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Wrath of the Lich King Modding => "Retro-Porting" => Topic started by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 12:13:28 am

Title: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 12:13:28 am
I know that prior to Patch 1.4, the Blue Child (the smaller, blue-ish second moon) appeared in the skies with the White Lady (the large white moon) and then was taken out for reasons unknown, only to finally be re-implemented when Mists of Pandaria launched. My question to you guys is, can we re-implement the Blue Child into 1.12.1 via a patch?
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: kojak488 on May 15, 2015, 01:24:14 am
Quote from: "SMBComix"
My question to you guys is, can we re-implement the Blue Child into 1.12.1 via a patch?

Yes.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 04:38:35 am
Oh, that's good news!

Is there anyone out there with the technical know-how willing to do this? Or at least give me the information/files I need to do it myself?
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: iindigo on May 15, 2015, 05:08:19 am
Actually, I recall seeing the second moon up to around 1.10 or so, having started playing during patch 1.5. I don't know what it'd take to bring it into 1.12, but I suspect the reason for the moon's disappearance has to do with the new skybox tech introduced in TBC.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 06:19:51 am
Quote from: "iindigo"
Actually, I recall seeing the second moon up to around 1.10 or so, having started playing during patch 1.5. I don't know what it'd take to bring it into 1.12, but I suspect the reason for the moon's disappearance has to do with the new skybox tech introduced in TBC.

Ahhhh. I see.

Well, it's a good thing I'm only sticking with Vanilla as a WoW option then (but I may be using some of the graphical touch-ups from this site lol) :P

Would it perhaps be a good idea to import the skybox from the WoW Alpha client? Is that even possible?
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: iindigo on May 15, 2015, 08:17:10 am
That's the thing. If I'm not mistaken, in Classic content 99% of the skies aren't skyboxes, they're procedurally generated. Basically, the sky painting is hardcoded, with the only external references being colors and textures for the moons. Notable exceptions include the death sky and the stratholme instance sky, which are typical M2 skyboxes.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: kojak488 on May 15, 2015, 12:14:52 pm
Quote from: "SMBComix"
Oh, that's good news!

Is there anyone out there with the technical know-how willing to do this? Or at least give me the information/files I need to do it myself?

To officially answer the two questions: yes (they are phrased as yes/no answer questions rather than asking for detail).

The only reason I'm going to give you partial information is to spite schlumpf.

If I were you and wanted to do this in a couple minutes I'd take your standard skybox, convert it to a .obj, load it in Blender, find the moon mesh, add to it and therefore create the second moon, edit the UV map so you don't need to fuck around with new textures, modify the moon's texture to accommodate your second moon, and convert that shit back to .m2.

I wouldn't want to do that for every skybox; fortunately if it were my mod, my game uses one skybox because of its edited day/night cycle.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 04:48:20 pm
What if I wanted to use GMax instead of Blender? I already have GMax installed and I was gonna use it for some Warcraft III and Fallout: New Vegas projects.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Skarn on May 15, 2015, 06:45:10 pm
GMax sucks.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: SMBComix on May 15, 2015, 10:33:48 pm
Quote from: "Skarn"
GMax sucks.

At least it comes with a tutorial. Blender doesn't do that.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: kojak488 on May 15, 2015, 10:51:25 pm
Quote from: "SMBComix"
Quote from: "Skarn"
GMax sucks.

At least it comes with a tutorial. Blender doesn't do that.

No, but there's this magical tool called Google.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Ascathos on May 16, 2015, 02:32:29 am
Quote from: "kojak488"
Quote from: "SMBComix"
Quote from: "Skarn"
GMax sucks.

At least it comes with a tutorial. Blender doesn't do that.

No, but there's this magical tool called Google.
If you prefer, there is also Youtube. Recently, I found a pretty awesome tutorial for Blender.

