The current developers of the Star Battle arcade mod in EU and NA are too busy to make updates and the game is withering. No updates have been made on NA since prior to March of this year. A developer in the Chinese community has also been semi-helpful. However, I am unable to upload a working copy of the game that I can develop in order to be a properly active developer. The EU, NA, and CN developers have been stubbornly and selfishly reticent to allow others to develop. They have not sent a working copy of the .SC2Map file, and the game is stagnant. I have provided a lot of suggestions for development, and many are popularly supported in the community -- but the developers do not have time to update and, basically, never update the game. I have a copy of the .SC2Map file that works when I test it on my local drive, but when I upload it on Battle.net, the hero selector does not load, no units spawn, and I get a fog-of-war'd background.
I am looking for developers who might be able to provide key assistance to tackle this issue, so that I am able to upload a working version and develop the map.
I doubt this is a very good idea. If the main creators do not want to share the map, why would they allow you to publish their map again with your name on it? It's kind of sad sometimes that mapmakers tends to stall in the development at some point in time, even with new ideas and interested people.
I'm currently in that situation where the 1st place rock the cabinet winner of 2014 Star Party is hanging forever. I'm pretty much the only one out of four mapmakers that truly wants it to continue. Another guy could help me if I push him a bit but he won't get working back on the map by himself. As of me, I lack time and I have other project with higher priority like helping out DrSuperEvil with setting up the wiki. The map used to be awesome and played alot, even been in top 10 back in the days, now it's a buggy map barely some people remember. But man, is it awesome and internally we have an updated version (that still need polishing) with new minigames and stuff that are probably the best minigame in the whole map.
So... this is it, in your case, if they don't want to, maybe you should respect that. If someone came up to me saying they want to continue StarParty, I'd be open for discussions, but would definitly be carefull with who I share the map.
The NA map developer doesn't want to because he is lazy. He hasn't done significant development work on the map for over two years. The loading screen has been stagnant with no updates for over a year. I have offered to help but he refuses out of spite due to a previous conflict he and I had during a tournament. It is very petty.
The CN map developer said he would upload a working .SC2Map file pointing to the .SC2Mod file that I develop, but then he did not follow through on his word and nothing has been done.
The game is stagnant because the NA developer is inactive and doesn't care about the development of the game, the EU developer has said he will no longer do development work, and the CN developer does not take any advice from the NA community on the NA version. He just releases whatever he wants and nobody plays his version (Star Battle Legacies). Everybody plays Star Battle X, because it is the best working version, but it has not been updated in over two years.
I am working to get Star Battle Legacies finished -- four new ships were introduced that still need polishing in terms of skill trees and abilities. The current layout of the hero ships is very weak. The CN developer refuses to take my advice because he thinks they are balanced, but older players in the NA community do not want to play the map because we all see the same flaws that the CN developer refuses to see. The CN community even uploaded a copy of Star Battle X and played a tournament on it, behind the CN developer's back and in spite of him.
So... if someone can help me to get control of working map files for this Arcade mod, it would be very helpful and the entire community would very much appreciate it and benefit.
Where did you get the .SC2Map file? Just trying to figure out why it might not be working. And which version are you talking about? When I do a search on the arcade there's like 9 different versions.
Quick recap about Star Battle for these unaware about state of the game:
The original map developer (@zedu) abandoned project years ago (around 2014). Since then many community forks appeared.
To my knowledge @zedu didin't pass original map files to anyone, thus none of these forks can be considered official. They all pulled map files from bnet. Aside from that the main map file had obfuscated map script (deeply obfuscated, not the light version sc2 editor generates) - without Triggers scheme. Thus they struggled to edit game beyond Data section. Luckly though, some of the game code was in dependency mods which were untouched (publshed as "unlocked" to arcade).
Anyway, problem was that every author of that fork had its own vision on the game and its balance. What leaded to conflicts and final split of the community. Where both EU and NA had it's own game copy. And were developed independently.
(There were also minor forks, from other people. But they did not get much attention.)
EU dev gave up on it very quickly. Even though his version is still the one being played the most on EU (Star Battle 3.1).
Then we have NA.. their dev team had one guy which was preparing complete overhaul of game mechanics (could call it 4.0) for several months, where he finally gave up because community explicitly said it was not what they wanted.
This was around 2016, where I stopped folling it.
