Though this is unrelated to mapping, the latest StarCraft 2 diorama contest sponsored by Alienware has come to an end. There are so many amazing and creative submission, ranging from a whole bases or close up unit, made by paper craft or clay. There is also a very nice corrupter plushy :P Check out all of them here.
Some of the great submission:
Also, if anyone is interested, the new WoW Community Battle.net site went live yesterday.
Not sure which race to choose? Want to learn a little bit more about each race through the eyes of the legendary Jim Raynor? Check out these cool videos Blizzard made.
Terran:
Zerg:
Protoss:
A group of survivors from the last battle ended up lost in the woods but found a deserted terran supply base in the middle of nowhere. They where relieved, but not for long. The discovery turned out to be a nesting ground of hell, and what else they didn’t know is that they were being followed by an unknown force. There is a slight hope, it’s up to you to find out and if not, this maybe “The Last Swarm”.
Bejeweled TD is an attempt to combine the most 2 addictive game ever invented. The project is still on the work but here's a sneak peak.
Updates: Custom map Winner has been officially announce by Blizzard. Also, free name change is now available. Go grab one now if you like
The (SC1) Legacy Melee Remake votes (Part 1 - Part 2) is finishing tomorrow!
I already newsed The Final Frontier, a space RTS, a while ago but I figured I would give an update in the development of this map. Hookah604 added a lot of features and this starts looking extremly well :)
I really love Bounty_98 because he always has some crazy ideas! I won't describe this one, the video speaks for itself :)
This week WTE is about Morituri te saluant but I figured I'd give a highlight of the few I missed before :) The images & videos below are about Favouritism!
To finish, here are two machinimas that uses both WoW and Starcraft worlds. They are both pretty well done :)
Blizzard has started to reserve their map name. Mephs was informed to change his map Left 2 Die's name before Friday, or else the name will be taken.
The Legacy Remake Contest is now over and there are 18 great entries. You can download all the entries to test it out with a computer.
You have 5 days to vote :)
Right after Blizzard showing their DOTA idea map, progammer had recreated the UI interface and turn it into a model previewer :)
Here is one crazy unit made entirely with the Data Editor, possibly inspired by Blizzcon's custom unit showcase
There are many great entries entered the Blizzcon Movie Contest but not all of them can win. If you have one, feel free to share it on mapster. Here's an epic action scene happened on Char
Blizzard updated the fan arts section with another 3 artwork for Starcraft
Another new round of blue answers is up :) Blue poster now have their own avatar.
Quote:Q. (Aratar) - I can't seem to stop a tank's turret from doing its idle turning animation. I've tried removing the "fidget" property from the tank's owner and from the unit itself (Set Unit State). I also tried clearing its animations and stopping baseline animations... it's still spinning its turret! :O Same goes for Missle Turrets or Auto-Turrets.
A. You can control the idle animation for turrets by modifying the Fidget field for the Turrets data type. This is separate from the Fidget field for the Unit data type.
Q. (Aratar) - Is there any way to use data objects (like images, sounds) from a mod in a map that has that mod set as dependency? I can see the objects in the editor, but once I run my map, the objects aren't there (images don't display, sounds don't play)
A. We're currently researching this issue. Maps should be able to use assets that have been imported into a custom mod dependency.
Q. (Aratar) - How do I make portraits move their lips in transmissions? The "talk" animation just makes them shake their heads. Is it possible to make the lips move in sync with the subtitles?
A. You can set up facial animations in Sound data with the Facial Animation and Facial Group fields. These refer to animations available from a .fxa file which is specified in Model data with the Facial Controller field. The easiest way to pick facial animations is to open the Previewer, add a portrait model, and right-click the portrait model tree view item to Add Facial Layer. Then you can right click the facial layer to view which facial animations are available. Once the data is set up, your portrait will play the facial animation when you send a transmission using that model and sound.
Q. (Aratar) - When I make a UI dialog and then put a portrait inside it, the portrait is underneath the whole dialog frame... how do i make the portrait render on top of it? The "Set Portrait Channel" function seems to be the answer, but it's not doing anything :(
A. You should be able to fix this by calling the Set Portrait Render Type trigger to render the portrait in the LDR pass. The game UI is rendered in two passes. HDR is rendered first which generally includes all 3D elements (world, console, portraits). LDR is then rendered on top of that, which contains all of the 2D controls like the dialogs you can create through triggers. Changing the portrait to LDR will allow it to render on top of the dialogs but you will lose certain effects only available in HDR
Q. (Aratar) - Some doodads have different textures based on the tileset that used. Is it possible to switch their textures somehow? Example: Rock doodads - I'd like to use their Char texture on the Mar Sara tileset (along with using the normal mar sara rock textures)
A. To swap an Actor's textures to a specific tileset you can send the Texture Group Apply message in response to the Actor Creation event. What’s happening here is that Rocks have their Model data entry configured to automatically change their textures in response to the application and removal of various “texture props”. This behavior is turned on by having at least one item the Texture Declarations field. Each tileset has a prop associated with it such that any model with textures declared will automatically use the correct textures for that tileset.
Whenever a Model Actor sets its model (during initialization or a model swap), it internally sets the tileset prop with what the map specifies. But you can override the prop with the Texture Group Apply message to customize individual models however you want. Tileset props overwrite each other, so if the map sets the tileset prop to “aiur” and you specify “char”, then aiur gets replaced with char. The texture props for any given texture are based off a combination of any texture prop names found in the texture file's name and any additional data configured in the Model or Texture catalogs. You can link a texture file to any set of texture props by adding TextureDeclares for the model or by adding entries to the Texture catalog.