SC2Mapster

We're nearing 2500 map projects here on Mapster, yay! We also have 200+ assets to go along with those maps.

StarShout by elunder

Basically, this library helps you implement audio output on your map with ease. Once it is initialized via Triggers, you can play sounds by using the corresponding strings given. Making announcements and comment on gameplay has never been this easy! Some notable features of the library are as follows:

• 105 unique words
• numbers fom 0 to 999999999
• letters a to z
• use "," for a pause
• very small, all sound files are blizzard originals
• easy to use

Common Sense 101 Tutorials by Dogmai

Currently, there are two different editions of Common Sense 101 Tutorials: Triggering and Team Recruitment. As far as Triggering goes, it runs through the basics of the Trigger Editor and helps explain what you should know when trying to create a Trigger. It's very basic, but for those who do not know the ins and outs of the Editor, you will find this helpful. As far as the Team Recruitment one goes, it explains how you should generally setup your team, and task your team members, in order to create a successful project.

Don't forget to vote in our recent Scene Recreation Contest and to vote for your favorite Blizzard map in our poll!

Heart of the Swarm Preview

UPDATE: Blizzard posted their own interview for those who want to give it a looksie, as well as the official teaser blog.
UPDATE2: Looks like they added a brand new Game page too, looks awesome.

As you all know, I flew out last Wednesday to California to visit Blizzard HQ and preview the upcoming expansion, Heart of the Swarm! Thursday morning (around 9am), I arrived at Blizzard to see a small group of people circled around someone, similar to a flock of seagulls around some bread on the beach. Yeah, Day9 must be there. And of course, there he was, accidentally being the center of attention. Though i'm sure you aren't here to read about Day9, I know you want me to break into HotS. After some bsing around with the other members of the press that attended, they brought us into the Theater with Dustin Browder, whom then showed us the following teaser, which I know some of you have already seen (leaks make me QQ). Also, if after you still have questions, you still have questions, feel free to ask!

Dustin talked to us a little bit, giving us the general idea of how things were going to work. Essentially, we were going to be dropped into two different missions, approximately 4-6 missions into the story, where Sarah Kerrigan is trying to regather the broods of what is left of the swarm, while still being hunted by both the Terran and Protoss. So while Wings of Liberty focused on Raynor being a pirate, a mercenary, and whatever else he needed to be while jumping around worlds, Heart of the Swarm will focus more on a specific few planets, where we will conquer them, and then move onto the next one. On that note, we were set free to go play them ourselves.

The first thing I noticed prior to playing the missions was the change in scenery. No longer are we sitting in the Cantina of the Hyperion, now we are just sitting planet side while controlling our characters. Aside from Kerrigan, we see Abathur, dubbed Evolution Master, who essentially gives us new stuff. If you talk to him, you can spend "mutagen" that you earn/find within the missions to evolve your creatures. For example, you can mutate your Banelings into Splitterlings, and they will split into 2 smaller Banelings twice, though dealing less damage. I've got the full list of possible evolutions at the bottom of the post for those of you interested. And yes, most, if not all evolutions had new models, so yay new models! Aside from Abathur, we have Izcha, who is Kerrigan's Advisor. She retains the memory of Kerrigan as the Queen of Blades, and simply... advises her! And of course, we have Kerrigan. There is a brand new mechanic, currently called Battle Focus, where we can level Kerrigan up as a hero, as will use her in-game in just about every single mission. Essentially, you can envision Kerrigan as a Diablo character. Battle Focus has several (the number is not set, currently there are 2, there are room for 4, but Browder said there can be 6+ even) "skill paths" where you take different directions with her spells. The Spec Ops Focus currently gives you +50 energy, and then gives her two spells: Pulse (which does an AoE stun & damage), and Psionic Shadow, which essentially creates a shadow Kerrigan to fight by your side. On the other hand, we have the Corruption "tree", which adds +3 armor, and allows her to Spawn Broodlings, or use Corrosive Spores, a damaging AoE. By beating levels, we unlock new spells for Kerrigan, as well as adding to her energy and health.

