Patch 1.5 has brought a great host of changes and improvements to starcraft 2 as well as the editor. The changes listed here are not the complete and final list- features are still being added and discovered. If you're interested in seeing a quick bullet-point list of the changes, we've got that available right here.
Changes to Starcraft 2
The most notable change to the entire starcraft 2 platform is as follows: Sc2 is now split into 2 different categories: Starcraft, and Arcade. The "Starcraft" category contains all melee-focused aspects of the game, including the single-player campagin, AI matches, all the custom and blizzard-created melee maps, and some melee-oriented mods like monobattles or 1v1 Obs. This means that if you are somebody who just wants to play sc2 as it was meant to be played, you have your own section of the client to do so. For mapmakers, it means we get our very own section of the client where we don't need to compete with melee maps for attention. Below you can see a screenshot of the "Starcraft" section of the game client.
So that brings us to the second area of the starcraft 2 platform- the Arcade. The Arcade is where all custom maps and games are housed (all non-melee starcraft games, like most maps the community here develops). It's important to note that you can still create a custom melee map- the only difference is that you must decide upon publishing if you want your map in the Arcade or in the Starcraft section.
The brand new Arcade layout is like nothing we've seen in starcraft before- it's layout is more like an app store for a phone, using a very slick and clean grid-style layout, with icons and banners for the maps themselves. There's a whole host of new features to the Arcade, but we'll first take a look at the featured page. Luckily for us, it's much more diverse than the previous popularity list. Because the 1.5 patch is only in beta, the lists are mostly empty, which may make it hard to see.
Below is a screenshot of the current featured page- normally there would be a large, horizontal banner that represents the "spotlight" map. This is a map chosen by blizzard to get the spotlight slot, and will change frequently. Below that is an up-and-coming list, which displays map that are rising in rating (rating will be covered later). Finally, a small list in the corner displays the popular maps, presumably in the way that the current popularity system works.
The next tab of the arcade is the "browse" tab. It boasts a much-improved UI from the current list. The browse tab is where players will go when they want to play a specific map or just see what's on the list. This list can be sorted with several different methods, like top played, top rated, new, up and coming, etc... In addition, games are sorted into a much wider list of game genres (like RPG, Arena, Action, Tug, Tower Defense, etc...). This genera sorting combined with the new listing methods means that your map will have a much better change to be noticed by people just looking for something fun to play.
The Fun-Or-Not mode is returning, but it's function has changed. From what we've heard from prior blizzcons, it places players into active game lobbies, based on now long you have waited. In other words, if you host a game for long enough, people will start getting placed into your game automatically.
As you may have noticed, the maps are now displayed with an icon and stars. Maps are all rated between 1 and 5 stars- players can rank maps once they have played it at least once, or even create full-length reviews of a map. The map's average score won't be calculated until a fair amount of people have ranked the map, to ensure that one bad vote won't ruin your score.
The final major feature of the Arcade is the map details window. Clicking on any one of the map icons shown in the image above will open the map info page- this is a page similar to something that you might see on an app store. It contains a basic overview, a how-to-play guide, patch notes, reviews, a unique chat room just for that map, and a tutorial feature.
The overview, how-to-play, and patch notes sections are all defined by the map creator in the editor's map options window. One very powerful tool we will now have is the ability to create a SEPARATE tutorial map that players can launch right from the map info. This means you can create a special single-player version of your map that guides players through the game, instead of forcing them to read a help section during the game itself. Maps also revive a unique chat channel- this means that map makers don't need to say "use the xyz chat channel" in the load screen, as many maps do. Instead, the map receives a chat channel built-in to the map info window.
Finally, players can give reviews of a map. Players can give a quick review by just giving a rating out of 5 stars, or they create a fully detailed written review. Reviews are also able to be flagged as helpful or not helpful, meaning the good reviews will rise to the top.
OneTwo created a quick video that shows off the new starcraft UI. And hey, if a picture's worth a thousand words, than this video has unimaginable value ;)
Overall, we can see some serious changes to starcraft 2 that will benefit both players and map makers.
Changes to the Editor
The new stacraft 2 editor will contain a large number of improvements, optimization, and new features. We'll go into more detail on each of the features later in the article. Obviously not all features have been discovered yet, and therefore not all of them are listed and explained below. However, the most important updates to the editor that we currently know about are provided below.
General Editor Improvements
There have been many "general" editor improvements made that don't really fit into other categories (and are also fairly self-explanatory), so they're listed in bullet points below.
Editor updated to use Visual Styles in Editor
Added high resolution minimap support
Font Style editing added to Text Editor
Added Data Editor horizontal auto-layout to better utilize available screen space
User-defined data system, accessed through the new User type in the Data module as well as the corresponding functions in the trigger library.
Added support for passing structure, array, and function references as function parameters
Cinematic Editor
Blizzard has created a new cinematic editor that allows us to easily create cinematics for our maps. This replaces the old model previewer window, since many of their functions overlap. The UI is similar to something like 3DS max, with a time bar at the bottom and scene views on the sides. We're working on discovering exactly how the custscene editor works and all of it's features, but you can expect tutorials on it in the future!
