One more thing we should keep in mind is that this program will only get downloaded and used (after we can get Blizz approval) if there is a good use. It should probably have a more social aspect to it as well, so it has more uses than just the custom maps. There has to be a long-term value to it for people to bother (see Steam, Origin and UPlay).
And it would need a decent amount of maps to use it.
Also what would happen if people played it without the program by just downloading the map on Battle.net? What kind of problems could arise from that is a thing to keep in mind.
Overall this might be a really cool thing for SCU though. I bet they could make good use of it.
Battle.Net delay has been fixed with the big patch that brought all the HOTS content.
Really? They fixed the sync? Gotta check on it.
Also we should probably run this by our local Blizzard resident on the Mapster IRC Channel before we mess around with it. He can hand it up to his boss and they can give you a straight answer, I'd say. Better we check on it now before you invest huge amounts of time and people get banhammered.
@SheogorathSC: Go
I'd suggest you use the 3rd one to progress from. That one has potential to look impressive if you do it right.
I suggest you scale down the grass a slight bit more and use some generated foliage as well. Use some of the vines on the upper edges of the building, based on that camera perspective. See my last one with the tree in the corner for it.
Maybe you could take the upside-down crash car and replace that with the transporter you got in the front of the picture (it's the primary POI so it will automatically draw attention there) and put some vines on that.
The road you could try and use the one type of waterplant one. The flat one. The frontal grass cluster asset sadly looks like it's made of paper cutouts in it's current position, replace that one :)
Alternative you could use the bridge as an overpass running through the buildings you have right now and work from that one. I did something like that back in WoL, didn't look to bad, but since it was for a TPS view, it didn't work out very well (no backfaces... see-through bridges are stupid).
You should also try to show more of the building tops. If need be fake the city backdrop with scaled buildings.
Also there still isn't any fog in sight. Just a slight bit, since it's daylight. If you want to go all out, you could mess around with Depth of Field and Bloom a bit.
Also if you really want to bring out those luminescent flowers and their glow, make a really, really dark lighting. So that the flowers are basically most of the lightsources in the picture. But obviously that requires you to use more of them to show the environment you made and custom light the intensity of the whole thing.
Ye, I think that is all I can come up with for now. Try around with those ideas, I'd say.
After lots of failure I now am 5 hour uploads away from putting up the video. Joy oh joy.
Since I dabbled in the Cutscene Editor since we first found it in WoL, I have a pretty good grasp on how long it takes to make something really decent.
I'd suggest going with 2 weeks and a timelimit. Like 2 Minutes at max. That should work pretty well for this format.
Pretty good, wish this wasn't a bonus DVD content but instead something like a Tutorial in a seperate Blizzard Mod YT Channel. Knew most of this though, since I dabbled in this thing ever since we discovered it on the WoL DVD. Sadly it's not really flexible enough without custom animations to be interesting to me. Might make something small for a friends map as a intro though.
It would help if we could manipulate bones similar to 3ds max / maya in the cinematic editor.
@SheogorathSC: Go
Currently that lacks any kind of POI. I'd suggest putting a car or something like that in the middle and making it overgrown with plants. Or maybe try to build something out of assets growing out of that roadcrack.
Also I'd suggest adding small vines (should be a cliff doodad) to the buildings. There is also brambles you can use to make vines that crawl up on the building side :)
A slight fog at 0.025 could also help it.
Also you could try to reduce the UV scaling a little, so the textures match the scale.
@Scbroodsc2: Go
Yeah. The sorting by terrain set doesn't even work properly at all, because Blizz lazied out on sorting the assets properly and a lot of space platform assets and such are just available to any tileset. Compared to how orderly WC3 was, this is pretty awful.
It has come down to me going through every file roughly by my head categories for search terms and placing all of the assets I need on the map (see pic I posted on page 1 for the ice stuff).
I suspect Blizzard will ban people using it due to Warden probably being very angry about this and will most likely even go to court with you if you are unlucky. So I suggest you do not do this :)
You should probably look for other dynamic content options. We already had experiments with this, for example with dynamically create terrain (usually ugly as fuck) and quests. Maybe you should try to advance in that direction. If you could create dynamic set pieces that can be connected to each other, similar to how Diablo games work and if those actually were looking good level design and lighting wise, that would be quite the feat to achieve and would increase replayability a lot.
