LOL, yeah it could probably work better that way... I think including your name and BNet contact info in the loading screen could be enough, though... If you don't spam your loading screen with unnecessary control tips or whatever, people will read who you are. You can even tell them to check your other maps in the process (...talk about free advertising, huh!). The shorter the message is, the better.
I had the good surprise a few days ago of seeing my map featured on a Youtube channel with "SC2 best maps of 2011" in the title (or something like that). Their video has way much more views than my own gameplay videos in the forums! I couldn't dream of a better advertising, I guess... So sometimes, it's worth spending lots of time making your map.
To be honest OneTwo, I played your TD map a few weeks ago just because (amongst the list of TD maps) I only knew your name. I was like "oh cool, he's from SC2Mapster, I'll test his map and bump his thread to give feedback". I was so disappointed when I saw nobody's playing the map online... I waited something like 5 or 10 minutes, just to end up alone. And I forgot to give feedback too, shame on me.
The Hive Keeper mod is already famous, way ahead of even being released, and is anticipated by both the DK2 community and SC2 players. This is more than enough of a reason IMO to at least rename your project, which has clearly less ambition than the already existing mod. I wanted to make a DK map in SC2 too but gave up, because I respect the work of Bibendus and his team on the Hive Keeper mod. They made it first, it sounds fair to me to let them work on it and simply give them support if they need it.
Sorry to ruin your hopes, but let's face it: your map won't have any success, especially here because we all know of the Hive Keeper mod and it's almost a reference already. Actually, if I were you I'd already have given up the map. Not because your map is bad (I don't know, I haven't played it), but because the idea is already taken. There are lots and lots of other ideas worth a map, especially if you don't have as much time to spend on it as the Hive Keeper mod team.
That's just my opinion. You obviously couldn't have guessed the Hive Keeper mod existed, but you surely can understand how inappropriate your request is though, especially in these forums where the Hive Keeper mod team is the most active...
it's kind of annoying when you do all that and people support you and then 2 weeks later its gone and everyone disappears...
That's why I call games an entertainment: It never lasts... That's probably the most depressing "side effect" when you work in this business, you know in advance that everything you do is going to be lost in 2, 5, maybe 10 years at best... Some nerdy guys might keep playing it when it becomes abandonware, but who really cares? That's how it is, you can't do much about it. It's even worse with custom maps because 98% of the published maps are done by complete amateurs, no one knows about them and no one will ever care. Who can tell the names of the guy(s) who made Star Battle and SOTIS? I'm pretty sure you'll have to check to answer this.
Even though it looks really depressing somehow, I wouldn't mind either about how much time you spend on making a map. My Ikari Warriors map is around 60 hours of work now, I assume it will need 30-40 more hours to add the second level... And I already know it won't become much more famous than it is now, for a few good reasons (which have nothing to do with the BNet popularity system itself by the way, even though it doesn't help). I don't care that much, because it helped me to understand lots of things about the editor, and I intend to make something really good out of my second project (which was not even supposed to be one, to begin with!). My third project is kind of stuck right now, but I assume finishing my second project will help... And so on!
My point being: Don't worry about spending hours and hours on a map that won't get far. As long as you get better at what you are doing, sooner or later your maps will catch the attention of players if all your maps are done with the same quality. That's pretty much how any entertainment works: music, art, television... They spend lots of money, time, and efforts and they're not sure it will work. That's why it's so exciting (and so depressing at the same time), the more fame you gain the better. But you can't win every time (unless named Michael Jackson... or Chuck Norris), and your success can stop anytime, very quickly.
Anyway, YES, boosting is the main problem here. I can only think of one solution about this: restricting the creation of games to 3 per hour, per user, per map. This way, you can't play more than 3 <name a map here> per hour as the host. Which also means you can't boost your map by constantly creating games... 3 might be a bit too restrictive, but you get the idea.
@wOlfLisK: Go
Haha! I told you it wouldn't work in english... :)
The initial story is about a dog (chien = dog, not chicken). You usually tell that joke when someone asks you to find a joke to tell, and you have none in mind. Then they ask for another one, and you tell the giraffe version. If they insist again, you tell the baby version. Each of these is the exact same story, just in a different context.