Now, the first mission we played, called War for the Brood, was on Char. Our goal was to defeat Za'Gara, a Brood Mother who was attempting to take over the Zerg swarm that remained on the surface. Joining us for the first time, would be the Baneling. The mission following up will be called Fire in the Sky, but we couldn't play that just yet. So, the second mission we played, called Silence Their Cries, was on an icy planet named Kaldir, and the Roach joined us. In addition is a new functionality, similar to the lava rising in those few Tosh missions, the surface of the planet would freeze over, rendering everything unusable for 20 seconds or so. By gathering Yeti Matriarch DNA (new neutral units: the Yeti, and the Yeti Matriarch), we were able to stay thawed when the freeze happened. I also noticed a few other new units/models on that level, Protoss Psi-Link Spires, and Protoss Mobile Satellites. The next level again, will be Shoot the Messenger, but we weren't able to play it. Also worth noting, Kerrigan is allowed to die! No longer do we have to worry about losing the mission on hero death. When she dies, her DNA is used to revive her, and then you get to place her back on Creep when the cooldown is up.

Zerg Evolutions

Like I said, for those curious, here is a list of the possible evolutions:

• Zergling
  • Metabolic Boost - Move speed +33%
  • Posthumous Mitosis - 20% chance to spawn 2 Broodlings on death
  • Rapid Genesis - Instantly produce Zerglings
  • Raptor - Leaps at enemies and +10hp
  • Swarmling - Hatches 3 Zerglings instead of 2, for no extra cost

• Baneling
  • Vicious Discharge - Goo sprays at and slows enemies by 25%
  • Centriugal Hooks - Move speed +25%
  • Rupture - Splash radius on death +25%
  • Splitterling - Splits into 2 smaller Banelings, twice, dealing less damage
  • Gorgeling - Reduces Units/Structures into collectible resources

• Roach
  • Chitinous Plating - +1 armor
  • Bile Ducts - +2 damage
  • Organic Carapace - +2 life regeneration
  • Prowler - Move while burrowed
  • Leech - +10 life per kill (up to 6) and heals more rapidly while burrowed

• Metamorph
  • This isn't a confirmed unit, though it is something I picked up while watching Kerrigan talk to Abathur. After completing the "Silence Their Cries" level on Kaldir, Kerrigan tells Abathur that she needs a Metamorph, "a creature that gathers biomass and fuels its own transformation." I suppose we'll have to wait and see for more information.

Interview

While in the group interview, I tried to ask a bunch of general Mapping related questions, we were only able to talk to Chris Sigaty, Dustin Browder, David Kim, and Alan Dabiri, so no GE guys were available. The guys on SCLegacy recorded the whole thing, yay! If you listen close enough, you'll hear me asking some questions... I was the only guy asking questions related to Mapping at all (Editor, Marketplace, etc) so I don't think you'll miss me.

For those of you who don't want to watch the full hour+ video, here's the gist of the interview, in a nutshell: General/Lore:

• There won't be any Cerebrates, instead there are Brood Mothers. Cerebrates all wanted the Overmind!
• Raynor will side with Tosh and the Protoss from WoL.
• There will be 20ish new missions in HotS.
• There will be new Multiplayer units. They may also change or remove WoL Multiplayer units.
• There will be a Multiplayer Beta again, that will last somewhere between 3-5 months.

Mapping:

• They're talking about doing a Co-Op Campaign, eventually.
• The Map Marketplace will come either alongside, or shortly before Heart of the Swarm.
• More work on the Popularity System will be done, but the features coming with the Map Marketplace should help our problems a bit.
• They can and may roll out Ladders and their Matchmaking System with certain Custom Games in the near future.
• The UI Editor is coming around HotS, as well as a lot more new features/changes/additions.
• Adding a Water mechanic is something they're talking about, but currently have no plans for.
• Adding a way to have different colored creep is something they're talking about, but currently have no plans for.
• There are no plans to support maps bigger than 256x256.

Frequently Asked Questions

Blizzard also gave us an FAQ to go along with everything, I figured that I would just post it up in its entirety, regardless of whether or not I hit on some points above.

Quote:

Q: What is StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm?

A: Heart of the Swarm is the first expansion set to Blizzard Entertainment's sci-fi real time strategy game, StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. Heart of the Swarm continues the epic story from Wings of Liberty with an all-new campaign that focuses on Kerrigan, the former Queen of Blades. New multiplayer content will also be included in the expansion, as well as new features and upgrades to the Battle.net online platform.

Q: What features can we expect from the single-player campaign of Heart of the Swarm?

