[Development] NoggIt from now on.

[schlumpf]

Hello there and welcome to the current Noggit development.

As you may know, Noggit is a WoW map editor written by Cryect, based on the original wowmapview by Darkj and others. Cryect quit WoW a long time ago around the release of 2.0. He wrote this application for 1.12 and as of some changes, Blizzard made to 2.0, it stopped working from then. People needed to use a second client patched to 1.12 to edit worlds. People then had the idea of updating it to be compatible with the new client. This happened .. at the last patch of Burning Crusade being 2.4.3. This version was a ugly hack to fix the problems and get it running again with 2.4 but it did not really improve Noggit itself but made it more unstable.

This version of Noggit was done by a Russian called Beket. He worked on it alone and did not want help but also did not want to share the source code until some day in mid 2009. This is where I received the latest source code and started fixing it for the 3.* client.

So far, it went pretty good, I think. Still, there is no final version as there are still so many bugs in Noggit, that a complete rewrite like Cromon does seems better to do. Still, we are lazy. We have been so lazy to wait some years for Beket to give us his bugged and ****ed up code so we won't start getting non-lazy now.

Currently we have about 100 revisions of Noggit of which we released about 20 for testing. We will continue to do so. We just think .. We could improve on this.

Therefore we need your help. To find all bugs and fix them, its needed that the users test and report things. To collect all these bugs and also feature requests, we have made a bug tracker. This is a list where you can just add whatever you just found with a description. As we also have the possibility of deleting entries or giving them priorities, its far better than reports in a forum or thread like it has been until now.

Also, we need some better way on how to distribute packages of Noggit. We chose a blog for this issue. In this blog we will post feature previews as well as releases.

Even with all these things, people will still have problems. These problems will most likely be helped with a list of frequently asked questions. You can find a list below and most likely on the blog.

So, you might want to have the URLs etc now, I guess? Right. Currently this project is hosted by Modcraft. You may want to use these forums too. Therefore, the bug tracker can be found there. There is also a change log at the bug tracker. The blog is can be found at nogg-it.blogspot.com.

There will still be updates in this thread as well as people answering your questions.

I hope, Noggit might get a bit nicer in future.
Regards,
schlumpf


FAQ

Noggit supports all versions from 3.0 to 3.3. 3.3 not yet fully supported as of a change in map.dbc. There will be a new version for this soon. You won’t see all maps with the current version when using 3.3.


The current releases are no full packages but only the executable. For running Noggit you need to get some Files from some older pack and add the executable to there. You might run best by getting a package of old files from Beket's releases. Also, we will add a package of files soon.

If you have an old version and paste the application in the folder while there is a old bookmarks.txt, Noggit will not run until you delete the textfile.


There is a major problem with people using the enUS (and enGB?) version of the game. Noggit somehow deletes WoW/Data/enUS/locale-enUS.MPQ and therefore can’t find needed files and also corrupts WoW so far that it won’t run anymore. You need to back it up in order to still use WoW. Also, to use Noggit you should extract said MPQ to the WoW directory. Its needed that there is a folder WoW\DBFilesClient after extracting. If that’s the case, you did it right. We still have no idea, where this problem comes from.


Saving is on CTRL-S or in the menu. It outputs the ADT (terrain) files to your world of warcraft directory or if specified your project directory. You will find maps in the World/maps folder.

You need to save every ADT tile itself. As of now, Noggit does only save the ADT below the camera. We may implement some function to save all tiles that have been edited.

Yes, in the current version, saving is NOT completely working. Its missing water and does something wrong with doodads. In order to at least have the doodads, save the ADT in Taliis again after you saved it. This fixes the issue.

Yes, shadows seem to be ****ed up. If someone reports that into the bug tracker, I might have a look at it. If not: I don’t care.


You might not be able to run this application on every computer especially, if you have an older or bad graphics card like in a laptop. This results in poor OpenGL capabilities. Noggit needs hell a lot of OpenGL. Therefore updating your drivers may help.

Also, Noggit may have problems with Windows Vista or Windows 7.


Change the path where Noggit gets the data from by changing the WoW location in the registry or running WoW once. Also, you can set it manually by editing the "Noggit.conf" file. You will also be able to set a "project location" where your files get outputted in the future.


Copying and pasting models will work soon in the next version. You will have the possibility to let models be randomly tilt / rotated upon pasting so you can do forests easily.


You better do not have both, WoW and Noggit running at once. This may result in weird problems as both applications use the MPQ files. Also, you shouldn’t use tools on files you have opened in Noggit. It shouldn’t be a problem but you may lose some data.


In case you want to report a problem here or have something to tell us, always tell us at least which revision you used. Also, the logfiles (log.txt) help aswell as the ADT files on some problems. You may want to upload logfiles to pastebin.com rather than pasting them here. Also, images always help.

















