I know there are many smart people around here. Let me give you a little challenge (Idea from this Battle.net post). As you know, the map is limited to 256*256, what about finding workaround?
Rules:
Give a map larger than 256*256 that is loaded by Starcraft 2.
Prize:
3-month Curse Premium
We don't know if it is possible to do so, if the editor or game have any hardcoded checks to break if there's a map > 256*256 ... It's time to get people work on it! If you don't know where to start, here are some leads
I don't care about anything in between... I just want a map thats 65536x65536. Then I can live there, and there will be enough to explore that I'll never have to go back to my real life.
And give me the charge ability, just in case I need to get somewhere.
You could put 4 computers next to each other. Now it's 512x512. This method can be expanded to any map size. There are a lot of computers in the world so it shouldn't be a problem.
! got a start
my mouse is in the top right corner near the circle
it's pretty easy to edit a map if you create one without using terrain. I don't really know what this feature is for... can't add terrain after creating it without
okay:
tried alot
-memory edits while the editor is running are only crashing it
-it is possible to edit everything but the editor crashes if the most important t3TextureMasks is bigger then 256x256
starcraft says: unable to open map
I guess it requires a lot of hardcoding to enable bigger maps. If you have to change some memory addresses from 1 byte to 2 bytes it's going to be really hard
How about downscaling units and doodads by 50%? Since very few things use 1x1 footprints it shouldn't affect the gameplay too much (although things with odd-sized footprints like command centers would have to have slightly different proportions.) The only thing that would be very noticeable would be that cliffs would be effectively twice as large as they are now.
If I had to guess I'd say the 256x256 limit is due to texture size limitations in older video cards, if each map unit has a 4x4 texture mask then a maximum size map would have 1024x1024 mask textures which was the maximum texture size for many older and low-end video cards. So anything larger would not be playable by those with low-end systems. Just a guess, though.
My understanding is that this would be a lot harder than it first sounds. You would seriously reduce texture quality, mess with footprints (1x1, 3x3, 5x5 would all be messed up, which is most footprints), mess up speed/range/collision size/visual size of units/doodads/effects(searches), camera would be twice as far out, and a bajillion other things would go wrong.
I've got the solution for making a 512x512 map: whine and whine at blizzard til they implement it. Or make a challenge and some Brilliant One will arise from the East, claiming no past, and promising no future. He will wield his mouse like a well trained musician, and type with the grace and speed of ancient warriors. His words, they are so few. His hacks, though, will run deep in all our veins. And will we open 512x512 maps? Yes, my friends, we will open them for much longer than he will enjoy his Curse.com premium account.
You would have to change the scale for EVERYTHING, models, which includes units, missles, effects, cliffs, doodads, buildings. Texture sizes, unit speed, attack ranges, spell ranges, AOE range, sight range, flying units height, ect. Thats not even all of them..
To do it 50% of original would more or less be remaking the game just with all the content provided for you.
I don't care about anything in between... I just want a map thats 65536x65536. Then I can live there, and there will be enough to explore that I'll never have to go back to my real life.
And give me the charge ability, just in case I need to get somewhere.
You would have to change the scale for EVERYTHING, models, which includes units, missles, effects, cliffs, doodads, buildings. Texture sizes, unit speed, attack ranges, spell ranges, AOE range, sight range, flying units height, ect. Thats not even all of them..
To do it 50% of original would more or less be remaking the game just with all the content provided for you.
Why? That defeats the whole purpose of making a map larger than 256*256 if everything gets scaled up, you just end up with a map that is larger, but everything is at the same ratio. Leave all of the units regular just increase the size of the map.
My understanding is that this would be a lot harder than it first sounds. You would seriously reduce texture quality, mess with footprints (1x1, 3x3, 5x5 would all be messed up, which is most footprints), mess up speed/range/collision size/visual size of units/doodads/effects(searches), camera would be twice as far out, and a bajillion other things would go wrong.
I've got the solution for making a 512x512 map: whine and whine at blizzard til they implement it. Or make a challenge and some Brilliant One will arise from the East, claiming no past, and promising no future. He will wield his mouse like a well trained musician, and type with the grace and speed of ancient warriors. His words, they are so few. His hacks, though, will run deep in all our veins. And will we open 512x512 maps? Yes, my friends, we will open them for much longer than he will enjoy his Curse.com premium account.
If you increase the size of the map, you don't necessarily have to increase the size of the tiles, or anything else for that matter.
