Why do you even started talking about Unity when we were discussing editor's improvement? Oh, right, because it's an alternative game making engine, that's being improved 24/7, has comprefensive tutorial and builds no limits around the developer, cause he's free to code whatever he needs with fully functional modern object oriented language!
The key problem is not scripting and programming but assets
Unity's Asset Store is full of free or realy cheap assets of great quality and great range of styles. Also, standard practice for indies is to make a small team of coder + artist. We, mapmakers, got used to this kind of greenhouse where we have nice assets, but they limit us. Having an artist would open wide horizons.
Oh, and by the way, things went the way that I can now do all 2d and 3d art. Why? Because working in sc2 with its assets made me learn all that to avoid spamming shitty zealots and marines all around my maps as thousands other maps do.
Don't you feel this "but we have assets!" point is a bit weak weak?
And about the scale of games. The bigger game's scale, the more advantage Unity has. Because for big game one just spends a month or two on the architecture, and it feels like zero progress, just deep coding, but as soon as it's done, the progress raises with a speed of light, cause the whole initial engine fits the purpose. In sc2 a person of great plans is doomed to months of clicking on endless lists of data entries. Or, in worse case, spamming functions on galaxy. Or in worst case clicking on endless lists in trigger gui. If you don't mind I'd bring this allegory: feels like time spendings are proportional to map's complexity in editor, and to logarithm of game's complexity in unity.
So, the "unity is for cheap small arcade games" point can esily be disposed. I could bring my experience, compare development times, but I feel noob in Unity, and it's not convincing enough (even though it's already convincing).
Now about the player base. SC2 player base is ridiculously small if we compare it to, say, Google Play. NA server Arcade №1 map, Squad td, has 50k likes. Best games on Google Play has hundreds of millions downloads.
Maybe Storm will bring more players to Arcade, let's see.
@Zolden: Go
When i talked about people which could be interested in sc arcade i meant mostly students actualy. And i mentioned unity because you like to compare sc mapping with it time to time.
Now about the player base. SC2 player base is ridiculously small if we compare it to, say, Google Play. NA server Arcade №1 map, Squad td, has 50k likes. Best games on Google Play has hundreds of millions downloads.
However competition is much more fierce on Google Play as your unknown game has to face off against games with millions of downloads.
Also "likes" does not mean downloads. Not only is it separated by regions (so you are only seeing the likes for a single of the many BattleNet 2.0 regions) but also not everyone who downloads and plays a map will post a "like". You might find that the best SC2 arcade maps have reached near a million downloads.
The actual problem with SC2 is that PC gaming is pretty dead. Most casual gamers have either migrated to dedicated games consoles (Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One) or have given up serious gaming for casual gaming (Android, IOS or Windows Phone apps). As such the total available player pool is likely smaller than was the case of WC3. Do not get disheartened however since most of the players on WC3 at its prime were there for DotA Allstars and only DotA Allstars so never would play your maps anyway. SC2 would be a lot more popular if dedicated AoS games did not pull all the players (League of Legends HoN and DotA 2 and possibly soon Heroes of the Storm).
If all you care about is your game success metrics then give up SC2 modding now. Stand alone apps will not only have the potential to be more popular (especially if you over hype them or hit it lucky) but you can also even make money from them (SC2 has no revenue stream).
This raises a possible idea to encourage SC2 mapping. What if they could bring in advertisements into SC2 maps? Popular SC2 maps would thus generate some revenue both for Blizzard and for the developers. This revenue could be used to fund map development and so you might find a sharp increase in the number of user-made assets.
Quote:
Is the warcraft 3 % armor system also implemented ? I see its saying like 1 or 2 armor on a hero but not sure if its based on a percentage
The Warcraft III armor system is similar to the Diablo III armor and all resistances system. Each point of armor actually means "+X% EHP" when taking attack damage (abilities ignore armor). In Warcraft III this defaulted at 6% so a unit with 10 armor could take 60% more attack damage before dying compared to a unit with the same health and no armor. Warcraft III armor has no diminishing returns since the diminishing damage reduction gain is canceled out by the growing value of damage reduction. Warcraft III armor had a mechanical limit that it could not reduce damage below 1 point (before armor types and other scales) meaning that there was a practical limit to armors effectiveness.
SC2 does not natively support this sort of armor however using the data editor you can wire it in. Thanks to one of the patches they added the ability to customize the armor damage mechanics which in theory allows you to fully re-create the Warcraft III damage system for those units.
Personally I liked how Warcraft III armor scaled. The only problem was that the growth of both armor and health often resulted in impossible toughness values, not something good for gameplay (especially after attack speed capped at +400%, as until then you have double damage growth to cancel it out). If you are limiting attack speed to reasonable rates (recommened) you might also want to limit armor to reasonable numbers as well.
The problem with SC2's armor system is that it lacks scaleability. Outside of well designed simple tactical maps I would not recommend using it as any form of scaling (such as heroes with levels) will result in major balance issues.
