So I played around with it some over the last few hours. I found a few models that had their own camera with a pitch/yaw similar to what you would want on an FPS camera. I basically made a custom unit that used the model, and then applied model camera to set my game camera to the models cam, and then hid the unit so I could keep the FPS style cam. Problem is, you can't modify or move the camera in any way. It is locked onto the position of the unit and it cannot be mouse controlled nor can it be zoomed, scrolled, etc.
Oh well, it was a good idea. I was going to attach it to the head of a marine and use it as an FPS camera. You wouldn't have to worry about lag since it would be a fixed attachment and triggers wouldn't be needed to update its movement. You would just lock it to mouse rotation and turn on mouse rotation via triggers and ta-da! Sadly, not going to work that way right now.
I guess I can use the current third person style systems out there right now, although I don't find them very favorable (the only one I've seen that is to my liking, isn't for download!!!
Have been toying around with the idea lately, and the current systems for FPS and TPS aren't exactly CPU or online friendly.
I take it that its not possible to just create a camera object and attach it to a units weapon or origin attachment point? I tried myself to no avail, but I didn't know if anyone knew of a decent work-around or not.
Is it really necessary to add local variables for each player? If you just create a local variable named 'Player Units' and set it equal to all units who are an enemy of Player 15 hostile, it should count for all units of every active player, should it not?
I think they addressed this on Blizzcon / QA, not sure where it was exactly.
Thing is that scan/vision range on ground units is limited, because it's very cpu intensive to run the acquire checks on high distances.
I didn't seem to have this problem in Wc3. I set the acquisition range to 20,000 and gave them unlimited sight and they would track me down regardless of where I was on a 256x256 map. Why is it now a problem in SC2?
I guess a temporary fix would be to create a trigger to order each unit to attack a random player in the player group, but that shouldn't have to happen.
So I'm working on a small wave-type survival map and I need the spawned units to be able to see and acquire targets regardless of how far away they are. I've got a visibility modifier up for Player 15(Hostile) to reveal the entire map and I have the minimum scan range set for my units to the maximum of 500. The problem is, this isn't far enough. If I hide my hero on the bottom-right corner of the map only the bottom end right spawns will see him and come looking for him, while the other ignore him. Anyway around this?
Oh well. I did something a little easier. Just set it so when a unit owned by hostile dies it checks to see if a variable (that I set equal to the number of spawns) is equal to 0, and if not it reduces the integer count by 1. That way when the last unit dies, the int variable should be at 0, and then it will move onto the next set of actions.
I still have a lot to learn when it comes to this editor. I guess my frustration was the fact that I'm so well accustomed to World Editor GUI that when I first opened the Galaxy Editor I became a bit baffled. Oh well, its all starting to clear up for me.
You complain about all the simple commands being removed, whislt yes this is a minor inconvenience they have become more complex to allow us to do a lot more with them, There are a few things here and there missing, but we can do a lot more now with what we have than you used to be able to do with the old editor.
The diversity of custom functions overrides any downsides that might be present in GUI, but its still a shortfall overall. The novice map maker might have an extremely hard time grasping things that shouldn't be so hard to begin with. People coming straight from the World Editor aren't going to be very pleased especially if they weren't well versed in JASS to give them an easier transition to Galaxy.
Blizzard has said that the next expansion will be bigger than the Frozen Throne was for WC3, so hopefully it'll get even more Editor enhancements than the world editor did with the expansion's release.
As for now, I guess I'll be spending a little time learning galaxy for my own functions.
Local Variables UnitGroup = (Empty unit group) <Unit Group>
Counter = 0 <Integer>
Actions
Variable - Set UnitGroup = (Any units in (Entire map) owned by player 1 matching Excluded: Missile, Dead, Hidden, with at most Any Amount)
Unit Group - Pick each unit in UnitGroup and do (Actions)
Actions
Variable - Set Counter = (Counter + 1)
If you want to use counter in another trigger then you might want to set UnitGroup as global variable.
You see thats the entire problem with the SC2 editor in general. Something that should have been possible with ONE condition now requires and entire trigger.
I'm beginning to become seriously annoyed with the SC2 editor.
