Bibendus has a great present for the holidays! His long-awaited Hive Keeper map has finally been released on Battle.net! It's currently available on the US and EU servers. Check out the thread here for more information.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone! Those of you with plans, have a safe and fun filled day with family and friends... those that don't... well... have fun by yourself!
After months in the making, the future of Element Tower Defense is here. Unleash the powers of the six elements like you've never done before. Gone is the constant of computer controlled creep waves. Now, players wield the power of creep waves in their hand. Knock out your opponents and be the last man standing to win, or play with teams and eliminate the opposing force! This is Tower Wars!!!
Note: You have the option of playing "Classic" Tower Defense as well. Simply select it in-game at the start.
To celebrate Element Tower Defense finally coming out of beta on SC2, Karawasa has decided to host a tournament. There will be prizes! Only players on the NA and EU servers may participate. Game type will be "Classic" Tower Defense. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prizes (including Element TD products).
We're all dieing to use the new UI Module within the Heart of the Swarm Editor, however now there's really no reason to wait. SBeier's newest update to his Galaxy++ Editor includes generating code for a drag and drop-style UI design.
Mini Chop Farms is a Re-Make of the warcraft 2 classic, In this map your goal is to chop through the forest(while listening to the kickass war2 music) to reach your enemies bases, but beware chop too fast and you may not have the time to defend yourself, take too long and you will be rushed by mobile units or flying units.
Yes! Modeling Mondays! If you want to learn how to model/texture for SC2, you should definitely tune in. Experience is not required, as he will be starting with beginner level shows! If you want to show your support or leave any feedback or questions, head to his thread.
This is the tech demo for a first person horror project, which looks really great... Kinda reminds me of the ol' 7th Hour/11th Guest games from back in the day, ;).
For any ladder players or melee mappers out there, check out the map pool updates for Season 5!
Our buddies over at CampaignCreations are holding a pretty awesome custom contest, go check it out!
Quote:In the Terran Dominion there is one rising star that has surpassed all other televid programs, with a viewership of 32.3333% (repeating, of course) of all televid owning families empire wide, and growing fast. This show is none other than Crater of Carnage, a live feed of the bloodiest, most intense combat sport the Dominion has ever seen. The producers of the show were given their own moon from the emperor himself to provide you, the viewer, with the most spectacular smash-fest you can’t help but watch! Crater of Carnage showcases incredible battles between Terran mercenaries, Protoss prisoners, and terrible violent death incarnate: captured Zerg controlled via psi-collars from the Dominion's top imperial scientists, all fighting for YOUR entertainment! - Televid Today, a section of the Koprulu Times
The above fictional advertisement sets the stage for a style of game many of you are familiar with, but with a number of twists to make it much more approachable for new players while at the same time putting more emphasis on players fighting players, not farming creeps. LoneVandal is hiring individuals or teams from our community to help him create this game using the SC2 map editor. He is paying cash via Paypal both up front and on completion of the map, with bonuses for exceptional work to the positions listed in his thread.
How cool is that though? Getting paid to make maps, that's what Blizzard has in mind for the Map Marketplace, and that is what shall happen, :).
Trifaction has been described as DotA meeting God Of War. In this action packed multiplayer experience, three factions battle it out to wipe out the other two factions Life Crystals. You may choose to rally nearby creep to follow you to form huge armies and take over the three contested points on the battlefield. At the same time, you may defeat the Tug of War boss to take control of him and strengthen your army that much more.
Zerg Hunters is greatly inspired by Necrodragon's "Orcs & Elves" from Warcraft 3. Those who already played it in WC3 will recognize a lot of familiar content and gameplay, those who haven't, will learn fast, since it's a very intuitive game style. Four hunters use their advance in the beginning to chase down all eight low hp zerg. It's about teamplay, movement and surrounding incautious victims. Not keeping all zerg on the go will inevitably lead to a loose for the hunting team, since zerg are able to increase their survivability and battle power if undisturbed.
There is a short ingame tutorial for beginners and a PSR (personal skill rating) - System for more experienced players.
Hi guys!
