One of the most exciting things about HotS is the editor and custom games changes. Blizzard has added a ton of features to the editor as well as the battle.net custom games.
Battle.net Changes
First of all, the marketplace has been renamed "The Arcade". When it first launches, game makers won't be able to sell content; however, this is a planned feature and will be added eventually. Blizzard wanted to make it easy to play quality games, easy to play games you want (even if they're not popular), and build a foundation to allow for selling games. The first change can be seen below; this is the brand new arcade menu. (Single Player and MultiPlayer have been merged into another menu. )
First of all, you probably noticed Star Battle and Marine Arena up at the top. These are the featured games that blizzard chooses every so often. The list on the far right is the popularity list that we all know. The "What's Hot" menu on the far left will deal with maps that are rising in popularity but are not popular yet. You probably noticed the starts- that's Blizzard's new 5-star rating system. As long as you have played a map at least once, you can give it a rating. The "Up & Coming" section will show games with high ratings that are not played much. And finally, the "New & Noteworthy" section will show games that are very new but have high ratings.
Now comes actually getting into a game. You can see in the picture above that games will now get a detailed information page. While it was not explicitly stated, it seems to be that all maps get a page like this, not just blizzard DOTA. When you click join game, you will use the matchmaker to find a game of your skill level. Blizzard did not specify if this matchmaking/skill system would be available for all of us, if it was specific to blizzard DOTA. If it is available to all map makers, we can except some much more entertaining matches with people of our own skill level.
Remember earlier when I mentioned a goal was to let you play ANY game you want, not just popular ones? To meet this goal, Blizzard has added the Queuing system. Basically, the longer you wait in a lobby, the higher chance your game will be filled. When players use fun or not, they are put into these lobbies with players waiting. What this means is that you can now publish a map for the very first time, open a lobby, and eventually get people in your lobby for testing.
It's also important to note that these features are NOT HotS specific. They will also be available in WoL via an upcoming patch.
Editor Changes
The first "big" feature is the brand new trigger debugger. One of the things that blizzard noticed was that they have access to the game's source code for debugging; but we don't. Because of this, they've created a very fancy debugger for us to use. Anybody that uses a lot of triggers will appreciate this new tool. It's fairly complex, but you will now be able to see pretty much every detail of your trigger. You can see exactly how long each action is taking, and what is inside each variable at a given moment.
With HotS, Blizzard changed their philosophy on UI editing. From now on, you will be able to change anything you can see on the UI. First of all, you can work with raw XML to modify the UI. But if you're like me and large chunks of code scare you off, don't worry! You can see the new in-game UI editor below. Don't want to deal with code? Just launch your map, press the magic hotkey to active the UI editor, and drag around the UI. Once you're happy with your new UI, you just press OK. Once you do this, all the UI values are automatically updated in your map.
The third "big" feature of the new editor is the cutscene editor. Before we go into detail, here's a short video made only with this cutscene editor (and 1 imported soundtrack) to give you a taste of what you can do.
Blizzard noticed that making movies in the trigger editor felt strange, confusing, and awkward. Not only did you have to use clunky trigger commands with orders just to make units move around or animate, you have to launch the map just to preview your scene! All of this changes with the new cut scene editor. You will be able to actually see your scene and scrub through the timeline, just like you could in a program like 3ds max. It's also designed for level editors and map makers, so it won't be mind-blowing and confusing.
You can simply click and drag camera angles, set up actors and animations, and preview it all in a single window. Not only this, but cutscene files are very small and won't be a problem for map size. You can also swap models and change the scene depending on your game- for example, in the screenshot above, we can see arthas winning blizzard DOTA. But obviously (well, hopefully) he won't win every game. So using triggers, you can swap out these models to represent the people who actually won the game. And as if the last video wasn't enough, Blizzard also made a sneak peak of the HotS ending using the cutscene editor! See if you can notice all the different features (animation blending, camera work, light, and fog). This was also made without any animators or modelers.