Roughly translated, it would give something like this:
This is the story of Bam the dog, he crosses a road, a car comes and... Bam! the dog.
(...why do I feel the sudden urge of drawing a picture to explain that joke? :D )
Awesome project! :)
I love how the camera behave, though I'd make it slightly closer to the character to get a better field-of-view. For now the body of the character is hiding a lot of things, it might be troublesome when fighting.
I laughed at the very end of the latest video too (the one featured in the main page). I just hope the missions you'll be given will be more interesting, because sending a ghost to turn lights on is kind of a joke... :D
I didn't download your map to check, but my first guess is you forgot to edit/add the mover of your projectile actor. A missile can't move without applying a mover to it, or if the mover is not configured correctly.
It could only work in singleplayer... because when you load another map, it applies for every player at the same time. Various players in the same game can't be splitted in multiple maps without every player joining in. The only way to fake this is to include land parts in your map file, and move the units there when they reach a planet in the "space" battlefield. Adding restrictions to the camera will hide the unwanted parts of the map when you need it.
@BorgDragon: Go
LOL. It's hard to translate in english because it uses onomatopoeias (Paf in french is Bam in english, and so on...). That's black humor by the way.
C'est l'histoire de Paf le chien, il traverse une route, une voiture arrive et... "Paf!" le chien!
C'est l'histoire de Flip-Flap la girafe dans la savane, un hélicoptère arrive et... "Flip-flap!" la girafe!
C'est l'histoire de Squeesh le bébé, il joue avec un mixeur et... "Squeesh!" le bébé!
No offense taken. You pretty much have the same point-of-view as mine, just with your own words.
I know good entertainment exists, but you can't deny it's very rare (compared to the number of games released each year, only a few have noticeable success and only rare ones will last more than a year). My final point being: Making maps (and/or games) for fame is an utopia. It only happens in very rare cases... If you have a moderate success you can already be proud of your work, especially when you're an amateur map maker.
I worked 3 months on Totally Spies 3 on DS, the game did not sell much, the levels were awful (...sorry, my bad! :D ), and yet I'm kind of proud of it. OneTwo should be proud of what he did with his map, the success of a map is not revealing of its quality (especially on BNet because of the popularity system). 90% of the BNet popularity system is all about advertising your map. Seems pretty much like the same process as advertising games on TV: only big companies could afford it but it doesn't mean their games are better anyway...
Big ones eat small ones, that's how it works. It doesn't mean you shouldn't put a lot of effort in making maps, it only means you should not expect your map to become famous. If it happens, good for you. If it doesn't, let's just say it's normal and you shouldn't make a big deal out of it. Expecting the better can only be deceiving... Trust me on that...
That there is no real reason to complain. I'm going to take a shitty example to start with:
Who really plays again and again the campaign maps? I'm pretty sure right now, more than 90% of SC2 players already finished the campaign once or twice, so there is almost nobody playing these maps anymore. Do Blizzard mappers complain about it? No. (well, it's a bit more complicated in their case because they own both the campaign maps and melee maps, so there are always players on their maps anyway... but you get the idea: maps are often "wasted" even if they are really well made and their authors spent a lot of time on them)
Anyway, my point is you shouldn't be that concerned about the "loss of fame" of your map... Maps (and video games in general) are entertainment. It's not supposed to last, and only a few people have that chance. Others simply cheat (by boosting their map rank on BNet, for example). If your map had some success, it already did its job and you should be proud of it as it is. No matter how long it took you to create it, most people won't even care about that because their only concern is having fun quickly (which is why people mostly play maps from the first page)... If you do maps for fame, you'll only get deceived. I spent 60+ hours on my Ikari Warriors map, I got only 10 downloads in 2 weeks. I don't care that much, I love my map and I enjoy playing it again and again anyway... It's pretty easy to have friends on BNet and play with them if you need more players too... :)
Just look closely at video games in 2010... Which one really had enough success to last a whole year? Almost none, maybe around 10-15 games at most. And yet, there were hundreds of them made. Same goes for custom maps, you can't do a map and expect it to work just because it was well done AND enjoyable to play/replay. It happens, more often than you think, and it's not entirely due to the BNet ranking system and the cheaters boosting their maps... ;)
Seems like the problem actually comes from the .OBJ format after all... So my first guesses were completely wrong.