On Thursday December the 8th at 12:30PM CST we'll be taking the site off line for a maintenance window. During this time the website and is related services will be offline. We expect the downtime to last for less than two hours.
Thank you for your patience during this inconvenience.
UPDATE 1:30 PM CST: The maintenance has been completed.
UPDATE: Blizzard released their fifth Maps & Mods tutorial, this time covering the Data Editor.
Blizzard released some new fan art the other day, check it out!
CraftCraft is a co-op mining, construction, and exploration map with mostly defensive combat. Its development is still in progress.
Much like how Blizzard's 'Left2Die' is a nod to Valve's 'Left4dead', 'The Dominion Strikes Back' is a nod to Starwar's 'The Empire Strikes Back'. The map re-imagines if a 'Battle of Hoth'-like fight took place in the world of Starcraft 2.
Blizzard posted last week two new maps for their Custom Map Spotlight. One of which is from our very own gamfvr.
First up we have Star Battle. You may remember we put this map in the news awhile back.
Quote:Map Title: Star Battle
Category: Ship Battle
Mode: 6v6
Author: zedu
Description: Star Battle is a 6v6 map that allows you to command powerful warships in space. Join a battle between Terran and Protoss warfleets and crush your enemies with highly customizable ships of war. Enjoy this large-scale, DotA-esque battle of push your way to the enemy command center. Be careful, the risks are high and there is no respawn.
Next up we have Star Shooter Defense, as luck would have it, we had this placed in the same article as the other map (odd huh?). Don't forget to stop by his thread to give him any new feedback!
Quote:Map Title: Star Shooter Defense
Category: Shooter
Mode:3rd Person
Author: gamfvr.
Description: A 3rd person shooter where you defend your base against incoming enemy troops. Pick one of five iconic Terran units and battle in the frontlines as you beat back wave after wave of assailing enemies. Each class has their own unique skills and abilities so level up, gain minerals from your kills and call down reinforcements to survive all 50 waves.
Death Depot is a first person, survival horror game, that is loosely based off of malu05's Project Vector. The project includes an original story, boss battles, custom music and sounds, as well as up to 4 players cooperatively!
A new Hive Keeper development diary is out showing the new unit's UI and leveling system. Im sure you remember this from past news articles. Make sure to keep on eye on it as it looks to be turning out very nice.
Happy Thanksgiving to those that celebrate it, enjoy the time with your friends and families, and be safe on Black Friday. Enjoy!
Looks like Starcraft 2 has gone on sale for the holidays (50% off, now only $29.99). If you need a gift for someone, another account for map storage, or to finally get a SC2 for another region, now's the best time! The offer ends on Monday the 28th and is only available in US and Canada. Click here for Blizzard Store to order your copy!
Quote:Like it or not, it’s pretty much the law that you have to buy gifts for everyone at this time of year. Thankfully, Blizzard has your back, because now you can deliver a $60 gift for less than 30 bucks. For a limited time, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is available for a mere $29.99 - that’s 50% off the suggested retail price.
In short, this project is simply a hero creator. The goal is to let you create any hero you can think of. You are given a blank slate hero with a single spell, tasked to turn it into something great, useful or just downright stupid. Entirely your call. Your blank hero may have up to 5 spells and 5 abilities (described in detail below). This may seem a lot compared to traditional DotA maps, but the game makes little use of item abilities so it evens out somewhat. Currently the only map terrain available is Azure Strand, which is an Arathi Basin (Or LoL's Dominion) style base capture gameplay. Capture and hold bases, gain points, be the first team to reach the points cap. Win.
This project evolved from the Empires & Nations II map by Anteep, which displays quite a bit of Age of Empires gameplay elements. As you can see from the video, there are a ton of custom assets in use (which will all be redone in the future) as well as a custom AI. I suggest checking out the project page for more videos and gameplay tips. While you're there, feel free to leave some feedback!
Xxio from TeamLiquid wrote up a rather nice article on the importance of custom maps in the eSports scene, which any Melee mappers would certainly be interested in.