For example, I'm trying to create a condition that checks the number of units owned by player 1. In Wc3 it would be as simple as
Condition:
Number of units in (Units owned by (Player 1)) Equal to 0
In Sc2, thats impossible. Under conditions, theres no such check as "Number of units owned by player". The closest thing is "Number of units in Unit Group". That would be all fine and dandy if the unit groups were remotely useful. Instead you start with:
(Number of Living units in Unit Group) == 0. From there you click the Unit Group to modify the actual group being checked. If this was Wc3, when you clicked on Unit Group, you would get a huge USEFUL list of unit group options such as (Units owned by player), (Units in region).
In SC2 the closest things you get to what I need is: (Units in Unit Group for Player), (Units in Region Matching Condition), and (Units in Unit Group Matching Condition). Heres the problem with all 3 of those. The first one just makes you choose another unit group which puts exactly where you just were. The other 2 cause you to choose a condition, which starts you ALL over back at creating a condition.
So, where does the madness end?
So please, someone tell me how to do the once simple Wc3 esque function of checking to see how many units owned by a certain player on still on the map. This is absolutely retarded that "Units Owned by Player" isn't an option under Unit Groups. WTF.
I'd love to, but sadly I don't have time for the drama. I had planned on making a DBZ-esque map, but not with the actual DBZ story or heroes. It is just too much trouble making sure everything has been added and everyone is happy about it.
I didn't think anything of it until I opened the editor back up....
I was editing actors when the editor froze. Now in Wc3 when you hit the test button it forces a save before it opens WC3. I did this a dozen times testing a UI unit selection before the map crashed. When I opened the editor back up and the map, it was just the terrain, no triggers.
I take it that in SC2, it doesn't save the map when you test it out in-game? It doesn't create a temporary map save somewhere I might be able to pick up from?
So I'm growing a little leery of mindlessly creating TONS of heroes for a project I'm working on. I'm still using one of the old beta methods that countless tutorials for popped up way back in April.
So I started searching around to see what newer methods there were of creating heroes since the recent editor updates and official SC2 release. Out of the 5-6 topics/tutorials found on the subject, they were ALL from the beta. Is there really no better way to create a hero unit?
And on another note.... a lot of stuff in the editor has changed from the beta, yet there are still a lot of tutorials up from the beta that are obsolete. Why haven't they been removed???
1. Like I said, it was teenage mindgames. Looking back now I'm a bit embarrassed by it, and I think it was all silly to begin with. After being through the things that I've been through, and doing the jobs I've done... I've learned a bit. Its better to have a friendly competition with your competitors and leave the enthusiasts to the trash talking to fuel the lime-light.
2. And you don't agree this is the way kids do things? Anything they do/like is instantly the 'best ever' in their minds. Best ever in the minds of everyone else? Absolutely not, especially in this case. I didn't necessarily think it was the best map just because of what it was, I was utterly intrigued by the idea of a save/load RPG DBZ style, regardless of how the map itself came out.
3. When I was playing Rampage (before my map was released), the only thing Rampage had in it was a skin for Saibamen, Nappa, and a Buu skin over the demon hunter. Is it possible Lacrossetitans gave the models to Rampage? Sure, but I had them first, I can assure you of this. I very specifically told him what animations I wanted in each model. The Galick Gun animation for Vegeta I made myself, with him fine-tuning it. I don't ever remember playing a Rampage map with actual models until sometime around the closed beta of my map. This is not an outright lie. I'm REALLY not all that concerned about events that happened 7 years ago. This is just my perspective.
4. Tribute didn't kill it completely. Was it a discouragement after Gotenkz left? Absolutely. He was the only fair player in the game the entire time. The only one staying neutral and holding his ground. Obviously, even I wasn't playing by the rules. When he left, the new creators weren't exactly friendly. They were willing to do anything/everything, no matter who they took it from or who came up with it. I stopped production on V2 after posting that, but never actually did away with it. I always had the map files still on my PC until my 10-year old 40GB hard-drive failed on me. I even said in a later post in that same topic that there was still a chance of the completed V1.3 being released, so obviously I hadn't given up on it yet.
5. Like I said, he had the models since he helped do a lot of reskins (I wasn't very good with shadowing/blending). When I first noticed the models I was using in Tribute, I opened up the help section of the map to see that all credit was given to FinalTyrant for the models.
6. I'm not saying JUST thanks to me, I'm saying I obviously had a hand in it. Gotenkz might not've ramped up production by the time he had left if I hadn't came around. Would it still have happened eventually? Absolutely, especially since most of my bigger, flashier attacks used a custom system based off of something I had seen in another map (they weren't visually similar, but the other map used spell GFX as attachments to the models to change their size/shape/rotation, and it sparked an idea).