A: Heart of the Swarm's campaign will include approximately 20 new missions. Players will be able to evolve their swarms with unique, campaign-only units and abilities, and this evolution will happen in an organic manner befitting of the expansion's Zerg theme. As an example, zerglings can be induced to evolve the ability to split into broodlings upon death. Further evolution can yield specialized sub-species of zerglings such as the swarmling, a variant that spawns three swarmlings per larvae instead of the standard two zerglings. The fearsome raptor is another evolutionary offshoot of the zergling that has more health, and the ability to leap short distances to quickly close the gap on an enemy.

Another aspect of Heart of the Swarm that makes it unique from Wings of Liberty is that Kerrigan will play a major role in each of the battles as a powerful hero. Over the course of the campaign she gains in strength as well as new capabilities. Players will choose what abilities to enhance and powers to use from mission to mission.

Heart of the Swarm will also include a wider variety of sets for players to explore between missions - these sets change dynamically as players complete missions, giving a sense of a changing world as Kerrigan makes her presence felt throughout the galaxy. Fully-voiced cut-scenes will round out the cinematic gaming experience in Heart of the Swarm's campaign, while a new array of achievements will unlock in-game rewards such as portraits and decals.

Q: Will there be any technical upgrades to the graphics engine?

A: We'll be making some improvements to the graphics, including upgrades to the look and behavior of zerg creep, as well as some changes that allow our artists to better showcase the new types of planets that Kerrigan will explore in Heart of the Swarm. We still plan to keep the minimum hardware requirements the same for this expansion set as they were in Wings of Liberty.

Q: What are some of the changes made to multiplayer Heart of the Swarm?

A: While we're not quite ready to go into detail about the new multiplayer content in Heart of the Swarm, we can say that this expansion set will include new units and new maps. We'll have more details about multiplayer Heart of the Swarm content at BlizzCon.

Q: What changes will come to Battle.net with Heart of the Swarm?

A: As far as Battle.net improvements, one primary focus will be on getting the StarCraft Marketplace up and running at some point around the launch of Heart of the Swarm. The maps and mods community in StarCraft II has published tens of thousands of custom maps using the StarCraft II editor. Our goal with the new Marketplace design will be in upgrading the custom map UI to better showcase the wide variety of great new maps and mods to players who are looking for fun new gaming experiences. We want players to be able to more easily find, rate, and sort through all the great custom maps that have been created.

The Marketplace will also eventually include a commerce element that will allow mapmakers to charge a fee for their work. While there will always be a wealth of free content, we believe that allowing content creators to profit from their work will foster an environment for more complex and higher-quality custom maps. Our ultimate hope is that the StarCraft Marketplace will function and thrive in a similar manner as mobile "app-stores" - tons of free and premium content for players, and a limitless source of entertainment through StarCraft II and Battle.net.

We do have other Battle.net feature upgrades and improvements planned as well, and we'll have more details on those at a later date.

Q: Will Heart of the Swarm require ownership of Wings of Liberty?

A: For the regions that have a standard box business model such as North America and Europe, yes, Wings of Liberty will be required in order to play Heart of the Swarm. For other regions that have alternative access models, we’ll provide details at a later date.

Q: How much will Heart of the Swarm cost?

A: We typically don't provide details about pricing until the game is closer to release. We do view Heart of the Swarm as an expansion set, so for the regions that have a standard box business model such as North America and Europe, we will price accordingly. For other regions that have alternative business models, we’ll provide details at a later date.

Q: Will there be a console version of Heart of the Swarm?

A: StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm is being developed for Windows and Mac. We have no current plans to bring StarCraft II to any console platform.

Q: When is Heart of the Swarm coming out?

A: It's too early to talk about a specific release date at this point in time. As with all Blizzard games, our ultimate goal is to provide the best possible experience for our players, and we will take as much time as is needed to ensure that Heart of the Swarm meets the expectations of our players, as well as our own high standards.

Scene Recreation Contest

Our latest contest has come to a close. We revived tons of great submissions, so help us pick the winners by heading over to the voting thread and choosing your favorite!

Starcruisers by Sandround

This project was formally known as Mobile Battle Fortress. Sandround has updated the map, changing the look of the space vessels to appear more like star ships. Each star ship is made up of modules that upgrade into weapons. The starships are powered by reactor modules and moved by engine modules. Everything requires power, so the idea is to manuever your vulnerable reactors and engines away from enemy fire. There's also a variety of classes of star ships to choose from.

Hey guys, i'm back now! The NDA on the HotS event doesn't lift for another few days, i'll be writing up a nice article for everyone, on my trip and on HotS itself when I can, :).

