According to the talk in relation to the Arcade and the SC2 Editor held at Blizzcon, Blizzard has hired a person to draw up official documentation for the editor (such as providing more then just tooltips, have working examples and applications and what not). Given that, and the state of our wiki, I would like to discuss what we should focus on in terms of incomplete documentation, lack of examples and what should be fixed first.
Some areas of the editor are incredibly well documented, such as much of the Trigger editor, and many of the 'core' data areas such as Abilities, Units, Behaviors, Effects. However, more obscure sections have next to nothing (Bank Conditions, Preload, User Types, etc.)
Hopefully we can chat with this person and be able to provide her with the relevant examples, and so forth such that the editor itself will become better documented and also provide the wiki with more up to date information.
i always wanted to know how markers work and what EXACTLY do the single flags (matching and unmatching). how to use them with validators exactly (i got things working but i dunno why).
the next thing i could never figure out are target:sorts. or maybe they are just bugged for weapons. it always goes for distance/closest target/dunno anymore.
there should be more examples of movers. all kind of, everything you can prolly think off should be there as example.
also the data entry heroabilities (maybe hots has) should have examples.
actors in general , there is so much that in fact i cannot even tell what i want to know here right now.
First core area is transfer of stuff from the old wiki.
Trigger editor wiki is mostly just a a dump of the types not what they do.
Half the data editor pages were written by me several versions ago so there are tons of new fields. Our objective is to get a 1x coverage of everything, we can always update and improve later.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
That sounds great that blizzard is going to make a official document for the map editor. Hope it is easy to follow. My novice transition over from editing in SC1 to SC2 was a major hurdler for me. I didn't know where to start. So I deiced to start and learn the basic stuff like map design, simple trigger editing, and simple data editing. SC2mapster has with out doubt help me improved my maping skills along with going in to the campaign and seeing how thing were done over there as well.
Trigger editor wiki is mostly just a a dump of the types not what they do.
My thoughts are the same, Trigger wiki needs examples to show what they do and how they can function with other triggers, not every trigger might function as per how you might think it would. The wiki should be something that someone as inexperienced as me can go over there and take their trigger editing to the next level and learn how to make a desired trigger that works in a desired way. For me the focus is on the Ai and how it interacts in the game. Usually through the tutorials are the way to demonstrate the function of the Ai, but this demonstration of the Ai in the wiki is lacking and incoherent. It would be interesting to see a basic picture of a simple structural trigger setup on how to make this and that work. There is tons of stuff behind learning on how to command the Ai around in trigger, this should be a simple skill everyone should be able to learn and do.
This person should just use our existing wiki and not start from scratch. A lot of the tutorials are very clear and well-written, but just need to be updated to the current editor UI. I'm sure something can be worked out with Curse or Blizzard should just absorb Mapster to have the wiki available on its server. It seems silly to start from the beginning, especially since it will be an epic task for one person to document the craziness of the editor. I mean the sheer numbers of hours put in by this community to document the editor and provide tutorials has be in the upper thousand of hours.
Also...a really good beginner's tutorial (for non-programmers) start to finish would be awesome with a map theme e.g. campaign, tower defense, rpg, squad tactics, etc. I'm thinking a video-tutorial would be the best format.
Pretty awesome if Blizzard followed through with this...I'm already a Blizzard fan-boy, but if this happened I would become a Blizzard fanatic!!
So we need tooltips for every field, especially actors, and also working examples of everything, because although some triggers and data objects are obvious, some are not.
Yes, I'm going to speak to her about integrating or utilizing our existing tutorials. Perhaps we should make more example/sample maps to demonstrate usage, as opposed to just random text on a screen that people copy paste and get wrong? I'm assuming one can attach files to wiki articles.
