SC2 Campaigns?

Post Reply
User avatar
Alevice
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 373
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:51 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Alevice »

Haha, Lav, let's stop trolling, it is obvious we actually hate it because it blows donkey dicks and shit. I mean, who would like it?!?!! Damn. So yeah, don't worry mesk, you have it right.

And yeah, obviously I merely dabble with the editor, I haven't worked at all for serious shit to release in the past months, AT ALL. Nothing that involves data editing either. Because that shit is impossible to understand.
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by IskatuMesk »

Thank you for establishing my point in all its sticky glory.
User avatar
Alevice
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 373
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:51 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Alevice »

Okay, I handt paid attention to the post you mad before my latest, but I just did. So pretty muc, you got some model imports here and there and put a Third person camera over what seems to e a standard melee map, with a random truck wnadering. Whats that supposed to be?
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by IskatuMesk »

If you had read the video name you'd know it was a FPS testing map. I designed the map to stress test the engine and attempt various methods and concepts of creating performance impacts and how to best solve them. It was a generic map detail-wise, but the mechanics behind it were most important.

The AI trigger activates two computer players using default Insane scripts with an imposed APM cap of 400. This specific test is to demonstrate the enormous performance impact of the default AI. Not directly related to the editor, but such was not the video's purpose to begin with.

Other tests included heavy use of particles, rescaled dynamic lights, units, poly counts (there's a ship with 100k tris in that map), collision, pathing, and some other data editor related things. For example, I discovered that the siege tank will slide around units despite an extremely slow turning speed. The pathing is very wc3-esque in that sense. I also discovered that when dropped out of a dropship, tank turrets are physically flying in the air above the chassis for a short period of time.

I also discovered that the engine performs absolutely horribly for a TPS.

In reality, most of my negative perspective of the game and thus the editor comes from the fascination of TPS maps, for that was the only design that survived my initial performance tests during beta. Fleet mods seemed unrealistic, though not impossible, given the difficulties and performance loss with large numbers of projectiles and the small map size limit. An original AO-style gametype conversion is currently impossible through integration complications, but mechanically might have been doable if not extremely challenging from a data editor perspective given the enormous complexity of unit AI that would be necessary for bosses and their related spells and mechanics. Challenging, but not impossible.

The editor is very powerful, but its layout renders basic jobs extremely time consuming. Simple things like resizing tanks and changing basic stats around took a large amount of time, and I loathed the prospect of making things that would be extremely basic in sc1 iscript such as sequenced attacks.

Had the editor had more than a few weeks of development time put into it, and some forethought on behalf of the developers to investigate user-made tools, I imagine most of my complaints with it would have been evaporated. I really wanted to like the editor, I really wanted to do something with it - even something simple - but sc1's tools have spoiled me.

/e

That truck is a unit not assigned to AI attack groups (specifically assigned not to be added through unit properties) but it gets added anyways.
User avatar
Alevice
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 373
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:51 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Alevice »

By FPS I thought you meant First Person Shooter for some reason, hence my comment. My bad on that.

I guess we both got different interests for design. I personally couldn't really give a shit how the game performed for TPS nor Fleet based conflicts, so its defects on those particular areas are not of terrible concern for me. I have been working on a single player map/campaign and a "tactics" based multiplayer map and so far I have had quite some fun working on them. I have veeeery limited time when it comes to working on my maps, as I work around 70 hours per week on average, so I have to carefully choose my hobbies, and I haven't regreted working intensely on them.

I am not saying the editr is not without bugs, and I know there are a fair share of them (for example, did you know that lighting modifiers (you know, bluer, darker, more stauraded, etc) never get saved when you are working with more than one lighting object at a time? If you edit this by directly editing the XML, this doesnt get deleted), but that hasnt stopped me yet at all. As long as it isnt a core component crucial to my work, I just end up tweaking my design so the bug doesnt affect me at all.

And when it comes to bugs, you cant top Fallout 2 unpatched, and I invested like 80 hours in that game nevertheless.
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by IskatuMesk »

Well, performance is a big concern. If a map without anything going on gives me 20fps what happens when I send out 8 computers against each other with high detail units and lots of effects? Yeah. It's going to die. And that's on a very powerful system, too.

I looked at sc2 as one of two possibilities;

Rehash something old (AO, ITAS)

Try something new (TPS)

Simply put, stuff you did in Starcraft 1 won't happen in sc2. AO as a whole is based extremely heavily on iscript fancywork. I'm good at iscript. I learned a lot with AO, which all came down to conservation and efficiency and working my way around SC's ridiculous limitations and issues. I'm used to stuff just flat out being impossible. But even a super complicated unit like The Great Destroyer with all his random bullshit and fancy sounds and effects took an hour max to code out from the ground up. Add two hours onto that for making all of his assets.

