I just have to say that all members of all sides of this conversation are horribly butchering the actual meaning of words and thus creating silly posts and superfluous arguments simply because you're saying the same thing without realizing it.
Mapping/Campaigning
When you are Mapping, you're creating a setting that is NOT transferrable. This usually means the physical placement of assets and what have you on a map. Campaigning is exactly the same but relates to the story driven aspects of the map. While plots are easily transferrable, they MUST be adapted in order to fit the new setting.
Modding
When you are modding, you are not creating a Map or Campaign. You're creating a ruleset, engine, assets etc. The objects that can interact inside a map or campaign. Many of the people arguing in here seem to think that Modding requires you to alter Blizzard's MPQ files. This is entirely false. When you create a Mod through the Editor it creates a new MPQ file for you. In fact, everything you make gets its own MPQ file. This means the idea that you can only create a Mod outside of the Editor is also completely false because Blizzard has done an amazing job supporting Modding.
If you like the editor you use the Trigger and Data UIs to create content. If you're code savvy you can certainly create custom material outside of the editor using XML or Galaxy. As long as you are creating a NEW file and not messing with Blizzard's MPQs you're not doing anything illegal and its business as usual.
There is a general misunderstanding that the map upload limit applies to mods as well. This isn't true. While a map has a limit on the number of dependencies (mods) it can have, you can actually apply dependencies to those dependencies. This means you can chain mods together to create as many alterations as you need. Each of the mods can now fit under the size limit and you have an infinitely large game.
Now it is unknown if there is a hard limit to this given that nobody has tried (mostly due to lack of knowledge), but there ARE many projects (that I have seen first hand) that are running online (privately during testing) with massive art mods engine mods and [insertwhateveryouneed] mods that are chained together and working wonderfully on Battle.Net.
Conversion
Most of you who think that the Editor can't mod are actually talking about conversions: replacing the vast majority of content in Blizzard's dependencies. It is ENTIRELY possible to completely replace Blizzard dependencies in so far as you don't change the actual coding of the game. That means that if you are willing to put for the effort. Just take a look in the Project thread. There are several projects that are replacing large portions of the game already and anyone who wants to claim SC2 isn't modding is blind. Simply put, conversions are large-scale mods.
Hacking
All that remains is physically altering Blizzard's dependencies. This is where a lot of you are getting the most confused. The ones who are claiming SC2 Modding doesn't exist are actually talking about hacking. SC1 Modding wasn't modding. . . it was hacking.
The defining feature of hacking is that you aren't adding to (modding) or replacing (conversion) parts of the game, you're removing or changing them. Changes made through hacking are internal rather than external. What you believe to be new restrictions on modding in SC2 is actually entirely false. SC1 was far more restrictive because all you could do was hack, map or campaign. SC2 is amazing flexible in that you can now tell the game to use something other than itself to function. Hacking is completely unnecessary.
If you think that Blizzard's decision to make this illegal is restrictive, then you're very confused. Hacking destabilizes the game in that you don't have a solid foundation to build on. It really doesn't matter how good you are, at the end of the day Blizzard can't expect any sort of reliability from your hacked MPQs.
Thus if you take a moment to really think about this, SC2 modding is vastly superior to SC1's custom environment in every way.
I just have to say that all members of all sides of this conversation are horribly butchering the actual meaning of words and thus creating silly posts and superfluous arguments simply because you're saying the same thing without realizing it.
Mapping/Campaigning
When you are Mapping, you're creating a setting that is NOT transferrable. This usually means the physical placement of assets and what have you on a map. Campaigning is exactly the same but relates to the story driven aspects of the map. While plots are easily transferrable, they MUST be adapted in order to fit the new setting.
Modding
When you are modding, you are not creating a Map or Campaign. You're creating a ruleset, engine, assets etc. The objects that can interact inside a map or campaign. Many of the people arguing in here seem to think that Modding requires you to alter Blizzard's MPQ files. This is entirely false. When you create a Mod through the Editor it creates a new MPQ file for you. In fact, everything you make gets its own MPQ file. This means the idea that you can only create a Mod outside of the Editor is also completely false because Blizzard has done an amazing job supporting Modding.
If you like the editor you use the Trigger and Data UIs to create content. If you're code savvy you can certainly create custom material outside of the editor using XML or Galaxy. As long as you are creating a NEW file and not messing with Blizzard's MPQs you're not doing anything illegal and its business as usual.
There is a general misunderstanding that the map upload limit applies to mods as well. This isn't true. While a map has a limit on the number of dependencies (mods) it can have, you can actually apply dependencies to those dependencies. This means you can chain mods together to create as many alterations as you need. Each of the mods can now fit under the size limit and you have an infinitely large game.
Now it is unknown if there is a hard limit to this given that nobody has tried (mostly due to lack of knowledge), but there ARE many projects (that I have seen first hand) that are running online (privately during testing) with massive art mods engine mods and [insertwhateveryouneed] mods that are chained together and working wonderfully on Battle.Net.
Conversion
Most of you who think that the Editor can't mod are actually talking about conversions: replacing the vast majority of content in Blizzard's dependencies. It is ENTIRELY possible to completely replace Blizzard dependencies in so far as you don't change the actual coding of the game. That means that if you are willing to put for the effort. Just take a look in the Project thread. There are several projects that are replacing large portions of the game already and anyone who wants to claim SC2 isn't modding is blind. Simply put, conversions are large-scale mods.
Hacking
All that remains is physically altering Blizzard's dependencies. This is where a lot of you are getting the most confused. The ones who are claiming SC2 Modding doesn't exist are actually talking about hacking. SC1 Modding wasn't modding. . . it was hacking.
The defining feature of hacking is that you aren't adding to (modding) or replacing (conversion) parts of the game, you're removing or changing them. Changes made through hacking are internal rather than external. What you believe to be new restrictions on modding in SC2 is actually entirely false. SC1 was far more restrictive because all you could do was hack, map or campaign. SC2 is amazing flexible in that you can now tell the game to use something other than itself to function. Hacking is completely unnecessary.
If you think that Blizzard's decision to make this illegal is restrictive, then you're very confused. Hacking destabilizes the game in that you don't have a solid foundation to build on. It really doesn't matter how good you are, at the end of the day Blizzard can't expect any sort of reliability from your hacked MPQs.
Thus if you take a moment to really think about this, SC2 modding is vastly superior to SC1's custom environment in every way.