I quote what could be your answer:
Quote:
just export it in MS3D format then import it into whatever modeling prog you use.
I don't use Maya and I haven't used .OBJ files ever before, so I can't test on my own but I assume it should work. If not, I remember a few members here have already imported, modified, and exported models from the game (Nova especially), and it worked perfect. Maybe they're using 3DS Max instead of Maya though, but you should do a quick search for these topics and ask them directly in PM.
Hmm... Did you create the model from scratch, or is it a modified version of a model from the original game?
These kind of reversed and stretched polygons could occur if the model you use already have bones and skinning done. As soon as you modify a few polygons in the model, the skinning needs to be redone/modified to include your modifications properly. It might also be a problem of UV mapping, or already existing animation keys, so be sure to check that every single step of a model creation was done properly before trying to export the file to .OBJ
Make the model as clean as possible (maybe try to export it without textures, just to be sure... and do another export without animations too).
I haven't modelized anything for a few years now but it's not the first time I see this, I'm pretty sure the answer is something completely stupid that has nothing to do with the .OBJ format or the exporter plugin though... Did you remove polygons from an edge, somewhere on the model? Did you flip normals?
@TheAlmaity:
Well... The title/word was wider than the forum page itself... Something like "GAAAAAaaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!" with lots of As, and as, and !s... 6 hours of frustration indeed.
Only professional mappers get cash from creating maps. Not because they include ads, but because it's their job and they're obviously paid for it. That's the only legal way to get some money from making maps.
Advertisement by amateur mappers is illegal (or at least against the EULA you accept when installing any game): The game publishers clearly state in their EULA that it is forbidden to use their material (ie. the game and other tools associated) in order to make profit.
Advertisement in your map is obviously strictly forbidden, as it is an indirect way to make profit, using Blizzard's material. Not only your map will get banned from the servers, but you might also lose your Battlenet account for not following the EULA... and you might even get sued by Blizzard for this if you made money with the ads in your map.
If you want to get paid for your maps, start a career in the video games industry. Be warned though, it takes (at the very least) 2 years before officially becoming a junior level designer (you need to learn 3D modeling, texturing, coding, etc...). I started mapping at the age of 12-13 for my own pleasure, now I'm 26 (in 5 days) and I'm still considered a junior level designer in the video games industry. It's very hard to find a company wishing to hire you when you're not a senior/lead level designer (in France, at least), so don't expect a miracle... You'll probably end up the same way as I did: making maps for your pleasure and not getting paid for them anyway.
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@Vexal: Go
LOL, yeah it could probably work better that way... I think including your name and BNet contact info in the loading screen could be enough, though... If you don't spam your loading screen with unnecessary control tips or whatever, people will read who you are. You can even tell them to check your other maps in the process (...talk about free advertising, huh!). The shorter the message is, the better.
I had the good surprise a few days ago of seeing my map featured on a Youtube channel with "SC2 best maps of 2011" in the title (or something like that). Their video has way much more views than my own gameplay videos in the forums! I couldn't dream of a better advertising, I guess... So sometimes, it's worth spending lots of time making your map.
To be honest OneTwo, I played your TD map a few weeks ago just because (amongst the list of TD maps) I only knew your name. I was like "oh cool, he's from SC2Mapster, I'll test his map and bump his thread to give feedback". I was so disappointed when I saw nobody's playing the map online... I waited something like 5 or 10 minutes, just to end up alone. And I forgot to give feedback too, shame on me.
0
I just read the content policy, advertising is considered moderately inappropriate:
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The Hive Keeper mod is already famous, way ahead of even being released, and is anticipated by both the DK2 community and SC2 players. This is more than enough of a reason IMO to at least rename your project, which has clearly less ambition than the already existing mod. I wanted to make a DK map in SC2 too but gave up, because I respect the work of Bibendus and his team on the Hive Keeper mod. They made it first, it sounds fair to me to let them work on it and simply give them support if they need it.
Sorry to ruin your hopes, but let's face it: your map won't have any success, especially here because we all know of the Hive Keeper mod and it's almost a reference already. Actually, if I were you I'd already have given up the map. Not because your map is bad (I don't know, I haven't played it), but because the idea is already taken. There are lots and lots of other ideas worth a map, especially if you don't have as much time to spend on it as the Hive Keeper mod team.
