Abomination explode ability was from beta when Abomination was a hero rather than unit (this also explains why he has more animations than regular units). Frost Wyrms have birth animation because originally in beta they werent trainable from Boneyard but were summonable from Ultimate from Lich hero instead of Death n Decay ulti which belonged to Death Knights (it was transfer from WC2 death knights to WC3 death knights) Necromancer's have channeling animation because they had ability called Corpse Explosion in the beta, it used the current Finger of Death icon and was something like a 3-4 seconds channel that caused corpses to explode and deal damage over a wide radius, this was meant to give players a choice on whether to use corpses for Raise Dead for more units or to use those corpses to deal decent burst damage.
Krljavi Dzo some really good stuffs but just one thing to correct: in wc3 beta abomination was already be put in the slaughterhouse. The hero version should be in alpha or some versions earlier than beta.
The Azshara statue morph animation is used once in a cinematic where Vashj tells how the naga came to be, but the screen flashes as it is happening so you do not get to see it.
Okay, now I remember! Thanks. Man, it seems like I'd need to play the entire campaign all the way through every time I make a new video or I'll miss stuff like this!
Abelhawk, what model did you use for the gargoyle spire? also I love your videos and cant wait for the icon one so we will know about that weird abomination icon!!! Also how would you feel about doing a playthrough of Warcraft 3, I love learning about other people thoughts while playing it.
The abomination icon I was talking about was the one you showed at 1:15 , it was the red disease icon that was used originally for the abomination blow up. also thank you for the gargoyle spire model path. Also I'm trying for some odd reason to put some of these in a melee map which I cant upload and I have one last question.
During Beta Crypt Lord's Impale was a single target ability that threw the enemy airborne and behind the Crypt Lord, dealing damage and stunning, hence the "extended nose" animation.
Good ol' warforge days. That version of impale was hilariously OP btw, 120->240->360 damage and 2 seconds of stun. Along with a death knight and a couple statues you could run around killing heroes for days.
3:45 The Sull of Guldan shrine was originally the altar for the Demon race. As I saw on the internet, the Demon race was originally meant to be playable.
Another thing is that Jaina model is based of Furion's/Druid of talon model, some bones and attachment points still reffer to druids. Few animas are swapped, like Furion's spell anim being victory animation of Jaina, and her spell anim being custom.
9:52 It allows for a very short animation clip rather than "wasting frames" having it spin all the way around. Since the wheel animation resets before ever showing the latter half, you might as well cut it to save polys.
statue of azhara uses death animation at the moment when vashj tells maiev about naga's origins in tomb of sargeras its used when night elves, standing next to azhaea statue, transform into naga after the flash on the screen, during this flash the statue plays this animation
Dang it, I knew this at some point and was going to point it out, but I couldn't find the screenshot to confirm it and thought I had just imagined it. I need to go through Scrolls of Lore more deeply.
There are several icons hidden in the WE, and the model of the Lich changes in the TFT also There is the ROC and TFT version Kel ' Thuzad (Lich) changes in both
Just to let you know what you are talking about at 0:15 is called a texture artist. A "skinner" is a term used only in rigging. Texture artists and technical artists use this method of packing textures together to create less draw calls in the engine, therefore making the game run smoother. Its just a data saving technique and has nothing to do with the characters being connected lore wise. Hope this helps to clear things up. Love the videos, Cheers. Edit: it also is definitely not laziness. Being a texture artist myself it actually takes extra effort to pack textures together in this manner. It usually takes place in the final stages of the games development when they are really trying to get the game to run at the highest efficiency possible.
Honestly, they seem actually to be the BEST workers for battle compared to other races. 1: if they're caught out/harrassed, you can detonate them which denies xp (which is fantastic) 2: They're the most useful late game because they can still deal with draining mana of heroes and spell casters, as well as their ability to damage summoned units. 3: They're VERY good at defense if the opponent is relying on summoned units/mana intensive harass.
@@poego6045 not to mention the best for scouting and also can be stationed all over the map allowing you to use goblin lab/merc camp/tavern whenever you want. Wisp OP more like. Lol
The walking animations are still functional in-game via slow status effects such as dazed or slow poison and freezing debuffs such as frost shield's freezing slow. I played in a custom map as a pitlord once and some creep had a freezing projectile which slowed the pitlord which triggered the walking animation.
I did a couple of tests and it seems to be based on the movement speed of the unit. If it's below a certain amount, it uses the walking animation, and if it's higher than a certain amount, it uses running. I never knew it before!
Obsidian Statue/Destroyer originally had a different model. It resembled a sphynx. Also, you talked about the chaos orc berserker model in your previous video. But is a lot of more hidden models - ancient ziggurats, different city buildings, bridges...
