[Elrena]

Yo, what is up. Tapir fam... ,?, I'm making this post to raise a bit of awareness in the Model Changing Network that modding more recent expansions is possible; in fact it really only gets tricky after Mists of Pandaria.

A lot of people are frustrated that for years now, the community has been scared to move on and leave 3.3.5a behind. They voice concerns that modding is only about retro-porting now, because everyone wants the new content yet they don't have the balls to mod the new expansions. I'm conflicted, myself. I really like Cataclysm as an expansion, but WoD is so beautiful. Yet it comes with a lot of sacrifice, such as easy-to-manage dbc files and things like MPQ archives. 

Another concern is the lack of good emulation software for expansions beyond Wrath of the Lich King. TrinityCore made Warlords of Draenor their master branch, but since WoD is a horrible let-down, it looks like they're going to drop its development and jump right into Legion later next year, according to important people in their IRC channel.

Interesting Fact: Deepholm, a Cata zone, is still empty even on the latest TrinityCore 6.x revision. And the only Pandaria zone currently spawned is the Wandering Isle. Warlords zones are empty, and now we have Legion coming.

Basically, us unsavvy folks are screwed. Nowadays the emulation scene is ruled by repack developers who refuse to share their source code. So if you wanna make edits to your server, you're stuck developing the entire core. 

So what do we do? I want to MoD WoD, as it has so many new features. But the server software is so awful, and the lack of a reliable db2 editor and other tools makes it even worse. I wish more people were interested in it. Though on the other hand, I really don't want it to become another elitist 3.3.5a. People should mod whichever expansion pleases them. 

To be honest, all of these problems would be solved if people would just work together. But that's unrealistic. So, what do you think?  What expansions do you currently mod, and what are your reasons?

Edited November 28, 2015 by Corey

[Ghaster]

I switched to mod on WoD a few months ago, after i lost my old project in a harddrive crash. Personally, it still feels alot like WotLK modding, but the db2 files and FileData are a pain in the ass. I mostly figured the db2 stuff out with using DB2Editor, but i just hate the FileData system. It was way easier to just write the line directly into the file, instead of having to keep track of every single number. It is also extremely annoying, when you create something that worked in WotLK, but crashes on WoD for whatever reason (it took me so long to figure out how to add a new continent).

WoD modding is possible, it's just hard and requires more time to figure out how to make stuff work (Which i think is what scares many people off modding on WoD)

[Koward]

Lack of reverse-engineers and software developers is what keeps a modding community back from doing whatever it wants.

As a simplified version of the Separation of Concerns pyramid, creative people need well designed software, software developers need reverse-engineered documentation and reverse engineering requires advanced, often professional skills which are simply rare.

Aside from that, let's say some dev also want to create content, he may stick on the version he prefers. The preference criteria are often gameplay (hard to change), since the newer clients are always better in every other point of view.

Plus, as Corey said, I have a feeling the open source ideal is fading these days. WoW server content is getting back to the Internet Stone Age when lonely devs code for themselves then their work disappears when the project stops. Sad. Really sad.

 

Edited November 29, 2015 by Koward

[Skarn]

Koward, I think you mean reverseengineering, not sure if retroengineering is even a thing . We don't really need much things reversed now. For doing modding it is just enough to write the software on the knowledge base that we already have. PXR.dk wiki has pretty much every aspect of new file formats documented. It just requires someone to make a thing.

Another problem is that almost all the programmers in WoW Modding scene are not interested in the product of modding. They just code for fun or educational purposes. So, they are not interested in releasing the actual product. When they loose interest in coding a tool, they give up. We need to find people who have the required coding skills and are personally interested in seeing the results of modding performed with their software. Otherwise, no one is going to code anything. In 2008-2009 when most of the software was made, guys like schlumpf, Tigurius, tharo and other known programmers in the scene possibly had personal interest in modding. Some of them were even a part of a project, as far as I know. So, we must find a way to keep people interested, otherwise modding will die out.

Ghaster, it would be really cool if you could describe somewhere a process of making new continent in WoD, so that we can make tutorials and make life easier for people. We should share the knowledge we have to get the modding forward.

[Koward]

Sorry, edited, the retro part was a remnant of the translation we usually use in my language for reverse engineering x)

I think a list of what tools the community would like would be useful. To summarize the needs in all modding fields, if you prefer.

[Krysík]

I think that community should move ahead, but for me as for guys who has pretty much no experiencies with programming it's not possible at all, for only thing I could do is reskining and playing with some DBCs and that's the problem which Skarn already mentioned, there is a huge absense of various editors and other programmes for Model Editing in post WoTLK expansions.

[Skarn]

Sorry, edited, the retro part was a remnant of the translation we usually use in my language for reverse engineering x)

I think a list of what tools the community would like would be useful. To summarize the needs in all modding fields, if you prefer.

Good idea, actually. I think I can name some already:

• World Editor. It can be either Noggit or Neo or whatever else but it needs ot support new expansions and work properly.
• DBC/DB2 Editor.
• CASC Editor. So far we have perfect CASC readers, why no one cares to make an editor? Just because programmers are not interested in modding!
• M2 Converter/Editor supporting any public 3D format that would be easy to convert from.
• WMO Converter/Editor. We already have a pretty much decent MirrorMachine by Gamh and Blender plugins by happyhack. Though, all of them are made for 3.3.5a editing (changes to WMOs are minor though, very easy to redo saving) but they have a bunch of bugs that need to be fixed.

