LotV: Aerial support from Spear of Aidun. But from what I can see there are no target management system.
My wish: "Female protoss breaking out of their patriarchal structures. Read up on womens rights to get inspiration. I think this could be a very interesting story which I doubt Blizzard would ever consider. You can have domestic violence, complicated relationships, females turning into dark templars to get rid of their problems... strong stuff, but on a small scale!"
LotV: Vorazun, the female dark templar. Still unclear if domestic abuse caused it though.
My wish: "I would like to see that maps have multiple layers and more complex background doodads. Right now you have planets and some stars. In one of the final maps in Hots you had those flying cars below. I would like to see some cloud-blankets and other form of nice doodads."
LotV: the falling platform in the terran world, a campaign map, where the player needs to save the platform before it crashes. I hope there will be more levels like this.
My wish: "Base movement is also very interesting. Perhaps the Mothership could be tweaked to warp buildings too? Then you could have similar maps to the firewall map in WoL. The limited radious would force the players to choose which buildings to keep. Most of the time the Nexus should be included, but towards the end perhaps the factory buildings would be more important."
LotV: one of the announced campaign maps contains a rectangular moving base-platform. What I had in mind was a bit less complex. There has been these arcade maps where you can build buildings directly on top of it. Will be interesting to see how they solved the engineering part of this level!
My wish: Coop-mini-campaigns with persistent tech trees and unit upgrades/levels. I worked on this in a project called HercMerc.
LotV: The Allied Commanders gameplay mode. There are the Herc units, but they are not related. It's a pity they have chosen a hero-based system rather then squad. Squad based leveling makes micro more important.
My wish: "Finally, the Carrier has always been my favorite unit. I would like to see a tech-tree that can make it super-overpowered ;)"
LotV: the spear of aidun. Also the carrier got the fixed attack target point which will be awsome.
I think the coop campaigns is what will make me buy the game this time around. After all, I made the mod because I liked that way of playing. What has come true from your wishlist(s)? I guess it's hard to tell before the game has been released though.
Not was no big change in the technical sense, but from a social point of view, the star craft II version of the game engine is nearing its end station in player popularity so to speak. While modding for WoL you knew there was going to be at least two surges (releases) where players would return. To make maps for these surges was a motivator. I like working with the editor but have moved on to other tech (HTML5 and Android) because I feel there is more room to grow and the platforms are more stable in the long run for my hobbyist projects. My overall feeling is that the editor has been very deeply linked to SC2 and it's assets.
It feels like the platform is aging, maturing and dying with the SC2 triology. I guess the Heroes of the Storm could change the situation a little bit, but the legal and game-logic aspects might make it hard to include map-makers in the same way as has been the case in SC2.
One thing I've been thing about is the opportunity to re-release the engine as a board game and card game engine. Board games are played top down (avoiding the engines rendering limits) and the inputs fit well on current and next gen console as well as on the desktop. Tablets are harder because then you would have to port the entire engine to Android and iOS code... It would then be possible to strip the engine from most of it's RTS assets and only keep some limited assets. It would also require a new library for discrete events and a more friendly card-stack-library. Arrays are a bit too static so it makes chaining data a bit complicated.
EDIT: I'm also getting older and want new stuff to explore :)
In terms of level design I would like to see a level or two where you develop from a cornered position and then open up the battlefield in various directions. This can be very challenging, but also possible to toggle with difficulty settings. The easiest player would be cornered with one front, while the most advanced player could have two or three fronts.
Base movement is also very interesting. Perhaps the Mothership could be tweaked to warp buildings too? Then you could have similar maps to the firewall map in WoL. The limited radious would force the players to choose which buildings to keep. Most of the time the Nexus should be included, but towards the end perhaps the factory buildings would be more important.
Overall, starvation should be heavy, so that the players has to build bases and survive on low funds. In HoTs you had Kerrigan's abilities covering you, but here you should have tech-tree instead.
EDIT:
I Halo (first game) one of the later levels ends with a battlefield. The covenant and the zombies (forgot name) are all out battling each other. Then you have to run over the fields and steal a Banshee. I loved this segment because it always play out slightly differently. Perhaps such a level would be good? You have to move Zeratul and some units across an all-out battlefield between two foo-fractions?
About the future of sequels after LotV, most devs will probably be moved on to the Heroes of the Storm, so I don't think there will be more expansions in a while. I'm happy that they are not scrapping the core engine though. It opens up for future products being built on it, and old assets and skills to move on into new game titles.
I want there to be more complex smoke and particle effects. The engine could probably handle that, as the assets are not that huge in ram and they are generated procedurally -> can be turned off in options.
