You should always know your "competition", or even just other popular maps to know what the community is playing and what they are seeking to play.
That is it, it is finding the hard balance point between "pro" and "casual"; kind of like Starcraft II with Blizzard's infamous saying ... easy to learn, impossible to master. With Tofu we reduced the curve a shitload compared to Dota, but I believe that advanced tactics such as timing and combos will still allow pros to exist ... cause as you said, just reading the tooltips puts you above most players. I can introduce all the tutorial systems I want but if someone doesn't read them (or listen to them) then it is a waste of my time to introduce them.
The project is actually very very close to being released as an open beta, we are just finishing up the custom art ... ability icons, item icons etc ... it actually takes quite a long time to do, because you need to get everything matching right and looking good. At the same time the reason we "waste" so much time polishing is because we only get one chance at a first impression. Dryeyece and I have been playing it for months, even Sixen and Prozaic amongst others got in on the action back in July - October during the first round of closed beta, in which we tested all the code. So the basic "game" is finished, its just adding all the little things, aka, polishing it up.
There are no tutorials that exist that covers the work that has been done on Tofu ... I havn't had a chance to write those ones yet, but the UI tutorials above all else are what I want to get out first because other people simply don't know how to do it. But yes, you are right in principle, hide the UI and create dialogs to replace them ... but even then you have to show certain UI frames and edit them through Sc2Styles files. I actually cut up alot of the Sc2 UI to make it work.
In regards to the lagginess of it; you have to think how to code an engine rather than a game ... Tofu has it's own engine that runs almost independently of Sc2 ... that is why we can control the lag, instead of having the life bars update say 32 times a second when their life actually changes, it is updated 10 times a second which reduces the lag by about 68%. There are certain things that are laggy - for instance the health/energy/shield bars on the portraitboards (the left/right hand side team/enemy boards) - but those are automatically turned off for games with more than 6 players (3v3) - this is not something that always existed ... this occured in the last patch when Blizzard updated the dialog system ... because we were having 6v6 before with no lag at all, and now, the lag starts with 7 people - even though the code was rewritten after I found the problem and I reduced the load by half (theoritically half of 12 people is 6 - so a 12 player game should have had the same lag as the old 6 player which didn't lag, but it still caused lag) ... so I put it down to something went wrong in the last patch with dialogs.
Custom UI is an incredibly easy undertaking suggested for the newest of mappers if they know what to do (ie - had tutorials), but sadly they do not have this level of tutorials yet ... and I feel bad as being the only one with this knowledge at the moment, and (ask dryeyece or prozaicmuze) it is on my top list of priorities after Tofu is finished to get this information released to the greater community. The reason I am waiting for Tofu to be released is because then they can see it in action, play around with it, and Tofu should spark a whole shitload of new intrest in map making.
Tofu's UI took 2 days to make (In Photoshop) and another 2 days to implement into the engine ... what is taking the long time is all the hero icons/item icons which I do not really include as part of the UI ... they are just bonuses I want to do. Working with custom UI images in dialogs is FAR FAR EASIER and FASTER than working with dialogs ... I will honestly write this tutorial very soon, you have my word, regardless what happens with me and this website.
Wc3 hero arenas were not really copied into Sc2 because of a lack of success in Wc3 ... they we extremely popular before Dota but then kind of quietly got pushed aside. The very closest you would have are the ones mentioned, Smashcraft and Tofu, but even then they are going to really not be anything like the ones you are talking about, simply because they have evolved the idea into a better format.
What is your Sc2 username and ID # ... and which server? I will add you up mate.
You should always know your "competition", or even just other popular maps to know what the community is playing and what they are seeking to play.
That is it, it is finding the hard balance point between "pro" and "casual"; kind of like Starcraft II with Blizzard's infamous saying ... easy to learn, impossible to master. With Tofu we reduced the curve a shitload compared to Dota, but I believe that advanced tactics such as timing and combos will still allow pros to exist ... cause as you said, just reading the tooltips puts you above most players. I can introduce all the tutorial systems I want but if someone doesn't read them (or listen to them) then it is a waste of my time to introduce them.
The project is actually very very close to being released as an open beta, we are just finishing up the custom art ... ability icons, item icons etc ... it actually takes quite a long time to do, because you need to get everything matching right and looking good. At the same time the reason we "waste" so much time polishing is because we only get one chance at a first impression. Dryeyece and I have been playing it for months, even Sixen and Prozaic amongst others got in on the action back in July - October during the first round of closed beta, in which we tested all the code. So the basic "game" is finished, its just adding all the little things, aka, polishing it up.
There are no tutorials that exist that covers the work that has been done on Tofu ... I havn't had a chance to write those ones yet, but the UI tutorials above all else are what I want to get out first because other people simply don't know how to do it. But yes, you are right in principle, hide the UI and create dialogs to replace them ... but even then you have to show certain UI frames and edit them through Sc2Styles files. I actually cut up alot of the Sc2 UI to make it work.
In regards to the lagginess of it; you have to think how to code an engine rather than a game ... Tofu has it's own engine that runs almost independently of Sc2 ... that is why we can control the lag, instead of having the life bars update say 32 times a second when their life actually changes, it is updated 10 times a second which reduces the lag by about 68%. There are certain things that are laggy - for instance the health/energy/shield bars on the portraitboards (the left/right hand side team/enemy boards) - but those are automatically turned off for games with more than 6 players (3v3) - this is not something that always existed ... this occured in the last patch when Blizzard updated the dialog system ... because we were having 6v6 before with no lag at all, and now, the lag starts with 7 people - even though the code was rewritten after I found the problem and I reduced the load by half (theoritically half of 12 people is 6 - so a 12 player game should have had the same lag as the old 6 player which didn't lag, but it still caused lag) ... so I put it down to something went wrong in the last patch with dialogs.
Custom UI is an incredibly easy undertaking suggested for the newest of mappers if they know what to do (ie - had tutorials), but sadly they do not have this level of tutorials yet ... and I feel bad as being the only one with this knowledge at the moment, and (ask dryeyece or prozaicmuze) it is on my top list of priorities after Tofu is finished to get this information released to the greater community. The reason I am waiting for Tofu to be released is because then they can see it in action, play around with it, and Tofu should spark a whole shitload of new intrest in map making.
Tofu's UI took 2 days to make (In Photoshop) and another 2 days to implement into the engine ... what is taking the long time is all the hero icons/item icons which I do not really include as part of the UI ... they are just bonuses I want to do. Working with custom UI images in dialogs is FAR FAR EASIER and FASTER than working with dialogs ... I will honestly write this tutorial very soon, you have my word, regardless what happens with me and this website.
Wc3 hero arenas were not really copied into Sc2 because of a lack of success in Wc3 ... they we extremely popular before Dota but then kind of quietly got pushed aside. The very closest you would have are the ones mentioned, Smashcraft and Tofu, but even then they are going to really not be anything like the ones you are talking about, simply because they have evolved the idea into a better format.
What is your Sc2 username and ID # ... and which server? I will add you up mate.
The most similar to what you are discribing would be Tofu and you are welcome to play that if you are on NA/SEA ... hit me up ...
Edit) To clarify a bit more for you; Tofu is more like an arcade hero arena, rather than the classic wc3 hero arena.