In SC2 if you want assets... well you aren't getting them, sorry. Maybe by Legacy of the Void you'll have max tools, but no time sooner judging by their blank expressions and answers. Considering how completely blindsided they were by Lavarinth's inquiries and the art tools inquiry, it's pretty obvious they aren't given much thought into custom content past using it as a bridge into microtransactions. I had a guy make some basic mechanical examples of TGD's base attack in sc2... but it was scarcely the foundation.

A lot of functions in the editor flat out don't work. Texture tiling in tilesets, for example. If you want that you need to go into the XML file or use a console command. I mean, anyone could have simply changed a number to see if it worked and fixed it if it didn't. But apparently that kind of testing just doesn't happen in the industry anymore. Also, all of the naming bullshit with events that doesn't get updated ever. You have to pop into the events to check their id's to see if they are actually properly referencing the right shit or not, and half the time with duplicating they aren't, especially with beam effects.

Fleet mods simply don't work in 2d platform 3d games. Things getting stuck inside of each other is unavoidable with how they "broke" sc2's pathing to try to bring back some semblance of muta stacking. The result is just too messy graphically for mass air of any nature.
User avatar
Maglok
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 1312
Joined: Sun May 20, 2007 12:48 pm
Location: The Netherlands

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Maglok »

Fact: I like the editor. :)
- Maglok
Audio engineer and writer
SC2 campaign dev ranting: The Bunker blog
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by IskatuMesk »

That's a lie. You're a biscuit man, I can't trust you to say anything but lies.
User avatar
Krazy
Zerg Creep Colony Landscaper
Zerg Creep Colony Landscaper
Posts: 446
Joined: Sun Nov 30, 2008 1:49 am

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Krazy »

I think I might like the editor once I figure out how to do anything other than terrain in it ^^
johnnythewolf
Terran Starport Baggage Handler
Terran Starport Baggage Handler
Posts: 135
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:28 am

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by johnnythewolf »

Check the official campaign maps. You can see how Blizzard did their triggers. It's amazing how simple most of them actually are!
User avatar
DrumsofWar
Protoss Infested Terran (Unemployed)
Protoss Infested Terran (Unemployed)
Posts: 842
Joined: Fri Feb 29, 2008 12:55 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by DrumsofWar »

johnnythewolf wrote:Check the official campaign maps. You can see how Blizzard did their triggers. It's amazing how simple most of them actually are!
Well, that's sort of the problem. If Blizzard couldn't do any triggering gymnastics with their own editor, what chance do we have?

I get that you're a proponent of the editor and that's great, but most of us here used to be Blizzard fans and got burned. Granted that it took 6 years of semi-illegal prodding of the engine to get SC1 to the point where it could do some amazing stuff, but this time around, you're facing a much more litigious and defensive Blizzard now owned by Activision.

It's why so many of their people, including co-founder Bill Roper, left. And as a note, it was that prodding which created not just the campaigns which weren't popular but all the big Bnet UMS which kept SC1 going for another five years when the melee got hacked to death.
User avatar
Alevice
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 373
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:51 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Alevice »

Well, that's sort of the problem. If Blizzard couldn't do any triggering gymnastics with their own editor, what chance do we have?
I am not sold by this statement. Blizz's wc3 camapgins were also simple in the trigering aspect, it was complex user made mpas that really pushed the engine.
johnnythewolf
Terran Starport Baggage Handler
Terran Starport Baggage Handler
Posts: 135
Joined: Sat Sep 05, 2009 5:28 am

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by johnnythewolf »

DrumsofWar wrote:
johnnythewolf wrote:Check the official campaign maps. You can see how Blizzard did their triggers. It's amazing how simple most of them actually are!
Well, that's sort of the problem. If Blizzard couldn't do any triggering gymnastics with their own editor, what chance do we have?
Way to misinterpret what I said, Drummy!

By "simple", I of course meant "easy to do and easy to understand", which is a great thing for all amateur mapmakers. The only thing that sadly can't be reproduced is the lip-synching, as they used a third-party tool for that.
User avatar
IskatuMesk
Xel'naga World Shaper
Xel'naga World Shaper
Posts: 8328
Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 1:40 pm
Location: M͈̙̞͍͞ͅE̹H̨͇̰͈͕͇̫Ì̩̳CO̼̩̤͖͘ జ్ఞ‌ా

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by IskatuMesk »

Granted that it took 6 years
magi of war

try 2-3 years bro
User avatar
Alevice
Zerg Drone Masseur
Zerg Drone Masseur
Posts: 373
Joined: Fri Aug 25, 2006 5:51 pm

Re: SC2 Campaigns?

Post by Alevice »

Man, Magi of War was awesome. Damn you Koreans.
Post Reply