Versus TD & WoW2SC2

The Battle.net Invitational has been all over the BlizzCon Site these last few days. If you're up for watching some pro maps, check out the videos, commentated by Day9 and JP. Maybe this will give some of you guys a little encouragement into making some Melee maps that could potentially be used by the pros in these kinds of tournaments.

Versus TD Tutorial by OneTwo

This is what I believe to be the longest tutorial in the history of tutorials, and it covers the following...

• 4 players, split onto 2 sides, competing to last the longest.
• Mobs will spawn continuously on a timer.
• Players can choose between 2 races (choose in a dialog at the start).
• One tower for each race (yeah, just one for each... but you can easily keep duplicating).
• Fully working leaderboard
• Player-leaves-game trigger
• Anti-block
• Tower selling
• Few more minor things too.

Convert .WMO files to .M3 by Saeris

This tutorial covers how to convert .WMO Files to .M3, which means that we can now grab most, if not all, of the buildings used in WoW, within SC2. Previously, all the models we have been using to do so have been the .M2 files that were automatically converted by the WoW Model Viewer, which somewhat restricted us.

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Vote, DOTA, Fractalisk, Battlecruiser, Fanart

Blizzard has started to reserve their map name. Mephs was informed to change his map Left 2 Die's name before Friday, or else the name will be taken.

Legacy Melee Remake - Votes

The Legacy Remake Contest is now over and there are 18 great entries. You can download all the entries to test it out with a computer.

You have 5 days to vote :)

DOTA Hero Selection Interface by progammer

Right after Blizzard showing their DOTA idea map, progammer had recreated the UI interface and turn it into a model previewer :)

The Fractalisk by Mephs

Here is one crazy unit made entirely with the Data Editor, possibly inspired by Blizzcon's custom unit showcase

Battlecruiser Operational by Suhnder

There are many great entries entered the Blizzcon Movie Contest but not all of them can win. If you have one, feel free to share it on mapster. Here's an epic action scene happened on Char

Fan Arts

Blizzard updated the fan arts section with another 3 artwork for Starcraft

Blue Posts

Another new round of blue answers is up :) Blue poster now have their own avatar.

Quote:

Q. (Aratar) - I can't seem to stop a tank's turret from doing its idle turning animation. I've tried removing the "fidget" property from the tank's owner and from the unit itself (Set Unit State). I also tried clearing its animations and stopping baseline animations... it's still spinning its turret! :O Same goes for Missle Turrets or Auto-Turrets.

A. You can control the idle animation for turrets by modifying the Fidget field for the Turrets data type. This is separate from the Fidget field for the Unit data type.

Q. (Aratar) - Is there any way to use data objects (like images, sounds) from a mod in a map that has that mod set as dependency? I can see the objects in the editor, but once I run my map, the objects aren't there (images don't display, sounds don't play)

A. We're currently researching this issue. Maps should be able to use assets that have been imported into a custom mod dependency.

Q. (Aratar) - How do I make portraits move their lips in transmissions? The "talk" animation just makes them shake their heads. Is it possible to make the lips move in sync with the subtitles?

A. You can set up facial animations in Sound data with the Facial Animation and Facial Group fields. These refer to animations available from a .fxa file which is specified in Model data with the Facial Controller field. The easiest way to pick facial animations is to open the Previewer, add a portrait model, and right-click the portrait model tree view item to Add Facial Layer. Then you can right click the facial layer to view which facial animations are available. Once the data is set up, your portrait will play the facial animation when you send a transmission using that model and sound.

Q. (Aratar) - When I make a UI dialog and then put a portrait inside it, the portrait is underneath the whole dialog frame... how do i make the portrait render on top of it? The "Set Portrait Channel" function seems to be the answer, but it's not doing anything :(

A. You should be able to fix this by calling the Set Portrait Render Type trigger to render the portrait in the LDR pass. The game UI is rendered in two passes. HDR is rendered first which generally includes all 3D elements (world, console, portraits). LDR is then rendered on top of that, which contains all of the 2D controls like the dialogs you can create through triggers. Changing the portrait to LDR will allow it to render on top of the dialogs but you will lose certain effects only available in HDR

Q. (Aratar) - Some doodads have different textures based on the tileset that used. Is it possible to switch their textures somehow? Example: Rock doodads - I'd like to use their Char texture on the Mar Sara tileset (along with using the normal mar sara rock textures)

A. To swap an Actor's textures to a specific tileset you can send the Texture Group Apply message in response to the Actor Creation event. What’s happening here is that Rocks have their Model data entry configured to automatically change their textures in response to the application and removal of various “texture props”. This behavior is turned on by having at least one item the Texture Declarations field. Each tileset has a prop associated with it such that any model with textures declared will automatically use the correct textures for that tileset.

Whenever a Model Actor sets its model (during initialization or a model swap), it internally sets the tileset prop with what the map specifies. But you can override the prop with the Texture Group Apply message to customize individual models however you want. Tileset props overwrite each other, so if the map sets the tileset prop to “aiur” and you specify “char”, then aiur gets replaced with char. The texture props for any given texture are based off a combination of any texture prop names found in the texture file's name and any additional data configured in the Model or Texture catalogs. You can link a texture file to any set of texture props by adding TextureDeclares for the model or by adding entries to the Texture catalog.

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Ventrilo, Tournament, Haunted, FPS Engine, Legends

Mapster Ventrilo by iMisu

I would like to thanks iMisu for setting up a ventrilo server that everyone in mapster can use. Come on and talk with fellow map makers :)

Garden of Aiur Tournament

GardenOfAiur has been an active member making various great maps and artworks and in order to promote his blog he decided to launch a Starcraft 2 tournament. You may wonder why I news it, it's because he is going to make show off matches on custom games during the breaks. So if you want to participate and win up to $300, you know what to do :)

Haunted Temple by Bounty_98

I newsed the map recently Haunted Temple. It was played in the latest Custom Live and was reviewed by DarkRevenantX. Bounty_98 took many of your feedbacks and improved the map accordingly. He releases a new video to show us the latest version :)

FPS Engine by BacklitAvenger

Making a FPS takes a good amount of time and basically it's always the same thing. You have to make a WASD movement system and a traceline. Instead of doing it from scratch all over again, BacklitAvenger released a FPS engine free to use :) Your feedback is welcome!

Legends by Cedergren Productions

Blizzard games are not only great games but inspiring people to make great things. All your work on Starcraft 2 is really awesome and I want to feature today a World of Warcraft related work. It's a one hour machinima called Legends by Cedergren Productions. And, this is only the first of a serie! If you have the time, please watch it :)

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