SC2Mapster

Update: Blizzard sent a mail to the Map Contest winners four days ago. It's time to check your mails if you don't do it often :)

Nexus Word Wars Banned

Rodrigo has received a mail saying that his map Nexus Word Wars has been banned from Battle.net

Quote:

Offense: Inappropriate Map published under this account was found to have contained: Inappropriate words above some mobs (ex: dyke)

This is another really bad move from Blizzard against the map making community. We are spending a lot of our free time making maps and giving Blizzard content. Instead of being grateful they ban maps because of tiny details such as bad words or copyrighted sounds.

Right now it makes me want to stop spending that much time on Starcraft 2 map making ... I really hope that their attitude toward us is going to change.

Sorcerer's Defense by RileyStarcraft

Sorcerer's Defense is RileyStarcraft's Blizzcon contest entry and is a really polished TD. Give it a try on Battle.net :)

Icon Requests by Adelios

Adelios wants to help you by making icons for your projects. If you need some ask him nicely and I'm pretty sure he will help you out. Here are some icons he already made.

Blue Posts

Here's another round of Blue Posts. Important thing to note is the future addition of a way to get the player name as a string!

Quote:

(Tordecybombo) - Any chance of allowing us to convert texts to strings? If not, any chance of allowing us to get some sort of player information? Such as the player's name or the player's character code as a string?

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. We'll look into adding functionality to get a player's name as a string in a future patch.

(Eternal) - How will patches effect the custom maps already developed? Will it change within the dependencies? Will it override the unit if it has already been altered? Will it override a unit if it has been unaltered? More importantly, will it at all jack up our map?

Balance changes will only affect LibertyMulti, but bug fixes in a patch may change Liberty data. So generally custom maps will not be affected by patches unless you have LibertyMulti as a dependency.

When you override/extend data from a dependency, the map only stores the difference between the map data and the dependency data. The fields that are most vulnerable to being broken by a dependency change are array fields that only have specific indexes overriden. We've worked a lot to ensure that custom maps won't be broken by patches and will try to improve this in the future.

(SiNiquity) - What's the proper way to utilize Catalog Is Field Array? It takes 2 parameters, Field and Scope.

The Scope is an entry type like CUnit, and Field is a field like AbilArray. For example, CatalogFieldIsArray("CUnit", "AbilArray") == true.

(StKerrigan) - Does anyone know how to get the Charge counter to display for weapons?

This can't be done currently but it's a good idea and we'll consider adding it in a future patch.

(CutMeOwn) - Why do maps sometimes act diffrently when you test them with the test map button vs when you upload them to 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.

(Rorax) - Will it be possible in the future for an attachment, to be attached 'by point'.

We'll look into adding support to attach two actors at separate attach points in a future patch.

ProzaicMuze Interview

You probably know ProzaicMuze for his tutorials. Here's an interview of him :)

Quote:

Hello ProzaicMuze. Can you present yourself in few words?

Well, I live in Oregon, a lovely west-coast state in the U.S. I'm not currently in school, but I'll eventually get a degree in music. Musical goals aside, I'm an avid gamer and graphic designer. I create everything from simple logos to web design or photo retouching. I don't have a long history in game design, but I've always enjoyed the process of creating new things. As such I found myself drawn to the powerful new editor Blizzard produced for StarCraft 2 and began developing my skills by helping others with their mapping ideas.

Talking about teaching. You've done a lot of video tutorials on Starcraft 2 Map Editing. Is that the first time you are doing such things? Why did you do it?

I've actually made mostly written tutorials, but I started adding video demos to them to make them easier to understand. As far as mapping goes, my only previous experience is with the OLD Age of Empires editor (for making big battles) and then some minor NWN (Neverwinter Nights) and Morrowind/Oblivion work. The majority of that work consisted of moving objects in the game to where I wanted them.

StarCraft 2 is my first real attempt at mapping. I actually got started when I wanted to make this old board game I played into a Starcraft 2 map with graphics called Stratego. I played it a lot as a kid, but I quickly decided that wasn't something I'd enjoy making and resorted to roaming about the Data Editor. I experimented as much as possible while teaching others what I learned. The process helped me learn more quickly than if I had tried to trudge through it alone.

Great. I am sure that among the many tutorials you've written so far you must have some favourites.

I think my favorite tutorial to make was probably one of my first tutorials: The Uberlisk. I noticed early on that a LOT of people were asking about this thing they saw on YouTube and how to make it. I'd actually never seen it prior to attempting to make it and I was finding that the current method of XML was just waaaay to complex and produced very iffish results. I like my inside parts INSIDE my Uberlisk ;P

I had recently discovered that you could use multiple Site Operations (things that allow you to attach models and move them around) at once. Until my tutorial, I hadn't seen anyone try it so I figured, why not?