7. You should've been there for the countless chatroom session I was in with thrigs and his classmates from highschool. He never sent me an AIM virus. He did spoof me into looking at some incredibly nasty fetish porn a few times when I opened some attachments he sent thinking they were something else. Like I said, teenage BS. Did I threaten to sue him? Sure, but I knew I'd never be able to pull it off since it was impossible. The replies I got from a lot of people were hilarious though.
8. Like I said before, I was discouraged but never really quit. Even afterwards I still put out a few versions of my map Ultimate Fusion Arena, which was also lost to HD failure before V2 of it was released. There was even a TD I did with a fellow forum member (Ragnarok). I can't remember the name of it since he did 95% of it, but I did a handful of slick triggers for him. If I remember correctly, it was an offshoot of Maze TD he had been working on in his absence. Lost as well. I never told anyone of the HDD failure because it came a few months after I had already told them I had given up. I did post about it here: http://z12.invisionfree.com/SupremeGaming/index.php?showtopic=2158 back in July, where I told someone it had failed on me.
9. The job I do now thrives solely on competition, and therefor theres a lot to learn from it.
On the side note, I applied for a Beta code on battle.net's website when they were first taking volunteers. I had made a couple of posts on the battle.net SC2 beta forums for map development and sent in countless reports to Blizzard as far as the editor feedback was concerned. I was told in one of my replies that offering up this much help/advice would definitely increase my chances of being chosen for the beta since I was so determined for it, and when I asked if I had been chosen in a later report, they said "I'll see what I can do for you.". I ended up not being chosen for the beta that way, and had to find another way to get ahold of it. I was also at Blizzcon last year, but they gave out the beta keys the previous year so I missed out. I never actually said a Blizz employee gave me a beta key. When I finally got one, I said that I 'pulled some strings to get a beta key'. This being, I pre-orderd SC2 from Gamestop to get the key. I thought I was one of the lucky ones since I got the beta key the first round they were giving them out, and weren't supposed to be giving out anymore. Eventually they changed their policy and started giving them to almost everyone that pre-ordered the game.
Lets set a few things straight (even though this was posted 6 months ago).
1. I never attempted to start a fight with Gotenkz. In-fact, I was in communication with him throughout most of the project. We never spoke on forums through anything other than PM, but I spent some time discussing things with him through ICQ (we were in different time-zones, Gotenkz lived in Australia). Most of the non-sense talked back and forth between us on forums and through our forum members was just for show.If I remember correctly, I originally approached Gotenkz for one of his later coming versions of DBZ Tribute to try and offer some 'upgraded, more flashy spells' for his map. Of course I was just a newb at this time and didn't know anything about the wc3 editor other than how to manipulate a few things for visual purposes. I just wanted to be a part of the development. I even remember Gotenkz saying he thought a DBZ save/load would be fun, although it was HEAVILY limited by the way wc3 worked in general, and re-playability would suffer. Afterwards, I started working on my map, laying out general ideas and collecting a development team to help with teraining, etc (this was afterall, my FIRST attempt at even using the WC3 editor). Even when I had released the beta versions of DBZ Supreme, I had applauded Gotenkz when I seen some of the new models/skins he had developed. I remember being particularly impressed with his V10 screenshots of the remodelled lookout.
2. Me and the whole 'GREATEST DBZ MAP EVER' thing was just spewed out propaganda for attention and publicity. Besides, I was in my EARLY teens when I first started working on the map. (I don't think I was any older than 14/15). Thats just the type of stuff you say at that age, regardless. If I was an adult at the time, it might merit some sort of criticism, but not to a young kid who says that type of stuff.
3. The DBZ models weren't ripped from Rampage. Rampage never used custom models, only custom skins over classic WC3 models. This IS where I got some of the re-skins from (I believe it was saibamen and Nappa.. and maybe one other?) The rest of the DBZ models did have ESF ties. Were they directly ESF models? Not exactly. The skins all came from ESF models, yes. Most of the models themselves though were custom made by a guy who went by the forum name of lacrossetitans on the old WC3campaigns forums. He was the mastermind behind 99% of the models for DBZ Supreme. He didn't want his name given or any part of the publicity because he knew of the giant wave of trouble that would ensue after the maps release. He DID convert a few models over from ESF, such as Shenron, Perfect Cell, and one or two others. Either way, all of the models had to be 100% custom animated for WC3 as even the ESF converted models didn't carry over bone information for animation transfers. Lacrossetitans also did most of the animating early on in the project, and I picked up and did the animations for all of the boss characters (he just did the starting playable characters). After the beta, all of the custom models added to the map WERE made by me personally. This means that at least SOME credit should have been given for the countless people who took the models from my map, since I did the animations, several reskins, and implemented all of the particle effects and cameras to each model.
