3D Monsters (Ragnarok Online)

A player in Geffen Dungeon walks around a prototype version of Dragon Zombie, a 3D monster

3D Monsters in Ragnarok Online were a series of monsters introduced by Gravity as a means of adding new features to Ragnarok Online. The monsters that are known of are Dragon Zombie and Hugeling which have at various points, have had their attributes listed on Gravity sites or operators of Ragnarok Servers in other countries such as Brazil Ragnarok Online

Background

The original announcement for the 3D monsters was made in 2002's "Korea Amuse World Game Expo 2002", which detailed several new features for Ragnarok Online. According to Japanese game site "Game WATCH" reporter Seiji Nakamura, Gravity mentioned that they were working on Version 3.0 of Ragnarok Online's engine, GFC. Among the announcements for various features was for "full polygon monsters" . The intention of these monsters was to prove a challenge and require higher level characters in parties to band together in order to defeat them, noting that they would be tested on the Sakray server in January of 2003.

Nakamura also stated that at the time the Dragon Zombie was demonstrated, it was in a "debug mode" which caused it to deal only 1 damage.

Public-domain efforts

In 2012, several authors (Doss, Ricky92, Olrox, Ai4rei, curiosity, Lemongrass, Shinryo, Yommy and Greenbox) from the rAthena project undertook a sub-project to get the Granny3D Models (.gr2) models and 3D monsters to work correctly in the Ragnarok Client. This began as people realised that on several Ragnarok-related hacking forums were able to bypass the granny2.dll, which is primarily used in the client for rendering the 3D monsters for the War of Emperium. The authors contacted an author called Ricky92 from ElitePVPers who had written a conversion tool for Granny3D models, who began work on converting Granny3D models from a newer version to an older one which was supported by the Granny3D version in the Ragnarok Online client.

The converter was eventually completed with the texture being converted to the earliest form of Bink compression, with a sample model of a pyramid being used in-game which worked. The project experimented with various different 3D files which had mixed success due to them being older or newer versions than those supported. Eventually the group succeeded in importing converted RO2 models into Ragnarok Online like the Spore monster, a fish and so on:

Eventually, the authors considered the project complete after they had finished editing the client to allow for more 3D monsters to be displayed, to increase the number of vertices allowed in the client and other changes. Eventually, the group published a tutorial on how to add the monsters to the Ragnarok Online client.

This project however, has gone some way to show how complete the 3D monsters were when they were imported into the game, showing that they had complete states where they could move with animations, attack with animations, die and be revived. There are other references which state that 3D mobs were abandoned by Gravity due to complexities or that they did not integrate into the client well, although this seems not to be the case given what this project has been able to accomplish.