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Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2011 10:07 pm
by Taeradun
how is that terrible or convoluted or particularly different to how most other game expansions work

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 3:18 am
by Mucky
The real question is, why the fuck are they removing the carrier in the first place?

What they should be removing are the braindead attack-move units, i.e. Marauder, Roach, and Immortal.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 6:55 am
by Ricky_Honejasi
Seems they mostly base on it on which units are unused and such (regardless if it's their balancing fault or not).

For example, the carrier would probably be much more usable if they had 25% less build time and start with all 8 interceptors. But no, it seems more of an excuse to make new units instead and a bigger excuse to have stuff to sell.

EDIT : Also probably Blizzard-Activision's mentality with SC2 of trying to be "new" for the sake of having new things.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:05 am
by Pr0nogo
Taeradun wrote:how is that terrible or convoluted or particularly different to how most other game expansions work
Other expansions have you install them and launch them separately. Brood War integrated itself into the base game's UI. C&C 3: Kane's Wrath had you launch separately. SCII's potential method of installing different mods will be fucking confusing to most people and just be a mess in general.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 8:13 am
by Legion
These images are no doubt supposed to get us hyped up for the next instalment of Starcraft 2. Oh well. I still feel Blizzard should ditch the whole SC2 thing and do another expansion for Starcraft 1. I've finished BW and all fanmade productions of relevance. I want moar.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 9:28 am
by Falchion
Ricky_Honejasi wrote: For example, the carrier would probably be much more usable if they had 25% less build time and start with all 8 interceptors. But no, it seems more of an excuse to make new units instead and a bigger excuse to have stuff to sell.
I think it was a shame the Carrier got left out. Not only because it's a Protoss Trademark for Starcraft, but also because it was one of the most balanced units I've seen.

Thinking about it, yes, it did such vs Marine Balls and Corruptors and Stalkers, but that's because players were smart enough to shift-click Carriers and not merely A-move their AA. With the Graviton Catapult upgrade, less pricing would be overkill and major unbalance, as well as the already having eight interceptors. Not to mention Interceptors in SC 2 were pratically best against most AA, except Marine Balls on Stim and mass BCs, and the only thing the player could do to ruin it would open a Mothership vortex and the Interceptors get swallowed inside.

Also, there's gameplay-wise discussion: Carriers were only viable-to-gold if players could keep their expos secreted and/or well defended. Upgrades for air as well. Even then, the player would need more time to ready fully the Carriers (Building 4+ Interceptors) and keep them away from those AA balls.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sat Oct 22, 2011 11:56 pm
by Lavarinth
HotS has been called "expansion" by a lot of devs.

Considering the data for Carriers are already in WoL, they don't need to readd it. Any map can load data from another "mod" file, just like melee maps read WoL content.

I highly doubt that you'll be able to play HotS without WoL, especially after the statement: "If you picked A or B in the campaign multiple selection missions, we will TRY to impliment it into the campaign, but if you did not get that far in WoL we will default to A selection which is canon."

The statement was not: If youd did not get that far or did not purchase WoL, basically.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 1:46 am
by Taeradun
Pr0nogo wrote:Other expansions have you install them and launch them separately. Brood War integrated itself into the base game's UI. C&C 3: Kane's Wrath had you launch separately. SCII's potential method of installing different mods will be fucking confusing to most people and just be a mess in general.
I don't think what Ricky wrote (which is only a prediction and isn't necessarily how Blizzard would do it) would be that different to Brood War, except that wings of liberty has unique archive(s) of its own like a "second brood war".

StarCraft:
run the one program, select in the UI whether you want original or Brood War
Original: reads files from stardat.mpq
Brood War: reads files from broodat.mpq and stardat.mpq

how I imagine StarCraft II might work:
run the one program, select in the UI whether you want Wings of Liberty or Heart of the Swarm
Wings of Liberty: reads files from [Wings of Liberty archives] and [SC2 common archives]
Heart of the Swarm: reads files from [Heart of the Swarm archives] and [SC2 common archives]
+ extra files for the campaign data but it's the same kind of thing

also I don't know how Kane's Wrath works, and RA3 Uprising seems to be a standalone title, but going back further in time, RA2: Yuri's Revenge worked in a similar way except with separate executables (YR still read the vanilla archive) and Tiberian Sun: Firestorm worked like StarCraft in that it was handled in the game's UI

Things could get tricky when you start throwing user-made mod archives into the mix, especially if the mod-makers are retarded and ignore backwards/forwards compatibility so you end up in a situation where different projects rely on different versions of the same mod file, but that possibility has existed since Wings of Liberty came out. For Blizzard's official expansions I don't see how there could be any problems with it that can't be resolved with "if I want to use that WoL campaign unit in my project then obviously I'll have to include the WoL campaign files as a dependency", "hey guys this campaign requires Heart of the Swarm so if you haven't bought that expansion yet don't bother downloading this" or "welp I'm too stupid to understand even the most basic concepts, better kill myself".

also ahahaha look at all those fuckin words I just wrote :-[

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 3:15 am
by IskatuMesk
Sc2 is modular. There'll no doubt be some nature of protection (re: feigned moderation that doesn't actually exist) to try to discourage using HotS assets in WoL, but otherwise everything is based on the "mod" dependencies. Pretty much like what Taer said.

Given the arbitrary dependency limitations, I expect hilarity.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 3:55 am
by Falchion
IskatuMesk wrote:Sc2 is modular. There'll no doubt be some nature of protection (re: feigned moderation that doesn't actually exist) to try to discourage using HotS assets in WoL, but otherwise everything is based on the "mod" dependencies. Pretty much like what Taer said.
There will be, saw it in SC2Mapster.com. HotS maps with WoL dependencies will be accepted, but not vice-versa. WoL maps with HotS dependencies will be banned.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 4:03 am
by Taeradun
wouldn't a WoL map with HotS dependencies by definition actually be a "HotS map" (with possible WoL dependencies)?

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 5:53 am
by IskatuMesk
Falchion wrote:
IskatuMesk wrote:Sc2 is modular. There'll no doubt be some nature of protection (re: feigned moderation that doesn't actually exist) to try to discourage using HotS assets in WoL, but otherwise everything is based on the "mod" dependencies. Pretty much like what Taer said.
There will be, saw it in SC2Mapster.com. HotS maps with WoL dependencies will be accepted, but not vice-versa. WoL maps with HotS dependencies will be banned.
I was implying simply ripping the assets from hots and dropping them into a wol archive.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 6:12 am
by Falchion
IskatuMesk wrote:I was implying simply ripping the assets from hots and dropping them into a wol archive.
That's EXACTLY what Bluzzlard will ban.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:35 am
by IskatuMesk
Well, yeah, they said they would ban it. But I expect their moderation to be incredibly lazy.

Re: What... the FUCK... IS THIS???

Posted: Sun Oct 23, 2011 9:24 pm
by Lavarinth
I suspect it to be automated with a "consistency" check like SC1 already had if you modified the MPQ.