SC2Mapster

Warring Faction by Hookah604

Warring Faction is a strategy game that takes place in space. It uses a black textures with white dots to represent stars and planet models. This is a nice workaround given that Starcraft 2 is not adapted for a 3D space. I suggest you to watch the video in HD otherwise it is really hard to see things.

Hero Revival Tutorial by OneTwo

OneTwo regularly posts new tutorials on his Youtube Channel and this time it is about hero revival. This has been a problem for long time but we have come up with some elegent solutions. OneTwo is explaining how to revive hero by keeping their xp and items. As usual, this is really well explained :)

Platform Defense by RodrigoAlves

Yesterday I newsed the map Debates from RodrigoAlves and I realized he made a really nice map: Platform Defense. You have an hero and you can build a regular army in order to defeat the incoming monster. There are two versions of the map, one is cooperative and one versus.

Minigame Contest

If you have played Warcraft 3 custom maps you must have made at least one game of Uther Party. This is a map that regroups a lot of small minigames. The goal of this contest is to take this idea and make a lof of new minigames :)

• You can submit as many entries as wanted as long as they are all differents.
• Since Battle.net is down, the minigame must be playable solo.

In order to avoid people using already made map and to make it possible in a small amount of time:

• The map size must be 64x64
• Dialogs are allowed BUT the minigame must use the terrain.

You have 8 days to complete this contest.

Reward

The main goal of the contest is to further community development within GalaxyEdit. The rewards can be see as follows:

• First: 1-year Curse Premium
• Second: 6-month Curse Premium
• Third: 3-month Curse Premium
• Everyone else: 1-month Curse Premium

Debates by RodrigoAlves

RodrigoAlves just posted a presentation for his new map: Debates. I don't want to spoil you therefore I let you watch it :)

Casual Game by malu05

malu05 the creator of the Waterwork FPS map decided to take a break from his project and do a small minigame (too bad he didn't knew about the contest!). The goal is to click on the red blocks as fast as possible to get many points.

New Theme by profet

I have told you we were going to put a new theme on mapster. We received some negative feedbacks and therefore we put it on hold to rethink about it and fix a bunch of stuff. The forum part did not receive any change, this is no more the case. It should now be much cleaner than before. The theme is also no more in fixed-size, this will allow me to put more interesting content in the news!

I would like to hear from you about this improvments and hope you will like it.

• Enable the NEW theme (Click Switch)
• Go back to the OLD theme (Click Switch)

UPDATE 2: We have had problems with the DNS provider last few hours. It should work better now. Sorry for the inconvenience. If you still have problems (well ... you may probably not be able to read it ...) and are on Windows, you can execute "cmd" and type "ipconfig /flushdns".

UPDATE: The Beta Servers have officially gone down for good. The Beta has officially ended with Patch 18, hopefully you will all stick around for the launch, :).

Sparsile by TeamSMX

As of right now, you probably won't be able to see much within the Sparsile page. However, they are currently looking for Alpha Testers on their awesome new program. If you can remember, we've mentioned Sparsile as the "GE Extender" in a previous newspost. The goal of Sparsile is to add missing functionality to GE without having the need to use a separate application. If anyone is interested in Alpha Testing Sparsile, just leave a comment on the project page saying so and we'll make sure you get in.

Reconnaissance Report by Blizzard

Blizzard is running some sort of map spotlight feature on their new website from the looks of it, and they're dubbing it the "Reconnaissance Report." To kick off the series, this week's featured map is Lost Temple, an original StarCraft favorite recently revamped and ready for action. They go in depth on how exactly the map is setup and are looking for strategies that pertain to that map specifically. Whether or not this feature will relate to Custom Maps is still to be seen, but i'm sure with the amount of amazing maps you all have been submitting here, Blizzard will have to feature something, :). Keep up the good work everyone!

Creature Contest Results

The Creature Contest has now come to an end and the results are in. I'd like to thank everyone who participated, we were really impressed with the submissions, :). The top four videos can be seen below (in order). Stay tuned for the next contest, coming soon...