That's what I need so far. Maybe other modders need more.

[Elrena]

Skarn has said it all. I was going to mention m2i plugin for Maya, but he basically covered that. I seriously hate Blender. 

Though, the most important tools we need right now are definitely the Map Editor and a proper db2/db3 editor. Having the ability to implement mods into CASC is important too, but at the current time it's not entirely necessary. 

[Skarn]

Skarn has said it all. I was going to mention m2i plugin for Maya, but he basically covered that. I seriously hate Blender. 

Though, the most important tools we need right now are definitely the Map Editor and a proper db2/db3 editor. Having the ability to implement mods into CASC is important too, but at the current time it's not entirely necessary. 

I think I still named the most necessary software in general. There might be internal list of priorities, of course. But overall, I could have named a bunch of other stuff that I would want. But I may code that myself as it may be done with 010 scripts and I certainly will when I have time and inspiration for that.

[Kaev]

I switched to mod on WoD a few months ago, after i lost my old project in a harddrive crash. Personally, it still feels alot like WotLK modding, but the db2 files and FileData are a pain in the ass. I mostly figured the db2 stuff out with using DB2Editor, but i just hate the FileData system. It was way easier to just write the line directly into the file, instead of having to keep track of every single number. It is also extremely annoying, when you create something that worked in WotLK, but crashes on WoD for whatever reason (it took me so long to figure out how to add a new continent).

WoD modding is possible, it's just hard and requires more time to figure out how to make stuff work (Which i think is what scares many people off modding on WoD)

But don't forget - If your core supports it, you could send mapchanges etc. on the fly to the player when your server is Cata+. That's a big plus for modding.. i think..

[Skarn]

Do you mean to say that if I send patches using streaming to WoD the game will automatically create a new CASC update?

[Kaev]

Do you mean to say that if I send patches using streaming to WoD the game will automatically create a new CASC update?

I have no idea, but i doubt that it will work like that.
Just wanted to mention that it's possible to do on-the-fly-edits. This is a cool example, i guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDxcbV0jyfc

 

And to add a bit to the discussion: Yeah, you can find much stuff in the WoWDev wiki, but the pretty bad formatting and sometimes missing informations are a pain in the ass. When i made the reading part of my .adt library, i had problems because some things weren't correctly mentioned in the wiki. I had to ask Cromon like a thousand times to get it working - and i'm pretty sure that i still read some parts not 100% correctly. That's why i'm not developing the writing part atm. And i'm pretty sure if i would start to work on a CASC editor, that i'll face the next big problems after like 20 minutes of working.

(+ i'm a lazy as fuck, but let's keep that as a secret)

Edited November 30, 2015 by Kaev

[Skarn]

Do you mean to say that if I send patches using streaming to WoD the game will automatically create a new CASC update?

I have no idea, but i doubt that it will work like that.
Just wanted to mention that it's possible to do on-the-fly-edits. This is a cool example, i guess: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDxcbV0jyfc

 

And to add a bit to the discussion: Yeah, you can find much stuff in the WoWDev wiki, but the pretty bad formatting and sometimes missing informations are a pain in the ass. When i made the reading part of my .adt library, i had problems because some things weren't correctly mentioned in the wiki. I had to ask Cromon like a thousand times to get it working - and i'm pretty sure that i still read some parts not 100% correctly. That's why i'm not developing the writing part atm. And i'm pretty sure if i would start to work on a CASC editor, that i'll face the next big problems after like 20 minutes of working.

(+ i'm a lazy as fuck, but let's keep that as a secret)

Where will the streaming save things, then?

[wungasaurus]

 And to add a bit to the discussion: Yeah, you can find much stuff in the WoWDev wiki, but the pretty bad formatting and sometimes missing informations are a pain in the ass. When i made the reading part of my .adt library, i had problems because some things weren't correctly mentioned in the wiki.

It is a wiki. Instead of complaining, fix the formatting and if there was incomplete stuff, add what Cromon told you.

That video does not show streaming but terrain phasing. All content is already in the client.

[Kaev]

 And to add a bit to the discussion: Yeah, you can find much stuff in the WoWDev wiki, but the pretty bad formatting and sometimes missing informations are a pain in the ass. When i made the reading part of my .adt library, i had problems because some things weren't correctly mentioned in the wiki.

It is a wiki. Instead of complaining, fix the formatting and if there was incomplete stuff, add what Cromon told you.

That video does not show streaming but terrain phasing. All content is already in the client.

Don't worry, i already got wiki access and schlumpf already corrected some things that were wrong after i've spoke with him.
And i didn't wanted to complain about the wiki itself, but wanted to show why people don't like to develope tools with the informations we got. Without the wiki i wouldn't know anything at all about adt files, it's a pretty cool place for informations but it has some weaknesses.

Edited November 30, 2015 by Kaev

[Syama108]

Old Videos. More to come!

 

 

[Syama108]

Old Videos. More to come!