As a protoss player I would like to see more Air stuff and heavy mech. Protoss are a tech intensive race and should have at least one new walker and a ship of some form. I don't think any new units will be included into the ladder/melee gameplay since the balancing is so difficult.
Story wise, I would like to see lot's of Protoss mysticism and movement between the grand and the small. I Liked the "awakening of old artefacts" story of the Colossus. Also, getting some CGI about Protoss everyday life and living environments would be cool. Humans we can imagine and Zerg is just some bio-blobs lurking in their creep. Protoss however, they have culture and normal life (of some form). I would like to catch a glimpse of this. Protoss are some form of space-elfs, so I guess all they do is walk around in some serene way and squeeze holy chrystals, but something substantial would be nice. Their home-world lies in wrecks, but have they built any new cities and temples on the dark-templar world?
Monster wise... If the final boss is just some darkly shaped blob that walks around on the map and shoot beams, I would be disappointed. This enemy is so huge that it should include environmental elements. The firewall in that Wings of Libery campaign, the shield in the Dominion city and the beam competion in HoTs was good. More of that!
I don't know if it's too cmplex but some form of chrystalline creep would be cool. Perhaps some form of glacing tech that prevents creep from spreading, which the XelNaga can use to block creep.
I would like to see that maps have multiple layers and more complex background doodads. Right now you have planets and some stars. In one of the final maps in Hots you had those flying cars below. I would like to see some cloud-blankets and other form of nice doodads.
Clouds, on top of the map is such a thing. I know it's complicated because they cover the screen and prevent gameplay, but if you place them out nicely you could add a new visual layer to the map, together with the more living background you would have: distant background, close-by background, ground(3 cliff-levels), air and atmosphere.
Finally, the Carrier has always been my favorite unit. I would like to see a tech-tree that can make it super-overpowered ;)
I only have experience in working with dialogs using triggers (both creating them and manipulating them). You can work with predefined xml-frames which is a bit different.
*
Dialogs consist of Dialogs and Dialog Items.
All dialog items (images, labels, buttons etc.) are placed inside Dialogs. The Dialog is clipping the images so that the stuff that won't fit will not be rendered. You can set the background of the dialog to an image with transparent pixels.
You can't create groups of dialog items and use them as layers. You will need custom scripting with a handle (variable or frame-id) for each item and then manipulate them one by one. When you create a new item and add it to a Dialog, it will be put on top. So start with the bottom and work your way up.
When you manipulate a Dialog, all it's contents (the dialog items) will be affected. Thus, this could be used as a layer-feature.
The transparency of Dialog Items can not be manipulated. However, the transparency of Dialogs can. So to dynamically manipulate the transparency of each image you will need to put them into a unique Dialog.
Also, note that black pixels sometimes counts as transparent, depending on how you choose to render the image. If the method of rendering is "additive" black pixels will be transparent too, since they will add the pixel values (0,0,0).
Actor Messages (Triggers) and Actor Events are very similar, perhaps we should link them together somehow? Actor Messages are much better documented and viewing the same Message/Event from two angles could help understand it better.
My suggestion is to put all of the actor events + actor messages on the same page and write a line about how they work from a trigger perspective as well as from a data perspective. Then there are events and messages that are unique to the data editor and to the trigger editor. These would be put into their own sections. So a mutual page with three sections.
The banners seems to have been adjusted to their proper location. Now I have some other comments:
The Brown/orange color of external links is a bit dark. It's hard to see in a bright environment.
The page-content box should have a fixed width, same as the banner. Depending on the window size it sometimes pushes all content down by the distance of its height.
I'm also wondering if it would be ok to remove the Blizzard category in tutorials, integrate them into the others and split the Trigger section into two parts.
Edit: I removed the bullets from the tutorials page and replaced them with br elements, this makes the Icons pop out much more. It can be reversed through history.
The girl doll was quite boring, but I like the cat-like animals to the right (in the other picture). But $56? Perhaps if I would be riddiculously rich, had kids and had a huge need to show off to other parents.
Nostalgia: I remember making a lot of clothes for my dolls and toys when I was a kid and I think those are pretty easy to make clothes too. I had two sisters so when we played together we mixed my action figures with their dolls + lego and stuff we found outside. Mom was not happy finding large holes in the canvas rolls she had bought. Obviously we did not cut out material from the corners, but from the middle of the cloth since the cloth was much better there.
I'm mostly concerend that they are limiting themselves with their existing IP. From what I have seen and heard so far most of the content will be already existing content like heroes and estethics. My rough analysis of the game-market right now is that people are a bit tired of the established IP:s. People want fresh stuff. On the console market you have the new iterations coming on soonish. Not so much stuff going in on the PC department....