4. The models in tribute that were 'more efficient' were originally mine as well. After Cena left my community (and a couple of Global Mods), I picked up the help of a community member for a huge V2 release. I already had a new terrain finished (FinalTyrant provided the basis for it), and wanted to try and cut down the size of the models to allow me to cram more into the map. In V1, the headskins themselves had the exact same bitmap size as the body skins, which was overkill. The plan was to reduce them in dimension by half (to effectively cut down area to just 25%), and use the heads as attachments for models that would just use the same body (such as all SS forms). The community member I picked up was supposed to help with this. The attachment points I had made were bugged and the heads looked more like spring-loaded bobble heads. He said he knew a fix, so I sent him over quite a few models. Shortly after, I learned him was making his own DBZ map (can't remember the name right off hand) and was planning on also using the models for his map. By the time I got the edited versions back from him, I had grown a little older and weary of the Piss-Poor community I had with Supreme Gaming (Hundreds of nagging kids wanting me to put in DBGT stuff, hundreds of Tribute die-hards that wanted me to jump off a bridge, hundreds of people reporting new bugs that I still hadn't learned how to fix... etc). Plans for V2 started to fade, even though it was more than half-way done.
5. FinalTyrant (who NEVER made models, btw, he only did skins.... thats another bit of mis-information), helped redo the skins for a few models during the beta as well. I would get everything laid out and colored up and send to him for touch ups and polish. A quick example of this can be seen in the first form of Cooler which basically used a re-skinned Frieza model. FT sold out on me once the community started dying down. He made a couple of maps that were released and hosted on my forum, and eventually just got pissed at the community in general (and the fact that I wouldn't make him an Administrator on the forums), and eventually left, going back to the WC3Hive and sending all of the models he helped do reskins for over to the people that took over DBZ Tribute after Gotenkz left.
6. DBZ Tribute did benefit a LOT from the DBZ Supreme release. They went from a huge, more featureful version of DBZ Rampage to a map that started using flashy visual effects for abilities, custom skins for trees and buildings and units, and custom coded systems for sagas, leaderboards.. etc. I originally shared some of the ability triggers with the community and Gotenkz, which he used for a base on some of his new ability triggers and then further improved upon for efficiency and consistency (like I said before, I was 14 and this was my first time at ever using the editor, so triggers were POOR).
7. I didn't piss off an 'extremely good coder'. Lorothrigs was just a punk that couldn't even manage a B-average in highschool. He enlisted the help of 2 people to help make his code generator. One to interpret the raw script code from my map to help him lay out the save/load code, and another to make him a workable interface for his coder. He was my age at the time, so I wouldn't classify a 14-15 year old as an 'extremely good coder'. I did enlist his help for the V2 remake, though. I was using him to make a save/load code that would be more efficient and un-crackable (well.... by anyone that would actually give a damn anyway). The code I had come up with used single alphabetic characters for each item, hero, etc. It converterd the short 10-digit save/load code into Binary before scrambling them and posting a hexadecimal based save/load code. Once again, this was lost with the hard-drive failure.
8. I didn't directly give up on my map. The hard-drive I was using that had the unlocked version of V2 I was working on crashed on me. I still have the hard-drive, but its blank and won't hold anything for more than a month before self-formatting again. Around this time I had graduated highschool and was off to college with a full-time job, so I wouldn't have had any time to do anything else anyway. By this time, though, I had released another map and was working on another HUGE project..... but everything was lost with the hard-drive. Now I'm 23 years old as of a month ago, and have a much higher education when it comes to computer programming and computer hardware engineering. I've been doing this stuff for a few years now and love it.
9. So just on a side note, there was never any hatred between Gotenkz and I. Maybe a little jealousy here and there, but it was never just grueling competition. We spoke and didn't argue. The competition was a great learning experience for the both of us, as honestly, all competition is. Competition is what drives innovations as both sides are always being forced to learn new innovations to stay at the same level as their competitors. The competition between Gotenkz and I fueled a bit of a wc3 revolution that caused a trickle-down effect. Other maps started learning flashy abilities, using better custom models, and learning new ways to take control of the way I had abilities learned auto-learned and leveled based on hero level and the randomized functions I used to hide the dragonballs and give them each a custom rarity value. Gotenkz brought more people back to WC3, and in the end, DBZ Tribute's popularity was only surpassed by that of DotA. You honestly can't complain about the events that took place, even though they look silly from my perspective as of now.