I found it a lot easier to make than I had anticipated, but largely due to the fact that I was able to use more Site Operations than what people thought was the max. So I added the Spine Crawlers and moved them around until they were flailing away at baddies to their heart's content! I never got around to making the spells from the demo, but I'm sure one day I'll add them.

It looks like you are focusing on making tutorials about exciting parts of the Galaxy Editor that haven't been really discovered yet. Do you have anything else completely awesome that we can do with a bit of skill and time?

Around the time I joined the site and had begun making the Uberlisk, there was a contest for custom spells well underway. I saw a lot of great spells, but I hadn't spent much time creating them. A week or so after finishing the Uberlisk I wanted to take some of the ideas I had seen and expand upon them. I ended up making another tutorial covering what I learned.

One really exciting thing I found was that you could attach Text to units while they cast a spell or even create models that had their own mini-spell running. Whereas most spells run through a linear set of effects, I tried to make a lot of spell effects that happened at once. I managed to separate each of the steps of a spell out and attach a really cool effect to it. The caster starts the spell, text changes above his head while glowy stuff appears around him. Normally this would continue on to have the caster reduce everything around him to very small bits, but I started summoning more units that had their own spells running on them instead. The result was a fun spell that you might see in any WoW boss fight.

What about physics. It's usually a domain that people like to implement in Starcraft 2 as it gives nice effects at the cost of some simple formulas. Did you manage to implement physics into the Data Editor?

Well, I'd love to say that I sat down and contemplated advanced mathematical formulas that any lesser mind would cower before. . . but I barely did more than simple multiplication. Given my lack of experience with Blizzard editors, I wasn't comfortable venturing into the trigger editor just to "attempt" to make things move around. Mixing myself with coding typically involves many facepalms, several punched babies and a dramatic ragequit. One might say I have a strong aversion to triggers given this history ;)

I knew that Blizzard implemented a system for moving objects in the editor so I dove right in. A friend had recently asked me how to make a tornado complete with a swirling vortex and the randomly thrown bodies of those unfortunate enough to be sucked in. By now my tutorial request poll was underway and there was a high demand for it, so why not?

While I didn't put the tornado in the tutorial, I made a "Ground Pound" that reminded me of my Mario days and a shockwave. The spells weren't that complex, but I found that there were a lot of aspects regarding force mechanics that weren't working exactly as expected. For example, you'd think that more force would throw an object farther, but the editor just wouldn't have it. I had to apply the same force repeatedly over a short period of time until the bodies started flyin'.

Last but not least, what's the best tutorial you've done so far?

While it might not seem like it at first, one of my best works is definitely my Custom Movers/Projectiles tutorial. I had finished the Uberlisk only a few days before and people were already beginning to ask me questions about things like artillery shells, ships spiraling down from the sky and mounting missiles on the already beefy Uberlisk that could shoot in zig-zags and arcs. I really wasn't excited about answering any of these questions because I didn't know a thing about how movers worked and I couldn't find material to reference anywhere. Movers were a daunting mystery. So of course I flipped to the movers tab and spent a couple long days guess and checking my way through every field.

I think I really got into it when I accidentally made a missile spiral wildly across the map and then off the screen. I still have no idea what happened to this missile, but I quickly took what I had discovered and tweaked it until I had missiles that could fly in arcs, spin in circles and zig-zag back and forth across the map. While I still don't know what half the fields in the mover section do, I walked away with a wide range of missiles to show off, and mappers began using them to create all sorts of awesome stuff previously believed impossible to do.

I know you are working on a lot of different projects, and that you are talking a lot! So here's a challenge. Give us 1 sentence on each of those.

Attrition: Attrition is a mostly unique plot-capture war game with elements of Tower Defense and Risk; capture stuffs. . . kill stuffs. . . then rub it in their face >:D

Munchkin DotA: MDotA is a comedic project by myself and many of my good friends that pokes fun at the traditional DotA clone while highlighting some of the best parts of Munchkins (the card game).

Hex-tile Boardgame Mod: I recently participated in a ModCraft where we created hexagon shaped tiles that could be used for a boardgame. I'll be expanding this to multiple hex-tilesets and genres for mappers to make boardgame maps without the hassle of modeling.

Age of Empires Tribute: I grew up playing Starcraft and Age of Empires so I want to combine elements of my two favorite game into one supermegaultrasexy game!

4x Turn Based Space Strategy: While I originally thought I'd pack this into my boardgame mod, I've always wanted to turn boardgames like Twilight Imperium into something playable online; something like the first Master of Orion.

Omg it's coming to an end :) Any last word you want to share with the rest of the world?

I'm working out the details for a YouTube channel with more "fun" content as opposed to all tutorials all the time. Hopefully, through collaboration with friends, you can expect to see REAL maps from me, enjoy mapping challenges and learn exciting new things :D