Transcendence RPG by Pottfish

Transcendence RPG is a hero base defense map with good old RPG element of hero defense map since wc3. You either win by defeating the King at the end or defeated by losing the Queen you're defending. The map plays as coop with up to six players. The terrain and effects looks nice and not too confusing. Try its beta version on US server.

Just FYI, Patch 1.3.4 was released earlier, all it did was fix a bug that would cause some Leagues & Ladder pages display incorrectly. As always, you can post undocumented editor changes here. Also, BlizzCon tickets are on sale again tomorrow night (May 25th)! In addition, i'll be gone until Friday night for the HotS Press Tour at Blizzard, so if anyone needs me, feel free to PM me!

War of the 12 Kingdoms by Malpheus

War of the Lost Kingdoms was an oldschool War3 custom map that was pretty popular in it's prime. Malpheus and his team are working to bring it over to SC2 to continue the fun, on a similar styled map. Essentially, there are 12 players, each with their own base, and your goal is to conquer the other players by taking over other bases, for their minerals. Each kill you make grants you a bounty, to help gain resources that way. You are also able to make alliances with other players to take control of the whole map, and take part in some quests for some loot, throughout the gameplay. Each base allows for upgradable units spawned every one minute. Armor, attack and ability upgrades will be featured as well, in addition to some pretty slick custom models. Check out the Terrain teaser below.

Unit Ownership Tutorial by ZightFear

This is a rather simple tutorial on changing the owner of a unit through the Trigger Editor. I recently saw someone asking how to do this on the Battle.net Forums, so for those of you interested, here it is.

Blizzard has just recently added some new spotlighted community maps. This time around, we have Battle for Sky Fortress, which we actually featured on Mapster not too long ago. We also have Uberena, which I haven't had the chance to play, but I remember from the old SC1 days, and it was definitely a fun map. Feel free to review either of these maps and leave it in our Map Review Forum!

Battle for Sky Fortress by Stark (KratsAU)

Name: Battle For Sky Fortress Co v1.24
Category: Co-op VS AI
Mode: Up to 6 players (Faster)
Author: Stark
Description: Choose your weapon and battle for Sky Fortress! Call down mighty Titans, upgrade your weapons, and learn new abilities!

Uberena by Kenoli

Name: Uberena v0.52
Category: Micro Arena
Mode: Default
Author: Kenoli
Description: Use teamwork and micro control to overcome your opponent and destroy their base!

Just a reminder to everyone who wants to go to BlizzCon this year, the first batch of tickets go on sale on Saturday! It has also come to my attention that Blizzard's original RTS CM, Karune, has resigned. Farewell, Karune!

Also worth mentioning, State of the Game, the uber popular SC2 Podcast included some talk about DarkRevanent's Mafia map (at 1:36:00)! Sure they could have potentially meant the actual game, but hey, it's an SC2 Podcast, no? Aside from Husky commentating his custom map experiences, this is huge for the custom mapping community, by introducing the general SC2 public to the custom mapping scene.

SmashCraft 2.0 by Mephs

As we all know, SmashCraft has been a rather popular SC2 Custom Map since the beginning. This PvP giant of a map, that plays out very much like Bloodline Champions (from what i'm told) has gotten a major overhaul. Mephs has just recently released version 2.0 of his map, adding a whole slew of changes to the: UI, stats/balance, heroes, a bunch of bug fixes, and so much more! If you have yet to play this map, you can see what you're missing below.

Scene Recreation Contest

Well folks, it's been an awful long time since we've had a contest around here... So to pick things back up, we're holding contest to recreate your favorite scene from any movie, video game, book, etc!

Quote:

What you have to do

• Re-create a scene from your favorite movie or video game (other than StarCraft) in the GalaxyEditor.
• NO editing your screenshot with external utilities. It must be provided as-is with no modifications, simply through the Editor.

What you have to submit

• One screenshot of your scene
• One picture of the scene your trying to recreate
• The map file you took the screenshot from
• A brief explanation about which game/movie you chose and what scene it was

Deadlines

• You have 2 weeks to submit your entry
• End of the submissions: Sunday, May 29th - Midnight PDT (Los Angeles) [Monday, May 30th - 9 AM GMT (Paris)]
• A public vote will be held after the end of the submissions to decide who wins.

