SC2Mapster

Hmmm I'd be interested how well it goes.
Maybe we'll get some people who'd post stuff there. And I think there would be a couple of people interested in music/sound effect production. Audio is really underestimated even though it has great effect on a games atmosphere.

I'm not doing that much with game audio, but I'm doing a bit of home recording. (mainly guitar-heavy music)

@DeepCover187: Go

You can adjust the camera following speed in the Data Editor. Create a new Camera based on your default Camera and change the values. It would also be advised to adjust the target smoothing to decrease acceleration times.

Then just change the Camera Data via Trigger when needed.

@Yaksmanofage: Go

There is a action that is called "Turn Camera Height Displacement On/Off" needs to be turned off. Then there also is the "Height Smoothing On/Off" Action. This also need to be turned off.

The problem with seeing you unit can only be solved with a FirstPersonArms model. The Controlling player has the normal Unit model hidden and can only see the FPS Arms model. The normal unit model needs to be displayed to the other players and the FPS arms need to be hidden from them. That's how real FPS games do it. It's also possible in sc2, but I bet you don't have a FPS arms model. For starters just hide the unit model for the controlling player.

Also I'd rather use the Follow Unit Group action for updating the camera's position. To disable the smoothing you have to set your camera up properly in the data editor. (There are some fields for target smoothing)

From what I've read UE4 will support these kind of physics, too. But they still need to show how good or bad they really are. Cry Engine is also impressive, but I somehow didn't like the SDK that much. I don't even know why.

The new features of the editor really look nice. Especially that you can make a change to the code and then immediatly continue to test the level. Currently you have to Compile and Cook your game (which can take some time) and then play with the changes you made in the classes.

When I read in an interview with epic developers that UE4 will make everything in UE3 look like shit, I didn't believe them ... but they were right.

@Tolkfan: Go

Yeah, that cutscene also gave me some hope. But for blizzard it's easy to just generate a *.fxa when they have the sound file. That's the selling point of FaceFX. I don't expect much from the cutscene editor in terms of animating objects, from what I've seen.

But when I see the animations in the trailer I can hardly think that they are generated by the game, but with FaceFX and put a more effort into tweaking them. (HOTS generally seems to have better art than WOL)

The facial animations in SC2 were done with a tool called FaceFX, a tool specifically designed for Facial Animations and Lip sync. It is a really expesive tool, but judging from the Games that use it, it seems to be industry standard like 3ds Max (which also is really expensive)

There is a free version for evaluation which can save files, but it has restricted functionality. (There is also a version of FaceFX professional included which doesn't allow you to save)

But you can still do facial animations in max, but they will be tied to your model and a specific animation of it

But there may be hope that the Art Tools could include some plugins. UDK comes with some FaceFX plugins for Max and Maya to create facial animations for UE3. So maybe The Art Tools will have a similar set of plugins designed for SC2

@Mexaprone: Go

That's not for Tablet PC's or whatever you want to call them. That's for Graphic Tables that you use for drawing Artwork, etc on the PC.

@Starscr3am: Go

You can load external animations from the *.m3a's into the model via script. If you even want facial animations to work you just have to make the unit say something using the Transmission Actions. If the Model has a *:fxa assigned to it the lips will move ingame and in the portrait (if you show it).

Most of the StoryMode models animations are only useful for the spiecific scene they were used in. To make something useful for you you'd have to re-animate them. So all those animations won't be any use for you anyway.

I'm here representing inStarCraft.de, a German SC2 Fansite.
And we from the Staff would like to tell you that your Map got Map of the Month for Febuary.

Here is your Medal:

You can use it in the loading Screen of your Map if you want to.

I think you can't read German, but here is the News on our site: [Link]
and a short German video review of your Map from our Team:

Congratulations

The graphs pretty much show what could be expected. A high peak when the maps were released because of Blizzards huge advantage in advertising (almost every video game and starcraft fansite had news about those maps).

Then it goes down to "normal" popularity. Aiur Chef is doing really bad, since it's the weakest Map (It would have had much potential if it was more of a Hero arena with cooking objectives. It's alot more fun to kill your oponent's Hero, than to just collect stuff). Left2Die is well made but it's the Campaign Mission for 2 Players, so it's getting old really quick. And since it's coop it's best played with someone you know, rather than just random people. Star Jeweled seems to do pretty good. I didn't expect that, but it's easy to pick up, many people like games like bejewele, it's competetive and it has basic rock-paper-scrissors counter strategies. It's still lacking imo

If those Maps weren't made by blizz they wouldn't be so high on the popularity list, because they would have trouble getting up there.