• 1 - Phaos - 28b-x - 93
• 2 - Klishu - Anakin's Racer - 62
• 3 - KoronaTR - Zergling Cavalry - 44
• 3 - 38dedo - Shard of Adun - 44

• 5 - ProzaicMuze - Rhino - 19
• 6 - LordAbyss - Overcharged Archon - 12
• 7 - Demonette - Green Space Ship - 10
• 8 - MrZ3r0 - Aerial Worm - 9
• 9 - KoronaTR - Psionic Surfer - 7
• 10 - BrotherLaz - Zerg Slaver - 4

Bad news, the client files are encrypted. Someone managed to take a screenshot from the installer post-blocking message but I highly doubt he got the files installed. If you know more, please send me a PM :)

Also, the size limit for synchronized .sc2banks on Battle.net is now 4000 bytes (it was way higher during phase 1). Found by WhiskeeGX.

Creature Contest Vote

The Creature Contest is finally over and we've got 10 great submissions.

Planet Package by Corbo

Hookah posted a request for planets on the forums and Corbo was nice enough to make a sphere model with 75 textures that looks like planet. If you are going to make a map in the space you will probably want to use some of them :)

Multitasking Trainer by stettcl

Here's a pretty cool map if you are eager to improve your skills. You need to manage your base, defend incoming attacks, keep your minerals low, rescue a neutral unit and defeat your opponent all while microing a probe that is constantly being chased by a zergling.

• Race selection: You are able to select the race that you want to play in the start of the game. There is currently a problem with having the UI that matches the race selected. You can read more about it in the Known Issues section.

• Difficulty Selection: You can choose between five difficulty settings, each having a different time and mineral limit, amount of hits the probe can take before dying and attack waves that are sent from the opponent. You can also create your own custom difficulty setting.

• Coach Mode: As of v0.94 a new feature has been added: Coach Mode displays a notification every time you are not building workers out of your main building (until a set amount of workers) if you play as Terran or Protoss, or if you have idle larva and Creep Tumors if you play as Zerg. I hope this will help played keep their macro consistent while practicing.

Scrolling Combat Text by xD.Schurke

If you played World of Warcraft I am pretty sure you used the SCT (Scrolling Combat Text) addon that displays all the incoming damages, heals ... xD.Schurke from the HiveWorkshop decided to recode it as a Galaxy library.

Today is a big day, we just hit the 1000 Maps. I would like to thank you all for your awesome creations and tell you that I am, together with Sixen, proud of being part of this great community.

Starmap by acidragoon

In the latest patch, four starmap models were added to the game. The related triggers are still not working but we can already have an overview of what it is going to look like thanks to acidragoon. He did not use the model camera so it's not exactly the good view but you get a pretty good idea.

Items Kit by Phaos

At the moment, making items is a tedious process. The Data part is not trivial and it gets even more complicated when it comes to the actual look of the item in the floor. Hopefully Phaos is working on model kits to make life easier. You will get ready to use many armors, weapons and various items that looks great on the floor or attached to units!

New Critters

8 new critters have been added to the game with the latest patch. Here's a listing of those if you don't want to bother looking at them in the editor.

OSU by Hayate21

I did not know the game OSU, it looks like to be a korean APM training where you have to click as fast as possible on various stars at the screen. Even if the gameplay does not look too fun, it is interesting to know that the Galaxy Editor allows us to make interesting 2D games.

Dominion Propaganda Posters by rrowland and BlueFacedGit

Both rrowland and BlueFacedGit have submitted propaganda posters for the "Join the Dominion" event Blizzard is running. Go ahead and vote forcomment both of their posters!

War Finality by LordAbyss

Here is a Cinematic Trailer for LordAbyss' new map, War Finality. The Trailer was created by OneTwo, who also created a trailer for his own map just a few days ago. This is another amazing Cinematic Trailer and I hope you all enjoy the watch. I'm sure the map will be just as good as the trailer portrays it. The information about the map itself can be seen in the trailer and on his map project page.

Patch Pictures by GardenOfAiur

Thanks to GoA, we now have a list of the new portraits, buttons, wireframes, icons, upgrades, decals, textures, models, and planet images. They've all been uploaded in that thread and I highly recommend checking them out.

Wallpaper Contest Results

The Wallpaper Contest results are finally in. All of the submissions were great and i'd like to give a big thanks to everyone who participated. The winners are as follows:

1. peq
2. Madlios
3. lennywing

Congratulations to the three winners, and again, great job to everyone who participated. Check out the thread to view all of the participants submissions.