Honestly, I don't think we should make any new stuff until the Editor is updated. Until then, Blizzard should make tutorials and use our old stuff for guidance or if still relevant just take. If they really want to get new people into this scene, then they gotta make the Editor very very non-programmer newb friendly or at least make some kind of Code-Academy type Interface. I trudged through a lot of the tutorials to learn basic stuff and the UI for the Editor while not totally different is not the same. The folks who did all these tutorials were amazing and did a good job, but I spent way too much time learning about Dialog boxes when I should of been learning simple triggers!! Lol what a waste of time!! I am also not a programmer nor a SCI/WC3 veteran so everything was so new and crazy for me...just the idea of triggers/events versus actions, conditions and variables proved challenging for me to wrap my head around. Now I get all this silliness.
Blizzard has a opportunity with Lotv to get the Editor right. It also has Mapster a group of diehard SC2 fans who have stuck around through neglect and isolation for the last four years and produced some pretty awesome games, campaigns and documentation.
Honestly, I don't think we should make any new stuff until the Editor is updated.
Thats a valid point. The editor they are using for LotV is probably the one from Heroes. It probably has so many new stuff that i think they just can't include data dependencies from the WoL and HotS. I also think they hired this person only now for a reason. The editor is going to it's final set of features and thats a right time to increase the popularity of map making for sc2. However the editor most likely wont be simplified and even the oposite. As the number of features will increase, it will just throw more stuff in your face until it gets screwed
Thats a valid point. The editor they are using for LotV is probably the one from Heroes. It probably has so many new stuff that i think they just can't include data dependencies from the WoL and HotS.
I was thinking about this the other day, what will happen to WoL/HotS dependency maps once LotV is out? Will they have to be remade from scratch? I've just started working on data on my map (using only doodads from base dependency tho, recreating anything else), would like to know to stop in time if it's all going to be wiped out once LotV is out...
@StealthToast: Go
I have an idea for map that will be completely done with data (even AI) so i don't rly want to risk with my precious sparetime, for example i already have few abilities which using 16-25 actors per each even with optimisation. And i already experienced problems with HotS when my stuff turns garbage. I'm working with editor lately only to improve my actor/data skills to be prepared for LotV release, But ofcourse lot's of map that i saw on arcade using mostly triggers, cuz not so many people want to mess with data, they just want to create some fun gameplay in a reasonable time. Can't blame them for that )). So it's totaly up to you to decide.
I am pretty sure most of the features from HotS still exist in LotV. Sure new stuff will be added but the old stuff is hardly going to be removed. For example Tactical AI in Heroes of the Storm is identical to that of StarCraft II HotS which has not changed since WoL. Not adding new stuff will be the final nails in the coffin of a community of an already struggling game.
Most triggers do not need examples. They actually need a decent description explaining what they do exactly. Examples are only needed for obscure or not obvious usages and in fact would be better off in separate guides or tutorials.
Little things like the valid range of arguments as well as asserted errors for all the natives would help. Any natives that interact on game state outside the Galaxy Virtual Machine should explain clearly what the results would be. When someone searches up a native they should immediately be able to know what it does, something currently still being left to much imagination.
Since many actions and functions are simply native wrappers you could mix the two documentations together in those cases. Non-native functions used by standard libraries could be done with a script dump and top level explanation of what they do (since their actual operation is not hidden like natives are).
What does not make me happy is seeing incorrect native descriptions. For example http://www.sc2mapster.com/wiki/galaxy/triggers/substring/ (old wiki, article not ported yet but still in public domain). The end and start point can be 1 despite it saying it "Must be greater than 1". The "Loop through each character in a string." example is also wrong as the first character is at position 1 not 0 and the loop terminates without processing the last character. This is a perfect example of why people find SC2 hard since there is no good documentation for most of the stuff despite the game being several years old now.
Yes, the wiki is severely out of date, and more importantly, doesn't even match what is in the editor. The editor documentation for substring says "Pulls a substring by character start to end count." Which is a bit vague I guess, but more accurate then what is in the wiki.
Honestly, I don't think we should make any new stuff until the Editor is updated. Until then, Blizzard should make tutorials ...
