SC2Mapster

StarCraft II Beta – Patch 8 (version 0.10.0.14803)

The latest patch notes can always be found on http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=23094049316&sid=5000.

General

Korea

• Added support to display the game rating information on the login screen.
• Balance Changes

TERRAN

• Thor
  • Build time decreased from 75 seconds to 60 seconds.
• Siege Tank
  • Build time decreased from 50 seconds to 45 seconds.
• Marauder
  • Concussive Shells now require an upgrade.
• Barracks Tech Lab
  • Concussive Shells upgrade added.
  • Concussive Shells upgrade costs 100/100 and takes 80 seconds to complete.

PROTOSS

• Void Ray
  • Changed to only have 2 damage levels instead of 3. Still takes the same amount of time to fully charge.
  • Base damage changed from 2 (+4 armored) to 5.
  • Powered-up damage changed from 8 (+16 armored) to 10 (+15 armored).
  • Armor value decreased from 1 to 0.
  • Cost increased from 200/150 to 250/150.

ZERG

• Roach
  • Burrowed move speed decreased from 2 to 1.4.
  • Armor value decreased from 2 to 1.
• Hydralisk
  • Life decreased from 90 to 80.

We've been playing a lot of Starcraft 2 recently, so we wanted to do something for the community as a whole. We're working on backporting Starcraft 2 onto Warcraft 1, to allow the people still playing that game to enjoy it to the degree we have.

We've made immense progress, as you can tell from the following screenshot:

We have quite a few ideas on what we can do next with this. Despite Warcraft 1 not having multiplayer, it could be possible to still have fun by passing off the game every minute to a friend in the same room.

Alternatively, passing back saved game files through "Electronic Mail" is a viable option.

In case anyone couldn't tell, this was an April Fool's joke.

Curse is looking to hire a few new developers; and where better to hire than our own super-hecka awesome gaming community! We're looking for a .Net Web Developer and a PHP Web Developer. The requirements can be seen at the links below, but one of the most important things here at Curse is passion. Passion for what we do and what we're trying to build. If you're eager and have the knowledge required we'd love to hear from you!

PHP Developer Position Details:

Curse, Inc is seeking a talented PHP web developer to join its Huntsville-based team, for the ongoing development of Curse's PHP based fan site network. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone with a passion for online gaming, and an interest in continuing development on some of the web's most popular sites.

Click here for more information on the PHP Developer Position.

.Net Position Details:

Curse, Inc is seeking a talented .Net web developer to join its Huntsville-based team, for the ongoing development of Curse's web platform. This is an exciting opportunity for anyone with a passion for online gaming, and an interest in developing the world's leading online gaming portal.

Click here for more information on the .Net Developer Position.

Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.

Went to BlizzCon this year and got a bunch of good info regarding StarCraft 2. I'm going to be touching on the map-related info, as that's what this site's about.

• Authors will be able to publish maps directly to Battle.net.
  • This means that this site will not try to focus on being a user distribution site, but rather a developer resource.
• The map editor is going to be far, far more powerful than even the Warcraft 3 editor.
• All features of the WC3 editor, including items (which are not in the SC2 campaign or multiplayer), are going to be available.
• 3rd-person shooter play is possible, with demo.
• Swapping parts out on units is very easy, including weapons and all other things.
• Importing one's own models is possible.
• Creating new abilities and providing abilities to units that don't normally have them is possible.
• Adding custom UI elements is possible. This means unique buttons and all that good stuff.
• Premium maps are going to be available.
  • This will allow map creators and even professional studios to sell their maps at a premium.
• They will make it as hard as possible for people to plagiarize other works.
  • I suspect this will mean a compilation process of some sort.

I wasn't able to ask my question about maps in code repositories, but that will be available, for at least binary versioning.

I will enable closed source projects being able to be created here on SC2Mapster, so that if you wish to use our code repositories, you won't have to share your source with the world, hopefully helping plagiarism. This will be opt-in.

Non-map related stuff:

I played some of the campaign and a skirmish as zerg. I was really blown away at the UI of it. It's an evolutionary step beyond Warcraft 3, but it really is very nice. For example, to make 3 zerglings, I selected my hive, clicked "Select Larvae" (which had the number 3 on it, since I had 3 larvae to select), pressed "Z" three times. Each time morphed a single larva into two zerglings. This would've allowed me to do Z-D-Z to make four zerglings and a drone.