AI Editor
An AI editor has been added to make the set up of waves and AI players much easier. You can add several waves with a large array of options, like gather points and waypoints, unit compositions and unit counts (across all of the different difficulty modes), arrival, gather, and wait times, and much more. This will allow players to set up AI waves using a much simpler tool, instead of all in triggers.
Galaxy Debugger
The Galaxy Deugging window has been greatly improved. It now has a huge number of features, including things like being able to see the values of array variables, read execution queues, see very precise information on trigger and action run times, and view any custom script code that was used.
UI Development
For those of you who do a lot of UI work with custom layout files, you will love this next tool. You can now edit the layout files directly within the editor, so you won't need to spend time in an outside editing tool. This makes it quick and easy to create your own layout files, but it also provides a great reference for the default files. All default blizzard layout files are included, so you can see exactly how the UI is built. Syntax highlighting is also supported!
Actors & Graphics
Similarly to the general editor improvements, actors have received many new features and tweaks. They are listed below:
Camera Actor added for controlling camera through actor events
Scene Actor added for controlling global actor settings (Halo settings, Power visual hiding)
Light Actor added for creating lights in the world
Terrain Actor added for physics impact FX support
Creep Actor added for higher performance creep effects including creep engulfment
Ragdoll deaths and support for combat driven physics impulses
Added support for water ripples and physics collision based water splashes
Terrain squib support for tileset specific dust or snow clouds FX
Line and Arc targeting cursor support
Added ActorInfoDisplay cheat for live actor debugging
We've gotten to take a look at some fantastic new features for both the starcraft 2 editor and the starcraft 2 game itself. While there are a lot of new features that were not explained here, most of the major new features we've discovered are included. As more and more people are invited to the alpha (and eventually when patch 1.5 goes live) we expect to see tons of new features discovered. And of course, we'll continue to provide updates on new features as they are added and discovered.
Blizzard has been sending out emails to people asking them to try out the game. I didn't get invited in the first wave (which is odd, because normally we get fansite keys or something similar). I just recently got invited though, and the email says
Quote from le email:
....Because you’ve contributed to the StarCraft II community in the past we feel that you’re uniquely positioned to give us valuable feedback on the coming changes, so we’re offering you early alpha-phase access to the coming Arcade beta!....
That would lead me to believe that they're only sending it to people who have published maps, perhaps with some qualifications (like was played x hours at least, or something similar).
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You fogot to mention some of the more interesting and unexpected elements, like finally having struct and function references, potentilly non blizzard-only render to texture capabilities. And screens for the following:
Font Style editing added to Text Editor
Added Data Editor horizontal auto-layout to better utilize available screen space
User-defined data system, accessed through the new User type in the Data module as well as the corresponding functions in the trigger library.
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What We Know So Far
Patch 1.5 has brought a great host of changes and improvements to starcraft 2 as well as the editor. The changes listed here are not the complete and final list- features are still being added and discovered. If you're interested in seeing a quick bullet-point list of the changes, we've got that available right here.
Changes to Starcraft 2
The most notable change to the entire starcraft 2 platform is as follows: Sc2 is now split into 2 different categories: Starcraft, and Arcade. The "Starcraft" category contains all melee-focused aspects of the game, including the single-player campagin, AI matches, all the custom and blizzard-created melee maps, and some melee-oriented mods like monobattles or 1v1 Obs. This means that if you are somebody who just wants to play sc2 as it was meant to be played, you have your own section of the client to do so. For mapmakers, it means we get our very own section of the client where we don't need to compete with melee maps for attention. Below you can see a screenshot of the "Starcraft" section of the game client.
So that brings us to the second area of the starcraft 2 platform- the Arcade. The Arcade is where all custom maps and games are housed (all non-melee starcraft games, like most maps the community here develops). It's important to note that you can still create a custom melee map- the only difference is that you must decide upon publishing if you want your map in the Arcade or in the Starcraft section.
The brand new Arcade layout is like nothing we've seen in starcraft before- it's layout is more like an app store for a phone, using a very slick and clean grid-style layout, with icons and banners for the maps themselves. There's a whole host of new features to the Arcade, but we'll first take a look at the featured page. Luckily for us, it's much more diverse than the previous popularity list. Because the 1.5 patch is only in beta, the lists are mostly empty, which may make it hard to see.
Below is a screenshot of the current featured page- normally there would be a large, horizontal banner that represents the "spotlight" map. This is a map chosen by blizzard to get the spotlight slot, and will change frequently. Below that is an up-and-coming list, which displays map that are rising in rating (rating will be covered later). Finally, a small list in the corner displays the popular maps, presumably in the way that the current popularity system works.