I have been thinking about writing some overview tutorials on how to work with AI, difficulty and dialogs. If I would add them to the new wiki they would be updatable by other users, in case things change. They would also get a unified formatting ( the tutorials in the forum section look very different from each other). Should I write these tutorials into the new wiki or in the tutorials forum?
I could not find a template for data (only for triggers). Is this the appropriate way to write the wiki? I have seen a lot of bullet lists, is that the prefered way of writing?
And last but not least: Even though Nova is a hot chick in a Ghost suit, Tosh manages to be more interesting as a character, he doesn't feel as a Kerrigan copy. ;-)
I took until the later part of the WoL campaign before I realized that Kerrigan and Nova were two different persons...
0
The legacy of the void might come out this year and from what I can see it looks like several of my old wishes seems to be coming fulfilled!
I think the coop campaigns is what will make me buy the game this time around. After all, I made the mod because I liked that way of playing. What has come true from your wishlist(s)? I guess it's hard to tell before the game has been released though.
0
@Crazio: Go
TLDR: "The end of time is nigh!!!"
Not was no big change in the technical sense, but from a social point of view, the star craft II version of the game engine is nearing its end station in player popularity so to speak. While modding for WoL you knew there was going to be at least two surges (releases) where players would return. To make maps for these surges was a motivator. I like working with the editor but have moved on to other tech (HTML5 and Android) because I feel there is more room to grow and the platforms are more stable in the long run for my hobbyist projects. My overall feeling is that the editor has been very deeply linked to SC2 and it's assets.
To give you an idea of other platforms available, check: http://www.indiedb.com/engines
It feels like the platform is aging, maturing and dying with the SC2 triology. I guess the Heroes of the Storm could change the situation a little bit, but the legal and game-logic aspects might make it hard to include map-makers in the same way as has been the case in SC2.
One thing I've been thing about is the opportunity to re-release the engine as a board game and card game engine. Board games are played top down (avoiding the engines rendering limits) and the inputs fit well on current and next gen console as well as on the desktop. Tablets are harder because then you would have to port the entire engine to Android and iOS code... It would then be possible to strip the engine from most of it's RTS assets and only keep some limited assets. It would also require a new library for discrete events and a more friendly card-stack-library. Arrays are a bit too static so it makes chaining data a bit complicated.
EDIT: I'm also getting older and want new stuff to explore :)
0
In terms of level design I would like to see a level or two where you develop from a cornered position and then open up the battlefield in various directions. This can be very challenging, but also possible to toggle with difficulty settings. The easiest player would be cornered with one front, while the most advanced player could have two or three fronts.
Base movement is also very interesting. Perhaps the Mothership could be tweaked to warp buildings too? Then you could have similar maps to the firewall map in WoL. The limited radious would force the players to choose which buildings to keep. Most of the time the Nexus should be included, but towards the end perhaps the factory buildings would be more important.
Overall, starvation should be heavy, so that the players has to build bases and survive on low funds. In HoTs you had Kerrigan's abilities covering you, but here you should have tech-tree instead.
EDIT: I Halo (first game) one of the later levels ends with a battlefield. The covenant and the zombies (forgot name) are all out battling each other. Then you have to run over the fields and steal a Banshee. I loved this segment because it always play out slightly differently. Perhaps such a level would be good? You have to move Zeratul and some units across an all-out battlefield between two foo-fractions?
About the future of sequels after LotV, most devs will probably be moved on to the Heroes of the Storm, so I don't think there will be more expansions in a while. I'm happy that they are not scrapping the core engine though. It opens up for future products being built on it, and old assets and skills to move on into new game titles.
0
I want there to be more complex smoke and particle effects. The engine could probably handle that, as the assets are not that huge in ram and they are generated procedurally -> can be turned off in options.
As a protoss player I would like to see more Air stuff and heavy mech. Protoss are a tech intensive race and should have at least one new walker and a ship of some form. I don't think any new units will be included into the ladder/melee gameplay since the balancing is so difficult.
Story wise, I would like to see lot's of Protoss mysticism and movement between the grand and the small. I Liked the "awakening of old artefacts" story of the Colossus. Also, getting some CGI about Protoss everyday life and living environments would be cool. Humans we can imagine and Zerg is just some bio-blobs lurking in their creep. Protoss however, they have culture and normal life (of some form). I would like to catch a glimpse of this. Protoss are some form of space-elfs, so I guess all they do is walk around in some serene way and squeeze holy chrystals, but something substantial would be nice. Their home-world lies in wrecks, but have they built any new cities and temples on the dark-templar world?