That's just my opinion. You obviously couldn't have guessed the Hive Keeper mod existed, but you surely can understand how inappropriate your request is though, especially in these forums where the Hive Keeper mod team is the most active...
0
That's why I call games an entertainment: It never lasts... That's probably the most depressing "side effect" when you work in this business, you know in advance that everything you do is going to be lost in 2, 5, maybe 10 years at best... Some nerdy guys might keep playing it when it becomes abandonware, but who really cares? That's how it is, you can't do much about it. It's even worse with custom maps because 98% of the published maps are done by complete amateurs, no one knows about them and no one will ever care. Who can tell the names of the guy(s) who made Star Battle and SOTIS? I'm pretty sure you'll have to check to answer this.
Even though it looks really depressing somehow, I wouldn't mind either about how much time you spend on making a map. My Ikari Warriors map is around 60 hours of work now, I assume it will need 30-40 more hours to add the second level... And I already know it won't become much more famous than it is now, for a few good reasons (which have nothing to do with the BNet popularity system itself by the way, even though it doesn't help). I don't care that much, because it helped me to understand lots of things about the editor, and I intend to make something really good out of my second project (which was not even supposed to be one, to begin with!). My third project is kind of stuck right now, but I assume finishing my second project will help... And so on!
My point being: Don't worry about spending hours and hours on a map that won't get far. As long as you get better at what you are doing, sooner or later your maps will catch the attention of players if all your maps are done with the same quality. That's pretty much how any entertainment works: music, art, television... They spend lots of money, time, and efforts and they're not sure it will work. That's why it's so exciting (and so depressing at the same time), the more fame you gain the better. But you can't win every time (unless named Michael Jackson... or Chuck Norris), and your success can stop anytime, very quickly.
Anyway, YES, boosting is the main problem here. I can only think of one solution about this: restricting the creation of games to 3 per hour, per user, per map. This way, you can't play more than 3 <name a map here> per hour as the host. Which also means you can't boost your map by constantly creating games... 3 might be a bit too restrictive, but you get the idea.
0
@wOlfLisK: Go Haha! I told you it wouldn't work in english... :)
The initial story is about a dog (chien = dog, not chicken). You usually tell that joke when someone asks you to find a joke to tell, and you have none in mind. Then they ask for another one, and you tell the giraffe version. If they insist again, you tell the baby version. Each of these is the exact same story, just in a different context.
Roughly translated, it would give something like this:
This is the story of Bam the dog, he crosses a road, a car comes and... Bam! the dog.
(...why do I feel the sudden urge of drawing a picture to explain that joke? :D )
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Awesome project! :)
I love how the camera behave, though I'd make it slightly closer to the character to get a better field-of-view. For now the body of the character is hiding a lot of things, it might be troublesome when fighting.
I laughed at the very end of the latest video too (the one featured in the main page). I just hope the missions you'll be given will be more interesting, because sending a ghost to turn lights on is kind of a joke... :D
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I didn't download your map to check, but my first guess is you forgot to edit/add the mover of your projectile actor. A missile can't move without applying a mover to it, or if the mover is not configured correctly.
0
@Reaper872: Go
It could only work in singleplayer... because when you load another map, it applies for every player at the same time. Various players in the same game can't be splitted in multiple maps without every player joining in. The only way to fake this is to include land parts in your map file, and move the units there when they reach a planet in the "space" battlefield. Adding restrictions to the camera will hide the unwanted parts of the map when you need it.
0
@BorgDragon: Go LOL. It's hard to translate in english because it uses onomatopoeias (Paf in french is Bam in english, and so on...). That's black humor by the way.
C'est l'histoire de Paf le chien, il traverse une route, une voiture arrive et... "Paf!" le chien!
C'est l'histoire de Flip-Flap la girafe dans la savane, un hélicoptère arrive et... "Flip-flap!" la girafe!
C'est l'histoire de Squeesh le bébé, il joue avec un mixeur et... "Squeesh!" le bébé!
