to all animation frames.

Then you need to structure your model that you know to only draw the extra texture on the part of the model where the tabard goes, since the tabards themselves don't have any redundant space where transparent pixels can be stored for blending in the unused parts of the model you either need to redo the existing tabard system or add further changes to the way you render those models.

It is certainly doable, and technically not even all that hard, but it would require a non trivial amount of work and you would have to go back over the models. It isn't just a case of saying "composite these two textures" you have to say where on the models the extra texture goes and that is the part that requires the further work.

[Nayrrrr]

Wall jumping no longer works.

[Dessimus]

I didn't know we were playing a Transformers game...

[Pelf]

It is certainly doable, and technically not even all that hard, but it would require a non trivial amount of work and you would have to go back over the models. It isn't just a case of saying "composite these two textures" you have to say where on the models the extra texture goes and that is the part that requires the further work.

Yeah, thanks for elaborating. I guess I was thinking that since the robe model is pretty much just n*2 where n = number of races and 2 = number of genders, so, they could maybe do it in post-processing mathematically with conditions for race/gender. I hadn't thought about figuring out the transformation for when the robe animates and deforms and the fact that the tabard texture wasn't made with any reference points to figure out how it should behave during the animations.

/sigh

I'm with Blizzard, there -- really, I am. God knows, being a programmer myself, I know it's more fun to do new stuff than it is to spend time fixing old bugs and inconsistencies and overhauling stuff that, in retrospect, seems pretty silly. I just hope that after this coming expansion, they make a stand and go back and spend the time to pull out the brass-o and polish some of the older content and address some of the long-standing, little, annoying things like this tabard issue. There's a pretty big list by now.

[blakphyre]

Wall jumping no longer works.

Any further verification on this?

[Digitrevx]

The problem is the existing models do not have texture position information for where on the models the extra texture has to go. So they would have to go back through each model and add an extra set of texture co-ordinates to each vertex, this would probably require a change to the model file format as well as needing to have an artist go through each model and correctly set the new coordinate information for the tabard texture.

This also assumes that the vertex information is already correctly placed such that there are vertices at which the edges of the tabard texture will be placed, if not they would need to further tesselate each of the robe models to add this information at which point you need to remodel each animation frame rather than make a single texture positioning change which applies to all animation frames.

Then you need to structure your model that you know to only draw the extra texture on the part of the model where the tabard goes, since the tabards themselves don't have any redundant space where transparent pixels can be stored for blending in the unused parts of the model you either need to redo the existing tabard system or add further changes to the way you render those models.

It is certainly doable, and technically not even all that hard, but it would require a non trivial amount of work and you would have to go back over the models. It isn't just a case of saying "composite these two textures" you have to say where on the models the extra texture goes and that is the part that requires the further work.

I can think of at least 2 other simple ways to do it off hand. Even considering I’ve never touched their engine.
Problem is its a lot of repetitive and labor intensive work no mater which path you take.
Over all is it really a game breaking bug? Probably not so blizzard made the call that it does not affect the players experience.

This happens often, and I've been put in similar situations. If their artist are anything like me I bet they wish they could invest some time to fix it.

btw you mean UV's *wink*