Monster wise... If the final boss is just some darkly shaped blob that walks around on the map and shoot beams, I would be disappointed. This enemy is so huge that it should include environmental elements. The firewall in that Wings of Libery campaign, the shield in the Dominion city and the beam competion in HoTs was good. More of that!
I don't know if it's too cmplex but some form of chrystalline creep would be cool. Perhaps some form of glacing tech that prevents creep from spreading, which the XelNaga can use to block creep.
I would like to see that maps have multiple layers and more complex background doodads. Right now you have planets and some stars. In one of the final maps in Hots you had those flying cars below. I would like to see some cloud-blankets and other form of nice doodads.
Clouds, on top of the map is such a thing. I know it's complicated because they cover the screen and prevent gameplay, but if you place them out nicely you could add a new visual layer to the map, together with the more living background you would have: distant background, close-by background, ground(3 cliff-levels), air and atmosphere.
Finally, the Carrier has always been my favorite unit. I would like to see a tech-tree that can make it super-overpowered ;)
0
@Doubleclick123: Go
I only have experience in working with dialogs using triggers (both creating them and manipulating them). You can work with predefined xml-frames which is a bit different.
*
Dialogs consist of Dialogs and Dialog Items.
All dialog items (images, labels, buttons etc.) are placed inside Dialogs. The Dialog is clipping the images so that the stuff that won't fit will not be rendered. You can set the background of the dialog to an image with transparent pixels.
You can't create groups of dialog items and use them as layers. You will need custom scripting with a handle (variable or frame-id) for each item and then manipulate them one by one. When you create a new item and add it to a Dialog, it will be put on top. So start with the bottom and work your way up.
When you manipulate a Dialog, all it's contents (the dialog items) will be affected. Thus, this could be used as a layer-feature.
The transparency of Dialog Items can not be manipulated. However, the transparency of Dialogs can. So to dynamically manipulate the transparency of each image you will need to put them into a unique Dialog.
Also, note that black pixels sometimes counts as transparent, depending on how you choose to render the image. If the method of rendering is "additive" black pixels will be transparent too, since they will add the pixel values (0,0,0).
0
0
I added the Actor events page.
Actor Messages (Triggers) and Actor Events are very similar, perhaps we should link them together somehow? Actor Messages are much better documented and viewing the same Message/Event from two angles could help understand it better.
My suggestion is to put all of the actor events + actor messages on the same page and write a line about how they work from a trigger perspective as well as from a data perspective. Then there are events and messages that are unique to the data editor and to the trigger editor. These would be put into their own sections. So a mutual page with three sections.
0
I made a page called Community in the tutorials section to gather info about it. Perhaps you could build on that somehow (or move it).
0
The banners seems to have been adjusted to their proper location. Now I have some other comments:
Edit: I removed the bullets from the tutorials page and replaced them with br elements, this makes the Icons pop out much more. It can be reversed through history.
0
The girl doll was quite boring, but I like the cat-like animals to the right (in the other picture). But $56? Perhaps if I would be riddiculously rich, had kids and had a huge need to show off to other parents.
Nostalgia: I remember making a lot of clothes for my dolls and toys when I was a kid and I think those are pretty easy to make clothes too. I had two sisters so when we played together we mixed my action figures with their dolls + lego and stuff we found outside. Mom was not happy finding large holes in the canvas rolls she had bought. Obviously we did not cut out material from the corners, but from the middle of the cloth since the cloth was much better there.
0
I'm mostly concerend that they are limiting themselves with their existing IP. From what I have seen and heard so far most of the content will be already existing content like heroes and estethics. My rough analysis of the game-market right now is that people are a bit tired of the established IP:s. People want fresh stuff. On the console market you have the new iterations coming on soonish. Not so much stuff going in on the PC department....
0
The wiki default text color should not be white, a gray color is better. If the bold text would be made white then it would pop out a lot more.
The level 3 and 4 headers look almost the same. If level 4 headers would be made non-bold they would be easier to differentiate.
0
I have been thinking about writing some overview tutorials on how to work with AI, difficulty and dialogs. If I would add them to the new wiki they would be updatable by other users, in case things change. They would also get a unified formatting ( the tutorials in the forum section look very different from each other). Should I write these tutorials into the new wiki or in the tutorials forum?
0
I wrote a piece on the Conversation data type.
http://wiki.sc2mapster.com/Data/Campaign/Conversations http://wiki.sc2mapster.com/Data/Campaign/Conversation_States http://wiki.sc2mapster.com/Data/Campaign/Characters
I could not find a template for data (only for triggers). Is this the appropriate way to write the wiki? I have seen a lot of bullet lists, is that the prefered way of writing?
0
I took until the later part of the WoL campaign before I realized that Kerrigan and Nova were two different persons...