I am looking forward to this release. I really like some of the older strategy games (Dark Reign, Total Annihilation, Warcraft) but they don't "age well" relative to newer games and it is nice to be able to re-create that feeling of amazement but now on a 2K or 4K screen rather than on a 1280x800 screen.
Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
131–140 of 154 posts
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#132I was the QA Lead for Grapics on WarCraft3. This was Blizzards first 3D game and the early engine was very error prone but with the meticulous attention to detail and the sheer amount of time we spent polishing. This game turned out flawless for its time. Early on there were many models that would glitch and there was a massive artifact issue that would happen in multiplayer games. I’m sure the developers found it ve…
I’ve always been curious - what would you say was the driver internally behind the legendary “Blizzard polish” back then? What made that happen?
A tireless focus on delivery.
The QA manager came out of his office one day with a critical announcement. He was angry that we started taking a more quantitative approach to QA, producing lateral results and accomplishing little to nothing. Remember guys you’re number one task is to have fun. This was quite the eye opener for me. So wait I’m supposed to work at Blizzard and have fun? That just didn’t seem right so I just focused on the graphics.
People would come into QA with an ambition to join another budding internal team like cinematic’s and sound and did their best in QA to showcase their work ethic and ambition.
Team members were often treated to company goodies and publicly acknowledged for hard work.
In short we felt important.
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#133I feel torn in so many dimensions. On the one hand, one of the greatest games of all time gets remade. And I feel humbled that we're able to make giants over decades — Star Trek, Cobol, Warcraft have my respect. But on the other hand, it also speaks of a dire lack of creativity as we speak, or boldness, maybe both. The general trend of remakes is also about fixing problems we too often created for ourselves in the fi…
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Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
My theory is many great people left from blizzard.. they're trying to milk what they can with as low as budget and a team as possible.
I think it all started with WoW, when they realized how much more money they could make by going for things with the most mainstream appeal (which is why they now have Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm and such). It's way more bang for their buck compared to making a true improvement on a classic like Warcraft. Many other entertainment companies have realized the same, once they've gotten big enough. Starcraft 2 is s…
Things did change during wow. Three of the top guys left to do Guildwars. Blizzard North slowly collapsed after D2 and wow. Now blizzard is more the Anaheim guys than anything else.
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazing how WC3 maps were responsible for both MOBAs and Tower Defence, two of the most popular genres of all time, both moreso than conventional RTSs at this point
Tower defense maps were a thing back in the Starcraft days too, but the game engine was a big limiting factor. WC3 opened things up a ton.
Aeon of strife was moba games in sc1 too. Its interesting to watch game modes develop over decades.
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#136I was the QA Lead for Grapics on WarCraft3. This was Blizzards first 3D game and the early engine was very error prone but with the meticulous attention to detail and the sheer amount of time we spent polishing. This game turned out flawless for its time. Early on there were many models that would glitch and there was a massive artifact issue that would happen in multiplayer games. I’m sure the developers found it ve…
I tried to break the war3 engine as a youth, pushing it to weird limits in the map editor. Can confirm war3 doesn't break. Will forever be a staple game in my library.
I've always been quietly impressed how well war3's JASS and map editor works as an introduction to programming and how games work. The sc2 editor is too complex for teenage fun IMO.
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#137Does anyone remember "Tides of Blood"?
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#138Oh I’d be thrilled to play WC3 Tower Defence again. Those were loads of fun.
Never tried it. Link?
They came in many flavours, but Cube Defense is fairly representative.
It's a bit like Tetris, in that the game proceeds in levels. Each level, a wave of enemies would run from their spawn point to the centre of the map. All you can do is build defense towers to kill them off as they run through your build area.
Most waves are ground units, and you can arrange your towers in such a way that those units must spend more time walking through your area, which means each of your towers can fire more times. Every so often there would be an air unit round, and this maze approach doesn't work. Some towers have special attributes, like slowing an enemy unit with cold damage.
Re: Warcraft 3: Remastered Will Work with Old Custom Maps
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Another interesting story is that the engine came from an engineer at Nihilistic who made Descent, a PC pre-cursor to StarFox. It's just that it was never put to work as complicated before, Descent had just 4 perspectives and only a handful of models. WarCraft3 was another beast entirely.
Wow, Descent, man that one just took me way back. I remember one thing: PC struggled as much as I did to go through the game, haha. I can't believe that engine eventually made it to WC3, such a small (and wonderful) world. Thank you so much for the memories, and for sharing!
Yeah, that one took me way back, too. Descent was the first time I'd ever done multiplayer gaming on a computer. I was maybe 12 or 13 and a guy in my neighborhood was some kind of software developer who would take me and my friend to his office on the weekends sometimes to play it on their networked computers.
Good times!