The final big feature is 3ds max integration. One of the biggest problems for us is that there are very few modelers for Sc2, and those that do model can have a very hard time dealing with exports and whatnot. Blizzard wants you to make your own models, instead of just editing thier own (or stealing them from WoW...). Part of this package includes an exporter for 3dx max. With this exporter, you have a direct link between the editor and 3dx max. Meaning as you edit your 3dx max model, it updates inside the editor.
There will be tons of tutorials, example files, and help for any model editing newbie. With this, we'll be seeing new UI's, units, doodads, and spell effects (more than just Psi Storm!).
There are also tons of smaller changes. For one, Blizzard added a very much improved physics engine. Best of all, we're going to get access to it! Along with tons of workflow improvements, bug fixes, and upgrades, the HotS editor will be a wonderful update. We'll learn more as we get closer to the release.
Q&A
The Mods panel was combined with the Blizzard DOTA panel, so not all the questions were really relevant. I summarized the editor questions below.
Can you change the names of units?
Yes (somebody go send this guy a link to our site PLEASE).
How will texture compatibility work with 3ds and Sc2?
You don't need to worry; the exporter will handle all the file types and conversions for you.
Is there some kind of central database we can grab already created models from?
No, but good idea.
Will the script limit be increased?
I hope so. I like Mafia.
Are you working on any tools for Maya?
No.
Can we attach 3D portraits to dialogs now?
I'm not really sure, but the new UI editor is so great that I wouldn't doubt it.
UPDATE
Sixen was able to get a quick interview with some of the developers. Here's what was discovered:
Quote:
Water mechanics and 256x256 maps are on the list still, but not high enough priority.
Map protection is being worked on in time for the Arcade
Bank files being stored server-side is something they're talking about as a long-term plan.
HotS will be backwards compatible with WoL. Maps including WoL dependencies will be playable on HotS, but not vice versa. So, maps with HotS dependencies cannot be played via WoL. If players rip the assets from *HotS and put them in custom dependencies for WoL, the maps will be banned.
Star Tools will be released Soon(TM).
Lots of Custom Game Systems changes coming with HotS (discussed earlier)
Reviewing, Rating, filtering, better searching, and much more.
That's about it for the editor. Make sure you read up on everything else that happened at blizzcon here. Were your prayers answered- do you like the new changes? Which is your favorite? Make sure to let us know below!
I think the guy from the Q&A image you posted will soon become a meme for the question he asked, or at least will become another example to add to the huge *trollface* and *facepalm* or whatever lists... Let's call him "Blizztroll" from now on... or "Blizztard".
Oh yeah, right... The topic was about the editor changes, wasn't it... Err... Yeah, all the new features look cool. I just would have loved more than just one 5-stars rating for maps... I would have imagined something like 5-stars for gameplay, 5-stars for scenario, then originality, bug-free quality map, and so on...
I'm pretty sure reviews are going to be pointless because people will just check for the 5-stars rating and won't bother playing if the map doesn't have 3+ stars... Comments on Youtube and such are often very mean, I don't see why SC2 players would be wiser when they review any map, even those they like. I personally almost never play Star Battle, and I have no idea why people are not bored of this map yet. So basically, I don't trust SC2 players to give interesting reviews on maps, and I fear most of the coolest maps will be rated very badly just because there is one bug that pissed them off (that, or a gameplay mechanic they didn't twig). The day one of my maps reaches the top of the popularity list is not even close to happen...
For the record, my question was why ISN'T there a central repo of models/artwork. Not IS there. Semantics is important with that statement, and was the only reason they listened. [/rant]
I like the new Arcade setup aside from that it bottle necks even more (granted it's just a mockup)... but here I just photoshopped a mockup of their mockup that INCLUDES an active lobby system like war3. Feedback welcome.
And omfg that first question to the panel. Wow. Just Wow.
These custom maps have always been user created to show off their skills, I would pay for a full fledged Blizzard mod, i mean like a huge more.. not blizzard dota, bigger... i mean like Day of defeat is to CSS its a game on its on
Heres the mods Id pay for..