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So I played around with it some over the last few hours. I found a few models that had their own camera with a pitch/yaw similar to what you would want on an FPS camera. I basically made a custom unit that used the model, and then applied model camera to set my game camera to the models cam, and then hid the unit so I could keep the FPS style cam. Problem is, you can't modify or move the camera in any way. It is locked onto the position of the unit and it cannot be mouse controlled nor can it be zoomed, scrolled, etc.
Oh well, it was a good idea. I was going to attach it to the head of a marine and use it as an FPS camera. You wouldn't have to worry about lag since it would be a fixed attachment and triggers wouldn't be needed to update its movement. You would just lock it to mouse rotation and turn on mouse rotation via triggers and ta-da! Sadly, not going to work that way right now.
I guess I can use the current third person style systems out there right now, although I don't find them very favorable (the only one I've seen that is to my liking, isn't for download!!!
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Have been toying around with the idea lately, and the current systems for FPS and TPS aren't exactly CPU or online friendly.
I take it that its not possible to just create a camera object and attach it to a units weapon or origin attachment point? I tried myself to no avail, but I didn't know if anyone knew of a decent work-around or not.
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Is it really necessary to add local variables for each player? If you just create a local variable named 'Player Units' and set it equal to all units who are an enemy of Player 15 hostile, it should count for all units of every active player, should it not?
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I didn't seem to have this problem in Wc3. I set the acquisition range to 20,000 and gave them unlimited sight and they would track me down regardless of where I was on a 256x256 map. Why is it now a problem in SC2?
I guess a temporary fix would be to create a trigger to order each unit to attack a random player in the player group, but that shouldn't have to happen.
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My map is only 96x96, and they will only acquire my hero as a target from slightly under half of that distance.
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So I'm working on a small wave-type survival map and I need the spawned units to be able to see and acquire targets regardless of how far away they are. I've got a visibility modifier up for Player 15(Hostile) to reveal the entire map and I have the minimum scan range set for my units to the maximum of 500. The problem is, this isn't far enough. If I hide my hero on the bottom-right corner of the map only the bottom end right spawns will see him and come looking for him, while the other ignore him. Anyway around this?
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Oh well. I did something a little easier. Just set it so when a unit owned by hostile dies it checks to see if a variable (that I set equal to the number of spawns) is equal to 0, and if not it reduces the integer count by 1. That way when the last unit dies, the int variable should be at 0, and then it will move onto the next set of actions.
I still have a lot to learn when it comes to this editor. I guess my frustration was the fact that I'm so well accustomed to World Editor GUI that when I first opened the Galaxy Editor I became a bit baffled. Oh well, its all starting to clear up for me.
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The diversity of custom functions overrides any downsides that might be present in GUI, but its still a shortfall overall. The novice map maker might have an extremely hard time grasping things that shouldn't be so hard to begin with. People coming straight from the World Editor aren't going to be very pleased especially if they weren't well versed in JASS to give them an easier transition to Galaxy.
Blizzard has said that the next expansion will be bigger than the Frozen Throne was for WC3, so hopefully it'll get even more Editor enhancements than the world editor did with the expansion's release.
As for now, I guess I'll be spending a little time learning galaxy for my own functions.
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You see thats the entire problem with the SC2 editor in general. Something that should have been possible with ONE condition now requires and entire trigger.
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I'm beginning to become seriously annoyed with the SC2 editor.
For example, I'm trying to create a condition that checks the number of units owned by player 1. In Wc3 it would be as simple as
Condition: Number of units in (Units owned by (Player 1)) Equal to 0
In Sc2, thats impossible. Under conditions, theres no such check as "Number of units owned by player". The closest thing is "Number of units in Unit Group". That would be all fine and dandy if the unit groups were remotely useful. Instead you start with:
(Number of Living units in Unit Group) == 0. From there you click the Unit Group to modify the actual group being checked. If this was Wc3, when you clicked on Unit Group, you would get a huge USEFUL list of unit group options such as (Units owned by player), (Units in region).
