I am not a graphics person, nor a WoW mod creator. What I am, however, is a savvy user who can tinker with things to get them to deliver desirable results. What you see right now is a mostly working version of a Turtle WoW compatible conversion of the HD mod for Vanilla WoW servers, that I have painstakingly pored over to get into a state free of crashes and (mostly) free of graphical issues with player models. There are still a few fringe cases that makes this not quite perfect, such as the turtle mounts having a strange texture on them, and the rare face texture mismatch on players that seems related to helmets.
Currently, this patch successfully replaces all playable races with their Legion HD models, except for Goblins. As a side effect of the skin texture for High Elves being replaced, I was not able to prevent their blue eyes from turning green. I will leave that task in the hands of a fellow tinkerer. This patch replaces several spell effects and sounds with future variations which are more impactful or otherwise improved. This patch replaces all world textures with higher resolution, redrawn textures that use vanilla as a base and aims to update without desecrating the old aesthetic. This patch adds Cataclysm music for zones to the existing Vanilla playlist for more ambience.
What I would appreciate is any other tinkerers willing to fool with DBC files as I have and burnt myself out on, to achieve the last few items on the wishlist on this project. Below, I will offer the wishlist items, steps I have taken to make them possible, and tasks needed to achieve them.
- Custom skins have weird face distortion: There don't exist HD assets for these custom skins, so they will have to be made by an artist. Crestian in this thread is trying their hand at it, but there is no promise that custom skins will be supported.
- Strange lightshafts on Undead character creation screen. Not sure what I modified that caused this issue, as they're meant to be fog or the like, and they work fine in the OG version of this patch on other servers.
- Goblin Legion Models: I could not move over the Cataclysm models let alone the Legion models, as the entire library of assets for characters was later expanded and would require a great deal of retooling to retrograde the same way the original mod creator did for these other Legion models. That is beyond the scope of my ability at this time, and would require the most work of this project.
In order to make and test changes, you will need to use the MPQ Editor to open patch-W.MPQ (the mod) or patch-V.MPQ (the latest Turtle patch in load order) and find the file under DBClientFiles which handles the particular files you wish to work with. Extract it, then drag and drop the DBC onto DBCutil to spit out a CSV file which can be perused with Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet viewing application. Make the necessary changes, drag and drop the CSV back onto DBCutil and it will spit out a new DBC file, which can then be put in a new test patch at the end of load order, like patch-Y.MPQ or patch-Z.MPQ. Use MPQ Editor to make a new World of Warcraft MPQ, and use that as your testing patch.
File Downloads
MAIN PATCH UPDATED 6/21/2022
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patch-W.MPQ: Legion Character + World Models / Music Pack / Spell Effects
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patch-X.MPQ: Environment HD Retexture (reTEXTURE, not a reMESH or reMODEL, only replaces flat textures)
To install, simply navigate to your Turtle WoW install folder, open the /Data/ folder, and drop these MPQs in. Simple as that!