Destroyer was originally known as the "Black Sphinx" in the Frozen Throne Beta. That version of the model can be downloaded from Wc3c along with some other cool beta models. (I'd post a link, but youtube likes to annoy me by hiding most of my comments with links).
9:50 Cutting the gear like that reduces the amount of vertices for the model and removes polygons, thus reducing memory usage and light calculations needed for the model. Doing it this way also reduces the amount of animation needed for it to run, reducing the memory needed for the model even more, and you can pack the UVs even tighter, increasing pixel density on the model which improves quality. The animation technique itself is most likely a throwback to sprite animations, where you only actually need like 3-4 frames of animation to make a wheel turn, saving immensely on animation time for 2D, but in 3D it's likely to have had the opposite effect, although the animation in a whole most likely didn't take long. TL;DR: Cutting the gear saves memory and increases possible texture quality due to less vertices/polygons and less animation frames.
I always find myself coming back to your videos every 2 years since I can't move on from the effort you took to make these vids on a game that i use to play when i was a kid.good job man
Im pretty sure the Tinkers factory cog is actually not disappearing, but its conntantly snapping back if you look hard enough. That actually saves spaces as you dont have those extra polygons on it.
Things you missed: Necropolis had a pool around it. It is still visible in its icon. Also there is a haunted gold mine icon, but the one in use is the regular gold mine icon. Lich Icon and Models changed from roc to tft. Snapdragons' model is blue by default, but the unit is colored to look green. Its icon is blue. Ancient of Wonders used to be the Den of Wonders (icon still exists). Mannoroth and Azgalor are 2 different pitlord skins, they both have black plating where team color should be, but they don't have it.
after watching all your easter eggs videos I appreciate Blizzard's work even more, Warcraft 3 is simply massive!(and your work too, you rock at searching though the files like a detective) :)
7:00 Belated gripe: When Illidan absorbs the Skull of Gul'dan in the WC3 ROC Night Elf campaign, he uses the Demon Hunter channel animation. He also has the same model as the Demon Hunter. 12:25 ALSO a Warsong Gulch map did exist in Frozen Throne and it was exceptionally popular, even getting a saveload system. Here's one: www.epicwar.com/maps/26977/
for the Acolyte & sludge skin, i think its efficient & understandable to hold 2 different asset textures in 1 texture file. this is to save up on memory and avoid having any unnecessary usage of memory.
Also at 9:52 Saving polygons are key to running a game as smooth as possible, so even if its a few polygons It's also, most likely, because they wanted the animation short like that to save animation time
3:20 Agreed. WC3 Infernals look so much more crisp and firm. The collar just looks silly, or if you're gonna have a collar, make it look sharp, not like silly foam. 11:30 Guessing that's cuz in Lore, when her death should have come, she instead chose to become a Naga.
magnataurs voiceover is same as centaurs but slightly changed (just like firelords lava spawn has changed sounds of naga snap dragon) also magnataurs animations are the same as pitlords
“Their Detonate ability is worthless”. That ability saved Azeroth. Damage to summoned units, Archimonde was summoned by Kel’thuzad. 50,000 wisps Detonated at once and eliminated the threat that destroyed all our forces.
11:32 I knew I wasn't tripping when I noticed that animation in a cutscene! I was right! I find it weird no one is talking about this on the internet, not even the Wiki.
Both correct! I thought that the raven, Furion, and Medivh combo was self-explanatory, but now I realize that I pointed out others that were much less so. If I make an addendum video I'll have to point these out. Thanks guys!
You ever wonder why Tyrande's hair color changed too? I'm guessing they thought the hair color changing would make them stand out more than the other nightelven characters, and Tyrande and Furion are a combo-pack so they'd both change hair color as well
Never saw people talking about this, and even this video doesn't mention it, but the goblin merchant building has a training/research animation in the form of a goblin going down a slide and running inside into the building
Once while trying to mess around with the Dragonhawks, I accidentally gave them the Coatl quotes. I decided to leave that little goof intact for a while, it was hilarious :p
The Shoveller model is based on Frank Pearce not on Sam Didier. They just put his face on a kobald model for the end credits to mess with him. Messing with Frank is an old Blizzard pass time.
9:48 may be a burrow charge animation, simmilar to Anuburaks Abllity in Heroes of the Storm. The way he sticks his nose up may mean it suppose to be underground
Cool videos, glad you made them. Detonate is not as worthless as you imply. In fact it's a key element in every serious wc3 matchup with NE faction present. Even when not using the full effect, suicide to deny xp is crucial yet again. Edit: If you are curious how useful wisps can become, watch some of Moon's tours replays.(highly recommended)
Great series so far ! I already knew a lot from this episode and the last one since I spent a huuuge amount of my time in the editor, but very pleasant to watch anyway ! I'll be looking closely for the next episodes. Also, I think that Crypt Lord's jumping animation is used in Worm War scenario. (What ? Doesn't count ? Nevermind, then.)