There was also a separate rally point for drones and military units, so I stuck drones on minerals (which they mined right away) and zerglings to the middle of the map.

The game itself was strikingly beautiful. From the campaign's TV report (cinematic) to the observation room where Raynor was hanging out, but most especially the gameplay itself. Zooming in works like Warcraft 3, and when I do, everything is crisp and beautiful. When I zoomed into the creep, it looked very different from Starcraft 1, more like a mesh of spider webs. It was very cool.

The sounds of everything were amazing. Don't play with the game muted, you're missing a lot.

Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.

There has been some hub-bub about project approvals recently and one way we figured that we could help on the backend side of things is to introduce the concept of experimental projects. If you have a cool idea but nothing fleshed out, your project is best considered "experimental". This is especially true for libraries. Many of the best libraries out there have a lot of rehashing, discussing, even without much in the way of code. Previously, a lot of projects (especially libraries) were left in a limbo state where this should fill that gap.

You can flag your project as experimental when creating, or it may be flagged for you by an administrator while in the approval queue.

If you flag your project as experimental:

• It will not sync to Curse.com
• Unless it violates the terms of service or is plagiarism, it is likely to be accepted.
• You will be able to use all the features of a normal project, including repositories, pages, etc.
• Once a release file is uploaded (or created through the packager), it will be flagged as needing standard approval.

At any time, you may resubmit your project for approval to make it a non-experimental project.

Woo, the day has finally come when the author store is launched. A lot of hard work has been put into this, both on the technical end and on the business and legal side of things.

You can visit it at https://store.CurseForge.com/.

If you redeem an item, you won't receive it immediately. For the first little while, I'll be going through and approving all the redemptions manually, just to make sure everything's running smoothly.

In case you didn't read the previous announcements, in order to receive points which can be redeemed at the store, you must have an addon which has over 100 installs (as determined by the Curse Client).

The author rewards program is our (i.e. Curse, Inc's) way of rewarding our content producers which create incentive for users to subscribe to Curse Premium. 20% of all Curse Premium revenue goes directly into the Author Reward Program. This is our thank you for all your hard work.

Addons receive author reward points based on their popularity as determined by the Curse Client. Due to the amount of addons out there and the vast diversity, even the most popular addons only receive a few percent of the total pool, so don't give up hope. There are a few other details, but that is the main statistic. We feel that that provides the best relation as to what users actually want who use our services. We don't want to reveal all the nitty-gritty details in order to prevent gaming the system. If you do suspect gaming the system by someone (e.g. trying to actively manipulate statistics, uploading addons that aren't theirs, etc.), please report it. We want to reward those who actually deserve it, not those who think that they're crafty.

As a side note, everything store-related as well as standard logins now use HTTPS for security reasons.

Hey there, ckknight here.

I've been slaving over the keyboard for the past few days getting some cool features in that I hope a lot of you will appreciate:

• Private Messaging
  • Previously, there wasn't any real good way of sending a message to another user on the site, hopefully this will help that out. Please provide constructive feedback if you can.
  • You can PM more than one person at a time. You can also specify people as CC (like in e-mail).
  • This is a proper conversation system rather than a one-off messaging system, so if you message back-and-forth, it's all properly grouped together.
  • Indicator in the top-right showing what you have and have not read.
  • If you receive any spam, report it (button in the bottom-right of the page) and it will be dealt with harshly and as quickly as possible. Banning people is easy and it properly deletes all their content.

• Signatures on comments
  • You can now specify comments that you post to have a signature. You can set this on your profile
  • By default, you will see one signature per user per page.
  • For those who don't like signatures, you can easily turn these off at Edit settings in your profile

• Attachments on comments, pages, and themes
  • Previously, attachments were only available on tickets. This has been expanded to allow attachments on themes (if you want to include your own images or logos or whatever), pages, and comments. This has been sorely lacking, as sometimes it's very nice to upload a file or two as part of a conversation.
  • If this is abused, just report the abuser. If widespread abuse occurs, more restrictions may be put in. (But hopefully it won't come to that.)

Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.

I've been working on the revamp of CurseForge for a long time now, and I've gotten to the point where I'm comfortable launching it as the main site.

This is the largest change to happen to the codebase since WowAce moved from its old technology to the new CurseForge-based one.

Apart from the following, many, many bugs were fixed in the process.

• There are gradients and rounded corners now. This provides a feeling of weight to the widgets on the page. (also: I'm pretty sure this makes us Web 2.0)
• New color scheme for WowAce and CurseForge (though they do borrow some shades from the old).
• Widgets are more spread out than before, allowing an easier eye-travel path.
• Streamlined pages where every page of the same type (e.g. details, listing, main page, edit) have the same feel, rather than differing from page-to-page.
• Many various layout fixes.
• Improved form layout, as you can see on http://www.wowace.com/create-project/
  • the most important field (Project name) is larger
  • icons show where they make sense, e.g. on the categories and languages.
  • Many-to-many editing pages are far, far easier to use. Examples would include project membership assignments.
• Tab-based navigational interface instead of a pseudo-tabbed interface or dropdowns.
• Visible user actions in the upper-right corner of every page, this replaces any dropdowns that the user might experience.
• Easy to access, but hidden by default, admin actions, below user actions. This would appear only if a user has special rights to an object.
• Listings: (good example: http://www.wowace.com/projects/pitbull4/tickets/)
  • Much more advanced filtering system
    • Icons in some filters
    • More advanced filters in most cases
    • Date-based filters
    • Per-page specification (if you are an author or QA person and want to see all the tickets on one page, you can. This is limited to authors so that the database doesn't become overloaded unnecessarily.)
    • Bulk editing is a lot cleaner and easier. This is used for ticket management.
  • Better visibility of sorting and pagination
  • Heavy use of icons for graphical feedback.
  • Create links on the top-right. e.g. On the projects listing, "Create project" shows up. On a tickets listing, "Post a ticket" shows up.
• Use of openable widgets, e.g. post a comment. Instead of seeing a big white box before all comments, you click "Post a comment" first.
• Contests system, for if we have code contests (which we just finished one), or image-based contests (if we want a logo contest or something along those lines). (http://www.wowace.com/contests/)
• Theme system, which handles the styles of a site, where each site has a separate theme, but users can create their own themes and post them for others to use. (http://www.wowace.com/themes/)
  • This is very powerful and will allow custom theming of sub-sites (e.g. atlasmod.com or support.curse.com) very easily.
• Greater consistency for posting. Previously, the "Preview" of a post might look very different from the final result, now, they look exactly the same in both situations.
• Due to the hidden admin actions, more actions can be placed inside. On a project, the mainline repository is far more accessible because of this. Many authors had issues figuring out what was possible before, but this alleviates most worries.
• Categories have all been given icons. This was mostly in anticipation for the upcoming Curse Client 4.0, but it's also adopted on the new CurseForge as well. Everywhere a category would show, its icon shows now. (Eventually, Curse.com will sync these icons as well.)
• Comments
  • banning options have been added to make it easier to fight The War on Spam.
  • direct linking of comments now provide links that will work regardless of pagination.
• Users now have all their IP addresses tracked, rather than just one. This will allow us to better track gaming of the system, but mostly for spammers.
• Sites have much better management, so that if we want to launch a new site based on CurseForge tech or change an existing site, this is very viable. This will become more prevalent later, if we launch a non-addon site (since CurseForge's technology is a very good project management system), a ticketing-only site (perhaps for support.curse.com or potentially other sites), or for authors to host a site with us based on one or more of their projects (e.g. atlasmod.com).
• Implemented a data caching system. This should make page loads quite a bit faster overall, but their shouldn't be any horrible invalidation issues (here's hoping).
• Set up for localization of the whole site. Every string is properly wrapped, but it doesn't hook into the localization app yet. That is low-priority and a few months off, after some more important things are taken care of.
• Implement CCIP support (used by Curse Client 4.0). On files pages, there is a "4.0 Install" button in the top-right. Once CC 3.0 supports CCIP, the standard psyn links will be replaced with CCIP links.
• Add icons to projects, as specified by the project owner.
• When hovering over images that have been shrunk down, show the full image in a popup. (e.g. http://www.wowace.com/projects/)
• When making a large comment, the textarea size will expand as you make more lines.
• For search boxes, add an eyeglass icon as well as a grayed out "Search" text.
• More Semantic HTML, which should help Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a bit.