In SC2 the closest things you get to what I need is: (Units in Unit Group for Player), (Units in Region Matching Condition), and (Units in Unit Group Matching Condition). Heres the problem with all 3 of those. The first one just makes you choose another unit group which puts exactly where you just were. The other 2 cause you to choose a condition, which starts you ALL over back at creating a condition.
So, where does the madness end?
So please, someone tell me how to do the once simple Wc3 esque function of checking to see how many units owned by a certain player on still on the map. This is absolutely retarded that "Units Owned by Player" isn't an option under Unit Groups. WTF.
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I'd love to, but sadly I don't have time for the drama. I had planned on making a DBZ-esque map, but not with the actual DBZ story or heroes. It is just too much trouble making sure everything has been added and everyone is happy about it.
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I didn't think anything of it until I opened the editor back up....
I was editing actors when the editor froze. Now in Wc3 when you hit the test button it forces a save before it opens WC3. I did this a dozen times testing a UI unit selection before the map crashed. When I opened the editor back up and the map, it was just the terrain, no triggers.
I take it that in SC2, it doesn't save the map when you test it out in-game? It doesn't create a temporary map save somewhere I might be able to pick up from?
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So I'm growing a little leery of mindlessly creating TONS of heroes for a project I'm working on. I'm still using one of the old beta methods that countless tutorials for popped up way back in April.
So I started searching around to see what newer methods there were of creating heroes since the recent editor updates and official SC2 release. Out of the 5-6 topics/tutorials found on the subject, they were ALL from the beta. Is there really no better way to create a hero unit?
And on another note.... a lot of stuff in the editor has changed from the beta, yet there are still a lot of tutorials up from the beta that are obsolete. Why haven't they been removed???
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1. Like I said, it was teenage mindgames. Looking back now I'm a bit embarrassed by it, and I think it was all silly to begin with. After being through the things that I've been through, and doing the jobs I've done... I've learned a bit. Its better to have a friendly competition with your competitors and leave the enthusiasts to the trash talking to fuel the lime-light.
2. And you don't agree this is the way kids do things? Anything they do/like is instantly the 'best ever' in their minds. Best ever in the minds of everyone else? Absolutely not, especially in this case. I didn't necessarily think it was the best map just because of what it was, I was utterly intrigued by the idea of a save/load RPG DBZ style, regardless of how the map itself came out.
3. When I was playing Rampage (before my map was released), the only thing Rampage had in it was a skin for Saibamen, Nappa, and a Buu skin over the demon hunter. Is it possible Lacrossetitans gave the models to Rampage? Sure, but I had them first, I can assure you of this. I very specifically told him what animations I wanted in each model. The Galick Gun animation for Vegeta I made myself, with him fine-tuning it. I don't ever remember playing a Rampage map with actual models until sometime around the closed beta of my map. This is not an outright lie. I'm REALLY not all that concerned about events that happened 7 years ago. This is just my perspective.
4. Tribute didn't kill it completely. Was it a discouragement after Gotenkz left? Absolutely. He was the only fair player in the game the entire time. The only one staying neutral and holding his ground. Obviously, even I wasn't playing by the rules. When he left, the new creators weren't exactly friendly. They were willing to do anything/everything, no matter who they took it from or who came up with it. I stopped production on V2 after posting that, but never actually did away with it. I always had the map files still on my PC until my 10-year old 40GB hard-drive failed on me. I even said in a later post in that same topic that there was still a chance of the completed V1.3 being released, so obviously I hadn't given up on it yet.
5. Like I said, he had the models since he helped do a lot of reskins (I wasn't very good with shadowing/blending). When I first noticed the models I was using in Tribute, I opened up the help section of the map to see that all credit was given to FinalTyrant for the models.
6. I'm not saying JUST thanks to me, I'm saying I obviously had a hand in it. Gotenkz might not've ramped up production by the time he had left if I hadn't came around. Would it still have happened eventually? Absolutely, especially since most of my bigger, flashier attacks used a custom system based off of something I had seen in another map (they weren't visually similar, but the other map used spell GFX as attachments to the models to change their size/shape/rotation, and it sparked an idea).
7. You should've been there for the countless chatroom session I was in with thrigs and his classmates from highschool. He never sent me an AIM virus. He did spoof me into looking at some incredibly nasty fetish porn a few times when I opened some attachments he sent thinking they were something else. Like I said, teenage BS. Did I threaten to sue him? Sure, but I knew I'd never be able to pull it off since it was impossible. The replies I got from a lot of people were hilarious though.
