Ok so I've been around here long enough to know what people want. I'll list a few things: lag free third person system, 500x500 maps, infinite doodads + units with zero lag, underground areas without using rocks, etc etc. Now many of these things can't happen because of computer problems instead of editor problems, but many of these issues seem to be a fairly simple fix. I have a theory that might help all of us. Please hear me out. Blizzard Entertainment built the editor based on the game to allow us to create maps for our entertainment correct? Well they had to have used something to make the editor in the first place and if you can make it once, you can change it, rearrange it, fix it from the inside if you will. Instead of trying to dig a tunnel or parachute onto the roof why not try the front door first? I say let's edit the editor itself! Remake it so we CAN do what we want. I'm sick of these smoke and mirrors tactic that are going on around here. It's time someone made something so it IS possible to do. I'm sick of flat water, I want it to roll with the land. I'm sick of not having a REAL underground, enough of these lousy rock arches. I say let's fix the thing that stands in out way! Starcraft 2 deserves more than this! We are Mapsters, AND WE, ARE, POWERFUL!
Unfortunately, most of these limits are not limits of the editor, but of the engine itself. If we compare this to WC3 or SC1, this is a huge difference:
The WC3 editor had several limits, which were not present in the game at all. The editor limited the use of textures, the map sizes, the doodad limit etc. But all those limits were just postulated by the editor, the engine itself could handle more. So 3rd party programs were developed to circumvent these limits, usually by injecting/replacing data in the finished map file. Ultimately, a hacked editor (several, actually) were created, which combined many of those features.
For SC2, most editor limits are also hard-coded in the engine. You cannot make maps bigger than 256² without modifying the actual game (only talking about "physical" map size, there might be workarounds). You cannot use more textures or cliff types than within the editor limits. You cannot create a lag free first/third person without actually changing the whole battlenet ;)
Sure, there are improvements, which indeed could be done to the editor, I don't want to deny that. But circumventing those hard-coded limits like in WC3 will at least be very limited, if not entirely impossible (there might still be some editor-only limits we don't know about)
Also, do you know how hard your hypothetical situation is? Dynamic water usually needs a physics engine.... And underground doesn't seem that hard, but i think smoke and mirrors is easier.
You know what's even easier? Telling the landlord to get rid of the bottom of the building. (ie, ask blizzard)
Anyway, I found that speech very motivating. You should run for Pres of SC2Mapster. If we had one.
exactly what he said above (Kueken531) ... it does not matter what the editor lets us do or not do, but what the game engine lets us do.. all the editor does is make things easier for working with the engine...
Ahh I see, and which engine exactly IS standing in our way might I ask? Is it also designed by Blizzard or by a third party? If the engine does not allow it, then we must change that as well! Man I sound like a Democrat right now with all this change... O well joking aside this is going to be harder than I thought.
If the engine does not allow it, then we must change that as well!
For this, we would need to modify the game itself, which would:
require every single player, who wants to play the map, to make the same modifications. This would discourage about 95% of the people to play the map.
disable the map to be played via Battle.net, because Blizzard keeps track of modifications to the game files. Combine that with a lack of a LAN mode, and we will lose the rest of the players.
Well, there is hacked lan support (I guess), but then... why even bother to alter the SC2 engine to become a first person shooter? If you can do that, you can probably create your own engine... or use tools better suited for this :)
So that means that it is physically possible but they don't want to throw their time and money at a project that wouldn't benefit them in return? Isn't there any pride to be gained if such a thing was accomplished? Wouldn't they feel that they could hold their heads high like men for giving us the ultimate freedom in the digital world? Just like Fallout except with money.
I dont think you understand the amount of work it would take to just keep throwing more and more things to a RTS engine... remember thats all this is, is a RTS engine... the things we can do with it already are mind blowing... if you want to make a full out game... you need to use a real engine made for "full" games.
to add a third depth [underground] would be a almost 100% resigned of the engine.
to keep adding things would cost them tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
O I understand all well and good but the SC2 world deserves better than this type of treatment. In my opinion screw the WoW universe entirely, leave the orcs to die, and make a SC2 world like that so it feels more open. If they go broke, they failed to make it good enough in my opinion. It's not my job to keep track of a multi billion dollar company's funds. It's my job to give them a reason to make something better regardless if they lose a little or not.
O I understand all well and good but the SC2 world deserves better than this type of treatment. In my opinion screw the WoW universe entirely, leave the orcs to die, and make a SC2 world like that so it feels more open. If they go broke, they failed to make it good enough in my opinion. It's not my job to keep track of a multi billion dollar company's funds. It's my job to give them a reason to make something better regardless if they lose a little or not.
wait what... its an rts... its one of the best selling rts in the world..the already did it right...
