Forums Back Up! news - WarCraft III: World of WarCraft mod for Warcraft III: Frozen Throne

We've been rebuilding the Wc3:WoW forum after an anonymous hacker breached the website's administration control panel and deleted EVERYTHING, including all backed-up information. After a couple weeks of reconstructing the website, it's finally up! I encourage everyone to visit the forum and get yourself registered. Only registered users can post (guests are disabled due to spam users) so go on and visit the site: Wc3WoW.net78.net

In other news, Eleandor and Hawkwing are working together a lot with the interface. What's being tinkered? Well, while Hawkwing is supplying Eleandor with interface images (which are mainly WoW interface screenshots taken from Google Images and Hawking edits out the useless stuff in the image and adds necessary content to it, if needed) Eleandor uses the interface images as part of implementing the new features in Wc3:WoW. The following features are in development right now:

• Questing System - Includes a custom quest log (not that old WarCraft III quest log, ours will look exactly as it does in WoW and it doesn't pause the game every time you want to look at it. And of course, aside from its looks, it will function just about the same as WoW's does. Only difference is that you might not be able to scroll down the quest dialogue, but how many people read that stuff anyway? Also, you'll be able to share quests with players (or in this case, Player-Bots) to give them a purpose to the group as well so you can all complete a quest together.
• Equipment System - When the player opens his equipment window, the same equipment window interface from WoW pops up and you are able to drop items from your inventory into the appropriate equipment slots. Although it'll be difficult, Eleandor is going to try to make it so when you equip an item, the statistics that affect your character show in the equipment system. For example, it will display your DPS, Resistances, etc.
• Inventory System/Bags System - The inventory system (Otherwise referred to as the Bags System) is a custom item-storing system which allows you to have multiple bags (Bags can have different amounts of available slots to store items in, depending on the bag) to store items and even use them while stored. You first start off with a 16 slot "Backpack" which is the inventory space you cannot remove or replace, but throughout the course of the game, you'll find (Or buy from a vendor) 'bags' to use (Or trade or sell it, take your pick) for storing items, granting you more item storage space and thus allowing you to pick-up and carry more items than you probably could before.
• Bank - Banks are located in major cities such as Stormwind, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff, etc. and banks provide you with a good deal of imobile inventory space. What does 'imobile inventory space' mean? Basically, it's practically like the inventory system - or an extension, if you will - but unlike the inventory system, you cannot walk around with a bank's inventory space... a bank is situated in an area and doesn't leave. Although, if you store items in a bank in Orgrimmar and visit a bank in Thunder Bluff, the items you stored in the bank at Orgrimmar will appear at the one in Thunder Bluff. Same goes for The Undercity.
• Looting - Looting is where you go to a dead corpse of a PvE creature that is sparkling and search the corpse for items to 'loot', this process is called, of course, looting! When looting the corpse, if it has more than one item, you can choose which items to loot (acquire into your inventory) and which ones to leave behind, if you decide not to take all of them. Looting will replace the old fashioned WarCraft III item pick-up function to make the mod more like World of WarCraft and overall have better ways of functioning.

If you're wondering what systems we'll be working on after the listed systems our guys are working on now, most likely we'll be working on a Partying System (Otherwise referred to as a Group System) which is basically the forming of groups and managing them. We already have one, but it's about time we start getting the interface of the Party System done the right way and extend its usability/WoW-like functions.

I'd love to show you what we've got so far, but they're pretty early in development and really there isn't much to be impressed with just yet. Oh and before I conclude this news post, Eleandor is also redoing the Keyboard Movement and Camera system! The Keyboard System (Arrow keys to move) are being redone to respond better and work more seamlessly. As for the Camera System, you now have the option to toggle through two camera modes:

1. The first camera mode allows you to adjust the camera's angle and rotation and also allows you to zoom in or out. As of now, Keyboard Movement is disabled when this camera mode is enabled since the arrow keys are used to adjust the camera.
2. The second camera mode allows you to use the Keyboard Movement system while the camera adjusts the way it needs to automatically, like in WoW. For example, if an object (usually is a big object rather than a small one though such as terrain or a building) is too close to you, the camera will adjust so that your view isn't blocked by some random object and that you can actually see what's around and in front of you. Although, this mode is expected to be flawed in the Open Beta's release since it'll require rigorous effort to correct the camera for every area in the mod in each and every zone... manually. So although the camera automatically changes in-game, the coder (Eleandor) must manually setup the camera limits and so forth to ensure that the camera doesn't clip through models or at least your screen isn't blocked by a solid object.

That's all for today! Hope you enjoyed today's news post.
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