It is ABSOLUTELY beginner stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLV7h-WLIx0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLV7h-WLIx0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

Like, totally. Keybindings, explainations of a few keys, etc.
But an amazing start.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Steff on May 16, 2015, 04:48:35 am
I like  gmax and did all model stuff with it.  Only to hold up. The max flag ;)
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Insanity on May 17, 2015, 02:22:21 am
Can you define more than one skybox for an area?  So basically setup a mostly transparent skybox with the moon(s) and apply it along with another skybox or does the client only accept 1 skybox at a time?  I’ve been looking through the light*. dbc files on the wiki site and I can’t quite figure out how skyboxs are called…I should be looking at the core?
A follow up question would be can you change skyboxs using an event or some other script.  If I wanted to tie the appear of the moon to something like… a “The Blue Child Rising” event.  Is that possible without significant changes to core (in my case trinity)?
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: kojak488 on May 17, 2015, 03:24:40 pm
Quote from: "Insanity"
Can you define more than one skybox for an area?

Yes.  The question you should be asking is if you can still see both skyboxes.  The answer to that I'm unsure of as I haven't tried working with a transparent skybox before.

Quote from: "Insanity"
I’ve been looking through the light*. dbc files on the wiki site and I can’t quite figure out how skyboxs are called…I should be looking at the core?

No, you should be looking at: http://www.pxr.dk/wowdev/wiki/index.php?title=Light.dbc (http://www.pxr.dk/wowdev/wiki/index.php?title=Light.dbc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

Look at a light entry that you know works and learn it by backtracing how it all works from there.

Quote from: "Insanity"
A follow up question would be can you change skyboxs using an event or some other script.  If I wanted to tie the appear of the moon to something like… a “The Blue Child Rising” event.  Is that possible without significant changes to core (in my case trinity)?

Not that I'm aware of.  You can change skyboxes based on effects (i.e.g, death skybox), but I'd wager that's a core change and a heavy one at that.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Skarn on May 18, 2015, 01:25:20 pm
If some parts of the skybox are transparent, you will just see the usual colored sky through it.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: spik96 on May 19, 2015, 10:54:10 pm
Quote from: "Skarn"
If some parts of the skybox are transparent, you will just see the usual colored sky through it.
I think the question was about a multiple skyboxes case.

By the way, (I don't want to steal OP's thread, but it's just a little thing), how do old-world clouds work ? Are they procedurally generated too ?
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: Insanity on May 20, 2015, 03:08:49 am
Quote from: "spik96"
I think the question was about a multiple skyboxes case.
That was my main question but the answer does infer that there are at least 2 levels to work with: the skybox and the sky background itself.  Time to start messing around with it an see.  Thanks for the responses.
Title: Re: [Question] Azeroth's second moon?
Post by: kojak488 on May 20, 2015, 04:02:20 am
Quote from: "Insanity"
Quote from: "spik96"
I think the question was about a multiple skyboxes case.
That was my main question but the answer does infer that there are at least 2 levels to work with: the skybox and the sky background itself.  Time to start messing around with it an see.  Thanks for the responses.

It's very common for places to have two or more light sources.  In fact, almost every light source has more than one.  Why?  Each map (Blizzard map - custom ones should too) has a kind of default skybox.  When you open the Light.dbc and see a row with lots of 0's in those first few columns, it's often because that's the default skybox for that map.  Every other map entry is covered by both that entry PLUS the default skybox.  That's where my comment earlier about transparent skyboxes came from and Skarn indicates that shouldn't be a problem.

Look at this screenshot I made from Lightmapper: http://i.imgur.com/T076wQx.png (http://i.imgur.com/T076wQx.png" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;)

 It's showing you Dreadmist peak.  Dreadmist peak is the smaller, completely black circle in the middle.  That's got its own Skybox settings.  It's also within the circle for the Skybox that basically covers Crossroads.  They're both covered by the general Skybox for Kalimdor.

So Dreadmist peak is covered by 3 Skybox settings.