Here is the biggest open question: Can 2 custom game scenes exist?
Of course they can, and they are, even now. Sc2's custom scene is extremely small, vastly overshadowed by communities like Doom, Counter-strike, Arma, so on so forth. Custom content may not be what it once was in gaming, but it's still huge. The real question you should be asking is, "Why would anyone stick with sc2?" Other than community, I don't see a reason, between engines like UE4 for developers looking for big projects, and vast communities for other games more open to custom content than Blizzard has ever been. Sc2 is capable of decent projects given the time, but many other engines are far more open and far more reliable and easy to get into than sc2 can hope to be. At the end of the day, though, it all depends on what you as a developer want out of your project. If you're already situated with the game, then I see no reason to switch. But sc2 will not likely ever see its scene grow substantially after LotV's release.
The reaction from what I've seen is pretty extreme, that because the tools are not simple for either, it becomes a full time commitment to either and one can not participate in both at once. And this doesn't even go into the (IMO) irrational attachment or detachment to one company or the other (since companies are not people, don't know why people are loyal or hate them).
I wouldn't call it irrational. People get set in their ways. Additionally, many people are extremely hostile to Blizzard because of how Blizzard treated our communities in the past (their only communication was to issue C&D's to projects they saw as competition, they made fun of us for requesting them to fix wc3's problems during TFT beta, etc), and how they chose to reward our dedication with sc2's restrictions and censorship, not to speak of the charade that is sc2's editor when many custom content developers, including myself, went to extraordinary efforts to familiarize them with our polished user tools and why they were successful. It may not seem like a lot coming from wc3, but sc2 is a slap in the face to all custom content creators from sc1-d2 and anyone coming in from developer supported titles. Also, their extremely limited communication, things like "do you really want chat channels?", 1.5 silently deleting projects, all hint to a company that really just doesn't give a shit. I really wanted to like sc2. I really wanted to do something with it. I did my best to shed my opinions with past dealings and see sc2 with an open mind for five long years. But it fought me any step of the way, and in no objective, politically correct manner, can I see sc2 in any shred of positive light.
While I understand and agree with your point on the conceptual level - a company isn't a person so you can't really hate or be loyal to a name - what that company represents is an extremely negative connotation depending on where you come from and what you're looking for in a product. I look for objective improvements over old products, communication, and a standard of quality.
As a developer I see no reason to associate myself with anything Valve does, either. Nothing screams at me and says "pick me over the other choices". For someone already invested into dota 2 or the engine it is probably a very easy choice to make to move to it. For someone working on sc2, you should first ask yourself what exactly it is you want out of your project. If sc2 can't handle your project (like it can't handle any of mine), then maybe it's time to check out other games. If you're doing fine, there is probably little reason to switch, since it introduces a lot of barriers more likely than not to kill your project. Even an editor with perfect UI and responsiveness is nonetheless a titanic task to master. Dota 2's editor is just another fish in a very crowded pond. Nothing about it seems unique or appealing when compared to the other choices.
I've been at this for way too many years to have the patience for the kind of crap companies try to pull with modding and maps. This isn't 2001 anymore. There are endless examples to go by on how to foster a productive and positive community, and how to develop good and reliable tools in a reasonably short time, and most importantly, how to continue to support those tools and the community as time goes on. All of the countless years myself and others devoted to trying to communicate and establish ties to the company that made the games we developed content for a decade and more were an absolute, utter waste. To seal the pact, the friends I knew who moved into the company and then promptly vanished from everywhere else. That is how Blizzard does business. I just don't agree with it is all.
/e
Ugh, this forum's bbcode is really the worst I have ever had to deal with. Why doesn't a double quote work?
Well, the proportions are more realistic, which is more important to me. That's one of the big appeals of your screenshots to me so far. I wanted to go down most of the game's default assets and remaster them a bit, particles, proportions, textures and all, but NiNtoxicated's m3 importer shreds a huge amount of data so the workload would have been just as big as porting something else or close to making something from scratch (except for infantry, which I can't model much less animate. Totally understand your pain there.)
Nonetheless, looking forward to seeing the end result. Keep up the good work!
/edit
If you plan on having custom voice acting, I may be able to lend more direct assistance there.
For a private project you will be fine. But Blizzard is one of the few companies I know to actively issue C&D's to anyone using their ip's, much less their assets, in unrelated games/engines.
Btw, TaylorMouse, does your script handle particles and such?