UPDATE: Phase 2 has gone live on the EU Servers now as well. Don't forget to post your Usernames in the Beta Usernames thread i've setup!

Bridge Creation in Terrain by casperb

casperb from the IRC has figured out how to create Bridges and is sharing how he did it. However, there's still a few finishing details he needs help with, so feel free to gaze at the amazingness and lend a hand, :).

War3 to SC2 Heroes by Triceron

Triceron decided to recreate his favorite War3 heroes in SC2. I'm sure nobody can forget Illidian or the BladeMaster. His models were made completely from scratch and he used NiNToxicated's M3 Tools to import them into SC2. Check them out in his thread.

Golems by Gpie64

I'm sure everyone can remember the classic Golems maps from the original StarCraft. Gpie has decided to remake this type of game for SC2 and has done a great job thus far.

TimeStoppers by ArcadeRenegade

In this map, you're a ghost that can do crazy stuff, such as stopping time and things along those lines. The whole plot synopsis is in on the map page. It's kind of like a top-down shooter/RTS/scenario/hero map mixed all into one.

Real ID Updates

Blizzard has decided to pull the Real ID system from the forums, but they do still plan to use it in-game and still plan to update the forums with other cool features.

Quote:

Hello everyone,

I'd like to take some time to speak with all of you regarding our desire to make the Blizzard forums a better place for players to discuss our games. We've been constantly monitoring the feedback you've given us, as well as internally discussing your concerns about the use of real names on our forums. As a result of those discussions, we've decided at this time that real names will not be required for posting on official Blizzard forums.

It's important to note that we still remain committed to improving our forums. Our efforts are driven 100% by the desire to find ways to make our community areas more welcoming for players and encourage more constructive conversations about our games. We will still move forward with new forum features such as the ability to rate posts up or down, post highlighting based on rating, improved search functionality, and more. However, when we launch the new StarCraft II forums that include these new features, you will be posting by your StarCraft II Battle.net character name + character code, not your real name. The upgraded World of Warcraft forums with these new features will launch close to the release of Cataclysm, and also will not require your real name.

I want to make sure it's clear that our plans for the forums are completely separate from our plans for the optional in-game Real ID system now live with World of Warcraft and launching soon with StarCraft II. We believe that the powerful communications functionality enabled by Real ID, such as cross-game and cross-realm chat, make Battle.net a great place for players to stay connected to real-life friends and family while playing Blizzard games. And of course, you'll still be able to keep your relationships at the anonymous, character level if you so choose when you communicate with other players in game. Over time, we will continue to evolve Real ID on Battle.net to add new and exciting functionality within our games for players who decide to use the feature.

In closing, I want to point out that our connection with our community has always been and will always be extremely important to us. We strongly believe that Every Voice Matters, ( http://us.blizzard.com/en-us/company/about/mission.html ) and we feel fortunate to have a community that cares so passionately about our games. We will always appreciate the feedback and support of our players, which has been a key to Blizzard's success from the beginning.

• The Creature Contest is still running :)
• The Wallpaper Final Vote is open. Chose one of the 10 most voted maps.

Tristram by egodbout

egodbout is working on a Diablo remake called Tristram. It features a character selection, a spell system and a talent tree. More work on it plus a Diablo UI would make it perfect!

Tutorial: Item Loots by OneTwo

A lot of people are wondering how to make items and item loots. OneTwo did a pretty good tutorial explaining all the required steps to make items for your maps.

Tutorial: Terrain for Dummies by Mozared

Like me, you are probably a complete noob at terraining. Mozared wrote a nice tutorial explaining the major steps to make a good terrain: Cliff, Doodads, Textures, Colors, Finitions.

Nuclear Reaction by Luxor0

To finish, a map in the work: Nuclear Reaction by Luxor0. You have to avoid all the incoming nuclear launches. You have to chose between one of the 6 heros, each one having special abilities to make your opponents die first :)

Battle Bots by Beider

Beider is an active tutorial maker (Trigger Debugging, Scrolling List, Tilesets and Water States, ...) and he his working on a map called Battle Bots. In order to win the map you have to program an AI using the ingame scripting language he developped. This is a pretty crazy concept!

