Well, neither are Paladin and Dreadlord hero skin options as they initially promised. Another one to throw on the pile.
just for fun i took the sample image from above that has abysmal image clarity and gave it a similar but not as in depth treatment to the last, just to show that the readability issue is basically 90% lighting and color related. its not perfect, it just should illustrate the amount of tuning headroom reforged has, its massive.
original
xhttps://i.imgur.com/tFAmd0H.jpg
retuned colors and contrast
xhttps://i.imgur.com/n72cOKo.jpg
i increased overall image brightness and contrast but introduced a stronger blue tint to not lose the night-time information.
i manually increased overall diffuse map contrast on the acolytes robes, the nightelf armors and weapons and the team color patches.
i gave aboms their slighly pinkish skin color back and recolored the ghouls to give them more yellow to eliminate that almost neutral blue-gray skin color that blends into background textures like mad. i also made tyrandes tiger overall brighter, ideally youâd be aiming for a more white/black/blue color scheme instead of that gray blue / black blue original.
âoverdetailingâ isnt as much of an issue, as long as certain visual qualities are very remarkable. the issue with reforged currently is, that most details dont actually stand out enough and in effect all the details cook down to a gaussian normalized color noise. nightelf silver armor details should be ALOT more visible for example.
to get visual clarity improved further, blizz should have compared all the terrain color palettes to the units color palettes. and balance racial color palettes against each other.
i threw this together to illustrate what i mean. some shades and hues should be rebalanced using a color wheel, but thats currently a bit much work for that purpose of demonstration
xhttps://i.imgur.com/KuTp6ky.jpg
notice how the terrain color palette isnt especially competing on brightness or saturation with the race colors. you could balance it better, but with reforged there is no such constructed balance in foreground vs background colors, but the lighting in engine might be a huge issue here.
elfs, in reforged, have alot of brown and generally dark colors going on with very little highlights and bright colors, skin and hair color isnt overly remarkably. humans have a very dark color scheme going on, undead basically is one grey blob in different hues with no contrast or saturation whatsoever and orcs actually look alright, except for the orc skin color blending into grass terrain ALOT.
if the world textures get some slider-work done, skins get touched up and recolored following a well balanced and thought out color theme, some particle effects get revamped in size and effect amount (e.g. hold up time and girth of chain lightning) and the engine lighting setup gets tweaked, reforged graphics should actually turn out really darn nice looking.
the performance, however, is another major issue. maybe the engine just cant keep up with the texture size and polycount of the models - maybe it was overdone or the engine is underdeveloped. wow runs on a very much updated wc3 engine, so there should be a way to get more performance out of it.
I think this is a really good example. Just from changing the saturation and contrast, the units look much more readable, and nothing was changed on the models themselves.
Of course the models themselves could be updated to provide better readability, but a big part of the problem is the saturation and colors themselves. I think a lot of these issues are already solvable through Quenching or Reshade.
I get that people probably look down on using 3rd party programs on top of bad frame rates but thatâs not really my concern if weâre just talking about unit readability. Iâd rather they focus on properly implementing the LOD system and optimizing performance over fixing the graphics which can already be worked around with graphics mods.
indeed, they drop at sub-pixel level and get all smoothed in the antialiasing.
As far as you know, how much scaling id dynamically implemented by the engine (if any)?
If youâre talking about Level of Detail scaling, none as far as we know.
Retera looked into it and couldnât find any evidence of the game actually using the LOD information, even though they are all in the models. Every model has various levels of LOD information in it, but at the same time the LOD itself is often times a copy of the High Res model, not cut down at all. In some cases, model files literally have multiple copies of the same mesh in the file with no polycount differences. Itâs a case-by-case scenario though.
When modding, we just blow away the LOD models and focus on kitbashing/creating one high res model. Itâs still a lower filesize than what Reforged would be using.
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thx, understoodâŚ
Iâm wondering at this point if they will make D4 in unity and then disguise it as âBlizzardEngineâ^^
D4 doesnât have the budget and deadline restrictions, much like how Overwatch got free reign of development even if it was scrounged from the still-warm corpse of Titan.
