SC2Mapster

This community is what gave me a lot of exposure along the way - I hope it was mutual!  To be clear, I'm not just up and abandoning what's going on with SC2, but I have simply played most campaigns so I have to find a replacement for something consistent to record.

I've considered messing around in the Arcade, that has a lot of potential to be great fun.  Just gotta find consistently populated lobbies so it doesn't turn into tedium when finding something to play!

As a side not, I also announce the release of InsaneUI library.

More a collection of assets than a library, InsaneUI contains some layout templates I used when I was making InsaneBriefing.

It also features an interlude system that allows map makers to create interludes similar to those we've all seen in Brood War or Starcraft Remastered.

The main features are:

• Borders, Buttons and Scrollbars layouts templates and more
• Brood War style interludes
• Starcraft Remastered style interludes
• Support for different players, up to 16 togheter with different interlude each

This library is very easy. If you are interested, more information you can gather here.

The last attachment is an example text generated using this library. Actually, by just 3 actions in the GUI.

Hope you enjoy and, as always, good luck with your mapmaking!

Quote from MaskedImposter >>

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BwNFMMSLI4xlbWZUZU43OXhBMUE

 

Mapsters 4.5 for Mapcraft 2017 has been significantly updated. Very interested in feedback for anyone who has time. Just about 20 days til contest ends.

 

Some changes of note:

- The end is an actual boss fight now, far different than it was before. So much improved. Type "boss fight" without quotes after you choose difficulty if you want to skip straight to it for testing purposes. 

- Changed the supply max to 100, and added an addition second level upgrade for the healing bots. This makes it easier to keep a fully healed up army.

- Changed the tanks impact indicator to make it more distinct from the grenade ability indicator. So hopefully that'll help the player to know to dodge the tank attacks.

- Lots of other various things I don't remember :P

 

The main problems mentioned above with StarCraft II is a change in general player habits rather than anything to do with Blizzard.

StarCraft II engine was made during the early days of wide spread truly simultaneous multi threading. It edged on faster dual cores with only 2 heavy threads, as opposed to where computers actually went with slightly slower quad cores, and now going towards hex and oct cores. It was also created just before entering the era of the monster graphic cards so was designed to support some pretty old D3D9 style hardware as opposed to taking full advantage of the cutting edge D3D10 hardware. In fact the game engine was so optimized around this style of graphics it is one of the few game engines that has been known to cause hardware damage to GPUs due to it making them use so much power, although that is really a design flaw with the GPU hardware/driver.

All this means the game has not aged well, in fact it might even be aging worse than Warcraft III. Warcraft III will run extremely well on pretty much any modern computer that has a CPU and a GPU from the last 10 years, even integrated GPUs. StarCraft II on the other hand still needs a pretty decent computer to run well, and even then it can still cause modern GPUs to overheat under some conditions. It also seems that Blizzard has given up modernizing the SC2 engine, since HotS constantly receives performance optimizations and new features that will likely never be ported back to StarCraft II.

A lot of old Warcraft III players did not move to StarCraft II, instead moving on to discrete MOBA games, mobile games or even giving up gaming for social networking. A lot of old Warcraft III developers gave up modding StarCraft II due to early day problems. StarCraft II also did not attract the flood of "trash" content that populated Warcraft III custom game list for years since it has more strict publishing rules and the editor requires a little more intelligence to use. Many of the better Warcraft III creators grew out of this style of content creation entirely and moved on to creating their own independent games. The real nail in the coffin is the false news style dark cloud that constantly covers StarCraft II of all the "arcade issues" that were fixed early on but people still insist that they exist and constantly spam about them everywhere.

That said StarCraft II arcade should not be under estimated. If your map is good it can get access to thousands of players, far more than Warcraft III ever allowed (most players were there to only play DotA Allstars). Additionally if one works with the game engine rather than against it one can create some highly polished content. If enough people published decent new content to the Arcade StarCraft II could still take off, since playing the same old maps does get boring eventually.

StarCraft II also never got the technical expertise that Warcraft III got. There was no generation of people like Vexorian for StarCraft II early on. It took several years before the model format was finally cracked, and even then it was done largely by the Warcraft III technical community. The lack of such expertise is obvious and unfortunately does not help the game's image as there are many wide spread StarCraft II technical documents or tutorials that are just out right wrong. For example the belief that running actions in new thread makes them run in parallel on multi core systems and that synchronization is needed between threads is entirely wrong, as the game uses a similar trigger threading/scheduling model as Warcraft III so only 1 thread can run at any time and all state is consistent between threads so there is no concept such as synchronization.

Problem with looking like alarak cares is that everyone, even his own troops, know that he doesn't.  Heck, even Ji'nara knows better than to cross him.

First off, I'm pretty impressed by the new units and the custom voice acting.  Was unique to say the least.

The mission isn't lacking as well.  Wrathwalkers and vanguards provide spikes in difficulty on demand, and I decided to fight the hybrid and his two lackeys as solo alarak (and won).

For a relatively new hand at the editor, this is a strong first mission, and hopefully once we get into macro missions the fun will remain. 

issues:

• Armored votary doesn't get armor/shield upgrade
• Stalkers don't autocast their autocast ability
• Setting the game speed to faster (force of habit/more exciting micro) screws with dialogue triggers

small issues:

"youareatraitor"  and "noitcan'tbe" - feels to fast

"This campaign is placed in time one year after epilogue of Legacy of the Void" -> ""This campaign is placed one year after the epilogue of Legacy of the Void"

"Alarak declined the alliance"

"true strenght" -> "true strength"

"to clear it from trees" -> "clear the trees"

"could damage your force" -> "could damage your forces"

"briefs his forces inside the warchamber"

"confrontation with the Hybrid" 

"if anyone other" -> "if anyone else"

"surrending" -> "surrendering"

Feedback

- The map is in shadows. For total black Map Properties Grey Mask to Black Mask

- The nexus for you  reinforcements don't star construction

- Mineral / Vespen and Supplies dont apeard

- The reinforcements are allies? Is not clear because they don't help you in the advance.

- Deselect unit in the cinematics

- Final cinematic don't activate when you kill the hybrid.

Just a thing

-The first cinematic is to short and is not really a got intro to your campaign. Maybe show when Alarak separate the Daelam of the Taldarim o a discussion with Artanis.

- Also Alarak speak to with care of his troops. He doesn't give a shit about his troops. He only care for the price. 

Good star for your campaign

- I love The "clean area" thing. Very good.

- The voice of your units is great