WC3 styled armor can be used to differentiate different kinds of attacks to make them weaker or stronger against certain units. In WC3 a unit with a lot of armor would be hard to kill with weapon damage however abilities would be more effective as they ignored armor. On the other hand a unit with low armor but a lot of health would require a lot of hits from abilities but would fall fairly quickly to normal attacks. Unless you plan to take advantage of such mechanics you might want to consider ignoring armor completely and instead use inflating health (how Heroes of the Storm does it) to increase toughness.
Great, when I first saw I thought only the heroes were released. Nice to see whole terrains. Unfortunately, that means Blizzard are not willing to make a new Warcraft official game, only - do it yourself.
This deserves as much, if not more attention than model release - this is a fabulous mod (3 mods) with all the abilities/items and other proper things that everyone hoped to get with this pack. It isn't completely foolproof, but it's a delight to have Renee share it unconditionally, thank you so very much! Being the lazy bum that I am I can't imagine having anything done in timely manner without it.
Search for "war3" under "Map/Mod Name". For "war3 Extra (GA)", which contains abilities I had to create a "WarCraft" folder in PTR mods folder and drop there "War 3(GA)" which had to be renamed to "WarCraft.SC2Mod" (it pretty much told me to do so).
Amazing work Renee, all of the hearts go to you <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
This deserves as much, if not more attention than model release - this is a fabulous mod (3 mods) with all the abilities/items and other proper things that everyone hoped to get with this pack. It isn't completely foolproof, but it's a delight to have Renee share it unconditionally, thank you so very much! Being the lazy bum that I am I can't imagine having anything done in timely manner without it.
Search for "war3" under "Map/Mod Name". For "war3 Extra (GA)", which contains abilities I had to create a "WarCraft" folder in PTR mods folder and drop there "War 3(GA)" which had to be renamed to "WarCraft.SC2Mod" (it pretty much told me to do so).
Amazing work Renee, all of the hearts go to you <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
Completely agreed. I've been testing out the PTR mod and it's surprising at how close it is to being exactly what all of us war3 fans are looking for.
Let me take a moment to express my love for this Mod, outstanding work and taking all the thunder for this Ptr crazy mod. Thank you Renee. Thank you for taking your time and effort to bring this to us.
Amazing work Renee, all of the hearts go to you <3<3<3<3<3<3<3
okay i got it working. So i loaded up the war3 asset and the war3 data mod dependency.
Is the warcraft 3 % armor system also implemented ? I see its saying like 1 or 2 armor on a hero but not sure if its based on a percentage
@abvdzh: Go
Why do you even started talking about Unity when we were discussing editor's improvement? Oh, right, because it's an alternative game making engine, that's being improved 24/7, has comprefensive tutorial and builds no limits around the developer, cause he's free to code whatever he needs with fully functional modern object oriented language!
Unity's Asset Store is full of free or realy cheap assets of great quality and great range of styles. Also, standard practice for indies is to make a small team of coder + artist. We, mapmakers, got used to this kind of greenhouse where we have nice assets, but they limit us. Having an artist would open wide horizons.
Oh, and by the way, things went the way that I can now do all 2d and 3d art. Why? Because working in sc2 with its assets made me learn all that to avoid spamming shitty zealots and marines all around my maps as thousands other maps do.
Don't you feel this "but we have assets!" point is a bit weak weak?
And about the scale of games. The bigger game's scale, the more advantage Unity has. Because for big game one just spends a month or two on the architecture, and it feels like zero progress, just deep coding, but as soon as it's done, the progress raises with a speed of light, cause the whole initial engine fits the purpose. In sc2 a person of great plans is doomed to months of clicking on endless lists of data entries. Or, in worse case, spamming functions on galaxy. Or in worst case clicking on endless lists in trigger gui. If you don't mind I'd bring this allegory: feels like time spendings are proportional to map's complexity in editor, and to logarithm of game's complexity in unity.
So, the "unity is for cheap small arcade games" point can esily be disposed. I could bring my experience, compare development times, but I feel noob in Unity, and it's not convincing enough (even though it's already convincing).
Now about the player base. SC2 player base is ridiculously small if we compare it to, say, Google Play. NA server Arcade №1 map, Squad td, has 50k likes. Best games on Google Play has hundreds of millions downloads.
Maybe Storm will bring more players to Arcade, let's see.
@Zolden: Go When i talked about people which could be interested in sc arcade i meant mostly students actualy. And i mentioned unity because you like to compare sc mapping with it time to time.
However competition is much more fierce on Google Play as your unknown game has to face off against games with millions of downloads.
Also "likes" does not mean downloads. Not only is it separated by regions (so you are only seeing the likes for a single of the many BattleNet 2.0 regions) but also not everyone who downloads and plays a map will post a "like". You might find that the best SC2 arcade maps have reached near a million downloads.
