If You Could Add Anything You Want to SC2's Editor..

[Lavarinth]

What would it be?

Also- What would you hope would be improved from WC3's editor?

Please share your opinion.

[IskatuMesk]

See my previous post in sc2 discussion.

But, in short.

- A layout that isn't terrible.
- iscript.bin-esque animation control.
- Hardpoints.
- Totally softcoded AI.
- Unlimited object editor and unit/doodad placement (There are arbitrary limits in wc3 bypassed with external editors, this shouldn't be necessary)
- Support for map sizes up to 1024x1024.

[Marco]

Copy and paste terrain off of maps.  Copy a section of one maps terrain, paste onto another.  It's not to steal other peoples works, but rather to keep from switching maps or recreating sets for cinematic events.  Reusing sets you previously created as it were.  Because of cliff level variances, I imagine such a feature would be difficult to implement.

Effects editor.  A simple editing tool to change the dynamics of effects.  Instead of a red laser, you could fire a blue laser without having to import anything or tinker with code.

Faster loading between the game/editor.  Testing out maps, especially when creating cutscenes, is a constant process of add a little content, check it out in-game, then switch back to the editor to either correct or add a little more.  This one would save me a lot of time.

[Lavarinth]

Personally- I believe the cutscene preview in the editor was a step in the right direction, but it wasn't far enough, just a foot in the door. No cinematic bars or transmissions (even without an actual portrait) helped to make that feature useless rather quick. I found myself only using it for timing, not the actual preview.

In addition- I just hope for a much, much, MUCH simpler way to import your own custom creations, such as models and so forth, and hopefully custom animations can be played while a unit walks instead of animating every step a character takes only to have him point while walking, and then end the animation and have him pop to the original starting area.

Obviously, mine are more based on animation. But I also agree with you both. I also hope there will be a lot more softcoded features that really simply don't NEED to be hardcoded but for one reason or another are, and effects editors would be a nice addition instead of having to manually tweak a lightning bolt simply because you can't edit the hue or the such.

[UntamedLoli]

I would be happy if they simply kept the max exporting plugins up to date instead of releasing it for a single version with no further support like WC3 art tools, you can't even run the older versions on vista.

[RazorclawX]

Beside the loading of textures and such, which become ridiculous the more you work with it, the only thing I really want is somewhere to place your common function calls that become accessable in every campaign map, just as the Object editor is in War3. The silly necessity to copy a huge crapload of code to each map and the necessity to edit every map just to change one thing in common in all of them is ridiculous.

Copy and paste terrain off of maps.  Copy a section of one maps terrain, paste onto another.  It's not to steal other peoples works, but rather to keep from switching maps or recreating sets for cinematic events.  Reusing sets you previously created as it were.  Because of cliff level variances, I imagine such a feature would be difficult to implement.

You know, you can do this in War3 already. The only thing is it doesn't copy both terrain and doodads at the same time, so it's a little imprecise.

- Unlimited object editor and unit/doodad placement (There are arbitrary limits in wc3 bypassed with external editors, this shouldn't be necessary)

And I would rather they keep the hardcoded limits; some map people take things just a little too far and plaster everything they possibly can on every tile to make everything look busy.

[FlyingHat]

I'm all for a good user-friendly GUI / layout and everything being softcoded.


Oh, what a dream.

[Mr.]

I want to be able to make a unit's ability from nothing.  As in, I don't want to have to copy and paste Storm Bolt or Summon Water Elemental for every ability I want to make. 

[UntamedLoli]

- Unlimited object editor and unit/doodad placement (There are arbitrary limits in wc3 bypassed with external editors, this shouldn't be necessary)

And I would rather they keep the hardcoded limits; some map people take things just a little too far and plaster everything they possibly can on every tile to make everything look busy.

That's a really dumb reason to not remove the limitations, it doesn't effect you in any way what someone else does with their map.

[WB]

I know he wants the increased limit because he also wants the bigger map sizes, which I still don't see why he would need to make the map sizes as big as that, there is no reason any project would ever need it. if you want a larger playing field, shrink the game.

[Whiplash!]

I want the ability to join a map  mid game and more support for FPS style games. Also able to increase inventory size for units that would have one. You add these 2 things in the possibilities are endless. Oh, and up to 30 people in 1 game.

[RazorclawX]

- Unlimited object editor and unit/doodad placement (There are arbitrary limits in wc3 bypassed with external editors, this shouldn't be necessary)

And I would rather they keep the hardcoded limits; some map people take things just a little too far and plaster everything they possibly can on every tile to make everything look busy.

That's a really dumb reason to not remove the limitations, it doesn't effect you in any way what someone else does with their map.

It does when you load it.

THINK MCFLY!! They don't put in limits because they're big meanies, they put in limits because they don't want their lowest-supported end being annihilated. Blizzard actually cares about this sort of thing, which is why their games tend to work on nearly every computer put out in the last ten years and why you can't get some of the really high-end games working at all sometimes (I remember Ultima 9 worked on almost no computer that was out at the time of its release, for instance).

[Xenon]

I don't know, even with limits it's extremely easy to make a map that lags horribly on any computer because of bad triggering and memory leaks.

So they really need to make it so memory leaks are not such an obscure and difficult chore to avoid.

And it would be useful to be able to customize the interface (I think I just had a dream about a War3 map with custom buttons and a pulldown menu on the left side of the screen.)

[UntamedLoli]

which is why their games tend to work on nearly every computer put out in the last ten years

[imgwh 250x363]http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/3767/facepalm2s.jpg[/imgwh]

Never tried that doing anything remotely demanding have you? I was using a P3 up until a couple years ago and before that a P2.

http://ati.amd.com/developer/siggraph08/chapter05-filion-starcraftii.pdf

SC2 isn't skipping out on things because of the lower end, they are making it scale to what features are available.

That aside you just want Blizzard to moderate everyone for you, maps with bad triggering and AI are going to cripple the lower end more regardless what limits are in place than alot of static geometry which has almost no performance impact, this isn't WC3 and SC2 was designed to have far more going on at once so if someone wants to make a map that will use the hardware they or their friends have more then power to them.

WB> When you can't shrink everything you don't get very far with that and targetting anything would also be a nightmare.

[Ricky_Honejasi]

I want multiplayer game caches ... as in every player can have their own game cache to be read during the game instead of being limited to singleplayer/campaigns.

I do have many ideas that resolve around them which includes :

-> ideas of some kind of "scenario made in scenario" ... for example, you make a SC2 tactical squad-based map and you can make the map as an editor to be able also able to make your tactical scenario stored in your game cache to be played with other players. To top it off, auto-transfer of said scenarios slowly during gameplay.

-> store rankings updated from game to game. You can prioritize harder roles/difficulties on more veteran players of the map for example.

-> store open RPG characters' stats/items/money/quests done. Goodbye passwords that are long to implant right.

-> able to read another map's game cache for the propose of importing things. For me, it could be fun to import a campaign's data for a multiplayer map as a way to advertise the campaign by mentioning it subtly and giving a very minor bonus if they played it. Yet another possibility is to partially import another Open RPG's character into your own so he starts with level 10-15 instead of 1 if they played Open RPGs in general.

However, I presume if they do they will put file size limits at the very least to avoid those that decide to make infinite loops to overload a person's HD. In addition, it would be on a variable basis load to avoid potential malicious uses.

Although to be honest, there some bad sides to it :

Also a potential drawback would be a "game cache"-based banlist for specific maps although if it's not implanted right, the map creator is usually an idiot anyway on bad maps.

With the current ideas, it's also possible that one would proposely scrap another map's game cache.