The overhead from a cinematic model in gameplay would be unnoticeable at the absolute worst except for people who already are running below min spec, and that's only if you use a few dozen of the models at once. (my hardware is fairly out of date and 3 dozen+ cinematic hyperions is maybe a -1fps.) I tested this further by putting in a 110k tri model with 6 sets of 4kx4k textures and the fps loss was, again, minimal with a few dozen of them onscreen. You don't need to worry about polies that much in 2006. At this stage you should be asking yourself more "are these polies being useful or are they float for the sake of float?" See: Nvidia's laughable tesselation subdividing flat surfaces and producing more polies on their hair than can even be seen on a pixel.
The bigger problem would be consistency. The proportions are different and the textures would be more noisy. Really, the textures would be the toughest part.
For a skeleton, I'd just grab something like Epic's Unreal 4 skeleton and weight it to that. A walk cycle can be really tough, but if you're using it at the game view and not for a cinematic model, you can take the shortcuts blizzard took.
I see. Yeah, I was mostly interested in the assets because, were I to continue my private project, I was intending to redo all of the game's graphics in a more realistic style (similar to yours). I have a lot of factions based on Russia, Germany, etc. and the assets would have been great once I brought everything together. I've actually considered asking your team about porting some of your C&C3 assets into sc2 in the past, but I couldn't figure out a pipeline to actually get those out of the game and back into max (after that point it isn't hard for me to update them for sc2), so I never pursued the idea. I'd have to solve some pretty significant issues with the game's AI performance if I wanted to continue that idea, but I figured I'd ask anyways.
If I decide to try to continue work with the game I will consider attempting some lightning particles early in, as I would need quite a few of those myself. If this happens, I'll be sure to share them with you (along with anything else).
I remember your C&C work. Was quite impressive. I presume you will not allow anyone else to use those assets?
When you feel like getting started with particles, it would be work checking out Delphinium's thread and assets, and the assets I released. They will help you get started. I don't know what C&C editors were like, but transitioning from Sins of a Solar Empire, which has the most limited particle engine of any game I've ever seen (even wc3 is leaps and bounds ahead of it), was very easy. For most realistic-ish effects, like say those in CoH, they will be trivial to make with an art team like yours behind them. Use flipbook textures and go hogwild with high fps animations to complement those great meshes.
I did a bit of research on this a while back, but unfortunately I am no artist, so I couldn't find a really good solution. Max has some native options related to exporting/importing animations but they had no effect for me. I hypothesized you could use ActorX tools to export the animations as ActorX then use another tool to merge them all together and re-import them as a single body. However, I didn't get far enough to actually try that. If you figure out a better solution, do tell.
Hi, I am willing to do this for you icesmaster-chan. You will remember me from exciting episodes such as "that vent guy #69" and "that vent guy #37". Also CC.
I do not need monetary compensation for this. I can't receive payment, anyways.
If you have the lines written I am willing to do them much sooner than july.
Presumably you want the three standard Starcraft races (Terran, Zerg, Protoss), all 3 of which I can do with related effects if desired.
My main requirement is that your scripts are already proofread and polished, because once I make my set of takes, I don't want to go back and have to repeat them at a later time because you forgot something.
Thanks for the clarifications. My weakness is most certainly technical aspects as, like I said, I have no training whatsoever.
I had been lead to believe a low-pass was simply a broad term describing a manner of isolating low frequencies. The filter I was using was probably doing something else, then, as, although you could hear differences in the voice if you listened very closely, it was not very noticeable with background audio.
Youtube's quality is really bad. I don't think 1080p makes a difference now as it did a while back where the resolution was directly related to the audio, but don't quote me on that, I stopped using it years ago. I am curious if you can actually hear the compression from mpq, though. I would assume it uncompresses the sound in memory before playing it and therefore you don't hear any loss, but I don't know how that sort of thing works. If I was still doing custom content in blizzard games I would experiment with this. I would presume that, if there was loss in quality with .wav, there would be with any format, as I think it tries to compress anything that goes into it. I do remember something off about some sounds in wc3 but it's been many years since I did anything with that game.
'
/e
I re-read that lowpass section and yeah, that is not written correctly. I'll rewrite it sometime when I am not so sick.
/e2
Trying to find some modern youtube uploads to compare if they've done any changes to audio, but it's like they've removed a ton of anime music. Do you have any good examples?
0
Of course they can, and they are, even now. Sc2's custom scene is extremely small, vastly overshadowed by communities like Doom, Counter-strike, Arma, so on so forth. Custom content may not be what it once was in gaming, but it's still huge. The real question you should be asking is, "Why would anyone stick with sc2?" Other than community, I don't see a reason, between engines like UE4 for developers looking for big projects, and vast communities for other games more open to custom content than Blizzard has ever been. Sc2 is capable of decent projects given the time, but many other engines are far more open and far more reliable and easy to get into than sc2 can hope to be. At the end of the day, though, it all depends on what you as a developer want out of your project. If you're already situated with the game, then I see no reason to switch. But sc2 will not likely ever see its scene grow substantially after LotV's release.