Metal Slug Review by Husky

Husky just did a review of the Metal Slug map by ArcadeRenegade. I know I already newsed this map but since 200 000 people viewed the video, you are probably going to want to see it too! If you too are interested in making custom map reviews, feel free to post them on the forums!

Next Tutorial? by ProzaicMuze

ProzaicMuze who wrote some popular tutorials (Beam Effects, Dynamic Beam Chains and Hosting and Site Operations) is looking from your input about what to explain next.

• Spells (Beginner)
• Actors (Beginner)
• Specialized Weapons (Intermediate)
• Tower Defense Toolkit (Intermediate)
• Customized Projectiles (Advanced)
• Vote for the Next Tutorial!

Sprite Engine by rrowland

Last but not least, rrowland is working on a RPG map and wanted to get the look and feel of the old games. He implemented a sprite engine inside Starcraft 2 and it works well.

Wallpaper Vote 3/3

The third part of the vote is now over. A final round will be held in a few days with the 10 most voted screenshots on Mapster and StarcraftMapping.de. Meanwhile you can check out the two winner entries. Madlios made an unbelievable entry which does not look like to be made through the Galaxy Editor! Pkol did a really good shot too :)

Builders And Fighters by Pwootage

Another Warcraft 3 map remake: Builder & Fighters. It is pretty cool to see fun maps being re-adapted into Starcraft 2! Here is what Pwootage got so far.

1. Customized builders and fighters
2. You can send units to your fighter, who can then use them to attack/kill the opponent
3. A very complex map with Xel'Nagas and small pockets of minerals/vespene for fighters to use
4. A supering system in which:
   • You can send units into the super spot where they move to a UI
   • You can summon super units costing any number of regular units

Castle Fight Icons by Alex and XYZMuffin

Fullachain is working on Castle Fight like map and he asked for help to make icons. Alex and XYZMuffin have been kind enough to do some of them and they look pretty nice. If you too are a Photoshop master, I'm pretty sure you could help him :)

Changeling RPG by Talon0815

It has been a long time since I didn't news a 3rd person shooter. Talon0815 is working on a single player campaign called Changeling RPG. Basically you just morph into units from the 3 races to complete the missions. This looks very promising!

Days Before Starcraft 2 - 26

Creature Contest

This one is a fun contest and using one of the most exciting new feature of the Galaxy Editor: Attachements!

What to do?

You have to make a creature combining existing models. Do you remember the Uberlisk from Blizzard, well it's now your time to combine models together to make fun creatures. You can use any part of the editor you want (attachements, triggers, ...) but it must follow those rules:

• The creature must not be static: it should walk and attack!
• Custom models are NOT allowed. You can only combine existing models.
• You can submit as many entries as wanted as long as they are all differents.

What you have to give

• You have to provide a youtube video
• You have to attach the map used to take the video

Help

If you don't know how to start, ProzaicMuze made a step by step tutorial: How to make an Uberlisk. Don't be afraid by the length of it, it really goes into great detail to explain why things were done, it takes no more than 10 minutes to do the Uberlisk.

Deadlines

You have 8 days to complete this contest.

• End of the submissions: Wednesday, July 7th - Midnight PDT (Los Angeles) [Thursday, July 8th - 9 AM GMT (Paris)]
• A public vote will be held after the end of the submissions to decide who wins.

Reward

The main goal of the contest is to further community development within GalaxyEdit. The rewards can be see as follows:

• First: 1-year Curse Premium
• Second: 6-month Curse Premium
• Third: 3-month Curse Premium
• Everyone else: 1-month Curse Premium

Matchmaking - The Game by progammer

progammer that worked on the maps ChessCraft and Lag Painter is back with a new map concept. Matchmaking - The Game allies a board game where you have to chose 2 similar units, and their distance will determine the number of units sent to battle. Add some micro and some random and you get a sweet game! Will you defeat all the waves?

Wacraft 3 Models in SC2 by NiNToxicated

NiNToxicated who works on the model im/exporter plugin for 3DSMax just updated a Warcraft 3 model importer made by Philip Laing in 2002. It means you can now import any unit or doodad from Warcraft 3 for your Starcraft 2 maps! Here is a sum up of what he is handling right now.

