Job opening. Old art, models and animations,

[Hitei]

Judging from the dev watercooler and this job listing, that data likely doesn't include the old art assets. It seems that they're running an old version of the game using the modern rendering engine and assets.

https://twitter.com/warcraft/status/...988930?lang=en

This video is apparently a result of them running the 1.12 data in the modern retail infrastructure. Many people have pointed out that it's not a completely authentic recreation of 1.12, as some of the assets and the lightning are different.

This is a good example of what I am talking about though. You can see that they are running the old player models WITH old animations (particularly noticeable on the female gnome, because the new animation set has her a lot more energetic and waving her arms more when idle) perfectly fine. You don't need to bring in someone new just to revert to the models they can pull from the older data.

That may be true, but not all of the old assets still exist in WoW as they did in their 1.12 state, especially character models, which have had a new rigging and animation system ever since the revamps in WoD. AFAIK that's why they've gradually phased out the toggleable old models for various races.

I think the phase out was more about having to update two skeletal rigs each time they added new animations rather than not being able to use old skeletons, plenty of mobs have ancient, day 1 skeletons that operate in the modern infrastructure.

[Alkizon]

The art restoration reminded me of this; a perfect example of what we don't want.

It's funny, one of my new friends once used the same example to point out unfair new designers work. Still, I'm not yet sure what to think about this all, I probably don't have enough information. Suppose we'll wait and see.

[Akka]

At least this gives away a pretty important information : they are using a current client to retro-port Classic on it.

Now, the question is : why do they need someone to rebuild what they already have in archive ?
I mean, the old character models (with the old animations) were still available in WoD and toggable with the new ones, so why can't they simply re-enable them ?

Afaik weather effects also haven't changed, they're set by zone, the snow in Dun morogh is still just the snow in Dun Morogh.

Yes, the weather effects have changed (ironically, the new weather effects look actually much WORSE than the old ones, that's pretty weird).

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I was about to post, the WoW Classic community, the only community that doesn't endlessly complain about everything blizz does...Then someone had to ruin it.

Blizz is giving yall everything you wanted, yet some people still complain that they have to "restore" the old graphics.

jfc, some people are just never happy.

Who is complaining ? Most people here either they "I'm happy" or are wondering about some aspect or some other. You're the one complaining for now...

[Hitei]

Yes, the weather effects have changed (ironically, the new weather effects look actually much WORSE than the old ones, that's pretty weird).

Have they? How so? I thought they were just broken by Cata (along with lighting at night) such that they happened far less often. I recall seeing rain in Elwynn back in WoD-ish that seemed like it was still the regular Vanilla rain.

[Echocho]

Well this is fairly obvious. The modern client doesn't have these things anymore, when you connect to one of the classic servers you should at least have the option to have the game look like it used to.

But it's good news for everyone, you'll be able to toggle between your choice of style as you see fit. The modern look is already there, adding in the old stuff is going to take a while by the looks of it but it'll be there too.

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I mean, the old character models (with the old animations) were still available in WoD and toggable with the new ones, so why can't they simply re-enable them ?

Well something broke in Legion when they tied the new spell animations to the character animations or something like that, that's why we don't have that (working) toggle anymore, I'm sure they would've left it in if it was possible. The positive with all of this is that now they have to put all that stuff back in which means that if we can get the old look when we connect to the Classic realms we might be able to get the old look when connecting to the BfA realms too, I really hope we do since I hate the new animations.

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Judging from the dev watercooler and this job listing, that data likely doesn't include the old art assets. It seems that they're running an old version of the game using the modern rendering engine and assets.

I think the Legion client actually still contain all the original art assets since most of them are still in use. No zone was completely overhauled in Cata, they still retained a lot of the old stuff. Things like audio from the original Naxxramas is still in the game files for example, I don't think they remove anything unless maybe when it's overwritten by a new version, but even then I'd imagine they'd just use the new one and leave the old one in.

[Akka]

Have they? How so? I thought they were just broken by Cata (along with lighting at night) such that they happened far less often. I recall seeing rain in Elwynn back in WoD-ish that seemed like it was still the regular Vanilla rain.

Rain looks much worse at the very least, the ground impact are much less numerous, the sky is less cloudy and the rain itself feels more artificial.

[Alkizon]

But it's good news for everyone, you'll be able to toggle between your choice of style as you see fit. The modern look is already there, adding in the old stuff is going to take a while by the looks of it but it'll be there too.

Well, wrong statement. Сurrent fact says nothing about it. It can just say exactly that everything new will be replaced by old one, but this will require certain skills, but this already was voiced in the thread. I see you really like to give out your wish as reality (provoke?)

Well something broke in Legion when they tied the new spell animations to the character animations or something like that, that's why we don't have that (working) toggle anymore, I'm sure they would've left it in if it was possible. The positive with all of this is that now they have to put all that stuff back in which means that if we can get the old look when we connect to the Classic realms we might be able to get the old look when connecting to the BfA realms too, I really hope we do since I hate the new animations.

New models use most of "class-centered" animations (old use racial animations only) and I think this really could affect code and implementation, although it's again rather more of not my thoughts.

I think the Legion client actually still contain all the original art assets since most of them are still in use. No zone was completely overhauled in Cata, they still retained a lot of the old stuff. Things like audio from the original Naxxramas is still in the game files for example, I don't think they remove anything unless maybe when it's overwritten by a new version, but even then I'd imagine they'd just use the new one and leave the old one in.

Here (in this forum) was a Chinese man about half a year ago who claimed something like that, but I didn't see old animations in his videos, so it sounded somehow very doubtful.

...I'm not really into programming therefore won't take responsibility for last 2 statements myself.

Also us/eu forum about this.

