SC2Mapster

Patch 1.1 is coming in 3 days: September 21. The editor is going to get improvements. I've heard that the Trigger Editor has gotten attention lately on Blizzard side, but it's not something to be taken with much credibility.

Custom Map Popularity Listing by vjeux

I would like to introduce to you an experiment I've been working on the last few days: scladder.com (recycled domain name). I've found out that there were the latest 24 played games available on your Battle.net profile. In order to get the popularity listing, I made a bot that parses random players and note the maps they played.

Amazingly, the results obtained are pretty close to what's ingame, the top 12 maps are the same, the ordering is just messed up a little. You can read the full detail on my blog article. What's great is that we get for the same prize played statistics.

This is only an experiment but we are talking with sc2ranks.com to get them integrate this as they already have all the architecture to do that at a larger scale. Thanks to that, you should see more Battle.net integration on mapster during the next few weeks.

Starcraft Capture Assault Pwn! - Infernal by BumpInTheNight

SCCAP is a map to promote communism 2D WASD Movement & Click Shooting Engine developed by BumpInTheNight. I've already newsed an early version of the engine few days ago but I wanted to let you know that he made a CTF map called Infernal with the engine and published it on the US. Ultimatly the engine will be open and any of you will be able to use it for your maps :)

Diablo Movement by OneTwo and progammer

There is no native function to get the cursor position on the world nor an event to tell when the cursor moves. OneTwo found a workaround by placing a lot of invisible units in a grid. Therefore you can use the Unit Is Highlighted event and get an approximation of the cursor position. While this technique is working, it has many flaws like the huge numbers of units that has to be created and therefore performance issues, the lack of precision in real maps (big units hiding the invisible ones).

Using this previous tutorial, progammer made a Realtime Mouse Tracking System that you can directly use. It allows you to make a Diablo like movement (keeping left button clicked and the units follows your cursor) or create spells with targetting 100% using triggers.

Dustin Browder Interview by GameSpot

There's a really cool interview of Dustin Browder by GameSpot where he talks about how the game was being developped, how some units like the reaper evolved and there's one question about the Starcraft 2 Custom Maps!

Quote:

On what makes a perfect Starcraft II map

Dustin Browder: I don't know if there's a perfect one. What I love about the Starcraft II community is the diversity of maps they've created. In a single evening, I can sit down and play five completely different types of games with five separate clicks just by going up and down that list. I'm amazed with what they've been able to put out right now.

It really is for all types of players, and that's an area where I'd encourage newer players, intimated by online play, to try out. Try out some of those custom mods. Some of them are more casual, and some of them are more hardcore, but you can probably find something that interests you. There's so much variety in the types of games you can play.

As for the perfect one, it's the fans that really embrace the Blizzard concept of polish and quality. They don't try to make a mod that's too big. It's something they can actually get their head around. Something they can actually accomplish. They really focus on game balance and gameplay and making sure it's the best possible experience instead of making something huge and bloated that's got a lot of stuff in it that's not polished.

Fan Arts

3 new exciting fan arts about Starcraft 2. I really like the first one, this is not so often that we see cyborgs in fan arts.