Rewards for the winners

• First: 6-month Curse Premium
• Second: 3-month Curse Premium
• Third: 1-month Curse Premium

Please keep all discussion and entries in the contest thread.

Blizzard has released another Tutorial, this time it is all about the Triggers Module. For those of you interested, go check it out! And don't forget to vote in our Poll, we want to know what your favorite Blizzard Mod is.

SC2Streamster by SC2Mapster

SC2Streamster is going to be SC2Mapster's streaming channel, where we plan on holding shows (similar to Day9's) focused around mapping. We plan to bring mappers (that's you!) or even just people with a mild interest in mapping (that's you, if it wasn't earlier!) a mostly daily show that revolves around all aspects of the Galaxy Editor. Currently, the show will be hosted by Mephs (for most days) and Mozared for the Terraining themed day, and I will pop in here and there for some fun stuff. The goal is to make this very community driven, much like Day9's Dailies. Check out the thread for more information and current plans with the show.

Project Avatars by Bounty

Project Avatars is a PvP based game with some PvE elements. Each player will choose who to represent at the start of the game, the player will then be granted the an "Avatar" form of that God. The goal is simple, conquer the planes of the Gods and destroy anyone who gets you're way.

We recently just opened a UI Development Forum, so those of you who have questions (or answers!) in SC2Layout development, feel free to drop by! Also, if there are any Diablo Fans out there, you should know that the Diablo 3 Beta is coming soon.

Patch 1.3.3

Patch 1.3.3 went up on the PTR not too long ago and was released on the live servers earlier today. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any cool done in regards to the GalaxyEditor, according to the patch notes. However, as Renee spotted during the PTR, the CValidatorLocationCrossCliff bug was resolved and undocumented. If you find any other undocumented editor changes, please share them!

Quote:

General

• The default hotkey to toggle in-game music on/off has been reverted to its hotkey prior to Patch 1.3.0. The hotkey to display APM in the observer stat panel has been changed as a result.

Balance

• PROTOSS
  • Archon
    • Now a massive unit.
    • Range increased from 2 to 3.
  • Cybernetics Core
    • Research Warp Gate time increased from 140 to 160.
  • Gateway
    • Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37.
    • Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.
  • Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.
• TERRAN
  • Bunker
    • Salvage resource return reduced from 100% to 75%.
  • Ghost
    • Cost changed from 150/150 to 200/100.
  • Thor
    • Thor now has 200 max energy, and starts with 50 energy.
    • 250mm Strike Cannons now cost 150 energy to use (cooldown removed).
• ZERG
  • Infestor
    • Speed decreased from 2.5 to 2.25.
  • Spore Crawler
    • Root time decreased from 12 to 6.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where Ghosts could not quickly EMP the same location.
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to stack air units when issuing a queued stop command before the units reached the end of their patrol point.
• Fixed an issue where unplugging your USB headset while another player was talking to you could cause a crash.
• Fixed an issue where the APM statistic could be artificially increased.
• Fixed an issue where 3D unit portraits were not animating smoothly at slow game speeds.
• Fixed an issue where, when viewing a replay, no text message was displayed when a player left a game.
• The Taiwanese hotkey to display/hide the game UI while in Observer mode now works correctly.

A new poll here on Mapster has been long overdue... This time around, we want to know what your favorite Blizzard Mod is, so go vote! Also worth mentioning is two new fan fiction piece that Blizzard added to their gallery.

Star Drivers by zenx1

Star Drivers is a very simple racing game, that plays out pretty well. The game has quite a few unique tracks, a pretty cool (and logical) UI, and is super easy to understand. IMO, the game closely resembles Blizzard's own Rock 'n Roll Racing, if any of you have played that...

Blizzard recently interviewed the very popular shoutcaster, Day9. They also reached 1 million 'Likes' on their Facebook page, and released a cool piece of artwork to commemorate it.

Moving the Command Panel by Helral

Helral, who has been one of the very few who has done any extensive work of SC2Layout files, has released another UI tutorial. This one, in video format, goes into very great detail on how to go about resizing and moving around the Command Panel. However, after you understand and can replicate this tutorial, you should be able to edit any current panel there is with ease.

Some more SC Comics have been released, go check 'em out.

