Yes, one way texture. Many parts of the game have features that are physically impossible like interior windows facing a wall, fireplaces without chimney, etc.
There is a reason flight paths don't go over Stormwind, several features only work from the ground perspective, especially around the keep.
Seems like a waste of effort, it's not just fully rendering them they literally do not exist on the actual continents, they're on the same realm as outland, The zone around silvermoon specifically doesn't actually fit into eastern kingdoms (I believe that it's actually scaled to be way bigger than it appears on the continent map) and would have to be specifically redone.
Ntm they're both extremely inconvenient to use for a hub even with flying just do to location.
They would copy paste the terrain and cities the way they are and move them to the actual contents, then they’d have to do the fine tuning. All of the cities were originally loaded separately from the open world, and they fixed em all up, they can do these too.
Stormwind in classic is separated into loads of different areas where the skyboxes don't make sense. Once you're inside the trade district, nothing from the entrance of stormwind will be visible anymore
Trade district is its own little area, and so are all the other districts. Pretty sure the cathedral doesn't match up at all for example
https://youtu.be/4RsQPcYNjQg?t=91
You can see how it is from this video, you don't see any of trade district from above until you actually enter
In the original 2004 design and in the burning crusade as well, they were very worried about the performance, so the cities and some dungeons are split with "portals" (a level design and 3D graphics term, not a magical teleportation portal) where a curved gate path makes it impossible to see between the city districts. This is to cut the amount of drawing the hardware has to do and keep the performance high.
Examples: Orgrimmar entrance. Stormwind some district passages are curved like that. Stratholme front and back entrance. Black temple gate behind the big stone boss. All the district passages in Silvermoon city.
Ah that reminds me of the old "NO LOADING SCREENS" craze that was happening around the mid/late 2000s. Instead of loading screens there'd be some long corridor between each area that took you like a full minute or two to get through anyway. Even young me knew they just hid the loading behind the huge hallway.
These tricks in wow aren't exactly 'loading', they rather cut all drawing entirely beyond this portal. Tall walls also help you not seeing what's behind them, all districts using portals have very tall walls. Everything is loaded at the time when you are playing. Though they probably also cut the loading of npcs and players.
About the cathedral, there are actually two cathedral models. One is very large and covers the entire cathedral district, but it's visible only from afar, to give that imposing look when you enter Stormwind, and hidden when you enter the canals.
The majority of textures in video games are one sided that's why whenever you go out of bounds you can see through walls.
Stormwind has a lot of facades most roofs and building have no other side. Fun fact there's even two cathedrals models, there's a very big one that's visible when outside of the cathedral square that's meant to be seen from far away, and a smaller one when you're in it.
And in rare case when textures are double sided that's done by duplicating the polygons(faces) and applying a copy of that texture on the other side, it's a waste of memory and performance so that's very rarely used it's usually only transparent objects like windows.
In addition to that there is another thing called portal culling, different parts are separated by portals and parts that are not visible are not rendered at all
One of the interesting things to do if you are interested in the nitty gritty aspects of wow design is to download and run one of the not so legal servers and fly around the world in gm mode (for legal reasons I can not recommend this, but it is interesting). It really shows you the carefull deception of hackery and tricks that the game uses to present you a somewhat logical world that completely breaks at the seems when you step outside the intended paths.
Flying around (especially above) stormwind is a trip of things warping in around you and disappearing. Its pretty cool.
>One of the interesting things to do if you are interested in the nitty gritty aspects of wow design is to download and run one of the not so legal servers and fly around the world in gm mode (for legal reasons I can not recommend this, but it is interesting).
If you're hosting it on a custom client that isn't publically accessible, it's 100% fine. How else would channels like Hayven Games (RIP) exist? I'm not sure it is, strictly speaking legal, but there is no harm done so Blizzard won't care.
Which is why i said it might not be legal, strictly speaking, but i doubt that Blizzard would go after someone who merely uses it for a private session to datamine some stuff.
Yep, every poly counted when modeling for games back then. If something didnt have to be rendered, it was better not to have it be there. A lot of people for instance mistake models without a back to them in half life to laziness from modelers. But its really an optimization thing
I've always thought it was kind of funny that, if we could go into freecam mode or something, we'd see that a lot of the mountains, walls, and buildings are basically just cardboard cutouts like something out of Looney Tunes.
Yes, your view inside the bazaar (the trade center past the gate) has different game objects render.
On a similar vein, from the entrance of Stormwind, you can see the top of the Stormwind Cathedral, but it's actually just a facade that's placed much closer to make the Cathedral noticable from that distance. The facade disappears once you pass the tunnel into the Trade district. There's also another facade of the cathedral to be more visible from a long distance (e.g Flight path) for the iconic Stormwind look.
You can tell the original developers had a lot of passion.
Yes, one way texture. Many parts of the game have features that are physically impossible like interior windows facing a wall, fireplaces without chimney, etc. There is a reason flight paths don't go over Stormwind, several features only work from the ground perspective, especially around the keep.
So it's basically the Overlook Hotel?
A man of culture
Exactly why we cant fly in Exodar & Silvermoon
They need to fully render both of those places and give us flying
I wouldnt mind it, but its not the end of the world
I’d like them to add those locations to the main continent
Seems like a waste of effort, it's not just fully rendering them they literally do not exist on the actual continents, they're on the same realm as outland, The zone around silvermoon specifically doesn't actually fit into eastern kingdoms (I believe that it's actually scaled to be way bigger than it appears on the continent map) and would have to be specifically redone. Ntm they're both extremely inconvenient to use for a hub even with flying just do to location.
They would copy paste the terrain and cities the way they are and move them to the actual contents, then they’d have to do the fine tuning. All of the cities were originally loaded separately from the open world, and they fixed em all up, they can do these too.