This map is a remake of the NES, 4 player racing game, Galaxy 5000, and includes all of the original 10 tracks and 5 vehicles. This project really reminds me of the old F-Zero games and maybe even Blizzard's own Rock 'n Roll Racing.
Blizzard has released some new SC2 Fanart, pretty sweet stuff, go check it out!
This is a pretty awesome "plug-in" for the Editor made by Renee. It's just an SC2Mod that you add to your maps, but it adds a slew of new Trigger functions and XML data you can take advantage of.
This tutorial does exactly what it says, it's a quick and easy way to convert Diablo III Models to SC2 Models! This means we can make even better Diablo-esque maps, :).
This tutorial goes over the process of taking a scanned sketch, cleaning it up, creating vector outlines from it in Illustrator, saving it as a texture and applying it to a model, and finally Importing it into the Galaxy editor where it covers how to make it a doodad and it's basic use for blocking out terrain.
The great thing about using a template like this is how much faster it makes creating terrain. Before this, you'd have to really eyeball your terrain layout and hope that you've got equal sizes around your maps, or, spend hours looking at the grid and trying to match things up that way if you wanted any sort of symmetrical map. More complex designs, such as circular layouts, are easier than ever before with this technique. Plus, if your map ends up being too big or too small, all you need to do is resize the map bounds and the doodad, and you don't have to start all that tiresome work over again.
Classic remake of the original Starcraft: Broodwar Marine Tug of War game in a 1v1 or 2v2 style.
Both sides struggle to push their lane of Marines to their enemy's final line of defense. Their only chance is to use their limited resource to upgrade, purchase recruits or special spells.
Some spells include Airstrikes which demolishes entire enemy lines. Mustard gas that extinguishes all biological enemy units on the field. Mighty Thors that will squish any enemy unit it walks on.
You and your ally must control both air and ground by intensive micromanagement and creative strategies to outwit your enemies and claim victory.
Love the Elder Scrolls series and can’t wait for Skyrim? We do and we’re looking for mod authors to help us in making creative, useful, and imaginative mods to play with after the game launches! With the new skyrimforge.com, unleash your creativity with loads of development tools meant to streamline your mod-sharing process.
The first 35 uploaded Skyrim mods that meet our approval guidelines in each of the four main categories, will earn some phat loot to line the pockets of their authors!
Mods must be uploaded to skyrimforge.com by December 15th, and meet all criteria established by Curse moderators.
The categories and money rewards are as follows:
That’s a total of 140 mods that can potentially earn some cash! Want to enter more than one mod? No problem!
But wait...We’re also going to give an additional $3,000 to the author who creates the best mod, uploaded between now and December 15th, and voted the winner by Curse staff!
On December 17th, we’ll announce the grand prize winner and highlight their mod to the community as a thanks for all their hard work and dedication!
For full challenge terms of service, visit this link.
Patch 1.4.2 was released earlier today... Just a few bug fixes (including fixing an issue which prevented footprints from being edited in the Footprint Editor), but otherwise, mainly just some Protoss buffs and a nerf to EMP!
Not too long ago, MageCraft was featured on Battle.net. A PvP Arena where players get to choose every skill they wish to use. From Fireballs that push players back to the Gravity Flux that pulls everything around it into it. Using the spells players buy and upgrade to player’s liking, and a large amount of player skill, the objective is to dominate the arena.
I'm actually really excited for this, it seems like a great project. The campaign is based on the SC novel, Shadow of the Xel'Naga, set to take place in between the classic SC1 and it's expansion, Brood War. It features Blizzard-like maps, classic objectives, cinematics, transmissions, several difficulties, new terrain/weather/sounds, and most importantly, can be played in a 2-player co-op mode!
Due to popular demand, Metal Slug finally returns! ArcadeRenegade has gone ahead and created the sequel to the original game. The game features Up to 4 Players, a Platform System, 8 Missions, 8 Boss Fights, Enemy Randomizers, 10 Weapons, 3 Vehicles Types, Difficulty Modes, Unlockable Cheats and Customizable Keybinds. He's put a lot of work into this map, so make sure to check out the project thread here