Hello friends, ckknight here.

We've been calculating points for the author rewards program for one month now. The numbers we had been using to give points was based on an estimate, which, after one month of business, has turned out to be a bit of an overestimate. You may notice that points generated are less than before, because of this.

We expect that, over time, the amount of points will increase as the Curse Premium becomes more popular (likely when the next WoW patch arrives).

I know it's a bit shocking, but authors had been getting roughly 40% of the Curse Premium revenue, now it is dropped to its previously declared 20%, though it is possible that this number may raise over time, mostly dependent on how popular Curse Premium becomes.

Any questions or concerns (from authors) can be addressed in comments to this announcement or by joining us on IRC on irc.freenode.net at #CurseForge. I (ckknight) should be able to field any questions.

Hey beautiful people, ckknight here.

We at Curse.com are holding three contests for addon authors within the Curse Network (i.e. WowAce and CurseForge). The grand prize for each contest is a BlizzCon ticket. You'll be able to compete in all three contests, but you can only win one BlizzCon ticket total. We're also going to be providing Author Reward Points for runners-up.

Note: for the BlizzCon tickets, we won't be providing travel costs. You'll have to get to California on your own. Also, you need to be at least 18 years old.

The contests will run from now until June 15th, you can submit any time from here until then, and you can also revise your entries up until that point.

You can find the contests at http://beta.wowace.com/contests/. Yes, this is the beta site for WowAce, but it still should work fine, the contests system was easier to make with the new system than having to backport it. CurseForge authors shouldn't have a problem logging in or submitting entries.

• Alphabet mathematics
• Befunge-98
• WoW Avatar

We're hoping that by having these coding challenges, it'll be a bit more fun and interesting than giving out tickets to the top 3 authors or holding a simple raffle.

Hello, friends.

Donation buttons are now part of the Curse Client v3.0.0.5, which is great news for authors (including myself).

As it stands, users need to update the addon in the client in order to see the new donation links, but once that's there, they're quite visible.

Screenshot of the client:

Because the paypal button in the example uses the "Paypal" (non-hosted button) type, it shows up as OneBag3 (from WowAce.com) when clicked on WowAce, OneBag3 (from Curse.com) when clicked on Curse, and OneBag3 (from CurseClient) when clicked from inside the Curse Client. This should allow you to know where your donations are coming from without just guessing.

Hello, friends.

We're launching Curse Premium today and I'm sure some are wondering about the effect that Premium will have on authors.

All authors will have complimentary premium. Yes, this could lead to gaming the system and creating fake projects for the sake of it, but we have a manual approval process, and we will investigate any reports of said gaming. Please, don't ruin it for the real authors. It will be one or two weeks before complimentary premium is provided for authors.

We are also launching our Author Rewards Program (ARP). 20% of the revenue generated from Curse Premium will go towards the ARP. Some of you may have heard about it, but I'll describe it now:

One of the main reasons Curse.com has become so successful is due to the addons it distributes. These addons obviously are created by the addon authors, our content producers. As a way to reward our content producers, we are launching the ARP. We will grant addon and library authors Reward Points (henceforth called points) based on said addon's popularity; for libraries, it will be based on the popularity of the addons using said library.

Points will start accumulating now that premium is launched, but the CurseForge author store will not be available to redeem from until details have been worked out, likely a month from now.

We aren't going to release the full details of the algorithms we use to calculate points, to help limit gaming the system, but the general idea is as such:

1. Every day at 16:00 UTC, we start the point generation
2. An addon (or library)'s score is generated with our algorithm.
3. Score is then compared against all other addons, to calculate the percentage.
4. We then multiply that percentage by the amount of points we're granting that day, and grant the result to the project.
5. The points of the project are then subsequently divvied up based on the project manager's reward splits.
6. Points can then be spent at the CurseForge store to redeem for various items, currently Amazon Gift Cards (we will expand our inventory in the future). Note: we will support some non-United States goods and more may be added on request.