The person who Blizzard hired is doing just that, and she wants our help to do it. So yes, we will need to make new stuff, stuff that Blizzard can then host or somehow integrate in. From some digging around in the Storm files, Blizzard has set aside a URL to host these docs, so it would seem they intend to have on the battle.net site a place for the documentation.
I'm excited if Blizzard takes control of the wiki articles and will be happy to contribute. I really think we should de-couple from Curse and Mapster should be a Blizzard project and they should pay all of us in cookies and ice cream :).
Also, hosting under Curse seems so tenuous with our site almost being closed a few years ago. All these maps...all these tutorials just gone. Blizzard should really purchase this site or negotiate it away from Curse. Probably a lot of rules of conduct and licenses that would become an issue...but hey its a discussion thread!
The site is pretty small I have to admit. TheHiveWorkshop still generates more WC3 related traffic than this site does SC2 traffic and WC3 has fallen on hard times as it is over 10 years old.
I think the kind of documentation we should be aiming for should be breadth first, not depth first. What I mean is we should just try and get as much coverage as we possibly can. step by step tutorials which go through step by agonizingly small step don't help anyone unless they want to replicate the exact map in the tutorial.
What we need is an explanation on things so that when people are exploring for themselves they know what this function does, or what that field in data means, or how to access things which are hidden in the editor. We should assume that people are smart and can figure things out for themselves but they need to know what tools are available at their disposal.
A good start might be explanations for functions which don't have any and have fields with no explanation of what they do.
data fields which might be handy but which don't have intuitive names.
flow charts of how units/weapons/effects/behaviours are linked up showing how you can use set effects to cause behaviours which cause more effects etc.
Stuff that people can't just figure out for themselves without knowing first what to look for.
According to the talk in relation to the Arcade and the SC2 Editor held at Blizzcon, Blizzard has hired a person to draw up official documentation for the editor (such as providing more then just tooltips, have working examples and applications and what not). Given that, and the state of our wiki, I would like to discuss what we should focus on in terms of incomplete documentation, lack of examples and what should be fixed first.
Some areas of the editor are incredibly well documented, such as much of the Trigger editor, and many of the 'core' data areas such as Abilities, Units, Behaviors, Effects. However, more obscure sections have next to nothing (Bank Conditions, Preload, User Types, etc.)
Hopefully we can chat with this person and be able to provide her with the relevant examples, and so forth such that the editor itself will become better documented and also provide the wiki with more up to date information.
i always wanted to know how markers work and what EXACTLY do the single flags (matching and unmatching). how to use them with validators exactly (i got things working but i dunno why).
the next thing i could never figure out are target:sorts. or maybe they are just bugged for weapons. it always goes for distance/closest target/dunno anymore.
there should be more examples of movers. all kind of, everything you can prolly think off should be there as example.
also the data entry heroabilities (maybe hots has) should have examples.
actors in general , there is so much that in fact i cannot even tell what i want to know here right now.
that's all from me
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
ModeratorsFirst core area is transfer of stuff from the old wiki.
Trigger editor wiki is mostly just a a dump of the types not what they do.
Half the data editor pages were written by me several versions ago so there are tons of new fields. Our objective is to get a 1x coverage of everything, we can always update and improve later.
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
https://media.forgecdn.net/attachments/187/40/Screenshot2011-04-17_09_16_21.jpg
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Curse PremiumThat sounds great that blizzard is going to make a official document for the map editor. Hope it is easy to follow. My novice transition over from editing in SC1 to SC2 was a major hurdler for me. I didn't know where to start. So I deiced to start and learn the basic stuff like map design, simple trigger editing, and simple data editing. SC2mapster has with out doubt help me improved my maping skills along with going in to the campaign and seeing how thing were done over there as well.