D4âs going to have its own host of problems to deal with, but the technical issues are the least of my concerns considering this is going to be a flagship title with resources and manpower to back it. Itâs the design Iâm more worried about, like their flip-flopping direction for skills and stats, or their itemization which they donât seem to have a solid answer to yet. On top of that thereâs the whole open-world game theyâre trying to make, which is a huge step away from what Diablo originally set out to be.
We will have to see.
xhttps://drive.google.com/file/d/1F20PBwARd-DTnvdcd-wv0PBzH1Te-KE2/view?usp=sharing
What worries me on top of that is the difficulty level.
I have replayed D2 with a new player during the previous lockdown and there was a new version of the game since the last time I had played it and it was just a flat game until Harrogath. Considering I was mostly accompanying and watching over.
Then we gave a go to D3. The Season effect was basically killing everything around us so we skipped it and went for normal games. The game was way too easy (not saying Iâm particularly good at that, it was our first time), but really in the meaning that you can just freely walk around killing stuff (except for a couple of bosses). If you are interested in the story it makes the game boring. So what we had to do was to rely on someone else creating a torment level game for us and then leave, so we could feel some challenge. So basically the proper level to start D3 is torment 3 and you end the game 6 or 7 torments later (if I remember well).
There are bosses that you just stomp, like Diablo itself and bosses that single shot you when full hp even with max resistance. So, games were very different in the game play, story is fine even if they ruined a bit some characters^^, graphic was good, maps were a bit redundant, but the real game breaking issue was the difficulty.
As you said, weâll see D4âŚ
Sorry, it doesnât apply to WC3. 3rd model clearly misses the footprints. ^^
3 Likes
not the primary issue with reforged. the models are pretty spot on for a modern overhaul. wow abominations are closer to the comic look, but they also look really dumb.
90% of all the issues are texture work.
i made another paintover to illustrate:
xhttps://i.imgur.com/q0wcsgU.jpg
keep in mind the original is a WIP version ripped from the reforged beta server - live version looks slightly better and its also not in engine lighting.
the clarity you see in classic warcraft 3 is not related to the abysmally low texture resolution or the 10 polygon models. and this also means the bad clarity in reforged is not connected to the high res models or the texture resolution either. its the contrast - color and brightness. textures in classic have really high contrast and are diffuse lit. color contrasts are strong against each other - in unit textures and units on terrain textures. its easy for your eye to pick out those remarkable color patches.
reforged however is a hybrid of dynamic and diffuse lighting - and the diffuse lighting in the textures is undercooked while the dynamic lighting is not capable or not configured well enough to produce the desired outcome. reforged colors are generally undersaturated, color tuning is bad and contrast is low.
abomination in reforged reads bad because the texture has no contrast and no saturation - not to itself nor its surroundings - it doesnt matter if the texture is high resolution or not.
the abomination basically is a huge pink blob with innards hanging out carrying a meat cleaver and having the team color shirt on - the reforged abom shares all trades of the classic abom except for the color and texture contrast. and thats it.
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Well at this point we seem to be going towards a similar conclusion but with different mindsets.
I disagree with you that my image is not representing what is happening because you seem to shove under the rug the fact that there is so much unrequired details cluttering over everywhere and too high polygons.
If the textures were actually good and had a more simplistic and faithful designs for the models all the while not going heavy on polygons it would be a whole different world.
The majority of the people who push back and defend the Reforged visuals are overwhelmingly bias for something Warcraft 3 never was. nor any Blizzard game was. in the actual game. not talking about concept arts.
Though iâm happy to see those whom are interested in talking about the subject here are understanding the situation.
Heros of the Storm models dont look like this.
Starcraft 2 models dont look like this.
Diablo 3 models dont look like this.
World of Warcraft models donât look like this.
Overwatch models donât look like this.
The only difference of those (with the exception of Starcraft 2 ) and Warcraft 3 is that they have more details and clutter but they are âSingle Character Centricâ games for the most part so its only obvious to increase the fidelity of the available model assets.
So what Warcraft 3 has to do is simply do what those do above, but more simplistic and impactful art. and G bleeping G. mission accomplished.