Entire warcraft 2 mod with full campaign and expansion
Starcraft 1 mod full campaign and expansion
Warcraft 3 mod full campaign and expansion
WoSC mod, i would pay for it if it was done right.
Dont charge for custom games thats stupid... take Gem td, the maker made a decent game, now hes messing it up. I would never pay for a game where some random dude thats not with any company can just scrap the whole thing at any time.
The makers of gem td have made me loose all confidence in Game makers ability to keep their games up.
Gem td latest patch ruined the whole thing for me.
I dont want to pay for somthing where the maker can just scrap it all together, that being said I would pay for blizzard mods(NOT BLIZZARD DOTA), not the other mods they've made though, because their crap and blizzard dota they came out and said they wouldnt charge for a version of dota before SC2 WoL ever came out, I expect them to hold their promise.
The makers of gem td have made me loose all confidence in Game makers ability to keep their games up. Gem td latest patch ruined the whole thing for me.
I dont want to pay for somthing where the maker can just scrap it all together, that being said I would pay for blizzard mods(NOT BLIZZARD DOTA), not the other mods they've made though, because their crap and blizzard dota they came out and said they wouldnt charge for a version of dota before SC2 WoL ever came out, I expect them to hold their promise.
You're a perfect example of why mappers hate their audience. You claim you would pay for a Blizzard Mod, but every mod they have made thus far is "crap" to you and you don't want to pay for Blizzard DOTA (only because they said they want to start it out free). You can't say you'd buy something if you then go and say "oh but everything so far is crap so I don't want to buy it."
What you really meant to say was "I don't want to pay money for any mod because I think mods are too crappy to be worth anything."
@ProzaicMuze: Go
Before you read the rest: EDIT: I would pay for a SC2Mapster community project that was major like vector if it was polished up because the Makers are in the dozen and i doubt they would just quit one it... that would be worth something, but marine arena, all TDs, dota, thats not worth paying for. im sorry i just dont see if if you make something Im going to pay for It should be SinglePlayer story mode type game, just because empty lobbys can piss anyone off after they have paid for something.
well what I was trying to get across, is
Blizzard mods suck therfore i wouldnt pay for them.
and when a company says something, they shouldnt change it around just because a game has become more popular. they specifically said that dota was not good enough to pay for. you dont talk trash about a game then charge for it lol
Custom map makers mods are okay-good(none that are great yet, but games still new).
I just hate the idea of someone just all of a sudden making major changes to a map that I payed for...
I understand why you cant please everyone, but paid maps are a crap Idea, ive been playin custom since I was 6 years old... now little children will be thrown off these games. And you cant say playing Starcraft or Warcraft(RTS), isnt better for then then playin the newest crappy CoD. Paid maps will ruin the game. stuff will be rushed so they can put new product on the shelves and the old wont be supported what so ever.
Yes some Mapmakers are doing great Marine arena guys, Squad TD. and a few others. But then on the flip side theres the bad ones
GemTD, RunlingRUn, Evolves(yes theres one and it hasnt had a single update in over 10 months),
I understand the popularity system screws you guys over, i do, but sersiously charging people for games wont help anything, its just going to turn people off Starcraft, yes the initial content will be there, but do you really think blizzard is going to care how good a product is to be sold?
people barely play custom now... you really think that there will be high lobbys for paid games... I really doubt it,
That being said I would pay ANYone 2-5$ for warcraft 2, 3, or starcraft 1 and its expansions campaign that would be awesome.
But theres a major problem here... The limit to publish maps and mod.. that screws over any chance for there being a huge mod that would be worth anything
Im sorry most of you guys are great but theres ALOT who will make somthing thats crap, and then not fix it up.
And what you pay for after a few months at the most will never have any more players in it.
SUGGESTION: Charge people 50 Cents to play a map 1 month before it comes out publicly, that way you make something, and After a wait its still free and full of people.
Then watch my mod ;). Anyway who asked about the model database, it wouldn't be bad if they sell model packs in the new market center, and you could download them for x amount of money. They could make for example sc1 model pack, diablo ones, and warcraft ones.
