Campaign Creations

OutsiderXE wrote:Don't know if you know, but the loading time is much faster when you don't exit a loaded map. Alt-tab to the editor, make your changes, press test-map again => much faster loading times.

IskatuMesk wrote:Nope, I did not know that. I'm totally going to have to try that sometime.

Hmm, I thought it was deadly obvious to everyone since logically the data (as in models, terrain textures, etc.) would be still in the RAM. SC2 would mostly just reload the data editor's numeric data and triggers (and some other stuff) since it could it have changed between the earlier tested map and your current tested map.

I always did that from day 1 of SC2.

And yes, it makes a big difference, like from a 100% to 10-30% delay depending on the map. Although patch 1.5's feature to always force your Blizzard files to be unmodified did increase the load time by double on retests. At least that's as far I am concerned with my Warlords and Merchants SC2 map and testing changes that way.

Presuming you really didn't know that, I am afraid I have to pity you after all this time considering how often it's required to test small changes in the data editor to ensure they do work for real.

That's what I was talking about earlier when saying you should keep the game open so things are cached, obviously you wouldn't go back to the login screen or something after each test, that would probably stop it from helping.

I made a habit of avoiding the data editor as much as I could, as using it as trial enough. I was under the impression the game was running some kind of online CRC check every time you ran a map and it wasn't cache related, as it was a delay only added in the streaming patch to begin with. Plus, due to games taking possession over map files and such preventing you from re-saving, it was habit for me to close the game after testing.

Admittedly, after 1.5 deleted months of work, I didn't have much reason to pursue better testing avenues afterwards. I pretty much stopped doing anything with the game at that point.

Yeah, it might not be the cache but it seems to help.
About saving getting blocked - IIRC when you use Test Document the editor creates a copy of the map or mod you're testing and gives that to the game, so the original file is never locked by the game, but everything else that the game accesses like the map's dependencies or the mod's test map or maps you switched to in-game with a 'Set Next Map' trigger will all get locked.

Yeah, it's just something ingrained in my head from all the other games I've modded/mapped for that didn't have some kind of file hotload (like supreme commander or sins, though the latter has a habit of randomly crashing instead of reloading stuff).

One thing about subjection--although subjection was not very difficult, the few times I might accidentally lose a hero was very distracting if it caused map defeat. Remember its a pain to work out "saving" in sc2 so although you might want a difficult map, you should save "defeat" triggers for 'serious' defeat, and I would avoid maps with lots of small independent defeat conditions.

Yup. Tried the testing while SC2 runs in the background. What I'm curious about is how this would affect you when editing triggers, data, or mod data.

What can we keep editing and be assured our changes are implemented with these technique? What can't we do when using this technique?

@Krazy, yes, dying heroes are a little annoying. I played offline, and had to save after I get through a certain "event" in a mission. Say after killing a bunch of zerg along the path.

Auto save would be nice, but I think Blizzard has kept that to themselves. I see no reason why they would do that.

Also, after Mesk did a LP, and seeing him do a reload after reload and go through the mission from the start with The Signal, I thought there should be a kind of system I triggered in, where after certain scenes or events, I would read the map, store necessary info into variables, and set them up whenever the hero dies, or the hellcat.

[Event occurs or dialogue]
Store number of remaining men, and store positions
Store hero positions
Store enemies, and positions
Store door states

*if a hero dies,
Clear all
Create heroes, units, enemies, on positions set door states.

or something like that.

In any case, an auto-save would be nice.