• Warcraft 3 -> 3DSMax
• Starcraft 2 -> 3DSMax
• 3DSMax -> Starcraft 2

In the next versions we should see a World of Warcraft -> 3DSMax and more model stuff like ribbons and particul emitters (all the fancy explosions, aura and such things ...)

Bejeweled by Movali

Take a flash game, convert it into a Starcraft 2 map, add multiplayer rules, you've got a fun and successful game. That's the bet Movali did and I'm pretty sure it's going to work out. The map is not finished yet but it looks really promising.

Survivor Cinematic by GnaReffotsirk

Want to see the power of the Galaxy Editor on the cinematic field. This video of GnaReffotsirk is a great example. You are going to watch a (nearly) epic battle between Zealots and ugly zergs!

Earth Terrain by Quartaroy

You are making a Risk map (why not?), and you are much of a trigger guy. You will Quartaroy's project to recreate a detailed earth terrain. In the thread there are also informations about the different techniques to project a sphere (Earth) on a finite 2d plane (a rectangle : the map).

CardCraft Recruit by BeLugh

BeLugh working on an innovative great project: CardCraft is looking for help. In order to make an enjoyable map he needs help with the skills and weapons making via the Data Editor. If you want to get involved, get in touch with him :)

Wallpaper Vote 3/3

The second part of the contest revealed an amazing picture of peq from StarcraftMapping.de which shows that high quality pictures are possible with the Starcraft 2 engine. The second is pretty fun too!

There will be a final round with the 10 most voted screenshots here and on Starcraft Mapping.de. Since it's split into 3 parts, votes from each part will be weighted by the number of votes in that part like we did in the previous contest.

Attack of the Paper Zombies by Alpha_vst

Alpha_vst is working on a map with pretty a cool paper design. So far he managed to change the textures, made custom doodads and a custom UI to make the desired effect. It's still in the work and I haven't talked to you about the gameplay yet, you should hear from this project again in the near future :)

Thaddius Fight by rrowland

Some World of Warcraft people noticed the rrowland Thaddius fight and since they found it cool, I probably should news it. The two abilities are done only through the Data editor, no trigger involved :)

Few days ago went a Starcraft 2 Korean event. We learned some interesting things: "Chris Siggarty announced the final closed beta is going to be for around 2 weeks starting in early July.". It is likely that early July means 1st July. There's also a Starcraft 2 branded plane! Source: Team Liquid

SC2Localizer by Hati

Localization is still a really annoying problem. By default all strings are localized to your current language. It is possible, by manipulating the map as a MPQ file, to make the localization global and work for every language. However this is an annoying process to do manually. Hati did a program that takes a map and localize it.

It will make life easier for map makers. As a user, you can use it to play non-localized maps (and report that it's not localized!).

Hidden Textures by Tolkfan

Tolkfan found that there were textures in the game files but that were not listed in the editor. He put them inside a map, you just have to copy & paste the tilesets to use them in your map.

• Meinhoff Concrete
• Meinhoff Craters
• Meinhoff Grating: Competly New
• Meinhoff Panels
• Meinhoff Rough Sand
• Meinhoff Sand Dunes
• Meinhoff White Sand
• Aiur Grunge
• Port Zion Tiles: Completly New
• Tyrador Big Bricks
• Tyrador Bricks

Scrolling List Tutorial by Beider

Beider just made a new tutorial: making a Scrolling List from A to Z. The tutorial is of extremly great quality explaining in detail all the required steps. If you want to learn dialog creation and have an hour, this worth it.

Map Analyzer by dimfish

dimfish used the terrain files specifications to make an interesting program. It computes informations such as the shortest path between the various bases, the influence zones and even gives a balance score of the map.

Jump with Gravity by ArcadeRenegade

ArcadeRenegade worked on a Jump function and made it available to everyone! It's a jump function that uses real physics (you know formula with lots of strange symbols). It's pretty cool to see some small libs like that being released for everyone to use :)

Wallpaper Votes

The Wallpaper votes part 1/3 is over, he are the first two entries. You can now vote for the next 10 wallpapers and elect the best ones :)