There are some complications with all this, though:

• If you redeem more than 12000 points in a given year, we will need extra tax information from you. Since this will occur for only a handful of authors, we will work with you on a one-to-one basis.
• Due to tax issues and the like, there will be a new terms of service agreement that you will have to agree to in order to accrue points. Our lawyers are currently reviewing this and it should be ready soon.
• For non-United States authors, there may be extra tax issues related, which we should be able to work out on a one-to-one basis. Authors who have already opted-in will have to agree to the new terms of service in order to use the store.

We've already started granting points to authors. To see your points, go to http://www.CurseForge.com/home/ and check the bottom-left.

Update: Authors should now have free premium if you have a project with at least 1000 downloads. The 1000 number should hopefully limit gaming the system somewhat. If you have a legitimate addon, getting 1000 downloads should not be hard to do, especially with the number of users that use Curse.

Hello friends, ckknight here.

Previously, we haven't been tracking Curse Client downloads as something that would increment our download counters. This has now been fixed so that every download on the Curse Client will properly increment the download counters now.

Already we're seeing a _dramatic_ increase of downloads. It's really a wonderful sight to see how many users are really downloading my addons.

Note than from one refresh to the next, the download counts might not update, as there is heavy caching in place, but every download is still counted.

In no way, shape, or form are we "faking" our numbers, we try to be as accurate as possible.

This is an April Fool's joke

If you're an addon author like me, you probably got in the game for the sweet, sweet ladies. It just seems that meeting them has been a pain, so Kaelten and I (ckknight) have been collaborating on the design of the new CurseForge.com dating system.

Through our dating system, you, an addon author, can easily pick up the fangirl honeys. You will be put through a rigorous test to check for your 57 points of compatibility that will be automatically matched with fangirls in the community based on their previously made forum posts.

You may be wondering, "ckknight, how awesome is this?" The answer is obviously lots. Lots awesome.

From our initial run, due to the small authorbase (relatively) and the large fangirl base, we will be able to assign up to 274 unique fangirls to each author. So if you feel self-conscious about a date with one, or didn't realize you had lettuce in your teeth, don't worry, just skip that one and go to the next. We have a speed-dating system set up so that you'll spend 3 minutes with one girl and then move onto the next. Unlike other speed dating you may have seen, read about, or participated in, you will be the only male with upwards of 20 to 30 females all wanting a piece of you. Remember, these are girls who already love you and probably have a shrine to you and for you.

We at CurseForge.com want to give something back to the author community, and this is the best way we know how.

Do I hear wedding bells?

Hello friends, ckknight here.

Some of you may be wondering what the next step for CurseForge/WowAce might be. You may have seen the piles of tickets that the CurseForge project has and it can be disheartening.

So, I'd like to let you know that development absolutely has not stopped. We have limited resources with regards to manpower, as it has been essentially just one person (me, ckknight) doing nearly all the work on the site itself. Kaelten has been working furiously on the Curse Client, and I think we can all agree that it has blossomed under his guidance.

I've been working on the upcoming Author Rewards Program and Author Store, for when we launch Curse Premium and the Author Rewards Program soon.

The current gameplan is to completely overhaul the HTML and CSS on the website. While we previously had a frontend developer working with us, that is no longer the case and hasn't been for about a year, causing general bad practices to leak into our display code. This will lead to an overall greater polish for both WowAce and CurseForge. Things will also be very easy to change and add to in the future.

As it stands, if we want to add any new features, wrestling with the CSS has become a case of the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, where anything we do can cause a ripple effect, leading to slower development and an overall lack of polish.

Once this is finished, the website should act a lot more consistently, provide a better user experience, and allow further extensibility in the future. Also, we'll be able to call ourselves "Web 2.0" if we have rounded corners and gradients, right? ;-)

For an idea of some of the future ideas we have, so you know that we actually have future ideas:

• User-submitted guides
• Web-based repository browser
• Ticket enhancements
• Various bugfixes and small features.

If you have any ideas, we're more than willing to hear them through CurseForge's ticket system. Also, if you see a good idea, feel free to vote it up. That's a big reason on how we prioritize the next thing to do.