The next tab of the arcade is the "browse" tab. It boasts a much-improved UI from the current list. The browse tab is where players will go when they want to play a specific map or just see what's on the list. This list can be sorted with several different methods, like top played, top rated, new, up and coming, etc... In addition, games are sorted into a much wider list of game genres (like RPG, Arena, Action, Tug, Tower Defense, etc...). This genera sorting combined with the new listing methods means that your map will have a much better change to be noticed by people just looking for something fun to play.
The Fun-Or-Not mode is returning, but it's function has changed. From what we've heard from prior blizzcons, it places players into active game lobbies, based on now long you have waited. In other words, if you host a game for long enough, people will start getting placed into your game automatically.
As you may have noticed, the maps are now displayed with an icon and stars. Maps are all rated between 1 and 5 stars- players can rank maps once they have played it at least once, or even create full-length reviews of a map. The map's average score won't be calculated until a fair amount of people have ranked the map, to ensure that one bad vote won't ruin your score.
The final major feature of the Arcade is the map details window. Clicking on any one of the map icons shown in the image above will open the map info page- this is a page similar to something that you might see on an app store. It contains a basic overview, a how-to-play guide, patch notes, reviews, a unique chat room just for that map, and a tutorial feature.
The overview, how-to-play, and patch notes sections are all defined by the map creator in the editor's map options window. One very powerful tool we will now have is the ability to create a SEPARATE tutorial map that players can launch right from the map info. This means you can create a special single-player version of your map that guides players through the game, instead of forcing them to read a help section during the game itself. Maps also revive a unique chat channel- this means that map makers don't need to say "use the xyz chat channel" in the load screen, as many maps do. Instead, the map receives a chat channel built-in to the map info window.
Finally, players can give reviews of a map. Players can give a quick review by just giving a rating out of 5 stars, or they create a fully detailed written review. Reviews are also able to be flagged as helpful or not helpful, meaning the good reviews will rise to the top.
OneTwo created a quick video that shows off the new starcraft UI. And hey, if a picture's worth a thousand words, than this video has unimaginable value ;)
Overall, we can see some serious changes to starcraft 2 that will benefit both players and map makers.
Changes to the Editor
The new stacraft 2 editor will contain a large number of improvements, optimization, and new features. We'll go into more detail on each of the features later in the article. Obviously not all features have been discovered yet, and therefore not all of them are listed and explained below. However, the most important updates to the editor that we currently know about are provided below.
General Editor Improvements
There have been many "general" editor improvements made that don't really fit into other categories (and are also fairly self-explanatory), so they're listed in bullet points below.
Cinematic Editor
Blizzard has created a new cinematic editor that allows us to easily create cinematics for our maps. This replaces the old model previewer window, since many of their functions overlap. The UI is similar to something like 3DS max, with a time bar at the bottom and scene views on the sides. We're working on discovering exactly how the custscene editor works and all of it's features, but you can expect tutorials on it in the future!
AI Editor
An AI editor has been added to make the set up of waves and AI players much easier. You can add several waves with a large array of options, like gather points and waypoints, unit compositions and unit counts (across all of the different difficulty modes), arrival, gather, and wait times, and much more. This will allow players to set up AI waves using a much simpler tool, instead of all in triggers.
Galaxy Debugger
The Galaxy Deugging window has been greatly improved. It now has a huge number of features, including things like being able to see the values of array variables, read execution queues, see very precise information on trigger and action run times, and view any custom script code that was used.
UI Development
For those of you who do a lot of UI work with custom layout files, you will love this next tool. You can now edit the layout files directly within the editor, so you won't need to spend time in an outside editing tool. This makes it quick and easy to create your own layout files, but it also provides a great reference for the default files. All default blizzard layout files are included, so you can see exactly how the UI is built. Syntax highlighting is also supported!
Actors & Graphics
Similarly to the general editor improvements, actors have received many new features and tweaks. They are listed below:
We've gotten to take a look at some fantastic new features for both the starcraft 2 editor and the starcraft 2 game itself. While there are a lot of new features that were not explained here, most of the major new features we've discovered are included. As more and more people are invited to the alpha (and eventually when patch 1.5 goes live) we expect to see tons of new features discovered. And of course, we'll continue to provide updates on new features as they are added and discovered.
Nice summary there ZR, was curious how one goes about getting into this alpha.
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Blizzard has been sending out emails to people asking them to try out the game. I didn't get invited in the first wave (which is odd, because normally we get fansite keys or something similar). I just recently got invited though, and the email says
That would lead me to believe that they're only sending it to people who have published maps, perhaps with some qualifications (like was played x hours at least, or something similar).
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Curse PremiumYou fogot to mention some of the more interesting and unexpected elements, like finally having struct and function references, potentilly non blizzard-only render to texture capabilities. And screens for the following:
Font Style editing added to Text Editor Added Data Editor horizontal auto-layout to better utilize available screen space User-defined data system, accessed through the new User type in the Data module as well as the corresponding functions in the trigger library.
Go play Antioch Chronicles Remastered!
Also, coming soon, Antioch Episode 3: Thoughts in Chaos!
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