Which basically means do what they did for their other games for decades, just take the Sc2 approach of considering the models are being made for an RTS game so they are properly optimized for the game and are then able to provide a better performance experience.
The fact that the art itself also needs to be vivid and clear, good looking yet simple, can not be overstated. contrast alone isnât going to solve the issue.
you ignore the fact warcraft 3 in fact has been in development before the year 2000. wc3 was the first 3d game blizzard made.
they got the best out of the early 3d graphics, but that style was also forced by the tech limitations. there were no impressive shaders, no dynamic lighting - warcraft 3 even came with 16bit color modes. PCs had to be able to run it and they had to be able to fit it on a CD, all while delivering a complete game, because shoving big updates to the user via battle.net wasnt a thing back then.
the 100% diffuse lit textures were industry standard. look at the games of the 1998-2004 era and tell me they dont share a distinctive cartoony look.
if you look at the rendered video sequences, warcraft 3 isnt cartoony at all - its very gritty. the videos are probably more true to the vision they had than the extremely limited 3d ingame graphics.
you can prefer a more handpainted style like league of legends uses it, but quite frankly, reforged is another notch above league of legends. its the next step in graphics evolution coming from that route. its not like the reforged models are ârealisticâ by any means.
and starcraft 2 (released in 2010, 12-14 year old tech by today) already is pretty detailed - reforged is the next stepping stone.
hydralisk for reference
xhttps://i.pinimg.com/originals/48/01/31/4801319f9bd1ce1917cb34ede8cd7cd2.jpg
also for comparison for the overall style:
hots:
xhttps://static.heroesofthestorm.com/heroes/orphea/skins/heir-of-raven-court.jpg
reforged:
xhttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/yQr6WoM0P0alTKL7HoK7dqX90QU=/1400x1400/filters:format(png)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/19667939/Culling_Cutscene_2.png
its not all that different. wc3 reforged uses more specularity shaders instead of diffuse lighting and has more details - its still cartoony - but grittier.
now coming back to the wc3 cinematics, i think the overall style of reforged is pretty good. and the crucial thing is: if they want to fix it, its fixable, if they go down the route iâve been going down with my paintovers. basically its some manual touchup and slider work - should not take more than 30 mins per unit.
turning around the texturing style into handpainting is not gonna happen - you gotta redo everything.
What was industry standard was done but for Warcraft 3âs case it evolved to be so embeded with the game that to undo it will cause great damage and it already has.
Again donât try to run away by pointing out concept art even in 2002 compared to what actually ended up in the game. 2 very different things and one HELPED W3 to stay alive.
Sometimes when you remaster a game its best to do what always worked. a by the books simple Remaster while focusing on actual functions and features and new content.
This can not be more true for War3.
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This is the good old Blizzard, but now the mindset seems to be âwho cares shut up buy moar ram and moar hdzâ and believe me, it doesnât only apply to gamesâŚ
Well, RoC had a coherent colors set, while TFT was already a color mess. Unnecessary random bright colors squashed together while they were shifting to the infamous WoW Little Marmaid style. In the same time that Square-Enix was mastering a wider range of colors.
But anyway, we all miss the times when a bit of color mess was a thing⌠while everything else was working flawlesslyâŚ
Oh wait, the reconnect buttonâŚ
Oh wait⌠thatâs so complicated that it cannot be added even 20 years later^^
2 Likes
It is a product of itâs time if thatâs your point, yes. However your whole point of them wanting to go with cinematicâs style game is completetly wrong. Samwise Didier said several times in interviews that they tried realistic approach initially but it looks stupid, hard-to-read and ugly from top down during gameplay. Looking at all the concept art its directly replicated in the texturing, proprotions of characters are set up to facilitate them to stand out combined with how contrastic colouring is.
Also from later examples WoW still keeps strict division between itâs cinematics and ingame style cutscenes, especially since Legion onwards with introduction of ingame style cinematics. Itâs never meant to look like realistic ones ingame. Itâs intetional and not based on technology limiations its a stylistic choice.
If you want an example of what Wc3 should look like if it was made couple years later look at Heroes of Might and Magic V.