You're assuming that it's possible to make a map larger than 256x256. I'm merely suggesting an alternative. Of course it's not ideal compared to just increasing the map size, but I'm very skeptical that will be possible unless it's enabled with a future patch or expansion.
And I realize downscaling everything is basically an absurd solution that would require an insane amount of work. But it may be the only workaround for a long time, or ever, depending on the technical reasons for the 256x256 limitation.
It seems like it is some kind of hard coded option hidden somewhere, my attempts in forcing the Editor to force create a 512x512 map causes it to crash upon loading. So at the moment it seems we are stuck at having to scale everything down...
Forcing a hard code to truely create a real >256X map does infact seem like a good hard challange. However, despite the negitave feedback on scaling, i support scaling as a work around untill a hard code fix is created. scaling isn't that difficult.
While admittedly, scaling is a lot of work (more so than in War3 where I used to scale units -50% to increase map sizes) on SC2, but you need to note 2 things about it that work fine, and 2 things about it that suck.
1st Pro - SC2 can save map mods so that, you can import data editor files into any map; just like in War3 where you could save object data to import into a map. Making a new map on the scaling isnt that difficult once you've done it the first time. Just save it, and basically CnP it later in another project.
2nd Pro - War3 sucked on scaling things lower than 30% their original size. However, on SC2, I've scaled things to 0.005, adjusted the cam according and it STILL felt like it was the real size, only the map texture was severly exposed because of the zoom. SC2 supports SUPER small units because of its amazing pathing.
3rd Pro (theoretical) Now I don't know this for sure, but IF you do NOT use splats to supplement terrain textures (below) and just use what the game has given you to use and just scale it? You'll actually save game play lag by using only the RAM needed to run a 256X map, only to effectively run a map that behaves 100% or more larger with the unit scaling. I cannot absolutely confirm this for I'm no guru in that nature but, I remember in CnC Generals, how you could have virtually no limit to your map size. however, the larger the map, the more lag I got. Eventually, you get too big and game would crash when I had barely an army to field. In War3 on my slower comp, I'd lag more on a larger map with 200 units fighting, but less on a small ass map with the same battle happening. This leads me to believe that Scaling can be better in terms of saving resources. If you wanted to be really crafty, imagine finally breaking code and making a true 512X512 map, only to scale it anyway and basically get a 1080X1080 map using half the resources on peoples systems.
1st Con - Horrid terrain texture. While with SC2 its less because its no longer really "tiles" like they were in War3, the resolution of the texture for the terrain will seriously start to look bad, because you'll be zoomed in so close to it. The work around I found for this was on War3, import a custom texture and use it as a splat image on the ground. If you're clever, you can make quite a few different terrain related splat textures and place them to cover the map terrain. When I did this in War3, i had to make quite a few because A: the game would'nt read image files of a larger resolution than what it supported and B: i kept the images small in comparison so that, zoomed in, their resolution matched the Cam View and didn't pixelate. The bad thing? The map was well over the limit to host online, but it worked flawlessly.
2nd Con - I never really found a work around with the pathing textures. The pathing textures, if some of you don't know, are the small image files I believe (on war3) that are done in TGA format. You use a solid color (be it Cyan, Pink, or the like) and the game would compute it into a pathing texture for use with buildings, doodads and what not. Warcraft 3s got pretty small. Starcraft 2s though, each pathing cell looks pretty good size. While you could still scale the pathing pretty easily by making your own files as well, there would be a limit that would not reach how small I've shrunk units before.
In conclusion, if you're looking to only to scale a map +100%, its easily possible and not AS laborous as you think to transfer across many maps. As for the scaling itself, simple math people, is all thats needed. You'll have to shrink everything; models, projectile models, divide everything by 2 to achieve the -50% ratio.
What I have not done, is change the distance in pathing in which a CC can be near minerals. Never really looked at it when I last had fun scaling units earlier; so its unclear to me if that is a Pathing related deal or if its easily adjustable in the DE.
At any rate, don't doubt scaling. I've already done it many times with War3 and have already experimented with it on SC2 as well.
Without seeing the Engines source code I can only speculate that the reason why the GE is limited to 256x256 is because it has to load an map object which holds all the details about the terrain textures, doodads, units, etc. When b0ne123 said he managed to make a map that was 512x512 before adding textures this screams at me it's a hard coded limitation with no immediate work around.