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Curse PremiumOne of the most exciting things about HotS is the editor and custom games changes. Blizzard has added a ton of features to the editor as well as the battle.net custom games.
Battle.net Changes
First of all, the marketplace has been renamed "The Arcade". When it first launches, game makers won't be able to sell content; however, this is a planned feature and will be added eventually. Blizzard wanted to make it easy to play quality games, easy to play games you want (even if they're not popular), and build a foundation to allow for selling games. The first change can be seen below; this is the brand new arcade menu. (Single Player and MultiPlayer have been merged into another menu. )
First of all, you probably noticed Star Battle and Marine Arena up at the top. These are the featured games that blizzard chooses every so often. The list on the far right is the popularity list that we all know. The "What's Hot" menu on the far left will deal with maps that are rising in popularity but are not popular yet. You probably noticed the starts- that's Blizzard's new 5-star rating system. As long as you have played a map at least once, you can give it a rating. The "Up & Coming" section will show games with high ratings that are not played much. And finally, the "New & Noteworthy" section will show games that are very new but have high ratings.
Now comes actually getting into a game. You can see in the picture above that games will now get a detailed information page. While it was not explicitly stated, it seems to be that all maps get a page like this, not just blizzard DOTA. When you click join game, you will use the matchmaker to find a game of your skill level. Blizzard did not specify if this matchmaking/skill system would be available for all of us, if it was specific to blizzard DOTA. If it is available to all map makers, we can except some much more entertaining matches with people of our own skill level.
Remember earlier when I mentioned a goal was to let you play ANY game you want, not just popular ones? To meet this goal, Blizzard has added the Queuing system. Basically, the longer you wait in a lobby, the higher chance your game will be filled. When players use fun or not, they are put into these lobbies with players waiting. What this means is that you can now publish a map for the very first time, open a lobby, and eventually get people in your lobby for testing.
It's also important to note that these features are NOT HotS specific. They will also be available in WoL via an upcoming patch.
Editor Changes
The first "big" feature is the brand new trigger debugger. One of the things that blizzard noticed was that they have access to the game's source code for debugging; but we don't. Because of this, they've created a very fancy debugger for us to use. Anybody that uses a lot of triggers will appreciate this new tool. It's fairly complex, but you will now be able to see pretty much every detail of your trigger. You can see exactly how long each action is taking, and what is inside each variable at a given moment.
With HotS, Blizzard changed their philosophy on UI editing. From now on, you will be able to change anything you can see on the UI. First of all, you can work with raw XML to modify the UI. But if you're like me and large chunks of code scare you off, don't worry! You can see the new in-game UI editor below. Don't want to deal with code? Just launch your map, press the magic hotkey to active the UI editor, and drag around the UI. Once you're happy with your new UI, you just press OK. Once you do this, all the UI values are automatically updated in your map.
The third "big" feature of the new editor is the cutscene editor. Before we go into detail, here's a short video made only with this cutscene editor (and 1 imported soundtrack) to give you a taste of what you can do.
Blizzard noticed that making movies in the trigger editor felt strange, confusing, and awkward. Not only did you have to use clunky trigger commands with orders just to make units move around or animate, you have to launch the map just to preview your scene! All of this changes with the new cut scene editor. You will be able to actually see your scene and scrub through the timeline, just like you could in a program like 3ds max. It's also designed for level editors and map makers, so it won't be mind-blowing and confusing.
You can simply click and drag camera angles, set up actors and animations, and preview it all in a single window. Not only this, but cutscene files are very small and won't be a problem for map size. You can also swap models and change the scene depending on your game- for example, in the screenshot above, we can see arthas winning blizzard DOTA. But obviously (well, hopefully) he won't win every game. So using triggers, you can swap out these models to represent the people who actually won the game. And as if the last video wasn't enough, Blizzard also made a sneak peak of the HotS ending using the cutscene editor! See if you can notice all the different features (animation blending, camera work, light, and fog). This was also made without any animators or modelers.