The reaction from what I've seen is pretty extreme, that because the tools are not simple for either, it becomes a full time commitment to either and one can not participate in both at once. And this doesn't even go into the (IMO) irrational attachment or detachment to one company or the other (since companies are not people, don't know why people are loyal or hate them).
I wouldn't call it irrational. People get set in their ways. Additionally, many people are extremely hostile to Blizzard because of how Blizzard treated our communities in the past (their only communication was to issue C&D's to projects they saw as competition, they made fun of us for requesting them to fix wc3's problems during TFT beta, etc), and how they chose to reward our dedication with sc2's restrictions and censorship, not to speak of the charade that is sc2's editor when many custom content developers, including myself, went to extraordinary efforts to familiarize them with our polished user tools and why they were successful. It may not seem like a lot coming from wc3, but sc2 is a slap in the face to all custom content creators from sc1-d2 and anyone coming in from developer supported titles. Also, their extremely limited communication, things like "do you really want chat channels?", 1.5 silently deleting projects, all hint to a company that really just doesn't give a shit. I really wanted to like sc2. I really wanted to do something with it. I did my best to shed my opinions with past dealings and see sc2 with an open mind for five long years. But it fought me any step of the way, and in no objective, politically correct manner, can I see sc2 in any shred of positive light.
While I understand and agree with your point on the conceptual level - a company isn't a person so you can't really hate or be loyal to a name - what that company represents is an extremely negative connotation depending on where you come from and what you're looking for in a product. I look for objective improvements over old products, communication, and a standard of quality.
As a developer I see no reason to associate myself with anything Valve does, either. Nothing screams at me and says "pick me over the other choices". For someone already invested into dota 2 or the engine it is probably a very easy choice to make to move to it. For someone working on sc2, you should first ask yourself what exactly it is you want out of your project. If sc2 can't handle your project (like it can't handle any of mine), then maybe it's time to check out other games. If you're doing fine, there is probably little reason to switch, since it introduces a lot of barriers more likely than not to kill your project. Even an editor with perfect UI and responsiveness is nonetheless a titanic task to master. Dota 2's editor is just another fish in a very crowded pond. Nothing about it seems unique or appealing when compared to the other choices.
I've been at this for way too many years to have the patience for the kind of crap companies try to pull with modding and maps. This isn't 2001 anymore. There are endless examples to go by on how to foster a productive and positive community, and how to develop good and reliable tools in a reasonably short time, and most importantly, how to continue to support those tools and the community as time goes on. All of the countless years myself and others devoted to trying to communicate and establish ties to the company that made the games we developed content for a decade and more were an absolute, utter waste. To seal the pact, the friends I knew who moved into the company and then promptly vanished from everywhere else. That is how Blizzard does business. I just don't agree with it is all.
/e
Ugh, this forum's bbcode is really the worst I have ever had to deal with. Why doesn't a double quote work?
0
I'll refer you to nothing. I've got nothing. Sorry.
:P
0
Almost all of those views are bots.
0
Well, the proportions are more realistic, which is more important to me. That's one of the big appeals of your screenshots to me so far. I wanted to go down most of the game's default assets and remaster them a bit, particles, proportions, textures and all, but NiNtoxicated's m3 importer shreds a huge amount of data so the workload would have been just as big as porting something else or close to making something from scratch (except for infantry, which I can't model much less animate. Totally understand your pain there.)
Nonetheless, looking forward to seeing the end result. Keep up the good work!
/edit
If you plan on having custom voice acting, I may be able to lend more direct assistance there.
0
For a private project you will be fine. But Blizzard is one of the few companies I know to actively issue C&D's to anyone using their ip's, much less their assets, in unrelated games/engines.
Btw, TaylorMouse, does your script handle particles and such?
0
Perhaps for this case. But even experimenting will teach you skills that will be useful for all of your time with custom content to come.
0
The overhead from a cinematic model in gameplay would be unnoticeable at the absolute worst except for people who already are running below min spec, and that's only if you use a few dozen of the models at once. (my hardware is fairly out of date and 3 dozen+ cinematic hyperions is maybe a -1fps.) I tested this further by putting in a 110k tri model with 6 sets of 4kx4k textures and the fps loss was, again, minimal with a few dozen of them onscreen. You don't need to worry about polies that much in 2006. At this stage you should be asking yourself more "are these polies being useful or are they float for the sake of float?" See: Nvidia's laughable tesselation subdividing flat surfaces and producing more polies on their hair than can even be seen on a pixel.