8. Like I said before, I was discouraged but never really quit. Even afterwards I still put out a few versions of my map Ultimate Fusion Arena, which was also lost to HD failure before V2 of it was released. There was even a TD I did with a fellow forum member (Ragnarok). I can't remember the name of it since he did 95% of it, but I did a handful of slick triggers for him. If I remember correctly, it was an offshoot of Maze TD he had been working on in his absence. Lost as well. I never told anyone of the HDD failure because it came a few months after I had already told them I had given up. I did post about it here: http://z12.invisionfree.com/SupremeGaming/index.php?showtopic=2158 back in July, where I told someone it had failed on me.
9. The job I do now thrives solely on competition, and therefor theres a lot to learn from it.
On the side note, I applied for a Beta code on battle.net's website when they were first taking volunteers. I had made a couple of posts on the battle.net SC2 beta forums for map development and sent in countless reports to Blizzard as far as the editor feedback was concerned. I was told in one of my replies that offering up this much help/advice would definitely increase my chances of being chosen for the beta since I was so determined for it, and when I asked if I had been chosen in a later report, they said "I'll see what I can do for you.". I ended up not being chosen for the beta that way, and had to find another way to get ahold of it. I was also at Blizzcon last year, but they gave out the beta keys the previous year so I missed out. I never actually said a Blizz employee gave me a beta key. When I finally got one, I said that I 'pulled some strings to get a beta key'. This being, I pre-orderd SC2 from Gamestop to get the key. I thought I was one of the lucky ones since I got the beta key the first round they were giving them out, and weren't supposed to be giving out anymore. Eventually they changed their policy and started giving them to almost everyone that pre-ordered the game.
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Wow, so much misinformation in this thread.
Lets set a few things straight (even though this was posted 6 months ago).
1. I never attempted to start a fight with Gotenkz. In-fact, I was in communication with him throughout most of the project. We never spoke on forums through anything other than PM, but I spent some time discussing things with him through ICQ (we were in different time-zones, Gotenkz lived in Australia). Most of the non-sense talked back and forth between us on forums and through our forum members was just for show.If I remember correctly, I originally approached Gotenkz for one of his later coming versions of DBZ Tribute to try and offer some 'upgraded, more flashy spells' for his map. Of course I was just a newb at this time and didn't know anything about the wc3 editor other than how to manipulate a few things for visual purposes. I just wanted to be a part of the development. I even remember Gotenkz saying he thought a DBZ save/load would be fun, although it was HEAVILY limited by the way wc3 worked in general, and re-playability would suffer. Afterwards, I started working on my map, laying out general ideas and collecting a development team to help with teraining, etc (this was afterall, my FIRST attempt at even using the WC3 editor). Even when I had released the beta versions of DBZ Supreme, I had applauded Gotenkz when I seen some of the new models/skins he had developed. I remember being particularly impressed with his V10 screenshots of the remodelled lookout.
2. Me and the whole 'GREATEST DBZ MAP EVER' thing was just spewed out propaganda for attention and publicity. Besides, I was in my EARLY teens when I first started working on the map. (I don't think I was any older than 14/15). Thats just the type of stuff you say at that age, regardless. If I was an adult at the time, it might merit some sort of criticism, but not to a young kid who says that type of stuff.
3. The DBZ models weren't ripped from Rampage. Rampage never used custom models, only custom skins over classic WC3 models. This IS where I got some of the re-skins from (I believe it was saibamen and Nappa.. and maybe one other?) The rest of the DBZ models did have ESF ties. Were they directly ESF models? Not exactly. The skins all came from ESF models, yes. Most of the models themselves though were custom made by a guy who went by the forum name of lacrossetitans on the old WC3campaigns forums. He was the mastermind behind 99% of the models for DBZ Supreme. He didn't want his name given or any part of the publicity because he knew of the giant wave of trouble that would ensue after the maps release. He DID convert a few models over from ESF, such as Shenron, Perfect Cell, and one or two others. Either way, all of the models had to be 100% custom animated for WC3 as even the ESF converted models didn't carry over bone information for animation transfers. Lacrossetitans also did most of the animating early on in the project, and I picked up and did the animations for all of the boss characters (he just did the starting playable characters). After the beta, all of the custom models added to the map WERE made by me personally. This means that at least SOME credit should have been given for the countless people who took the models from my map, since I did the animations, several reskins, and implemented all of the particle effects and cameras to each model.