Theres seriously a point where its overkill... they gave us WAYY more than they ever needed to give us mappers when it came to the engine.. its fantastic... they dont need to overkill it with things like that. [the fact is we CAN do things like that...using funky tricks... which is fantastic]
What I still don't understand is why indies and other third parties can bring us a good RTS experience with minimal latency (See LoL, HoN, and WC3 powered by Garena or Pickup Listchecker), yet a large, burgeoning million-dollar company is having trouble even bringing us past 1998-level latency. Or a 1998-level online platform for custom maps, for that matter.
The latency is really 30% of the reason mapmaking for Starcraft 2 feels like a Sisyphean task. The other 70% is obviously the popularity system.
The editor right now, as it is, is awesome. It has a ton of power. The problem is Battle.net. It really sucks.
So your idea is let's make our own damn game, our own damn engine that used 95% of code from the sc2 engine and get our asses sued by blizzard lawyer ?? Eh no.
LoL and HoN did not have better latency than sc2, its just they have fewer players than bnet had to handle. However garena does achieve a better latency since it connect you directly with others and not through a central server like battlenet or LoL server for authentication to prevent cheating/hacking etc..
So in essence, the bigger\popular your game is, the more problems are bound to happen. You either trade off some problem to fix others but not all of them.
What I still don't understand is why indies and other third parties can bring us a good RTS experience with minimal latency (See LoL, HoN, and WC3 powered by Garena or Pickup Listchecker), yet a large, burgeoning million-dollar company is having trouble even bringing us past 1998-level latency. Or a 1998-level online platform for custom maps, for that matter.
The latency is really 30% of the reason mapmaking for Starcraft 2 feels like a Sisyphean task. The other 70% is obviously the popularity system.
The editor right now, as it is, is awesome. It has a ton of power. The problem is Battle.net. It really sucks.
theres nothing wrong with sc2 latency...at all... (unless your talking about WASD movement.. which..it was not built around)
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LoL and HoN did not have better latency than sc2, its just they have fewer players than bnet had to handle.
Except, if you did your research, you would find that you are absolutely incorrect! If we take the Xfire statistics (I think that tracks US statistics), we find that LoL peaks at about 150k players a day, Battle.net 2.0 peaks at around 20k (the Bnet statistics when you sign in indicate worldwide concurrency). Even if these statistics were inaccurate, they nonetheless indicate a pattern in which LoL actually has more concurrency than SC2! Fewer players, indeed? And yet, LoL responds so much better.
So in essence, the bigger\popular your game is, the more problems are bound to happen. You either trade off some problem to fix others but not all of them.
You also forget that Blizzard probably has better server hardware than indie companies.
theres nothing wrong with sc2 latency...at all... (unless your talking about WASD movement.. which..it was not built around)
And pray tell, why can't we have some tweaks for custom games? Just for custom games. Ladder, I can see the latency being necessary, but custom games? Suppose there was an option permitting the mapmaker and/or the players to decide if they want their game to run on lower latency settings or not?
Ok Ok fine, screw it. I'll ask for something simpler and in a nicer way. Can we pretty please have a third person SC2 game where you can get in and out of ships, fight hydralisks, pilot a banshee from inside one, things like that would be great. I'm thinking something like a cross between Star Wars Battlefront and Eve Online.
Ok so I've been around here long enough to know what people want. I'll list a few things: lag free third person system, 500x500 maps, infinite doodads + units with zero lag, underground areas without using rocks, etc etc. Now many of these things can't happen because of computer problems instead of editor problems, but many of these issues seem to be a fairly simple fix. I have a theory that might help all of us. Please hear me out. Blizzard Entertainment built the editor based on the game to allow us to create maps for our entertainment correct? Well they had to have used something to make the editor in the first place and if you can make it once, you can change it, rearrange it, fix it from the inside if you will. Instead of trying to dig a tunnel or parachute onto the roof why not try the front door first? I say let's edit the editor itself! Remake it so we CAN do what we want. I'm sick of these smoke and mirrors tactic that are going on around here. It's time someone made something so it IS possible to do. I'm sick of flat water, I want it to roll with the land. I'm sick of not having a REAL underground, enough of these lousy rock arches. I say let's fix the thing that stands in out way! Starcraft 2 deserves more than this! We are Mapsters, AND WE, ARE, POWERFUL!
Now someone needs to figure out how to do that :P
@jaxter184: Go
Well that works too then as long as the end result is the same. I loled for real man, that was good, thank you.
Unfortunately, most of these limits are not limits of the editor, but of the engine itself. If we compare this to WC3 or SC1, this is a huge difference:
The WC3 editor had several limits, which were not present in the game at all. The editor limited the use of textures, the map sizes, the doodad limit etc. But all those limits were just postulated by the editor, the engine itself could handle more. So 3rd party programs were developed to circumvent these limits, usually by injecting/replacing data in the finished map file. Ultimately, a hacked editor (several, actually) were created, which combined many of those features.