As for scaling being long and laborious, surely some code or a trigger could be written to go through the attributes of all the everything an adjust the size accordingly without the need of having to do it by hand. That was you could decide that if you want it 1024x1024 you only need to have the value that everything is being scaled down by. Can triggers be used to adjust the scale of everything on map initialization?
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Hey,
I know there are many smart people around here. Let me give you a little challenge (Idea from this Battle.net post). As you know, the map is limited to 256*256, what about finding workaround?
Rules:
Prize:
We don't know if it is possible to do so, if the editor or game have any hardcoded checks to break if there's a map > 256*256 ... It's time to get people work on it! If you don't know where to start, here are some leads
512x512? Epicly Epic.
Whoa! Is that possible? What about 1024x1024?
Google translator doesn't work on SC2 map code.. damn..
@SC2Mist: Go
I remember a blue saying its impossible. Did it in a submarine RTS, going to check it.
Ive been trying to figure this out for sometime now actually. I'll be very intrigued if anyone else gets it
I don't care about anything in between... I just want a map thats 65536x65536. Then I can live there, and there will be enough to explore that I'll never have to go back to my real life.
And give me the charge ability, just in case I need to get somewhere.
Impossible is nothing? :)
You could put 4 computers next to each other. Now it's 512x512. This method can be expanded to any map size. There are a lot of computers in the world so it shouldn't be a problem.
@Vexal: Go
! got a start
my mouse is in the top right corner near the circle
it's pretty easy to edit a map if you create one without using terrain. I don't really know what this feature is for... can't add terrain after creating it without
okay:
tried alot
-memory edits while the editor is running are only crashing it
-it is possible to edit everything but the editor crashes if the most important t3TextureMasks is bigger then 256x256
starcraft says: unable to open map
I guess it requires a lot of hardcoding to enable bigger maps. If you have to change some memory addresses from 1 byte to 2 bytes it's going to be really hard
How about downscaling units and doodads by 50%? Since very few things use 1x1 footprints it shouldn't affect the gameplay too much (although things with odd-sized footprints like command centers would have to have slightly different proportions.) The only thing that would be very noticeable would be that cliffs would be effectively twice as large as they are now.
If I had to guess I'd say the 256x256 limit is due to texture size limitations in older video cards, if each map unit has a 4x4 texture mask then a maximum size map would have 1024x1024 mask textures which was the maximum texture size for many older and low-end video cards. So anything larger would not be playable by those with low-end systems. Just a guess, though.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
My understanding is that this would be a lot harder than it first sounds. You would seriously reduce texture quality, mess with footprints (1x1, 3x3, 5x5 would all be messed up, which is most footprints), mess up speed/range/collision size/visual size of units/doodads/effects(searches), camera would be twice as far out, and a bajillion other things would go wrong.
I've got the solution for making a 512x512 map: whine and whine at blizzard til they implement it. Or make a challenge and some Brilliant One will arise from the East, claiming no past, and promising no future. He will wield his mouse like a well trained musician, and type with the grace and speed of ancient warriors. His words, they are so few. His hacks, though, will run deep in all our veins. And will we open 512x512 maps? Yes, my friends, we will open them for much longer than he will enjoy his Curse.com premium account.
@RileyStarcraft: Go
You would have to change the scale for EVERYTHING, models, which includes units, missles, effects, cliffs, doodads, buildings. Texture sizes, unit speed, attack ranges, spell ranges, AOE range, sight range, flying units height, ect. Thats not even all of them..
To do it 50% of original would more or less be remaking the game just with all the content provided for you.
1337, is all I have to say.
Why? That defeats the whole purpose of making a map larger than 256*256 if everything gets scaled up, you just end up with a map that is larger, but everything is at the same ratio. Leave all of the units regular just increase the size of the map.
If you increase the size of the map, you don't necessarily have to increase the size of the tiles, or anything else for that matter.
@SquarelyCircle: Go
You're assuming that it's possible to make a map larger than 256x256. I'm merely suggesting an alternative. Of course it's not ideal compared to just increasing the map size, but I'm very skeptical that will be possible unless it's enabled with a future patch or expansion.
And I realize downscaling everything is basically an absurd solution that would require an insane amount of work. But it may be the only workaround for a long time, or ever, depending on the technical reasons for the 256x256 limitation.
@TheAhlias: Go
... I was telling him the problem of scaling things to 50%... Not saying double them in a 512x512 map...