4. The models in tribute that were 'more efficient' were originally mine as well. After Cena left my community (and a couple of Global Mods), I picked up the help of a community member for a huge V2 release. I already had a new terrain finished (FinalTyrant provided the basis for it), and wanted to try and cut down the size of the models to allow me to cram more into the map. In V1, the headskins themselves had the exact same bitmap size as the body skins, which was overkill. The plan was to reduce them in dimension by half (to effectively cut down area to just 25%), and use the heads as attachments for models that would just use the same body (such as all SS forms). The community member I picked up was supposed to help with this. The attachment points I had made were bugged and the heads looked more like spring-loaded bobble heads. He said he knew a fix, so I sent him over quite a few models. Shortly after, I learned him was making his own DBZ map (can't remember the name right off hand) and was planning on also using the models for his map. By the time I got the edited versions back from him, I had grown a little older and weary of the Piss-Poor community I had with Supreme Gaming (Hundreds of nagging kids wanting me to put in DBGT stuff, hundreds of Tribute die-hards that wanted me to jump off a bridge, hundreds of people reporting new bugs that I still hadn't learned how to fix... etc). Plans for V2 started to fade, even though it was more than half-way done.
5. FinalTyrant (who NEVER made models, btw, he only did skins.... thats another bit of mis-information), helped redo the skins for a few models during the beta as well. I would get everything laid out and colored up and send to him for touch ups and polish. A quick example of this can be seen in the first form of Cooler which basically used a re-skinned Frieza model. FT sold out on me once the community started dying down. He made a couple of maps that were released and hosted on my forum, and eventually just got pissed at the community in general (and the fact that I wouldn't make him an Administrator on the forums), and eventually left, going back to the WC3Hive and sending all of the models he helped do reskins for over to the people that took over DBZ Tribute after Gotenkz left.
6. DBZ Tribute did benefit a LOT from the DBZ Supreme release. They went from a huge, more featureful version of DBZ Rampage to a map that started using flashy visual effects for abilities, custom skins for trees and buildings and units, and custom coded systems for sagas, leaderboards.. etc. I originally shared some of the ability triggers with the community and Gotenkz, which he used for a base on some of his new ability triggers and then further improved upon for efficiency and consistency (like I said before, I was 14 and this was my first time at ever using the editor, so triggers were POOR).
7. I didn't piss off an 'extremely good coder'. Lorothrigs was just a punk that couldn't even manage a B-average in highschool. He enlisted the help of 2 people to help make his code generator. One to interpret the raw script code from my map to help him lay out the save/load code, and another to make him a workable interface for his coder. He was my age at the time, so I wouldn't classify a 14-15 year old as an 'extremely good coder'. I did enlist his help for the V2 remake, though. I was using him to make a save/load code that would be more efficient and un-crackable (well.... by anyone that would actually give a damn anyway). The code I had come up with used single alphabetic characters for each item, hero, etc. It converterd the short 10-digit save/load code into Binary before scrambling them and posting a hexadecimal based save/load code. Once again, this was lost with the hard-drive failure.
8. I didn't directly give up on my map. The hard-drive I was using that had the unlocked version of V2 I was working on crashed on me. I still have the hard-drive, but its blank and won't hold anything for more than a month before self-formatting again. Around this time I had graduated highschool and was off to college with a full-time job, so I wouldn't have had any time to do anything else anyway. By this time, though, I had released another map and was working on another HUGE project..... but everything was lost with the hard-drive. Now I'm 23 years old as of a month ago, and have a much higher education when it comes to computer programming and computer hardware engineering. I've been doing this stuff for a few years now and love it.
9. So just on a side note, there was never any hatred between Gotenkz and I. Maybe a little jealousy here and there, but it was never just grueling competition. We spoke and didn't argue. The competition was a great learning experience for the both of us, as honestly, all competition is. Competition is what drives innovations as both sides are always being forced to learn new innovations to stay at the same level as their competitors. The competition between Gotenkz and I fueled a bit of a wc3 revolution that caused a trickle-down effect. Other maps started learning flashy abilities, using better custom models, and learning new ways to take control of the way I had abilities learned auto-learned and leveled based on hero level and the randomized functions I used to hide the dragonballs and give them each a custom rarity value. Gotenkz brought more people back to WC3, and in the end, DBZ Tribute's popularity was only surpassed by that of DotA. You honestly can't complain about the events that took place, even though they look silly from my perspective as of now.