My thoughts are the same, Trigger wiki needs examples to show what they do and how they can function with other triggers, not every trigger might function as per how you might think it would. The wiki should be something that someone as inexperienced as me can go over there and take their trigger editing to the next level and learn how to make a desired trigger that works in a desired way. For me the focus is on the Ai and how it interacts in the game. Usually through the tutorials are the way to demonstrate the function of the Ai, but this demonstration of the Ai in the wiki is lacking and incoherent. It would be interesting to see a basic picture of a simple structural trigger setup on how to make this and that work. There is tons of stuff behind learning on how to command the Ai around in trigger, this should be a simple skill everyone should be able to learn and do.
This person should just use our existing wiki and not start from scratch. A lot of the tutorials are very clear and well-written, but just need to be updated to the current editor UI. I'm sure something can be worked out with Curse or Blizzard should just absorb Mapster to have the wiki available on its server. It seems silly to start from the beginning, especially since it will be an epic task for one person to document the craziness of the editor. I mean the sheer numbers of hours put in by this community to document the editor and provide tutorials has be in the upper thousand of hours.
Also...a really good beginner's tutorial (for non-programmers) start to finish would be awesome with a map theme e.g. campaign, tower defense, rpg, squad tactics, etc. I'm thinking a video-tutorial would be the best format.
Pretty awesome if Blizzard followed through with this...I'm already a Blizzard fan-boy, but if this happened I would become a Blizzard fanatic!!
Just add description for each actor field for fuck sake
hell yes
So we need tooltips for every field, especially actors, and also working examples of everything, because although some triggers and data objects are obvious, some are not.
@Hockleberry: Go
Yes, I'm going to speak to her about integrating or utilizing our existing tutorials. Perhaps we should make more example/sample maps to demonstrate usage, as opposed to just random text on a screen that people copy paste and get wrong? I'm assuming one can attach files to wiki articles.
Honestly, I don't think we should make any new stuff until the Editor is updated. Until then, Blizzard should make tutorials and use our old stuff for guidance or if still relevant just take. If they really want to get new people into this scene, then they gotta make the Editor very very non-programmer newb friendly or at least make some kind of Code-Academy type Interface. I trudged through a lot of the tutorials to learn basic stuff and the UI for the Editor while not totally different is not the same. The folks who did all these tutorials were amazing and did a good job, but I spent way too much time learning about Dialog boxes when I should of been learning simple triggers!! Lol what a waste of time!! I am also not a programmer nor a SCI/WC3 veteran so everything was so new and crazy for me...just the idea of triggers/events versus actions, conditions and variables proved challenging for me to wrap my head around. Now I get all this silliness.
Blizzard has a opportunity with Lotv to get the Editor right. It also has Mapster a group of diehard SC2 fans who have stuck around through neglect and isolation for the last four years and produced some pretty awesome games, campaigns and documentation.
Thats a valid point. The editor they are using for LotV is probably the one from Heroes. It probably has so many new stuff that i think they just can't include data dependencies from the WoL and HotS. I also think they hired this person only now for a reason. The editor is going to it's final set of features and thats a right time to increase the popularity of map making for sc2. However the editor most likely wont be simplified and even the oposite. As the number of features will increase, it will just throw more stuff in your face until it gets screwed
I was thinking about this the other day, what will happen to WoL/HotS dependency maps once LotV is out? Will they have to be remade from scratch? I've just started working on data on my map (using only doodads from base dependency tho, recreating anything else), would like to know to stop in time if it's all going to be wiped out once LotV is out...
@StealthToast: Go I have an idea for map that will be completely done with data (even AI) so i don't rly want to risk with my precious sparetime, for example i already have few abilities which using 16-25 actors per each even with optimisation. And i already experienced problems with HotS when my stuff turns garbage. I'm working with editor lately only to improve my actor/data skills to be prepared for LotV release, But ofcourse lot's of map that i saw on arcade using mostly triggers, cuz not so many people want to mess with data, they just want to create some fun gameplay in a reasonable time. Can't blame them for that )). So it's totaly up to you to decide.