For SC2, most editor limits are also hard-coded in the engine. You cannot make maps bigger than 256² without modifying the actual game (only talking about "physical" map size, there might be workarounds). You cannot use more textures or cliff types than within the editor limits. You cannot create a lag free first/third person without actually changing the whole battlenet ;)
Sure, there are improvements, which indeed could be done to the editor, I don't want to deny that. But circumventing those hard-coded limits like in WC3 will at least be very limited, if not entirely impossible (there might still be some editor-only limits we don't know about)
exactly what he said above (Kueken531) ... it does not matter what the editor lets us do or not do, but what the game engine lets us do.. all the editor does is make things easier for working with the engine...
Ahh I see, and which engine exactly IS standing in our way might I ask? Is it also designed by Blizzard or by a third party? If the engine does not allow it, then we must change that as well! Man I sound like a Democrat right now with all this change... O well joking aside this is going to be harder than I thought.
http://nooooooooooooooo.com/
Press it a few times please.
yeah... its designed by blizzard, but they can only add so much extra for us.. before it becomes a "loss" in development time.
For this, we would need to modify the game itself, which would:
Well, there is hacked lan support (I guess), but then... why even bother to alter the SC2 engine to become a first person shooter? If you can do that, you can probably create your own engine... or use tools better suited for this :)
@Molsterr: Go
So that means that it is physically possible but they don't want to throw their time and money at a project that wouldn't benefit them in return? Isn't there any pride to be gained if such a thing was accomplished? Wouldn't they feel that they could hold their heads high like men for giving us the ultimate freedom in the digital world? Just like Fallout except with money.
change the word war every time with "money"
I dont think you understand the amount of work it would take to just keep throwing more and more things to a RTS engine... remember thats all this is, is a RTS engine... the things we can do with it already are mind blowing... if you want to make a full out game... you need to use a real engine made for "full" games.
to add a third depth [underground] would be a almost 100% resigned of the engine.
to keep adding things would cost them tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
@Reaper872: Go
I think they are perfectly happy holding their money higher than their heads
Great to be back and part of the community again!
@Molsterr: Go
O I understand all well and good but the SC2 world deserves better than this type of treatment. In my opinion screw the WoW universe entirely, leave the orcs to die, and make a SC2 world like that so it feels more open. If they go broke, they failed to make it good enough in my opinion. It's not my job to keep track of a multi billion dollar company's funds. It's my job to give them a reason to make something better regardless if they lose a little or not.
wait what... its an rts... its one of the best selling rts in the world..the already did it right... Theres seriously a point where its overkill... they gave us WAYY more than they ever needed to give us mappers when it came to the engine.. its fantastic... they dont need to overkill it with things like that. [the fact is we CAN do things like that...using funky tricks... which is fantastic]
What I still don't understand is why indies and other third parties can bring us a good RTS experience with minimal latency (See LoL, HoN, and WC3 powered by Garena or Pickup Listchecker), yet a large, burgeoning million-dollar company is having trouble even bringing us past 1998-level latency. Or a 1998-level online platform for custom maps, for that matter.
The latency is really 30% of the reason mapmaking for Starcraft 2 feels like a Sisyphean task. The other 70% is obviously the popularity system.
The editor right now, as it is, is awesome. It has a ton of power. The problem is Battle.net. It really sucks.
So your idea is let's make our own damn game, our own damn engine that used 95% of code from the sc2 engine and get our asses sued by blizzard lawyer ?? Eh no.
@OneSoga: Go
LoL and HoN did not have better latency than sc2, its just they have fewer players than bnet had to handle. However garena does achieve a better latency since it connect you directly with others and not through a central server like battlenet or LoL server for authentication to prevent cheating/hacking etc..
So in essence, the bigger\popular your game is, the more problems are bound to happen. You either trade off some problem to fix others but not all of them.
theres nothing wrong with sc2 latency...at all... (unless your talking about WASD movement.. which..it was not built around)
Except, if you did your research, you would find that you are absolutely incorrect! If we take the Xfire statistics (I think that tracks US statistics), we find that LoL peaks at about 150k players a day, Battle.net 2.0 peaks at around 20k (the Bnet statistics when you sign in indicate worldwide concurrency). Even if these statistics were inaccurate, they nonetheless indicate a pattern in which LoL actually has more concurrency than SC2! Fewer players, indeed? And yet, LoL responds so much better.
Also, Starcraft 2 uses built-in latency.
You also forget that Blizzard probably has better server hardware than indie companies.
And pray tell, why can't we have some tweaks for custom games? Just for custom games. Ladder, I can see the latency being necessary, but custom games? Suppose there was an option permitting the mapmaker and/or the players to decide if they want their game to run on lower latency settings or not?
What's with the 512*512 map size desire?
I mean, it'd be nice and all, but I've yet to see a quality map that even uses the 256*256 space. I think ZHRPG is the only one, and that's a guess.
Ok Ok fine, screw it. I'll ask for something simpler and in a nicer way. Can we pretty please have a third person SC2 game where you can get in and out of ships, fight hydralisks, pilot a banshee from inside one, things like that would be great. I'm thinking something like a cross between Star Wars Battlefront and Eve Online.