Now that I finally have a mediocre gaming computer (as opposed to a no-video card winXp laptop), I finally started learning the map editor. So far the experience is great; the learning curve is not too steep and the work effort is reduced tremendously compared to sc1. Unlike everyone else here, I didn't play around with worldedit that much. Even with the purchased tft game, I still ended up logging into my SC1 account. I should've appreciated wc3 editing earlier lol( I just love playing Starcraft =D). As I work on the Galaxy editor, I keep thinking about the unnecessary tedious tasks made in sc1 editing. Starcraft: Broodwar editor wasn't even considered to be a custom map maker; it was simply a basic melee level editor. Mappers from sc1 had to come up with alternative ways to create out-of-the-box Actions and Conditions.
Editing situations I can say goodbye too:
1. Having 'fire only once' in 99% of all triggers: Lets say I want to give players 50 minerals, or spawn a unit. Without the fire only once trigger, players will get an overflow of minerals and players would
2. Having to deal with map system lagness: Triggers would fire at incorrect! sc1 mappers had to initially install a system so that you can control the triggers timing. Then you had to install another set of triggers on top of each trigger that corresponds to the system (death counts).
3. EUDS: There wasn't much you can edit on sc1. mappers would have creative 3rd party tools just modify the memory of the game. Now theres something called Data editor. Grr!
4. Mobile grids: This complicated triggering system had at least over 100 triggers. It was used to act like spells like in any DotA maps.
5. A few Actions: Back in sc1, we had to use the "spawn unit" action in many creative ways to indirectly fire many other different actions. Nowadays, there is over 9000 actions that can do pretty much anything you can come up with.
6. No Ai: it didn't exist in bw. the only ai action we had was "attack here" and "make drones,probes,scv mine minerals and make a basic base".
7. No variables: we only had things called switches.
One of my maps required Ai units to perform player-like actions. One example was the Siege Tank properly assaulting a base. I needed it to attack a base while sieging and unsieging and retreating when there are many enemy units. On the Galaxy, all i have to do is put a few actions but in SC1, thats a different story. >.<
Here is what I had to do:
a. Install the DC (to correct the map trigger lagness)
b. Setup an internal countdown timer
c. Make the tank move at a specific time in attack mode corresponding to the internal countdown timer
d. Right after c, I have to instantaneously give the tank to Player 0 and back to original player so that the attack mode won't continually fire (or else the attack mode trigger will act like a move-and-not-attack trigger).
e. Setup a region to follow the tank and have at least 10 regions on standby for other tanks in the field.
f. setup static region zones that cover the entire map that are as big as the range of a tank in siege mode. I had 50 of them.
g. Setup sets of situational triggers.
g-a. if there is a tank in a zone and no players in it, do steps bcd
g-b. if there is a tank in a zone with at least 1 enemy player, remove unit and replace it with a sieged tank right on top of the original tank.
g-b-a. Install another timer on this so that the trigger will fire right after the tank is remove otherwise, the tank won't get deleted.
g-c. if there is a siege tank and no players in it, replace it back to the regular tank, follow bcd
h. make a separate set of triggers for each of the 50 zones i had
I had over 300 per player. There were six players so 1800 total for tanks. That is only for tanks! I had to create a similar system for Lurkers. 1800 total for lurkers. There is one thing that was great about the 3rd party tools of sc1, one of them had Script so most of the triggering I typed it and copied paste spam on notepad.
Back to map editing...
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Now that I finally have a mediocre gaming computer (as opposed to a no-video card winXp laptop), I finally started learning the map editor. So far the experience is great; the learning curve is not too steep and the work effort is reduced tremendously compared to sc1. Unlike everyone else here, I didn't play around with worldedit that much. Even with the purchased tft game, I still ended up logging into my SC1 account. I should've appreciated wc3 editing earlier lol( I just love playing Starcraft =D). As I work on the Galaxy editor, I keep thinking about the unnecessary tedious tasks made in sc1 editing. Starcraft: Broodwar editor wasn't even considered to be a custom map maker; it was simply a basic melee level editor. Mappers from sc1 had to come up with alternative ways to create out-of-the-box Actions and Conditions.
Editing situations I can say goodbye too:
1. Having 'fire only once' in 99% of all triggers: Lets say I want to give players 50 minerals, or spawn a unit. Without the fire only once trigger, players will get an overflow of minerals and players would
2. Having to deal with map system lagness: Triggers would fire at incorrect! sc1 mappers had to initially install a system so that you can control the triggers timing. Then you had to install another set of triggers on top of each trigger that corresponds to the system (death counts).
3. EUDS: There wasn't much you can edit on sc1. mappers would have creative 3rd party tools just modify the memory of the game. Now theres something called Data editor. Grr!
4. Mobile grids: This complicated triggering system had at least over 100 triggers. It was used to act like spells like in any DotA maps.
5. A few Actions: Back in sc1, we had to use the "spawn unit" action in many creative ways to indirectly fire many other different actions. Nowadays, there is over 9000 actions that can do pretty much anything you can come up with.
6. No Ai: it didn't exist in bw. the only ai action we had was "attack here" and "make drones,probes,scv mine minerals and make a basic base".
7. No variables: we only had things called switches.
One of my maps required Ai units to perform player-like actions. One example was the Siege Tank properly assaulting a base. I needed it to attack a base while sieging and unsieging and retreating when there are many enemy units. On the Galaxy, all i have to do is put a few actions but in SC1, thats a different story. >.<
Here is what I had to do:
a. Install the DC (to correct the map trigger lagness)
b. Setup an internal countdown timer
c. Make the tank move at a specific time in attack mode corresponding to the internal countdown timer
d. Right after c, I have to instantaneously give the tank to Player 0 and back to original player so that the attack mode won't continually fire (or else the attack mode trigger will act like a move-and-not-attack trigger).
e. Setup a region to follow the tank and have at least 10 regions on standby for other tanks in the field.
f. setup static region zones that cover the entire map that are as big as the range of a tank in siege mode. I had 50 of them.
g. Setup sets of situational triggers.
g-a. if there is a tank in a zone and no players in it, do steps bcd
g-b. if there is a tank in a zone with at least 1 enemy player, remove unit and replace it with a sieged tank right on top of the original tank.
g-b-a. Install another timer on this so that the trigger will fire right after the tank is remove otherwise, the tank won't get deleted.
g-c. if there is a siege tank and no players in it, replace it back to the regular tank, follow bcd
h. make a separate set of triggers for each of the 50 zones i had
I had over 300 per player. There were six players so 1800 total for tanks. That is only for tanks! I had to create a similar system for Lurkers. 1800 total for lurkers. There is one thing that was great about the 3rd party tools of sc1, one of them had Script so most of the triggering I typed it and copied paste spam on notepad.
Back to map editing...