New Icons

[AJ]

Just a little sidebar.. Blizzard has bundled with patch 0.12 a new icon for World of Warcraft as well as for MPQ archives.

http://www.warboards.org/AJ/wow.pnghttp://www.warboards.org/AJ/mpq.png

I personally find them just a bit of an improvement. : )

[Maegtelluma]

I like the W, but the dragon isn't so hot. Will these be replacing the current forum image (they might not look as nice shrunk)? Good find, though ;)

[AJ]

No, of course not, the forum image is fine.
Just a find I thought I'd share.

[BSTRhino]

I never expected Blizzard to put an official icon on their MPQ format, I would've thought Blizzard would want to keep the MPQ and the use of it secret. But still, that is a cool icon. Is that for Mac only?

[AJ]

It's on my Mac client, without a Windows counterpart to see, it's somewhat harder to accurately inform you. ;)

But they do have some interesting things hidden away inside their MPQs, etc. I'll see what I have to share with you guys.

[BSTRhino]

I personally would love to open up the MPQ. I wonder if they have a file called iscript.bin in there hehe.

When I get WoW, I'll probably start making customs for it from day one. I might even start a whole site on it heh...

[Kamikazie190]

Um. BST, if you havn't been following, WoW is MMORPG, its all server based, there's no user interface (at least none that don't violate the End User License Agreement) on that level

[AJ]

The interface and all the art in the interface are in BLP and MPQ files within the Beta directory.
I'm browsing them currently.

[Graeme]

Ooooh, very much an improvement. I really do like those icons a lot more ^_^.

I personally would love to open up the MPQ. I wonder if they have a file called iscript.bin in there hehe.

When I get WoW, I'll probably start making customs for it from day one. I might even start a whole site on it heh...

I'd be very much up to helping that out :). I also plan on modding WoW quite a bit.

[BSTRhino]

Yes, MMORPGs have a user interfaces to present the world on the server to the user. Currently they let you mod the interface using some sort of script language, so it is customisable to an extent already. The thing is, the MPQ would at least contain the graphics of all the areas in the game, including the ones that haven't been visited yet, and it might even contain other things that control functionality that are open to modding. I mean, good programmers don't hardcode things, so the MPQ is bound to contain something interesting.

[AJ]

The Interface itself is run via two differing sets of files, one using the extension .lua, which i figure is the LUA Programming language. More Info: here. (http://www.lua.org/about.html)
The other file format is XML, which is much easier to play with, but really all it is composed of are calls to the files that are contained within the MPQs or to the BLP files.

I've yet to crack the BLP files or MPQ files, as they're using a different encryption method than the previous files were using. I doubt too major a hurdle.

I've since located the XML schema they're using for all their coding. Also mixed in amongst the other XML files.

And features that aren't yet enabled, such as..
<Button name="GuildRegistrarButton3" inherits="QuestTitleButtonTemplate" text="GUILD_CREST_DESIGN">

wonder what that is. ;)

[Nahotnoj]

wow, thats so leet...

MPQs are very interesting and nifty...

[BSTRhino]

Really? Sounds like Blizzard invented MPQ 2.0. I wonder what features MPQ 2.0 has over MPQ 1.0. Perhaps this time when they say you can't read files without knowing their names, perhaps you really can't read files without knowing their names. In MPQ 1.0, even if you don't know a file's name, you can extract it anyway. Obviously that's a major blow to what the MPQ was originally designed for.

Although, Kamikaze190 is kinda right here, there isn't much point trying to open up the WoW MPQ, although it might open another level of customisation, the amount customs can do for WoW will never compare to what they can do for StarCraft.

BLP... I wonder what that is. Have you got any idea what BLP might stand for?

[TranquilNightElf]

Cool ^_^ but the dragon isin't that great....

[Exedore]

The MPQ format is mostly the same as Warcraft III, but BLP's are up to 3.0 now (1.0 was used in RoC and 2.0 in FT because it contains improvements for better handling by the graphics engine).

<Button name="GuildRegistrarButton3" inherits="QuestTitleButtonTemplate" text="GUILD_CREST_DESIGN">
May be for the tabard design window.