Poker Defense, MGS Codec, Update Lib, Blues

Due to the number of submissions in the Blizzard Contest, they will be extending the judging deadline to October 8th. The winners will be announced then... As posted by Bashiok.

Also, congrats to Sixen on being one of the first Battle.net MVPs, ;).

There was a bug affecting people sharing their password in order to publish cross regions. You could not update a map if your editor locale was not the same as the one that first published the map. However it is now fixed! People can now update their european maps from my account without bothering me now :)

Poker Defense by Zinatic

Having a game based on random is a really scary idea. But Zinatic did not get afraid and worked on Poker Defense. I really like the concept and for once, this is actually fun to play. You can repick cards 3 times so there are great chances to get a nice combination :) The game is released on EU if you want to give it a try.

Tutorial: Metal Gear Solid Codec by Pshyched

I'm a real fan of Metal Gear Solid and when I saw that Pshyched developped the Codec interface on Starcraft 2 I was all excited! He did a full tutorial on how he did it and is providing the map :) [Skip the first 25s of the video they are useless!]

Tutorial: Update Libraries by Doubotis

You probably want to use the Library feature of Starcraft 2 for your triggers, and then release it to the public. However there's a big problem: when you update it, if people use your updated version it'll brake ALL of their triggers. This is really annoying and Doubotis found a quite hacky solution to solve this.

I really hope that we will be able to automate this process in order to make a greater use of libraries :)

Blue Posts

Another round of blue posts. If you have a question do not hesitate to ask it there. If it's good enough i'm pretty sure Blizzard will answer it :)

Quote:

(Pan) - I got a question that I've been trying to figure out since the beta: does anybody know how to change cliff heights mid-game (triggers, actors, abilities, etc.)?

Changing cliff levels during run-time would require significant changes and we would only add support for this if there was a strong need for it.

(gamecreator) - What's the proper way to load one published map from another after victory?

This is currently not supported, but we are planning on adding features for multi-map campaigns in future patches.

(gamecreator) - I meant to also ask: how do you transfer data between two maps (like which upgrades you took or who lived or died)?

You should be able to use the Bank system to transfer data as long as the maps are published by the same author.

(Mak) - As well, why is it so buggy? It crashes a LOT, and if it doesn't crash, the maps created make SC2 crash.

Please file bug reports for reproducible crashes. Fixing these type of issues is very important to us.

(Tyde) - Is there a way to change the requirements of an ability with triggers? Say the Overlord's Generate Creep ability?

You can't change the requirements directly, but you could create a separate ability and control which was shown on the command card. Requirements have both a Show and Use section, allowing you to set up different conditions for whether it's shown and whether it can be used.

1. 1 comment

Popularity Listing, SCCAP, Diablo Movement, Dustin Browder, Fan Arts

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.

1. 4 comments

Popularity List, Structure Placement, City Sky, Corsair Reaver

Glomby is getting a moment of fame! His video of a World of Warcraft-like terrain is being featured by many websites including Blizzard (Starcraft Facebook / Twitter, Warcraft Facebook / Twitter, Escapist Magazine and Kotaku). The video already has 150k views :) Congratz

Combined Popularity List by Gimpexe

Gimpexe started a nice forum post where regularly people will post the popularity listing on the various regions. This will let you see what are the maps played around the world :)

Simulated Structure Placement by Trylobot

Trylobot is working on Mock Battle a Unit Tester map and wanted to let the player make buildings using custom dialogs. Therefore he had to rewrite the whole structure placement algorithm using many tricks. For example since you can't get the mouse position, he found a workaround by using a camera trigger to keep the mouse centered. This is an impressive work!

City in the Sky (With Diamonds) by acidragoon

The lighting editor is a new addition of the editor and so far has only been used to make dark maps. acidragoon found out that it's possible to use it to make a "City in the Sky" effect.

Corsair and Reaver Models by mParfait and UltiDrgn

Yesterday I told you great models were on the way! Here are two units that didn't make through the final game recreated by mParfait and UltiDrgn: the Corsair and Reaver.

Infested Arena Commentary by ApolloStarcaft

Another great game commentary by ApolloStarcaft on the map Infested Arena.

1. 1 comment