Most, and i mean most people who have bought WoL and enjoy the arcade, or the campaign, would consider buying the expansion to get more out of it. People who enjoy specific map will also encourage us to spice up the models and add HotS model in for them. Progamers would have to get the expansion to keep up with tournaments. That leave the percentage of people who have WoL and does not want HotS are the one already quit the game a long time ago. I consider this issue to be trivial
There is quite a few people I know that don't consider buying HotS at all for now. Mostly because they have no interest in the campaign or the regular multiplayer and just the custom maps. Guess they might buy them for cheap later on maybe, if their favorite maps disappear. So this isn't a small or trivial thing if there are a lot more people like that. And I could imagine there might be quite a good chunk of those overall. I mean think of how many people bought WC3 just for DotA and Footy. A lot of my old classmates of that time did and never played the campaign.
There is obviously also the fact that the files are already downloaded into any SC2 folder that is up to date. I can relate to Blizzard wanting people to buy the Expansion for the Campaign and regular Multiplayer, but I really see no good reason to impact the community this way and blocking people from having access to their favorite custom maps just because someone suddenly uses HotS assets for it. To me this just seems like a really bad idea.
Though zelda is obviously right in that people might just export/remake the campaign maps and upload them, but there is certainly ways to prevent this behavior without impacting the amount of people that get to play your map. It's hard enough to boost yourself up to the higher rankings as it is, there is a lot of good maps dying on the 200+ rankings.
Guess I might just be mad at fellow Devs doing unnecessary things to impact their own playerbase again, especially after what we had to deal with in SC2.
I'd certainly be interested in knowing how many people still play sc2 regularly but didn't upgrade to HotS- I can't imagine there's too many.
Given the recent track Blizzard had with it's games, I can imagine quite a few people being very, very careful. I mean if you look at the spoiler thread, you already find quite a few issues that showed up in HotS as well. Though they still have more favor with people than Gearbox with that god-awful Colonial Marines.
0
One more thing we should keep in mind is that this program will only get downloaded and used (after we can get Blizz approval) if there is a good use. It should probably have a more social aspect to it as well, so it has more uses than just the custom maps. There has to be a long-term value to it for people to bother (see Steam, Origin and UPlay).
And it would need a decent amount of maps to use it.
Also what would happen if people played it without the program by just downloading the map on Battle.net? What kind of problems could arise from that is a thing to keep in mind.
Overall this might be a really cool thing for SCU though. I bet they could make good use of it.
0
Really? They fixed the sync? Gotta check on it.
Also we should probably run this by our local Blizzard resident on the Mapster IRC Channel before we mess around with it. He can hand it up to his boss and they can give you a straight answer, I'd say. Better we check on it now before you invest huge amounts of time and people get banhammered.
0
@SheogorathSC: Go I'd suggest you use the 3rd one to progress from. That one has potential to look impressive if you do it right.
I suggest you scale down the grass a slight bit more and use some generated foliage as well. Use some of the vines on the upper edges of the building, based on that camera perspective. See my last one with the tree in the corner for it.
Maybe you could take the upside-down crash car and replace that with the transporter you got in the front of the picture (it's the primary POI so it will automatically draw attention there) and put some vines on that.
The road you could try and use the one type of waterplant one. The flat one. The frontal grass cluster asset sadly looks like it's made of paper cutouts in it's current position, replace that one :)
Alternative you could use the bridge as an overpass running through the buildings you have right now and work from that one. I did something like that back in WoL, didn't look to bad, but since it was for a TPS view, it didn't work out very well (no backfaces... see-through bridges are stupid).
You should also try to show more of the building tops. If need be fake the city backdrop with scaled buildings.
Also there still isn't any fog in sight. Just a slight bit, since it's daylight. If you want to go all out, you could mess around with Depth of Field and Bloom a bit.
Also if you really want to bring out those luminescent flowers and their glow, make a really, really dark lighting. So that the flowers are basically most of the lightsources in the picture. But obviously that requires you to use more of them to show the environment you made and custom light the intensity of the whole thing.
Ye, I think that is all I can come up with for now. Try around with those ideas, I'd say.
After lots of failure I now am 5 hour uploads away from putting up the video. Joy oh joy.
0
@Telthalion: Go Did both. It's just not blending. No clue why.