Blizzardâs own style in wow is closest to Wc3 texturing wise but itâs dropped other aspects like proportions since it was a thirdperson mmorpg.
Other examle could be Blizzard commissioned porting of wc3 assets to Starcraft 2 with small batch of HD models most of them being very faithful design wise, and 100% animation wise, and they look much better than Reforgedâs ill-willed attempts at proving some stupid point of Brian Sousa and âpushing the techâ as he always would, which on other note i recommend you to seek out his GDC panel about remastering Sc1 and all his dev panel appearences on blizzcon, man was just totally unfit for the job, with incredibly wrong mindset, only saved in case of Sc:R by his previous involvement with Sc1 and pressure from focus groups and Stillwell to keep it in line with original game.
As for other consequences of and bad influence of Reforgedâs assets as they are now - they have caused a massive split in the community most people playing custom and melee games are on the side of classic wc3 art, while people who dont really play wc3 all that much for gameplay with more casual approach like in some lesser Roleplaying maps or singleplayer like HD models for very superficial reasons but they do, this causes unessessary separation within already shrunk community.
On performance side of things these models are incredibly unoptimized some going to excess of 100 000 polygons when original wc3 models are between 600 and 1200. Wc3 HD assets from Starcraft 2 are arond 4000, original Sc2 models are between 2500 and 4500(and they are still very cartoony in the game, while having more detailed portraits). Itâs just incredibly wasteful, if they were properly designed and optimized game could actually run better thanks to new renderer code.
Reforged isnt some case of actual original devâs coming back to complete their âgrittyâ vision. Its case of one hack of an lead artist enforcing his revisionistic show off approach acting like he is making a sequel rather than refresh of old classic game.
If they went with more proper approach and just fully realized original design and intent from Samwise with one limiation ridden - excess polycount optimization(which is so extreme in most cases taht they keep faces high poly for the portraits but reduce the body polycount to bare minimum, which is helped mostly by how good textures are at dicating the detail) and made it into pretty much new set of high and ultra settings for original wc3 with just new assets on top available to everyone, then we would have one and united community without any internal splits, same coherently looking game, with better performance, and hopefully more available thanks to a lower price.
And as a bonus it wouldnt be prohibitive storage wise having its size much lower than Reforgedâs stupid 30-36gb. I would estimate that to around 5-10gb depeneding on how many new assets and intermediate visual quality settings we talk about.
Except that we didnt get that and due to their idiotic approach that added up to just falseadvertizing in publicâs eyes we had a massive outrage that turned away and wholely wasted any chance of community growing thanks to surge in players. At best weâre back to how it was 2 years ago on classic, maybe a bit less. If they didnt try to act like theyâre making Warcraft IV with it, and just respectfully remastered the game as they did with SC:R or like other companies did with their RTS games ie Age of Empires or Command and Conquer, then we would all be having much better time, inlcuding classic team which wouldnt get liquidated over this failure.
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Well its just unfortunate, with what we ended up with, superficial and horribly executed bs assets made to Sousaâs specification were the focus - preteding that he was making Warcraft IV and âpushing the limiationsâ
While meaningful features werent even considered and ones we already had got stripped away ie crossrealm custom games, or any of og wc3 features that are still gone for no good reason aside of the lazy webui menu omitting them. Plus layout changes in it are quite idiotic for most part, chat should stay on the left-center and be bigger, instead of aping modern blizzard games. SC:R is fine with having it that way, why not Wc3. Itâs still 4:3 like in the center so it really didnt require too much to make it workin widescreen as it were aside of some minor work on the background art.
Even most basic things are broken like music stops playing once you join a lobby, making waiting there quite boring when you have no good looking 3d background, ambience from it and music playing. It would be nice to have option of choosing one from Reing of Chaos in the options with its green cloudy sky and rain ambience, and RoC bnet music playlist, but noâŚalso about RoC, melee players from it are left on ice ever since they axed it in summer of 2019 out of their own laziness because every balance change they affected Reign of Chaos variants of units. And melee community of RoC was healthy, playing melee was nice there and games were found fast, now its gone forever because there are no third party solutions and Blizzard doesnt care.
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