Maps 'n Mods Tutorial: Missile Movers by Blizzard

Earlier today, Blizzard released their third Mapping tutorial, which was surprisingly a lot more complicated compared to their last two, which were on Terraining and Publishing. This time around, the tutorial was on Missile Movers:

Quote:

We’ve just expanded the StarCraft II Maps and Mods page with the Missile Movers tutorial, located here. The missile mover system allows the map maker to control motion in dramatic and entertaining ways. While typically used to configure missile-based attacks, the underlying motion defined by the missile mover system can be used to drive a reaper’s body when it jumps or a spine crawler’s tentacle when it attacks. Add this tutorial to your toolbox and get more out of your custom map creations.

Head over here to discuss it.

Mapster Mentor Program by wOlfLisK

For a while now, we've been talking about making some kind of mentoring/training/teaching program here on Mapster. wOlfLisK has decided to take it upon himself and get things started with it, essentially it is a way to let older and experienced Editors take on an "apprentice," and help them learn the ways of the Editor. You can of course, still ask questions on the Forums and IRC, but this Mentoring program makes things a little bit more personal.

Quote:

What is Mapster Mentoring?
Mapster Mentoring is a scheme to help newbies get better at map making. There will be a list of mentors that newbies can contact to ask about questions, get tips and generally get help from.

Normally I don't do this, in fact I don't think I've ever done it, but I'm sure you'll all be talking about it anyway, US President Obama has announced that Osama Bin Laden was found and killed. I suppose it's only a matter of time before someone turns this into a Custom Map...

Battle Planets by lotsofcolors

BattlePlanets is a very unique map, as I have yet to see anything like it on all of Battle.net. Essentially, this map is a spruced up version of the ol' Mario Party Bumper Balls mini-game. It takes place in Space, and you're a tiny little planet that is trying to bump the other planets out of the Solar System. There is some pretty cool functionality, like the teleporting Black Hole thingy, and the ability to unlock different star systems to play on. Anyone interested in these unusually fun little mini-games should check this map out for sure.

Blizzard added some brand new Jim Raynor Fan Art to their website earlier today, go check it out!

The Hungry Baneling by johnfloyd

On the fringe of space, the rogue cerebrate Glummoth battles against a joint Terran and Protoss military alliance. Unlike other cerebrates who are content to use what the Overmind has left them, Glummoth has continued the Overmind's evolutionary experiments to bolster his forces. Just as the Overmind's experiments succeeded in creating the mighty Queen of Blades, Glummoth's years of experiments have finally yielded his own mighty warrior; The Hungry Baneling! Created with one purpose in mind, The Hungry Baneling consumes all in its path, friend and foe alike. The more you eat, the more you grow. The more you grow, the more you can eat!

The Hungry Baneling is of a similar nature to the game Spore, in which you control a primary unit, and must "consume" smaller units, with the aim of increasing your "size", in order to consume even larger units, later on in the game. Your mission to defeat the combined Terran and Protoss army is aided by the rest of your Swarm, which is automatically rallied into combat, to fight along side you, or to become your "food". You must consume units on the field, in order to "grow". These units can be either from the Terran/Protoss army, or the Zerg units fighting along side you. You are restricted to consuming units "smaller" than you, and are notified when you are able to consume new units.

Those of you who want to check the map out, may do so at the project page. In addition, just recently, Crucius did a lengthy writeup and decent review of the map, including the video seen below.

I realize i'm a few days late, but I wanted to wish the GalaxyEditor a happy birthday. I don't know if you all remember, but Maged and I actually got our hands on the Editor a day early, on April 21st, making us the first two users to ever use the GalaxyEditor. Patch 9, which released the Editor publicly, was released the next day, on April 22nd.

Also worth noting, from Renee, in the 1.3.3 PTR patch, the bug with "CValidatorLocationCrossCliff" was fixed and is undocumented in the official patchnotes.

Project TMA aka Tofu by Dogmai and Dryeyece

Yes, this is the long awaited project that I have been posting those mysterious images about for the last two or so months. Now, Tofu is not one single map or arena, it is the name of the entire project itself. Currently, to my knowledge, it will consist of two different maps (though i'm sure will expand over time), the first being Project TMA, Tofu Mini Arenas, which can be seen in the video below. TMA is a dynamic Team Deathmatch Map, with tons of different arenas all built into one map. Tofu Arena on the other hand, will be an AoS-style map, where you get to use the same TMA heroes, items, etc. This is pretty awesome, because you get to learn how the heroes work, who counters who, and what items work well with your character, all in a PvP environment. When Tofu Arena comes out, you'll already be familiar with all of the heroes and can jump right into the action.