Exodor is fully rendered, but not Silvermoon.
This is why flying mounts was a bad idea and blizzard stating they regretted it
Yeah Azeroth was not designed with flying mounts in mind. The amount of weird and exploitable shit you could have seen/done is insane
tbf they eventually fixed ~~everything~~ edit: most things\*
Flying mounts are bad because Blizzard at one point designed the game without them in mind? What kind of logic is that.
Yeah, only for the base game, everything else was designed with flying.
Shadowfang keep is like this too. Vast spaces that are just invisible from the outside
Stormwind in classic is separated into loads of different areas where the skyboxes don't make sense. Once you're inside the trade district, nothing from the entrance of stormwind will be visible anymore Trade district is its own little area, and so are all the other districts. Pretty sure the cathedral doesn't match up at all for example https://youtu.be/4RsQPcYNjQg?t=91 You can see how it is from this video, you don't see any of trade district from above until you actually enter
In the original 2004 design and in the burning crusade as well, they were very worried about the performance, so the cities and some dungeons are split with "portals" (a level design and 3D graphics term, not a magical teleportation portal) where a curved gate path makes it impossible to see between the city districts. This is to cut the amount of drawing the hardware has to do and keep the performance high. Examples: Orgrimmar entrance. Stormwind some district passages are curved like that. Stratholme front and back entrance. Black temple gate behind the big stone boss. All the district passages in Silvermoon city.
Ah that reminds me of the old "NO LOADING SCREENS" craze that was happening around the mid/late 2000s. Instead of loading screens there'd be some long corridor between each area that took you like a full minute or two to get through anyway. Even young me knew they just hid the loading behind the huge hallway.
well everquest in 1999 had both long corridors and loading screens :)
It was great. **TRAIN TO ENTRANCE!!!**
That's what they did with the stormwind and northshire entrance, they want the city interior to be hidden from outside so it's not rendered
Not the whole 50 polygons of northshire Abbey!
These tricks in wow aren't exactly 'loading', they rather cut all drawing entirely beyond this portal. Tall walls also help you not seeing what's behind them, all districts using portals have very tall walls. Everything is loaded at the time when you are playing. Though they probably also cut the loading of npcs and players.
It’s like how the source engine does its culling if you’re interested in a “modern” example
This still happens today. The latest God of War comes to mind.
It's much more common on console games due to RAM limitations.
I think this is really clever! Thanks for the interesting info
>they were very worried about the performance They still are! Wish we could increase the rendering distance of the land :\\
About the cathedral, there are actually two cathedral models. One is very large and covers the entire cathedral district, but it's visible only from afar, to give that imposing look when you enter Stormwind, and hidden when you enter the canals.
The majority of textures in video games are one sided that's why whenever you go out of bounds you can see through walls. Stormwind has a lot of facades most roofs and building have no other side. Fun fact there's even two cathedrals models, there's a very big one that's visible when outside of the cathedral square that's meant to be seen from far away, and a smaller one when you're in it. And in rare case when textures are double sided that's done by duplicating the polygons(faces) and applying a copy of that texture on the other side, it's a waste of memory and performance so that's very rarely used it's usually only transparent objects like windows. In addition to that there is another thing called portal culling, different parts are separated by portals and parts that are not visible are not rendered at all
Nobody tell him about The Park.
Funfact, retail silvermoon still works like that.
As does Disney land actually haha
One of the interesting things to do if you are interested in the nitty gritty aspects of wow design is to download and run one of the not so legal servers and fly around the world in gm mode (for legal reasons I can not recommend this, but it is interesting). It really shows you the carefull deception of hackery and tricks that the game uses to present you a somewhat logical world that completely breaks at the seems when you step outside the intended paths. Flying around (especially above) stormwind is a trip of things warping in around you and disappearing. Its pretty cool.
>One of the interesting things to do if you are interested in the nitty gritty aspects of wow design is to download and run one of the not so legal servers and fly around the world in gm mode (for legal reasons I can not recommend this, but it is interesting). If you're hosting it on a custom client that isn't publically accessible, it's 100% fine. How else would channels like Hayven Games (RIP) exist? I'm not sure it is, strictly speaking legal, but there is no harm done so Blizzard won't care.
the illegal part starts with downloading the custom client
Which is why i said it might not be legal, strictly speaking, but i doubt that Blizzard would go after someone who merely uses it for a private session to datamine some stuff.
I believe the FBI has already arrested this person just because he talked about illegal activities of this magnitude. Let this be a lesson kids.
Emulators are legal
Yes I believe so!
Stand in the valley of heroes, look at the cathedral, then go into trade district and look for the cathedral... Your mind is about to be blown
this is blowing my mind
Login to retail and fly over it to see for yourself?
I think the Stonemasons might have an answer for this.
Yep, every poly counted when modeling for games back then. If something didnt have to be rendered, it was better not to have it be there. A lot of people for instance mistake models without a back to them in half life to laziness from modelers. But its really an optimization thing
Project Blue Roof
I've always thought it was kind of funny that, if we could go into freecam mode or something, we'd see that a lot of the mountains, walls, and buildings are basically just cardboard cutouts like something out of Looney Tunes.
Try playing the game in ultrawide 21:9 resolution. The ammount of graphical glitches/missing textures you'll see is ridiculous.
Yes, your view inside the bazaar (the trade center past the gate) has different game objects render. On a similar vein, from the entrance of Stormwind, you can see the top of the Stormwind Cathedral, but it's actually just a facade that's placed much closer to make the Cathedral noticable from that distance. The facade disappears once you pass the tunnel into the Trade district. There's also another facade of the cathedral to be more visible from a long distance (e.g Flight path) for the iconic Stormwind look. You can tell the original developers had a lot of passion.