The bigger problem would be consistency. The proportions are different and the textures would be more noisy. Really, the textures would be the toughest part.
For a skeleton, I'd just grab something like Epic's Unreal 4 skeleton and weight it to that. A walk cycle can be really tough, but if you're using it at the game view and not for a cinematic model, you can take the shortcuts blizzard took.
0
I see. Yeah, I was mostly interested in the assets because, were I to continue my private project, I was intending to redo all of the game's graphics in a more realistic style (similar to yours). I have a lot of factions based on Russia, Germany, etc. and the assets would have been great once I brought everything together. I've actually considered asking your team about porting some of your C&C3 assets into sc2 in the past, but I couldn't figure out a pipeline to actually get those out of the game and back into max (after that point it isn't hard for me to update them for sc2), so I never pursued the idea. I'd have to solve some pretty significant issues with the game's AI performance if I wanted to continue that idea, but I figured I'd ask anyways.
If I decide to try to continue work with the game I will consider attempting some lightning particles early in, as I would need quite a few of those myself. If this happens, I'll be sure to share them with you (along with anything else).
0
I remember your C&C work. Was quite impressive. I presume you will not allow anyone else to use those assets?
When you feel like getting started with particles, it would be work checking out Delphinium's thread and assets, and the assets I released. They will help you get started. I don't know what C&C editors were like, but transitioning from Sins of a Solar Empire, which has the most limited particle engine of any game I've ever seen (even wc3 is leaps and bounds ahead of it), was very easy. For most realistic-ish effects, like say those in CoH, they will be trivial to make with an art team like yours behind them. Use flipbook textures and go hogwild with high fps animations to complement those great meshes.
Delphinium's Thread - http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/artist-tavern/49267-showcase-nana-key-delphiniums-models/#posts
My particles - http://www.sc2mapster.com/forums/development/artist-tavern/77125-resource-apex-h-particle-effects/#p1
0
I did a bit of research on this a while back, but unfortunately I am no artist, so I couldn't find a really good solution. Max has some native options related to exporting/importing animations but they had no effect for me. I hypothesized you could use ActorX tools to export the animations as ActorX then use another tool to merge them all together and re-import them as a single body. However, I didn't get far enough to actually try that. If you figure out a better solution, do tell.
0
That sounds like... CC. And SEN. And probably every other pre-wc3 community except phrozen keep that still exists at all, haha.
0
@3yks: Go
iirc their forum was invite only or something. Been a while since I looked, though.
0
Brood War has always been my home for a reason. I'm afraid Antioch is too exclusive for me, though.
0
Hi, I am willing to do this for you icesmaster-chan. You will remember me from exciting episodes such as "that vent guy #69" and "that vent guy #37". Also CC.
I do not need monetary compensation for this. I can't receive payment, anyways.
If you have the lines written I am willing to do them much sooner than july.
https://soundcloud.com/iskatumesk
Presumably you want the three standard Starcraft races (Terran, Zerg, Protoss), all 3 of which I can do with related effects if desired.
My main requirement is that your scripts are already proofread and polished, because once I make my set of takes, I don't want to go back and have to repeat them at a later time because you forgot something.
0
Thanks for the clarifications. My weakness is most certainly technical aspects as, like I said, I have no training whatsoever.
I had been lead to believe a low-pass was simply a broad term describing a manner of isolating low frequencies. The filter I was using was probably doing something else, then, as, although you could hear differences in the voice if you listened very closely, it was not very noticeable with background audio.
Youtube's quality is really bad. I don't think 1080p makes a difference now as it did a while back where the resolution was directly related to the audio, but don't quote me on that, I stopped using it years ago. I am curious if you can actually hear the compression from mpq, though. I would assume it uncompresses the sound in memory before playing it and therefore you don't hear any loss, but I don't know how that sort of thing works. If I was still doing custom content in blizzard games I would experiment with this. I would presume that, if there was loss in quality with .wav, there would be with any format, as I think it tries to compress anything that goes into it. I do remember something off about some sounds in wc3 but it's been many years since I did anything with that game.
'
/e
I re-read that lowpass section and yeah, that is not written correctly. I'll rewrite it sometime when I am not so sick.
/e2
Trying to find some modern youtube uploads to compare if they've done any changes to audio, but it's like they've removed a ton of anime music. Do you have any good examples?