Below in the video, you can see one of the many TMA arenas, Waterforts Arena. Aside from a robustly dynamic TDM styled map here, they also have a pretty badass custom UI, 18 unique heroes, portability into their other Tofu maps, and a dozen different game modes.

Don't hack! Blizzard is cracking down.

Patch 1.3.3 PTR

Blizzard has updated the PTR patch notes for 1.3.3 this afternoon. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like there are any changes for the Editor whatsoever, though this isn't a huge patch, so... Do not fret!

Quote:

Balance

PROTOSS

• Archons are now a massive unit.
  
• Pylon power radius has been decreased from 7.5 to 6.5.
  
• Cybernetics Core
  
  • Research Warp Gate time increased from 140 to 180.
    
• Gateway
  
  • Sentry train time decreased from 42 to 37.
    
  • Stalker train time decreased from 42 to 37.
    
  • Zealot train time decreased from 38 to 33.
    
  • Warp Gate unit train times remain unchanged.
    

TERRAN

• Ghost
  
  • Cost changed from 150/150 to 200/100.
    
  • Salvage resource return reduced from 100% to 75%.
    

ZERG

• Spore Crawler
  
  • Root time decreased from 12 to 6.
    
    

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Ghosts could not quickly EMP the same location.
  
• Fixed a bug where players were still able to stack flying units on top of each other.
  

Starcraft: Tarsonis

This is something that should be new for all of us, as it is not a project being made in the GalaxyEditor, but is a fan-made film being created externally. The film is based around a formally neurally re-socialized marine finds himself in the middle of an evacuation from the home of his youth, Tarsonis City. Seems like a really interesting plot to me and I feel like the people behind this production have enough passion to really do a good job with this. They're keeping developer diaries in the form of videos, check 'em out below to see what the project is all about.

HotS Preview

That's right fellas! Today I received an invitation to go to Blizzard HQ, at the end of May, to test some single player content from Heart of the Swarm. Now there will be no multiplayer content, that will be disclosed at a future date, only SP content will be playable at this tour. Though keep in mind, there is still no release date, this could potentially be pretty big. The Wings of Liberty preview was in April of 2010 and the game was released in July of that year. Perhaps HotS is coming sooner than we think? However, the February ActiBlizz Conference Call made it clear that there were currently no plans to release any games in 2011. Confusion!

Kotaku did a nice little write-up about their thoughts on what this means, feel free to take a look.

Something to also think about for us Mappers is that the War3: RoC Editor got some pretty big updates after TFT was released. I'm expecting major updates to the GalaxyEditor with HotS, so I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens. I'll fill you all in after all of this goes down, but it's still a bit more than a month away.

For discussion, use this thread. That way we can actively chat about this stuff after this post gets bumped down.

For those interested, the brand new Christie Golden novel, Devil's Due, was just released, go pick up your copy today!

Weekly Terrain Exercise 29: Military Space Compound by Mozared

For quite some time, our Terrain Moderator, Mozared, has been running Weekly Terraining Exercises, that have allowed the community to partake in some fun, yet challenging terrain creation. We always get some pretty great submissions and i'd like to take the time to point a few out from this most recent one. Keep in mind, it just started, so feel free to submit your own entries as well!

Quote:

Did you guys know 29 is the number of atoms in copper? Because of this, I intended to make WTE #29 be about 'creating a coppermine', but I realized this would yet again force people into the Mar Sara tileset. While it's awesome, we've done so much stuff with it lately that I'd like an opening for a different idea. Thus I came to something we haven't at all done before or even came close to: a Military Space Compound.

I want to see a military compound on the Avernus, Braxis Alpha or possibly Castanar tilesets, located on a platform in outer space. This will give people a chance to show what they can do with a great number of doodads and textures we've never really used before. You can make the project as large or small as you want - it can be a small landing point for spacecraft or a whole scientific research facility. Do with it what you will!

Good luck, hope for some more submissions this week!

The Global Information/Idea thread for Terraining Exercises can be found here.

Feel free to check out our other exercises...

• Weekly Data Exercise
• Weekly Trigger Exercise
• Weekly Art Exercise

And just in case anyone missed it, check out yesterday's featured map, Photon Cycles by JademusSreg!

Age of Empires is back and we've got beta keys! This time it's online and with your friends. You can fight friends, co-op, and even build persistent cities.