The final big feature is 3ds max integration. One of the biggest problems for us is that there are very few modelers for Sc2, and those that do model can have a very hard time dealing with exports and whatnot. Blizzard wants you to make your own models, instead of just editing thier own (or stealing them from WoW...). Part of this package includes an exporter for 3dx max. With this exporter, you have a direct link between the editor and 3dx max. Meaning as you edit your 3dx max model, it updates inside the editor.
There will be tons of tutorials, example files, and help for any model editing newbie. With this, we'll be seeing new UI's, units, doodads, and spell effects (more than just Psi Storm!).
There are also tons of smaller changes. For one, Blizzard added a very much improved physics engine. Best of all, we're going to get access to it! Along with tons of workflow improvements, bug fixes, and upgrades, the HotS editor will be a wonderful update. We'll learn more as we get closer to the release.
Q&A
The Mods panel was combined with the Blizzard DOTA panel, so not all the questions were really relevant. I summarized the editor questions below.
Can you change the names of units?
Yes (somebody go send this guy a link to our site PLEASE).
How will texture compatibility work with 3ds and Sc2?
You don't need to worry; the exporter will handle all the file types and conversions for you.
Is there some kind of central database we can grab already created models from?
No, but good idea.
Will the script limit be increased?
I hope so. I like Mafia.
Are you working on any tools for Maya?
No.
Can we attach 3D portraits to dialogs now?
I'm not really sure, but the new UI editor is so great that I wouldn't doubt it.
UPDATE
Sixen was able to get a quick interview with some of the developers. Here's what was discovered:
That's about it for the editor. Make sure you read up on everything else that happened at blizzcon here. Were your prayers answered- do you like the new changes? Which is your favorite? Make sure to let us know below!
Is it safe to assume they're just showing the battle.net changes in WoL as testing and not something they plan to give us before HotS?
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Curse Premium@RCIX: Go
Did that answer your question? :D
@zeldarules28: Go
Good to see they're coming. Maybe that will help shut up all the pop system whiners ;)
An important thing I only found out by watching the panel was that Blizzard wants to introduce the ability to reconnect to games.
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Curse Premium@Aenigma: Go
Right. They mentioned that during the DOTA bit, and I must have forgotten to put it.
Those are cool news but the important question is... will we get that Tomatoling model??? :-D
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Curse Premium@SoulFilcher: Go
Now you can just make it yourself :D
I think the guy from the Q&A image you posted will soon become a meme for the question he asked, or at least will become another example to add to the huge *trollface* and *facepalm* or whatever lists... Let's call him "Blizztroll" from now on... or "Blizztard".
Oh yeah, right... The topic was about the editor changes, wasn't it... Err... Yeah, all the new features look cool. I just would have loved more than just one 5-stars rating for maps... I would have imagined something like 5-stars for gameplay, 5-stars for scenario, then originality, bug-free quality map, and so on...
I'm pretty sure reviews are going to be pointless because people will just check for the 5-stars rating and won't bother playing if the map doesn't have 3+ stars... Comments on Youtube and such are often very mean, I don't see why SC2 players would be wiser when they review any map, even those they like. I personally almost never play Star Battle, and I have no idea why people are not bored of this map yet. So basically, I don't trust SC2 players to give interesting reviews on maps, and I fear most of the coolest maps will be rated very badly just because there is one bug that pissed them off (that, or a gameplay mechanic they didn't twig). The day one of my maps reaches the top of the popularity list is not even close to happen...
For the record, my question was why ISN'T there a central repo of models/artwork. Not IS there. Semantics is important with that statement, and was the only reason they listened. [/rant]
Good article thanks!
I like the new Arcade setup aside from that it bottle necks even more (granted it's just a mockup)... but here I just photoshopped a mockup of their mockup that INCLUDES an active lobby system like war3. Feedback welcome.
And omfg that first question to the panel. Wow. Just Wow.
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Curse Premium@OneTwoSC: Go
I was hoping for something like that. But hey, the improvements are still very much welcome.
They should listen to the people making photoshops. It shows how much they care.
if you charge for maps i wont play them...
These custom maps have always been user created to show off their skills, I would pay for a full fledged Blizzard mod, i mean like a huge more.. not blizzard dota, bigger... i mean like Day of defeat is to CSS its a game on its on
Heres the mods Id pay for..