[ddsad2212]

I don't see how this suggest new art. What artiest needs two years of C++ programming experience? There is work involved in getting the old models back up and running and some may not actually still exist in a usable state anymore and may need to be re-done, if that's the reality then people need to live with it. This looks like a posting for a job that needs to be done to actually get the game back up and running in a decent state. Nothing about this indicates a redesign of art

[Lochton]

Do you know what restore means? They wouldn't need to pull in someone for graphics if they were leaving it as is.

These are the job responsibilities:
-Restore old models and animations
-Re-implement old shader behavior
-Transform database data
-Build classic UI elements
-Repackage binary distributions
-Work closely with artists to revive the classic game elements

If anything I'd argue this confirms a remastered toggle. You don't need to restore old models to have them work on the modern system (see: centaur, gnolls, most vanilla robots, wyrmkin, etc. Which all use Vanilla models in the modern game). You also don't need to work with artists (read: what you do to concept and make new models) if all you are doing is re-implementing existing models into the modern framework.

"build classic UI elements" suggests they are rebuilding the UI in higher quality, something unnecessary if you are keeping the same old graphics for everything else, because you don't want a brand new high res version of the Vanilla UI making it even more obvious that the stuff on the other side of the UI is out of date.

The signs makes it more seem as, restoring models to how they should look for classic. If you were to restore them to a better condition, why would you re-implement an outdated shader system?

[digichi]

Well this indicates what areas theyre ready to begin to reimplement the art stuff, which is cool to see.. baby steps forward

[Akka]

One thing that feels pretty weird is : why don't they just ask the guy who did the changes ? He would be the one knowing the code and most able to revert/reimplement it. It doesn't seem logical that they need to recruit for this.

[Aceveda]

This is a good example of what I am talking about though. You can see that they are running the old player models WITH old animations (particularly noticeable on the female gnome, because the new animation set has her a lot more energetic and waving her arms more when idle) perfectly fine. You don't need to bring in someone new just to revert to the models they can pull from the older data.



I think the phase out was more about having to update two skeletal rigs each time they added new animations rather than not being able to use old skeletons, plenty of mobs have ancient, day 1 skeletons that operate in the modern infrastructure.

"Work closely with artists" and "We’re looking for somebody passionate about both our game’s history and future" makes me think they want someone to help maintain the old model toggle working properly in bfa and beyond aswell

[Hitei]

The signs makes it more seem as, restoring models to how they should look for classic. If you were to restore them to a better condition, why would you re-implement an outdated shader system?

Because a shader is a big part of the atmospheric feel of a game, so if you want high fidelity, want it to feel like the old game but look high quality and modern, you update textures and model polygon counts, but then use an old shader. You'd get that more desaturated, lower contrast look that the original game had but with higher quality graphics.



See the difference in the ground coloration/brightness/the way the cracks stand out? It's what makes screenshots from BC and Vanilla look visibly different from recent screenshots.

[Kathranis]

One thing that feels pretty weird is : why don't they just ask the guy who did the changes ? He would be the one knowing the code and most able to revert/reimplement it. It doesn't seem logical that they need to recruit for this.

What makes you think they have all the same programmers and engineers on staff after nearly 15 years? It's already been established that old undocumented spaghetti code is an issue they struggle with and that a non-trivial amount of the work they do involves replacing, reorganizing, or updating old sections of the codebase.

[Akka]

What makes you think they have all the same programmers and engineers on staff after nearly 15 years?

Because the new models were added in WoD, which is hardly 15 years ago.

[Chaelexi]

Nope... I always expected 1.12... that's what private servers are using.

New code? Not for the client (other than some minor changes to being launched from Battle.net, which again, I always expected.)

Hey looks like they are using modern engine......you ready to admit you were wrong yet or change the your prediction again

[AwkwardSquirtle]

Do you know what restore means? They wouldn't need to pull in someone for graphics if they were leaving it as is.
These are the job responsibilities:
-Restore old models and animations
-Re-implement old shader behavior
-Transform database data
-Build classic UI elements
-Repackage binary distributions
-Work closely with artists to revive the classic game elements

If anything I'd argue this confirms a remastered toggle. You don't need to restore old models to have them work on the modern system (see: centaur, gnolls, most vanilla robots, wyrmkin, etc. Which all use Vanilla models in the modern game). You also don't need to work with artists (read: what you do to concept and make new models) if all you are doing is re-implementing existing models into the modern framework.

"build classic UI elements" suggests they are rebuilding the UI in higher quality, something unnecessary if you are keeping the same old graphics for everything else, because you don't want a brand new high res version of the Vanilla UI making it even more obvious that the stuff on the other side of the UI is out of date.

Did you see the blue post? They tried restoring the OG classic code but it wasn't up to standard, so they're rebuilding the whole of classic in the modern version. There are a lot of assets that just aren't the same. Sure, Centaurs and Furbolgs haven't been updated, but murlocs, playable races, even the whole of orgrimmar, have been changed significantly.

[Chaelexi]

Did you see the blue post? They tried restoring the OG classic code but it wasn't up to standard, so they're rebuilding the whole of classic in the modern version. There are a lot of assets that just aren't the same. Sure, Centaurs and Furbolgs haven't been updated, but murlocs, playable races, even the whole of orgrimmar, have been changed significantly.

It could mean a toggle for new and old models....that you will not know until they announce it but it does confirm there will at least be new old models(guessing higher def old models).

[Maudib]

Hey looks like they are using modern engine......you ready to admit you were wrong yet or change the your prediction again

Nope. They are not using "the modern engine".

[Coombs]

Who else recalls the moment when they upgraded computers and could see the other side of Warsong Gulch without fog?