Closed Beta for Age of Empires Online has been going for a while now, and Gas Powered Games is now ready to open the flood gates exclusively through Curse. Curse had had a chance to check it out at CES 2011 earlier this year, so be sure to check out our coverage.

We're stoked to be able to give you guys this opportunity to check out the game. This is a guaranteed spot in the closed beta, so be sure to get your key as soon as you can.

Initially, the giveaway is going to be limited to Curse Premium members. We'll be opening it up once premium users have had a chance to get ahold of their beta keys.

Details

• 
  
• Curse Premium giveaway: April 19, 2011 @ 9AM PDT to April 20, 2011 @ 9AM PDT
  
• General giveaway: April 20, 2011 @ 9AM PDT to when we run out of keys
  
• When you can play: Right away after redeeming your code
  
• How to play: See the instructions on the beta key giveaway page
  

There's no NDA for this phase of the beta, so feel free to contribute to AOE Wiki if you find information in the game that it's lacking.

Finally, here is the trailer from GamesCon 2010 for you guys to check out.

Photon Cycles by JademusSreg

Photon Cycles, a luminous lightbikes game, is all about driving around your ridiculous looking vehicle, while excreting lethal hazards from your rear, with the intention to cause your enemies to wreck into stuff. Essentially, this is a classy 3D remake of the old Tron Arcade Game, which I guess is sort of like a PvP Snake-like game. If anyone has seen either of the Tron movies, you'll know exactly how this map is structured; it takes place on the Data Grid.

Hero Line Wars by Kueken

Everything started in Warcraft 3 about 5 years ago for this project (and author!), and now here we have the port on SC2. This game supports 2 different teams, with separate corridors foe each team. They also both have mercenary camps where you can hire fighters for whatever team you are on, to attack the other team, similar to Nexus Wars. Each team also has a selection of 10+ heroes, all with unique spells and abilities. So if you're looking for a long-running TD, this map is for you.

Don't forget to participate in either of the Blizzard Contests. They are currently running two different contests with some pretty awesome prizes: Memories of Blizzard Video Contest and Core Hound Pup Adoption Campaign.

StarCrap TV by Demonik420

StarCrap is an action/comedy YouTube show based in the StarCraft Universe, with an original story, that is slated to be released bi-weekly. Now, that in mind, yes this is being created in the GalaxyEditor, but it will not be a full or complete map that someone can just play. The project is being created from several different maps and then being video edited together. So what does this mean? It has the potential of drawing in quite a bit of people, you don't have to play a game and you don't have to make anything, just sit back and watch, which is the entire philosophy behind YouTube. Currently, they have released a video trailer for the entire series. The first episode is slated to go live sometime next week, though they also plan to have video shorts here and there that will be about the characters, but may not necessarily follow during the storyline.

Demonik has also made it clear to me that he wants this project to be somewhat community driven, so if anyone wants to help contribute or get involved, send him a PM. For more information, check out the project page. If you like the trailer, go ahead and subscribe to the channel.

Automaton 2000 by blid

This AI is just... Nuts... Watch the videos, you'll see. The second video is the AI playing against famous pro player, IMMvp, and he loses... Below is also a little Q&A they added to clear up any confusion about their script.

Quote:

First of all we must say that we're really glad that the community appreciated Automaton 2000!

What is the APM of the bot in the different videos? We just made a script to check the APM, we got 250 and got kinda disappointed... then we realized that we had 250 APS, which is equal to 15000 APM!

So: 15000 APM for the kiting marines, and 8000 APM for the zerglings breaking the tanks.

Is there a risk that this will be abused on ladder? For everything Automaton 2000 can do we have to thank Blizzard for creating a wonderful editor. Having that said, there's obviously no way Automaton can be used for cheating online.

Would it be possible to code this same micro-scripting into a custom AI without needing to prompt the actions with a chat command? Yes, the chat commands were only implemented because it was convenient. And when we use the command, the AI will be applied to all marines/zerglings that spawn. The reason we had the commands was that we wanted to try out some zergling/marine-micro for ourselves! (...and we failed horribly!)

We've already started with the next implementations, and we're planning on having them finished in a couple of days. One of the scenarios will be more "realistic", and the other one just for funzies. Thank you for all the great ideas!

Are there any other AI's?

There are still some current AI's still floating around from our old AI contest... YABOT is always being updated, and EagleAI has been released on specific maps.

• YABOT
• EagleAI
• Mimic
• Behemoth
• HexBox

And here we have a Framework to make your own AI.