The actual problem with SC2 is that PC gaming is pretty dead. Most casual gamers have either migrated to dedicated games consoles (Wii U, PS4 or Xbox One) or have given up serious gaming for casual gaming (Android, IOS or Windows Phone apps). As such the total available player pool is likely smaller than was the case of WC3. Do not get disheartened however since most of the players on WC3 at its prime were there for DotA Allstars and only DotA Allstars so never would play your maps anyway. SC2 would be a lot more popular if dedicated AoS games did not pull all the players (League of Legends HoN and DotA 2 and possibly soon Heroes of the Storm).
If all you care about is your game success metrics then give up SC2 modding now. Stand alone apps will not only have the potential to be more popular (especially if you over hype them or hit it lucky) but you can also even make money from them (SC2 has no revenue stream).
This raises a possible idea to encourage SC2 mapping. What if they could bring in advertisements into SC2 maps? Popular SC2 maps would thus generate some revenue both for Blizzard and for the developers. This revenue could be used to fund map development and so you might find a sharp increase in the number of user-made assets.
The Warcraft III armor system is similar to the Diablo III armor and all resistances system. Each point of armor actually means "+X% EHP" when taking attack damage (abilities ignore armor). In Warcraft III this defaulted at 6% so a unit with 10 armor could take 60% more attack damage before dying compared to a unit with the same health and no armor. Warcraft III armor has no diminishing returns since the diminishing damage reduction gain is canceled out by the growing value of damage reduction. Warcraft III armor had a mechanical limit that it could not reduce damage below 1 point (before armor types and other scales) meaning that there was a practical limit to armors effectiveness.
SC2 does not natively support this sort of armor however using the data editor you can wire it in. Thanks to one of the patches they added the ability to customize the armor damage mechanics which in theory allows you to fully re-create the Warcraft III damage system for those units.
Personally I liked how Warcraft III armor scaled. The only problem was that the growth of both armor and health often resulted in impossible toughness values, not something good for gameplay (especially after attack speed capped at +400%, as until then you have double damage growth to cancel it out). If you are limiting attack speed to reasonable rates (recommened) you might also want to limit armor to reasonable numbers as well.
The problem with SC2's armor system is that it lacks scaleability. Outside of well designed simple tactical maps I would not recommend using it as any form of scaling (such as heroes with levels) will result in major balance issues.
WC3 styled armor can be used to differentiate different kinds of attacks to make them weaker or stronger against certain units. In WC3 a unit with a lot of armor would be hard to kill with weapon damage however abilities would be more effective as they ignored armor. On the other hand a unit with low armor but a lot of health would require a lot of hits from abilities but would fall fairly quickly to normal attacks. Unless you plan to take advantage of such mechanics you might want to consider ignoring armor completely and instead use inflating health (how Heroes of the Storm does it) to increase toughness.
Correction. 2 months is what we are looking at right now. More time for awesomeness!
@Traysent: Go
Thank you! Fixing the race selection would allow us to create a lot of fun mods. (Would be lovely if we could have Blight along with Creep as well)
Great, when I first saw I thought only the heroes were released. Nice to see whole terrains. Unfortunately, that means Blizzard are not willing to make a new Warcraft official game, only - do it yourself.
@Traysent: Go
Great news, 2 months is a good amount.
This deserves as much, if not more attention than model release - this is a fabulous mod (3 mods) with all the abilities/items and other proper things that everyone hoped to get with this pack. It isn't completely foolproof, but it's a delight to have Renee share it unconditionally, thank you so very much! Being the lazy bum that I am I can't imagine having anything done in timely manner without it.
Search for "war3" under "Map/Mod Name". For "war3 Extra (GA)", which contains abilities I had to create a "WarCraft" folder in PTR mods folder and drop there "War 3(GA)" which had to be renamed to "WarCraft.SC2Mod" (it pretty much told me to do so).
Amazing work Renee, all of the hearts go to you <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
Completely agreed. I've been testing out the PTR mod and it's surprising at how close it is to being exactly what all of us war3 fans are looking for.
Let me take a moment to express my love for this Mod, outstanding work and taking all the thunder for this Ptr crazy mod. Thank you Renee. Thank you for taking your time and effort to bring this to us.
Amazing work Renee, all of the hearts go to you <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3
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Well, it would still needs lots bug fixes and testing.
Since it's actually the first time I was ever able to publish and test it.
I dont see it in assets.
anybody else getting difficulty in entering "war3 Extra (GA)" ?
It says, dependancy data could not be loaded, then it goes on to say Dependencey file could not be found (mods\warcraft\warcraft.sc2mod)
Create a folder named Warcraft under Mods\, and put War3 (GA) into it and rename to warcraft.sc2mod
thing is, how do you download War3 Extra GA if we got a error message? we cant download it so cant rename it
That's two different mods. War3 Extra GA depended on War3 GA. And War3 GA don't have external dependency.
You can download War3 GA directly. And put it to your mod fold, then download War3 Extra GA.
DuckyTheDuck already said that on #68
i got it, nvm! thx you, nice work wow!
Renee, is that normal every abilities you made not working? or maybe its only some heroes...looking at this
Play that map before you say that.
I don't know if I am dumb or blind but I for the life of me cannot find the PTR editor to test out these assets =/