Entire warcraft 2 mod with full campaign and expansion
Starcraft 1 mod full campaign and expansion
Warcraft 3 mod full campaign and expansion
WoSC mod, i would pay for it if it was done right.
Dont charge for custom games thats stupid... take Gem td, the maker made a decent game, now hes messing it up. I would never pay for a game where some random dude thats not with any company can just scrap the whole thing at any time.
@rageofhell: Go
What about project vector with custom models and animations? I would pay for that if blizzard fixed the damn limitation they give us.
@Keyeszx: Go
not unless blizzard did it
The makers of gem td have made me loose all confidence in Game makers ability to keep their games up. Gem td latest patch ruined the whole thing for me.
I dont want to pay for somthing where the maker can just scrap it all together, that being said I would pay for blizzard mods(NOT BLIZZARD DOTA), not the other mods they've made though, because their crap and blizzard dota they came out and said they wouldnt charge for a version of dota before SC2 WoL ever came out, I expect them to hold their promise.
So a td map made you lose faith in other map makers? If it was consistent among map makers I would agree but it's not.
You're a perfect example of why mappers hate their audience. You claim you would pay for a Blizzard Mod, but every mod they have made thus far is "crap" to you and you don't want to pay for Blizzard DOTA (only because they said they want to start it out free). You can't say you'd buy something if you then go and say "oh but everything so far is crap so I don't want to buy it."
What you really meant to say was "I don't want to pay money for any mod because I think mods are too crappy to be worth anything."
@ProzaicMuze: Go Before you read the rest: EDIT: I would pay for a SC2Mapster community project that was major like vector if it was polished up because the Makers are in the dozen and i doubt they would just quit one it... that would be worth something, but marine arena, all TDs, dota, thats not worth paying for. im sorry i just dont see if if you make something Im going to pay for It should be SinglePlayer story mode type game, just because empty lobbys can piss anyone off after they have paid for something.
well what I was trying to get across, is Blizzard mods suck therfore i wouldnt pay for them.
and when a company says something, they shouldnt change it around just because a game has become more popular. they specifically said that dota was not good enough to pay for. you dont talk trash about a game then charge for it lol
Custom map makers mods are okay-good(none that are great yet, but games still new).
I just hate the idea of someone just all of a sudden making major changes to a map that I payed for... I understand why you cant please everyone, but paid maps are a crap Idea, ive been playin custom since I was 6 years old... now little children will be thrown off these games. And you cant say playing Starcraft or Warcraft(RTS), isnt better for then then playin the newest crappy CoD. Paid maps will ruin the game. stuff will be rushed so they can put new product on the shelves and the old wont be supported what so ever.
Yes some Mapmakers are doing great Marine arena guys, Squad TD. and a few others. But then on the flip side theres the bad ones
GemTD, RunlingRUn, Evolves(yes theres one and it hasnt had a single update in over 10 months),
I understand the popularity system screws you guys over, i do, but sersiously charging people for games wont help anything, its just going to turn people off Starcraft, yes the initial content will be there, but do you really think blizzard is going to care how good a product is to be sold?
people barely play custom now... you really think that there will be high lobbys for paid games... I really doubt it,
That being said I would pay ANYone 2-5$ for warcraft 2, 3, or starcraft 1 and its expansions campaign that would be awesome.
But theres a major problem here... The limit to publish maps and mod.. that screws over any chance for there being a huge mod that would be worth anything
Im sorry most of you guys are great but theres ALOT who will make somthing thats crap, and then not fix it up.
And what you pay for after a few months at the most will never have any more players in it.
SUGGESTION: Charge people 50 Cents to play a map 1 month before it comes out publicly, that way you make something, and After a wait its still free and full of people.
@Keyeszx: Go
Then watch my mod ;). Anyway who asked about the model database, it wouldn't be bad if they sell model packs in the new market center, and you could download them for x amount of money. They could make for example sc1 model pack, diablo ones, and warcraft ones.