0
No offense taken. You pretty much have the same point-of-view as mine, just with your own words. I know good entertainment exists, but you can't deny it's very rare (compared to the number of games released each year, only a few have noticeable success and only rare ones will last more than a year). My final point being: Making maps (and/or games) for fame is an utopia. It only happens in very rare cases... If you have a moderate success you can already be proud of your work, especially when you're an amateur map maker.
I worked 3 months on Totally Spies 3 on DS, the game did not sell much, the levels were awful (...sorry, my bad! :D ), and yet I'm kind of proud of it. OneTwo should be proud of what he did with his map, the success of a map is not revealing of its quality (especially on BNet because of the popularity system). 90% of the BNet popularity system is all about advertising your map. Seems pretty much like the same process as advertising games on TV: only big companies could afford it but it doesn't mean their games are better anyway...
Big ones eat small ones, that's how it works. It doesn't mean you shouldn't put a lot of effort in making maps, it only means you should not expect your map to become famous. If it happens, good for you. If it doesn't, let's just say it's normal and you shouldn't make a big deal out of it. Expecting the better can only be deceiving... Trust me on that...
0
That there is no real reason to complain. I'm going to take a shitty example to start with:
Who really plays again and again the campaign maps? I'm pretty sure right now, more than 90% of SC2 players already finished the campaign once or twice, so there is almost nobody playing these maps anymore. Do Blizzard mappers complain about it? No. (well, it's a bit more complicated in their case because they own both the campaign maps and melee maps, so there are always players on their maps anyway... but you get the idea: maps are often "wasted" even if they are really well made and their authors spent a lot of time on them)
Anyway, my point is you shouldn't be that concerned about the "loss of fame" of your map... Maps (and video games in general) are entertainment. It's not supposed to last, and only a few people have that chance. Others simply cheat (by boosting their map rank on BNet, for example). If your map had some success, it already did its job and you should be proud of it as it is. No matter how long it took you to create it, most people won't even care about that because their only concern is having fun quickly (which is why people mostly play maps from the first page)... If you do maps for fame, you'll only get deceived. I spent 60+ hours on my Ikari Warriors map, I got only 10 downloads in 2 weeks. I don't care that much, I love my map and I enjoy playing it again and again anyway... It's pretty easy to have friends on BNet and play with them if you need more players too... :)
Just look closely at video games in 2010... Which one really had enough success to last a whole year? Almost none, maybe around 10-15 games at most. And yet, there were hundreds of them made. Same goes for custom maps, you can't do a map and expect it to work just because it was well done AND enjoyable to play/replay. It happens, more often than you think, and it's not entirely due to the BNet ranking system and the cheaters boosting their maps... ;)
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I just found an interesting page while browsing...
http://www.wowmodelviewer.org/forum/index.php?topic=299.0
Seems like the problem actually comes from the .OBJ format after all... So my first guesses were completely wrong. I quote what could be your answer:
I don't use Maya and I haven't used .OBJ files ever before, so I can't test on my own but I assume it should work. If not, I remember a few members here have already imported, modified, and exported models from the game (Nova especially), and it worked perfect. Maybe they're using 3DS Max instead of Maya though, but you should do a quick search for these topics and ask them directly in PM.
0
0
0
@Ezera:
Only professional mappers get cash from creating maps. Not because they include ads, but because it's their job and they're obviously paid for it. That's the only legal way to get some money from making maps.
Advertisement by amateur mappers is illegal (or at least against the EULA you accept when installing any game): The game publishers clearly state in their EULA that it is forbidden to use their material (ie. the game and other tools associated) in order to make profit.
Advertisement in your map is obviously strictly forbidden, as it is an indirect way to make profit, using Blizzard's material. Not only your map will get banned from the servers, but you might also lose your Battlenet account for not following the EULA... and you might even get sued by Blizzard for this if you made money with the ads in your map.
If you want to get paid for your maps, start a career in the video games industry. Be warned though, it takes (at the very least) 2 years before officially becoming a junior level designer (you need to learn 3D modeling, texturing, coding, etc...). I started mapping at the age of 12-13 for my own pleasure, now I'm 26 (in 5 days) and I'm still considered a junior level designer in the video games industry. It's very hard to find a company wishing to hire you when you're not a senior/lead level designer (in France, at least), so don't expect a miracle... You'll probably end up the same way as I did: making maps for your pleasure and not getting paid for them anyway.