Lots of discussion about the visuals, mainly about the color pallette, which actually should be toned down a bit compared to the classic since the old Wc3 actually had ‘‘bleeding’’ colors.
But that’s not really the important thing, the main problem is the terrain. The terrain really stands out now compared to the detailed units and buildings.
To be more specific, I’m talking about the terrain texture quality and the actual geometry. In terms of textures it should just simply be more detailed and a little smaller in terms of scaling of the texture tiles and they should be PBR. But most importantly, the geometry, this is mainly noticably at cliffs, rivers etc. in which the geometry seems to almost have the same low poly geometry as the old one. When a surface is almost flat, you just need good detailed textures and some moving grass, but when there is some type of transition due to elevation (edges, cliffs, rivers, craters etc.) it will look ugly really fast when keep the low poly shapes from the old one, something good textures can’t even solve.
What I wish they would do:
-Remake all the terrain tiles from scratch, which should include new textures as well. Especially the breakdown of the tiles should be improved (edges of tiles, cliffs etc.)
-Toning down the colors of the terrain slightly
-Some level models like some of the trees are using the same silhoutte as the old game too strictly and don’t work well anymore. Should be remade, same goes for some other props.
-Actual (stylized) grass blades that almost completely cover the grass texture. You can make them a lot thicker than realistic grass blades so it’s not as performance heavy.
-Some shader tweaks/improvements
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As some others here pointed out, it seems the terrain is lacking Normal Maps too. I’m not entirely sure why, but that is a significant part of why the terrain is so flat and plain compared to the rest of the game.
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I totally agree. The game needs a high poly terrain, and grass animation, etc as u mentioned.
And the lighting is very bad overall.
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does lighting even exist in this game?
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Yes, I mentioned PBR which is physically based rendering, which includes normal maps, roughness maps, ambient occlusion etc. They didn’t do that for these textures which is really odd since I personally would be capable of doing this.
What they need to do is create a whole new set of high poly terrain tiles first (the geometry) Then they need to scale them inside the boundries of the classic low poly terrain tiles to make sure they are compatible with the old Warcraft 3 terrain, then they need to create low poly versions of the new high poly terrain tiles (retopo the high poly) then they need to texture the new low poly terrain tiles and bake the high poly onto the low poly so you get those nice detailed normal map/ambient occlusion map and roughness map effects onto your low poly terrain tiles.
This is what they should have done, there is no excuse for not doing this besides not wanting to invest time/money into it I guess.
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Theres actually a lot more wrong than that.
If you compare the sunken ruin tiles to the original, they are the wrong tiling scale AND they are tiling on the wrong angle.
The entire conversion process seemed half arsed. I would gather that the terrain seemd to be rushed or unfinished, and not just impeded by some lack of technical means.
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Yes it is quite a mess, you can also see a lot of stretched out textures which indicates that they used textures that are not custom made for the actual geometry. It’s a shame really, cause they could have made a really cool new stylized terrain set while keeping the same classic Wc3 boundry boxes.
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Terrain is my only real criticism. I can live without changes to the campaign or UI.
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Terrain looks very bad, Ive seen the screenshot comparing before and now, and before looked much better.
I hope they dont deliver exactly what we see now in the beta, graphic wise, or there will be lots of disappointed players, like myself.
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The only thing I dislike about the graphics is how poorly the units move animations are. They look like they’re on 30 FPS while everything else (scrolling, spell animations etc) are running at 144 -.-
I’m rarely staring at the grass. Frame rates are a lot more noticeable when you’re doing things like playing the game versus staring in awe at the detail of the blades of grass. The way units move, which is something you should be looking at a decent amount is horrible. It’s like when you lag in wow and your character just ghosts across the screen and their legs and arms don’t move -.-
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in the same month the game releases? LOL
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I mean we are 3 days away (us) or 4 days away (eu) how is this guy expecting them to redo everything from scratch in 4 days? 0.o
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I’m fine with another delay
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