SC2Mapster

If you are a winner of the Blizzcon Contest or if you know who is please PM me. I'd like to make some interview of you guys :)

progammer believes that he can make a Tower Defense without any trigger. He is looking for your input in order to know at what scale he is going to do it.

The famous group Tenacious D is going to perform at the Blizzcon. That might make you buy a 30 euros Virtual Ticket ... :)

Starcraft Universe Reloaded by Mille25

I thought that Starcraft Universe project was abandonned but it's not! Mille25 is still working on it and has made great improvements. This is a really impressive use of Dialogs to make the interface.

Planned Editor List of Changes Compilation by KratsAU

KratsAU went over all the Blizzard Q&A and made a compilation of all the things we could expect for the future patches :)

New Features/Fixes:

1. New feature to get Players Name as a string We'll look into adding functionality to get a player's name as a string in a future patch.
2. Ability to display the charge counter for weapons This can't be done currently but it's a good idea and we'll consider adding it in a future patch.
3. Fix coming for depency load order on battle net We're aware of an issue with dependency load order when maps are played on Battle.net and are working on a fix for the next major patch.
4. New feature allowing you to attach two actors at separate attachement points We'll look into adding support to attach two actors at separate attach points in a future patch
5. Mutli-Map Publishing This is currently not supported, but we are planning on adding features for multi-map campaigns in future patches.
6. New feature allowing you to share a fraction of kill resources with nearby players (similar to sharing a fraction of experience with nearby players that we currently have)
7. New feature that allows you to specify requirements for a unit that is purchasing items from your shop, such as if they have a certain ability.
8. Reducing Keyboard/Mouse control lag We will be improving keyboard and mouse control in a future patch, but we can't match the responsiveness of an FPS game with an authoritative server. Keyboard-based unit movement should be as responsive as issuing move orders with the mouse after these changes.
9. Bank Protection Bank protection will be added in a future patch to allow mapmakers to prevent users from modifying their bank data (optionally).
10. Increasing the Max Brush size You can turn on the grid in the View -> Show Grid menu to help line it up perfectly. We'll look into increasing the max brush size since it does seem somewhat arbitrary.
11. Improving filtering for big lists in the editor We're looking into adding a way to filter huge dropdowns since they are a bit unwieldy at the moment.
12. A new validator that can check the number of charges left on an ability
13. Changing render priority of minimap items Currently there is no way to change the rendering priority of minimap icons, but we'll consider adding a priority field in a future patch.
14. Fix for SetText 40 character limit There was a bug preventing the SetText message from accepting strings larger than 40 characters. This will be fixed in 1.2.0.
15. Turn a dialog box into a text box that players can type in Trigger edit boxes were temporarily disabled for the editor's initial release, but should be functional in 1.2.0.
16. Ability to modify the command card on the fly, or more command card slots There is a cost (performance and development time) for each field that can be upgraded. We'll look into either allowing command cards to be upgraded or increasing the maximum number of abilities.
17. Activate abilities on right click You can make certain types of abilities (unfortunately not Blink) activate on right click by setting the Smart flag on the ability. We'll look into allowing more flexibility for smart commands.
18. Adding the ability to detect the texture/terrain of a specified point We'll look into adding this in a future patch.
19. Improving the editor performance We're aware of certain areas in the editor with less than optimal performance and will be working to improve them as time is available.
20. The ability to use the placement/target system via triggers You're correct that this is currently handled asynchronously and adding a trigger to enter placement mode would be not be a trivial task. We'll do our best to support this in the future or provide sufficient alternatives.
21. Exposing console commands We're working on exposing more of our debug tools without making the game more vulnerable to hacking.
22. Making modal dialogs work Modal trigger dialogs currently aren't implemented and we're planning on adding support for them in a future patch.

Features that blizzard will probably not add:

1. Text to String Conversion It's intentional that there is no text to string function or text comparison, in order to localize the game without requiring that every user have every language installed. Player Name returns a text value since computer controlled player names can be localized.
2. On the fly Mover change The ability to adjust a mover for an invidual unit will probably not be added due to performance reasons. You can adjust a mover via triggers at the moment, but this will effect all units using that mover. We try to limit per-unit attributes for performance reasons so it's not likely that you will be able to change the mover for a specific unit unless there is a strong need for it. It can already be changed with upgrades and CatalogFieldValueSet, so there is already some flexibility available. Feel free to provide more justification if it's really important for your project.
3. Changing cliff levels during run-time. Changing cliff levels during run-time would require significant changes and we would only add support for this if there was a strong need for it.

Photon Defense Review by BadAxe

I just discovered BadAxe who is shoutcasting custom maps. I am going to show off one review of him per day :) We start today with Photon Defense.

Song: 12 Days of Christmas by Love4Starcraft

Here's a nice Starcraft 2 adapted song from the 12 Days of Christmas :)

Fan Arts

Blizzard updated the fan arts section with 3 new awesome picture. They also released an artwork about fruits: Grapeling, Applelord, and Bananalisk.