Okay, question: in the year 2002 the game Warcraft III released having been authored using:
- VC++ (if I’m not mistaken)
- DirectX8 or DirectX9
- 3D Studio Max by Discreet
- Windows XP or earlier
… and what I find is that to me the resulting game visuals and software mannerisms are timeless in my personal life. As I get older I have less and less time for games, and i don’t think I could ever convince a child to play this game instead of Fortnite Phone Edition or whatever kids these days are doing, but I don’t control other people (and I shouldn’t).
But I do think I would enjoy as a hobby to be able to use the same steps, in the same software, that was used to make the game’s 3D graphics and code. If we follow tutorials for learning to make games in the modern day, we get different 3D graphics and different code. Some people just say so use Unreal Engine or Unity, which are unlikely look structurally the same (software-wise).
So I’m left wondering, why do the people who created this game we call “Warcraft III” originally not publish a guide on exactly how they did it, like a book that if you follow through the book leads to a working equivalent game? We sort of had that technology for the game graphics with War3ArtTools in 2005, but then Autodesk bought Discreet and Activision bought Warcraft III and the software moved on and got harder to use. If someone would construct software mirroring the original tools that runs on modern computers, that would be really cool. Because although the modern game has moved on from it, the old Warcraft III was a compact game that launches instantly on modern computers and that seems kind of special, like a technology that should be remembered by humans into the future, without us all forgetting how it was made.