I seriously wonder if it is even worth to attempt ressurecting this game at this point. Given the fact that community is not known to be very friendly.
I'm somewhat familiar with Star Battle code, thus I'm capable of helping you. But since you show the attude of "Hey, come and do *this* thing for me", instead of "Hey, here's my problem and neccesery details. Help me solve it." I don't know if it's worth it. It might very likely end up being just another dead fork no one plays.
Do you have any communnity representatives supporting your endeavor? Where is community settled now? Since every SB forum I've used to visit is now dead.
As to your problem.. because you didn't provide necessary details, I can only guess. So here it is:
Does your map you have Trigger Scheme file? (When you go to the Triggers section is it all blank?)
If it is blank, go to editor options, and check if you've enabled option "Obfsucare map script file" (I think it's in the Publishing tab).
If the above is correct, then upon publishing editor attempts to obfuscate the map script, but fails to do so, because the original triggers scheme is not present. And you end up with blank MapScript.galaxy file, which had overriden previous version that contained all core code needed for map too intialize properly.
The current developers of the Star Battle arcade mod in EU and NA are too busy to make updates and the game is withering. No updates have been made on NA since prior to March of this year. A developer in the Chinese community has also been semi-helpful. However, I am unable to upload a working copy of the game that I can develop in order to be a properly active developer. The EU, NA, and CN developers have been stubbornly and selfishly reticent to allow others to develop. They have not sent a working copy of the .SC2Map file, and the game is stagnant. I have provided a lot of suggestions for development, and many are popularly supported in the community -- but the developers do not have time to update and, basically, never update the game. I have a copy of the .SC2Map file that works when I test it on my local drive, but when I upload it on Battle.net, the hero selector does not load, no units spawn, and I get a fog-of-war'd background.
I am looking for developers who might be able to provide key assistance to tackle this issue, so that I am able to upload a working version and develop the map.
E-mail me at [email protected] with interest.
I doubt this is a very good idea. If the main creators do not want to share the map, why would they allow you to publish their map again with your name on it? It's kind of sad sometimes that mapmakers tends to stall in the development at some point in time, even with new ideas and interested people.
I'm currently in that situation where the 1st place rock the cabinet winner of 2014 Star Party is hanging forever. I'm pretty much the only one out of four mapmakers that truly wants it to continue. Another guy could help me if I push him a bit but he won't get working back on the map by himself. As of me, I lack time and I have other project with higher priority like helping out DrSuperEvil with setting up the wiki. The map used to be awesome and played alot, even been in top 10 back in the days, now it's a buggy map barely some people remember. But man, is it awesome and internally we have an updated version (that still need polishing) with new minigames and stuff that are probably the best minigame in the whole map.
So... this is it, in your case, if they don't want to, maybe you should respect that. If someone came up to me saying they want to continue StarParty, I'd be open for discussions, but would definitly be carefull with who I share the map.
Working on projects:
The NA map developer doesn't want to because he is lazy. He hasn't done significant development work on the map for over two years. The loading screen has been stagnant with no updates for over a year. I have offered to help but he refuses out of spite due to a previous conflict he and I had during a tournament. It is very petty.
The CN map developer said he would upload a working .SC2Map file pointing to the .SC2Mod file that I develop, but then he did not follow through on his word and nothing has been done.
The game is stagnant because the NA developer is inactive and doesn't care about the development of the game, the EU developer has said he will no longer do development work, and the CN developer does not take any advice from the NA community on the NA version. He just releases whatever he wants and nobody plays his version (Star Battle Legacies). Everybody plays Star Battle X, because it is the best working version, but it has not been updated in over two years.
I am working to get Star Battle Legacies finished -- four new ships were introduced that still need polishing in terms of skill trees and abilities. The current layout of the hero ships is very weak. The CN developer refuses to take my advice because he thinks they are balanced, but older players in the NA community do not want to play the map because we all see the same flaws that the CN developer refuses to see. The CN community even uploaded a copy of Star Battle X and played a tournament on it, behind the CN developer's back and in spite of him.
So... if someone can help me to get control of working map files for this Arcade mod, it would be very helpful and the entire community would very much appreciate it and benefit.
Where did you get the .SC2Map file? Just trying to figure out why it might not be working. And which version are you talking about? When I do a search on the arcade there's like 9 different versions.
Previously known as: SomeoneTookMyNameTT