What does that teach us mappers? We need to advertise your Maps on sites where the players are. No normal player would go to mapster to see what kind of maps you can find in the bnet.

hmm I did draw a lot before I got to Uni.

I think this is the newest and this even isn't a fully finished pic. Most other recent stuff doesn't really get out of the rough scetch phase.

lol ... It would have been so much easier to explain everything in German
It's really hard for me to explain mathematical stuff in english, because you only learn stuff for everyday conversations in school ... and in Uni I only need German

I've sent you a PM with my ICQ Number

@HellGateSc2: Go x for cross product

If you do it with vectors it need to be a tensor (3*3 Matrix).

The formula is for the rotation around one axis. Most of the time you can simplify your problems to get rid of the tensor and only use scalar values.

J = [Jxx Jxy Jxz]
[Jyx Jyy Jyz]
[Jzx Jzy Jzz]

your formula can be used for Jxx, Jyy, Jzz. For the others there is another formula I don't know how exacly they are called in english. I learned the suff in German and we called them "Deviationsmomente"
Jxy = integral (x*y) dm

for rotationally symmetirc objects you can simplify it to a diagonal matrix
J = [J1 0 0]
[0 J1 0]
[0 0 J2]
because the momentum of inertia for a rotationally symmetric object would be the same for two axis (in this case x and y) Jxx=Jyy

If I understood this stuff correctly the tensor for a sphere would be:
J = [J 0 0]
[0 J 0]
[0 0 J]
with J=2/5*m*r^2
since it has the same moment of inertia around whichever axis you rotate it

But I'm not sure if I'm correct
The wikipedia article about Moment of inertia is pretty good. So maybe you should read it to see if every thing I wrote here is correct.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moment_of_inertia#Moment_of_inertia_tensor

Quote from Grogian: Go

@HellGateSc2: Go

If I'm thinking straight...

A) Use Torque for the rotation, using the tangential portion of the force Torque = F * r

B) Use F = m a for the velocity, using the portion of the force going into the sphere

e.g. - If you have a force applied directly to the center of the sphere, none of the force is tangential If you have a force applied across the surface of the sphere (tangent to the curve) all of the force is going to go into rotation

First two are right, but the e.g. part is not. As I stated in my post what is important is the Instant centre of rotation.

For the Forces there are two equations that always work.
First:
m*dv/dt = m*a = F1+F2+...+Fn
and for the rotation
J*dω/dt = (F1 x s1) + ... + (Fn x sn)

s1 is the vector from the point of attach to the centre of rotation. If you use J as the Moment of inertia tensor of the Centre of mass of the sphere s would all be vectors from the point where the Force is applied to to the centre.
For your problem it would be better to use the Moment of inertia tensor of the instant centre of rotation. So you'd also need the parralell axis theorem.

The Problem is that these equations only are good for accelerations. Since you don't want to analyzie something, it's better to just add the Momentum/angular Momentum

So if a momentum is applied to a point r the resulting anglular momentum L would be:
L = (r-c) x p
x for vector product operator, (r-c) is the vector from the point of attack to the center of mass and p is the Momentum that is applied

So the new Momentum of the Sphere would be Ls_new = Ls_old + L

the resulting rotation speed ω would be:
ω = Ls*J^-1
J is the Moment of inertia tensor for your sphere (a 3*3 matrix). And Ls as the current angular Momentum of your Sphere

Since the Sphere is not on the ground that would be it for the rotation.
The vector product in L = (r-c) x p eliminates all Momentum that are applied to the center, e.g. gravitational Force and buoyancy force. They only would have effect on the rotation when the sphere is touching something an thus changing the instant centre of rotation for the moment the sphere touches something when you take friction into account.

For the Translations it would just be adding the new momentum to the existing momentum of the sphere
p_new = p_old + p

with p = m*v -> v = p* 1/m

I don't know how familar you are with momentum but for dynamic stuff it's more important than force.
F = dp/dt
for constant forces like gravity
-> p = integral F dt = F * t
that means the Momentum of your object increases by F every second (if you use the standart units for this stuff)

So just to prove that gravity doesn't affect the rotation:
the vector pg = -|pg|*e_z with e_z = (0,0,1)
and the point of attack = (0,0,0) = centre of mass = c

L = c x pg = (0,0,0) -> no additinal angular momentum