This is the old first post:

In case you are looking in this post for updates: Try reading replies. I wont update this stupid post all the time.

On why development seems to be a bit dead currently:

I'm sitting here with a Satellite Pro 4300. That's 128 MB in RAM and 10 GB in HDD (not to speak of the 2 MB gfx RAM! ). Can you imagine working on that? I can't. Even doing things over a remote connection and another PC is so slow, that real development is not possible.

You may ask yourself, why I don't just buy a new PC or what happened to the old one: Well, I don't have a PC since about a month now. I was on someone elses place the last weeks enabling me to get Noggit to the current state.

In order to continue working on it, I therefore need a new PC (well, only parts. I still have a case!). It would be really helpful if people would donate to me. Every dollar is helping schlumpf to continue developing Noggit as soon as possible.

So think about it. You may aswell just wait until I get some present by someone unknown. But the chance that this is happening is even less than me getting money.

Only time will tell.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Well, as Beket has mainly given up and I (suprisingly) got the source:

• Who is interested in helping?
• What are the exact requests and bugs to be fixed or done?
• You may contact me on ICQ 174605633 or MSN [email protected] or via this forum / MMOwned / madx / ... on questions.
• It will be semi open source. Whoever's interested and has more interest into the project but "I want to enable editing PvPZones!!!!111" may have a copy of the source / an account on the SVN.
• Still, as it wont be of any use, you wont simply get a link to the source in this post. If you're interested: Contact me and we may talk about what's to be done etc. (Like .. a little coordination in the "project".

On the timeline is of course:

• Go to 3.* for editing.
  
  • M2s
  • Load lights from DBCs.
  • There are more liquid types but 4.. Get the reference to the DBC and load from there.
• 3D texturing. This would be awesome, but is of course a bit harder.
• Fix bugs and don't let it crash that often as well as not ****ing up the files.
• Water! This is pretty important to me.
• More things that you will tell me.

So: Go on. Tell me what to do. Contact me if you want to help. I won't do this alone. No chance that I will do everything.



This is the old development history:

http://imagr.eu/upload/noggit.JPG
http://imagr.eu/upload/noggit2.JPG

06-09-09:
http://imagr.eu/upload/NoggIt3.JPG

Partly fixed. Yay.

http://imagr.eu/upload/noggit4.JPG

Alphamaps working in WotLK.

http://imagr.eu/upload/Noggit5.JPG

I guess, you are interested in this, eh?

11-Sept-09

http://imagr.eu/upload/noggit6.JPG

This was made in 3D. Completely.

[The-Eradicator]

Added on MSN.

[Xel]

Awesome +Rep

[~sInX]

@ schlumpf i added you on msn, i'll see what i can do - regardless of whether or not i'm any genuine help, i'd like to keep track of what's happening with this software world builders are indefinatly dependant on it.
@Xel no u can't code for shit m8 :O jks

[homer91]

I wish you luck with this project, but I cant help you, I dont know programming :/
Thanks Breket and Schlumpf!

[svedin]

I hope the new "Noggit Team" will fix the buggs and maybe add a menu like this.

[mr_lew]

I'll help as im sure it will benefit my own endeavors

what do I need to compile???

and what tasks are you going to assign me

[mr_lew]

oh i can provide a shader for water although its not mine and looks nothing like wow's it will show water (I think wow's water is terrible anyway it uses a 16x16 grid over predefined verticies)

[Bjarke]

I hope for something like this:



but it wont :P just keep it the "noggit" way until later on...

[mr_lew]

schlumpf don't want help this project will never move on

[Carmen]

This is wonderful news!

You already mentioned 3d texturing which is one of the biggest points for me. It would also be nice if you could be able to have a visible brush as part of the GUI so that there could be an idea of the brush radius, etc. It would make making new terrains a lot easier.

[Ravenheart]

schlumpf don't want help this project will never move on

Lol why? because he didn't want a water shader that doesn't look like wow's?

ahem, on topic.. i hope you'll keep up the great work, i may contact you if i can be useful for that project

[Krillere]

A GUI would be nice. Is this Direct3D coding? C++, C#, VB or some other language?

[The-Eradicator]

A GUI would be nice. Is this Direct3D coding? C++, C#, VB or some other language?

C++ and OpenGL.

[mr_lew]

thanks for your input ravenheart your opinion means sooo much to me...

@ Eradicator not that theres much point in this unless sources are released its C++ & OpenGL through SDL

It amazes me that everyone wants to model edit and nobody but me thinks this could be used to make a new wow client which would be all-round awesome-o

@schlumpf its nothing against you just no reply to anybody on here and your not sharing code, theres no direction or mention of dependencies or a build environment