It seems like it is some kind of hard coded option hidden somewhere, my attempts in forcing the Editor to force create a 512x512 map causes it to crash upon loading. So at the moment it seems we are stuck at having to scale everything down...
Interesting challeng, though I doubt whether it is possbile to create a real map larger than 256*256. And I have suggestions for next challengs:
1. GE challenge: Cliffs more than 2 levels that work properly with ramps, units, etc.
2. Dat editor challenge: Bridge that really works so units can walk across / under it.
Forcing a hard code to truely create a real >256X map does infact seem like a good hard challange. However, despite the negitave feedback on scaling, i support scaling as a work around untill a hard code fix is created. scaling isn't that difficult.
While admittedly, scaling is a lot of work (more so than in War3 where I used to scale units -50% to increase map sizes) on SC2, but you need to note 2 things about it that work fine, and 2 things about it that suck.
1st Pro - SC2 can save map mods so that, you can import data editor files into any map; just like in War3 where you could save object data to import into a map. Making a new map on the scaling isnt that difficult once you've done it the first time. Just save it, and basically CnP it later in another project.
2nd Pro - War3 sucked on scaling things lower than 30% their original size. However, on SC2, I've scaled things to 0.005, adjusted the cam according and it STILL felt like it was the real size, only the map texture was severly exposed because of the zoom. SC2 supports SUPER small units because of its amazing pathing.
3rd Pro (theoretical) Now I don't know this for sure, but IF you do NOT use splats to supplement terrain textures (below) and just use what the game has given you to use and just scale it? You'll actually save game play lag by using only the RAM needed to run a 256X map, only to effectively run a map that behaves 100% or more larger with the unit scaling. I cannot absolutely confirm this for I'm no guru in that nature but, I remember in CnC Generals, how you could have virtually no limit to your map size. however, the larger the map, the more lag I got. Eventually, you get too big and game would crash when I had barely an army to field. In War3 on my slower comp, I'd lag more on a larger map with 200 units fighting, but less on a small ass map with the same battle happening. This leads me to believe that Scaling can be better in terms of saving resources. If you wanted to be really crafty, imagine finally breaking code and making a true 512X512 map, only to scale it anyway and basically get a 1080X1080 map using half the resources on peoples systems.
1st Con - Horrid terrain texture. While with SC2 its less because its no longer really "tiles" like they were in War3, the resolution of the texture for the terrain will seriously start to look bad, because you'll be zoomed in so close to it. The work around I found for this was on War3, import a custom texture and use it as a splat image on the ground. If you're clever, you can make quite a few different terrain related splat textures and place them to cover the map terrain. When I did this in War3, i had to make quite a few because A: the game would'nt read image files of a larger resolution than what it supported and B: i kept the images small in comparison so that, zoomed in, their resolution matched the Cam View and didn't pixelate. The bad thing? The map was well over the limit to host online, but it worked flawlessly.
2nd Con - I never really found a work around with the pathing textures. The pathing textures, if some of you don't know, are the small image files I believe (on war3) that are done in TGA format. You use a solid color (be it Cyan, Pink, or the like) and the game would compute it into a pathing texture for use with buildings, doodads and what not. Warcraft 3s got pretty small. Starcraft 2s though, each pathing cell looks pretty good size. While you could still scale the pathing pretty easily by making your own files as well, there would be a limit that would not reach how small I've shrunk units before.
In conclusion, if you're looking to only to scale a map +100%, its easily possible and not AS laborous as you think to transfer across many maps. As for the scaling itself, simple math people, is all thats needed. You'll have to shrink everything; models, projectile models, divide everything by 2 to achieve the -50% ratio. What I have not done, is change the distance in pathing in which a CC can be near minerals. Never really looked at it when I last had fun scaling units earlier; so its unclear to me if that is a Pathing related deal or if its easily adjustable in the DE. At any rate, don't doubt scaling. I've already done it many times with War3 and have already experimented with it on SC2 as well.
Without seeing the Engines source code I can only speculate that the reason why the GE is limited to 256x256 is because it has to load an map object which holds all the details about the terrain textures, doodads, units, etc. When b0ne123 said he managed to make a map that was 512x512 before adding textures this screams at me it's a hard coded limitation with no immediate work around.
As for scaling being long and laborious, surely some code or a trigger could be written to go through the attributes of all the everything an adjust the size accordingly without the need of having to do it by hand. That was you could decide that if you want it 1024x1024 you only need to have the value that everything is being scaled down by. Can triggers be used to adjust the scale of everything on map initialization?