I'd say that counts, since it was a scenario provided with the game. I remember having a lot of fun with Worm War. :D My favorite though was Extreme Candy War 2005. I think it'd be sweet if Blizzard made a map on Heroes of the Storm based on that one.
So a couple things, 1. You missed the old RoC beta version of catapults where they were pushed by peons, and 2. Detonate from wisps is one of the absolute most game breaking and powerful moves on the game in high level competitive, you can literally win an entire game because you pulled 4 wisps to detonate off your tree line, also when you detonate a wisp that’s about to die, the other players hero doesn’t gain experience
I talked about the catapults here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Kd49NkXWPis.htmlm21s And yeah, I'm no good player by any means. :D I probably wouldn't have the reflexes to detonate the wisps before they died, much less the know-how on strategy.
I really liked all your warcraft videos, it's just sad to see the series ended. It will be interesting tho if you make a walkthrough/playthrough of playing warcraft 3
From a modeler's perspective, the slimes and acolytes probably shared textures to lessen texture memory, which you can sometimes find multiple objects sharing textures in modern megatextures. As for the gear on the pocket factory, you save on memory with polycount and animation time being reduced is all I can surmise from it
That's fair about the acolyte/slime, but it's just weird to me that those two models in particular share a skin and no others in the entire game do. And they make separate skins for different variations of creeps just to change their color and stuff, so they didn't seem to care too much about saving memory that way.
They may have worked on both either near the beginning or near the end of the development process. There may have also, at some point, been a function where the Acolyte changes into the Slime (Perhaps reminiscent of Warhammer's Chaos Cultist > Chaos Spawn). It was also their first 3D game, so they could have been trying a lot of things and that was just one of their little blips they left in during the development process. Then again, I don't work for blizzard, so I can't really say.
I tried making Warcraft with the Warcraft 3 engine too. Got burnt out on it. Also played around with a "Minor League" campaign (3 missions each). Heroes like the Captain (who leads the survivors of Arthas' Northrend expedition after the events of Frostmourne), etc who could only use 2-3 items (3 for intelligence based minor heroes), and a mix of regular unit abilities with ultimates being tier 1-2 of a regular hero ability, item summons (Furbolg, golem, fel stalker, etc) or item effects. The flaming cube reminds me of the cube fired at the end of Doom 2, then the Romero head easter egg through the wall where the cube came from.
I don’t see it that way. Unused animations, icons, models, etc. were all used at one point of development, but didn't make it into the retail version of the game. Blizzard was just lazy or didn't care to remove all those things that ended up being unused. You can see how some of those things were used on pre-release screenshots of WarCraft III: Reign of Chaos. I can't post a link, but you can easily find them if you just google 'scrolls of lore image gallery'.
That halfgear is freaking amazing, a literal look behind the scenes. I wonder if that's the main reason I can't rotate camera for more than 90 degrees both ways.
Many buildings have faulty or missing sides at the back. Since buildings have a fixed facing angle (270 degrees) you can only see the buildings' backside if you make a trigger (like a cinematic) in which you rotate the camera by more than 90° or if you rotate the building itself. Normally, you can't see the back side of buildings, so they were left like that on purpose.
I remember having rad somewhere that any race should have one flying hero in the Alpha-Version but they skipped that. The model of the PotM can still be found obviously.
9:38 They use that animation trick to save some memory. To put it in perspective; it only has a fifth of the frames that it would need if they had a full wheel. Keep in mind that for 2002 with programs stored on CD-ROMs that held only a couple hundred megabytes, every little bit of space was precious.
4:30: Way late to comment, but you do this a lot where you assume old file names are references to what it used to be. As a modeler, I can assure you that's not the case, although it sometimes is. Here are some hints: 1. The model is often made first, and named later. There are a bunch of reasons for this, like the designer wants something, and he tells the artist to 'make an x' and the designer does it. Like, make a 'fire wizard', and then when it's put in the game it's called a Pyronic Thaurmaturge 2. Modelers name stuff goofy things all the time. If you tell the artist to make a 'punchy monk' it might end up called a 'pugilist' rather than 'monk'. 3. Sometimes it's not the unit that changed it's name, but the but the model that changed its unit. Something that was phased out was left with a model, and they decide to repurpose the model. Anyways, you can still guess that a unit used to be called something, but you should look for indications before assuming it. Usually, but not always, there's a reason they changed it, like copyright, sounding stupid, or losing a function.
I also hate numberous wow redesigns, infernals are among them xS Also btw i have few capture the flag maps for wc3, i can send you these if you want :v