I am pretty sure most of the features from HotS still exist in LotV. Sure new stuff will be added but the old stuff is hardly going to be removed. For example Tactical AI in Heroes of the Storm is identical to that of StarCraft II HotS which has not changed since WoL. Not adding new stuff will be the final nails in the coffin of a community of an already struggling game.
Most triggers do not need examples. They actually need a decent description explaining what they do exactly. Examples are only needed for obscure or not obvious usages and in fact would be better off in separate guides or tutorials.
Little things like the valid range of arguments as well as asserted errors for all the natives would help. Any natives that interact on game state outside the Galaxy Virtual Machine should explain clearly what the results would be. When someone searches up a native they should immediately be able to know what it does, something currently still being left to much imagination.
Since many actions and functions are simply native wrappers you could mix the two documentations together in those cases. Non-native functions used by standard libraries could be done with a script dump and top level explanation of what they do (since their actual operation is not hidden like natives are).
What does not make me happy is seeing incorrect native descriptions. For example http://www.sc2mapster.com/wiki/galaxy/triggers/substring/ (old wiki, article not ported yet but still in public domain). The end and start point can be 1 despite it saying it "Must be greater than 1". The "Loop through each character in a string." example is also wrong as the first character is at position 1 not 0 and the loop terminates without processing the last character. This is a perfect example of why people find SC2 hard since there is no good documentation for most of the stuff despite the game being several years old now.
Yes, the wiki is severely out of date, and more importantly, doesn't even match what is in the editor. The editor documentation for substring says "Pulls a substring by character start to end count." Which is a bit vague I guess, but more accurate then what is in the wiki.
The person who Blizzard hired is doing just that, and she wants our help to do it. So yes, we will need to make new stuff, stuff that Blizzard can then host or somehow integrate in. From some digging around in the Storm files, Blizzard has set aside a URL to host these docs, so it would seem they intend to have on the battle.net site a place for the documentation.
I'm excited if Blizzard takes control of the wiki articles and will be happy to contribute. I really think we should de-couple from Curse and Mapster should be a Blizzard project and they should pay all of us in cookies and ice cream :).
Also, hosting under Curse seems so tenuous with our site almost being closed a few years ago. All these maps...all these tutorials just gone. Blizzard should really purchase this site or negotiate it away from Curse. Probably a lot of rules of conduct and licenses that would become an issue...but hey its a discussion thread!
The site is pretty small I have to admit. TheHiveWorkshop still generates more WC3 related traffic than this site does SC2 traffic and WC3 has fallen on hard times as it is over 10 years old.
If I could throw in my 2 cents...
I think the kind of documentation we should be aiming for should be breadth first, not depth first. What I mean is we should just try and get as much coverage as we possibly can. step by step tutorials which go through step by agonizingly small step don't help anyone unless they want to replicate the exact map in the tutorial.
What we need is an explanation on things so that when people are exploring for themselves they know what this function does, or what that field in data means, or how to access things which are hidden in the editor. We should assume that people are smart and can figure things out for themselves but they need to know what tools are available at their disposal.
A good start might be explanations for functions which don't have any and have fields with no explanation of what they do.
data fields which might be handy but which don't have intuitive names.
flow charts of how units/weapons/effects/behaviours are linked up showing how you can use set effects to cause behaviours which cause more effects etc.
Stuff that people can't just figure out for themselves without knowing first what to look for.
-
View User Profile
-
View Posts
-
Send Message
Moderators@finiteturtles: Go
The bones of a flow chart is already in the new wiki just no one has ever put it into some network mapping software.
http://wiki.sc2mapster.com/Main_Page/Understand_the_Meta_Concept_of_Data_Editor_(A_Good_Starting_Point)
Contribute to the wiki (Wiki button at top of page) Considered easy altering of the unit textures?
https://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/resources/tutorials/179654-data-actor-events-message-texture-select-by-id
https://media.forgecdn.net/attachments/187/40/Screenshot2011-04-17_09_16_21.jpg