Some of the WoL textures work though. It's just a few that won't combine with each other at all. Weird.
0
Since I dabbled in the Cutscene Editor since we first found it in WoL, I have a pretty good grasp on how long it takes to make something really decent.
I'd suggest going with 2 weeks and a timelimit. Like 2 Minutes at max. That should work pretty well for this format.
0
Pretty good, wish this wasn't a bonus DVD content but instead something like a Tutorial in a seperate Blizzard Mod YT Channel. Knew most of this though, since I dabbled in this thing ever since we discovered it on the WoL DVD. Sadly it's not really flexible enough without custom animations to be interesting to me. Might make something small for a friends map as a intro though.
It would help if we could manipulate bones similar to 3ds max / maya in the cinematic editor.
0
So I just wanted to try and implement Agria grass with Zerus. It doesn't work. Doesn't blend at all. Isn't even displayed.
Anyone else having these issues?
0
Uploading a time lapse of this right now :)
Edit: Okay, RENDERING. Because appearently 1 hour videos down to 20 something is really having a lot of impact even with a i7.
0
Hrm, I got one more fancy idea for this one. Might make a small tutorial out of it.
0
TCG on PC I could get behind.
Heroes of WarCraft could also be the trademark for the movie maybe.
0
@SheogorathSC: Go Currently that lacks any kind of POI. I'd suggest putting a car or something like that in the middle and making it overgrown with plants. Or maybe try to build something out of assets growing out of that roadcrack.
Also I'd suggest adding small vines (should be a cliff doodad) to the buildings. There is also brambles you can use to make vines that crawl up on the building side :)
A slight fog at 0.025 could also help it.
Also you could try to reduce the UV scaling a little, so the textures match the scale.
0
@Scbroodsc2: Go Yeah. The sorting by terrain set doesn't even work properly at all, because Blizz lazied out on sorting the assets properly and a lot of space platform assets and such are just available to any tileset. Compared to how orderly WC3 was, this is pretty awful.
It has come down to me going through every file roughly by my head categories for search terms and placing all of the assets I need on the map (see pic I posted on page 1 for the ice stuff).
It's annoying as hell.
0
!!!!!SPOILER AHEAD, SPOILER AHEAD!!!!
@Taintedwisp: Go Maybe there is 3 differently colored Mengsk Explosions at the end and we just don't know it yet? :P
0
I suspect Blizzard will ban people using it due to Warden probably being very angry about this and will most likely even go to court with you if you are unlucky. So I suggest you do not do this :)
You should probably look for other dynamic content options. We already had experiments with this, for example with dynamically create terrain (usually ugly as fuck) and quests. Maybe you should try to advance in that direction. If you could create dynamic set pieces that can be connected to each other, similar to how Diablo games work and if those actually were looking good level design and lighting wise, that would be quite the feat to achieve and would increase replayability a lot.
0
There is quite a few people I know that don't consider buying HotS at all for now. Mostly because they have no interest in the campaign or the regular multiplayer and just the custom maps. Guess they might buy them for cheap later on maybe, if their favorite maps disappear. So this isn't a small or trivial thing if there are a lot more people like that. And I could imagine there might be quite a good chunk of those overall. I mean think of how many people bought WC3 just for DotA and Footy. A lot of my old classmates of that time did and never played the campaign.
There is obviously also the fact that the files are already downloaded into any SC2 folder that is up to date. I can relate to Blizzard wanting people to buy the Expansion for the Campaign and regular Multiplayer, but I really see no good reason to impact the community this way and blocking people from having access to their favorite custom maps just because someone suddenly uses HotS assets for it. To me this just seems like a really bad idea.
Though zelda is obviously right in that people might just export/remake the campaign maps and upload them, but there is certainly ways to prevent this behavior without impacting the amount of people that get to play your map. It's hard enough to boost yourself up to the higher rankings as it is, there is a lot of good maps dying on the 200+ rankings.
Guess I might just be mad at fellow Devs doing unnecessary things to impact their own playerbase again, especially after what we had to deal with in SC2.
Given the recent track Blizzard had with it's games, I can imagine quite a few people being very, very careful. I mean if you look at the spoiler thread, you already find quite a few issues that showed up in HotS as well. Though they still have more favor with people than Gearbox with that god-awful Colonial Marines.