SC2Mapster

a month later.... How about now? Lol xD haha sorry but cant wait for 2.0 to come out.

Sounds like 2.0 is going to be amazing. Keep workin at it guys, im trying to help by increasing the playerbase haha :D is there an estimate to when 2.0 will be out? i dont care how long, just curious.

I really want to play version 2. The map is practically dead in the NA server, and that really bums me out. I try to use channel TFF and The Final Frontier, but we don't really have a community anymore.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No.

That was quick... Let's elaborate a bit. First off, there are generally two ways that "3D gameplay" gets implemented. The first is the gimmicky 3D. That's what Sins of a Solar Empire did. Sure, it's a fully 3D engine, and the various planets and stars and all that have various positions, and ships move in a three-dimensional space. But the core of the game is completely unchanged by the fact that it's 3D; ships still move on a 2D plane, their distance is calculated on this plane, and the game would still be exactly the same if it would be displayed on a 2D screen with silly hand-drawn icons. There is nothing, I repeat, nothing, wrong with this approach, since it remains more fun to play than if they had attempted to implement here the next form: Full True 3D. In True 3D gameplay, there is no "up" and "down", or if they are they're simply tools to help the player actually play the game and they're completely arbitrary. Homeworld 2 has, in many cases, this approach. Sensor range is a sphere in space. Ships can move as far "up" or "down" as they can "left" or "right". Two ships at the same 2D position but out of range in terms of their difference in height simply can't see nor attack eachother. The entire game is designed around fully three-dimensional gameplay, and using all the positioning advantages you can gain from this actually matters.

Don't worry, I didn't go and type this wall of text just to look smart. The thing is, let's face it, gimmicky 3D in Starcraft II just looks and feels bad. There's this giant slew of problems that arise in selecting units, manipulating the camera, units too "low" being too small to select comfortably, and so on and so forth. Then, why not implement true 3D? Well, simply because Starcraft II isn't designed to support it. Starcraft II units move on a 2D plane. Their movement speed is always according to the 2D plane, so no matter how fast (or slow) they're moving vertically, they'll always move at the same speed horizontally.

If there's a unit within 4 distance from them on the horizontal plane and they have 6 sight range, then even if that unit is 12 distance above them, they can still see it. Vision range is a gigantic cylinder with a radius of sightRange and a height of (maxMapHeight-minMapHeight). That's just how the engine works.

Thus, an attempt at implementing true 3D would require a major plugin engine to be coded into the map/mod, and would require completely customized and engine-independent handling of sight, range, movement, position, control, and so on.

The question is, is this all really worth it? Is the effort involved in implementing non-gimmicky 3D worth the gameplay effects - and more importantly, will it be that much more fun to play? Would gimmicky 3D or partially-implemented somewhat-almost-true-3D-without-the-above-features give substantial and worthwhile to the current gameplay? Is this (or are these) feature(s) more important to the core of the game itself than other, easier-to-implement features? Would it actually make us want to play this game more?

My own answer to those questions is a confident, resounding "No!"

This is exactly the reason, as far as I know, why Sins of a Solar Empire decided to go with a gimmicky 3D approach instead of full true 3D. It would have given nothing more to the game, and gimmicky 3D works well with their interface and engine and gameplay (since it was probably all designed with it in mind).

Again, apologies for the wall of text of critical eyehurt +2. I simply felt that this was a point that had to be made, and had to be made early and clearly.