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Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:36 pm
by Kaoru
...questions, but no news. First off, am I the only one who is patently unable to access these sites in any way, shape or form, including through the use of Firefox, Internet Explorer, Google's cached archive, and the Wayback Machine, itself?

Secondly, if not, are these sites 'dead'? The Wayback Machine shows no updates for SEN yet - this year - which suggests that it hasn't been around since even January 1st. Last I heard, SEN was gearing up for the update to SEN v5, but I'm not sure if that went through and they have a new address that I can't find - or if they've simply vanished off the radar.

I mean, I know CC is still right here, and still going through its long, thorough update process. I'm fine with that. I don't mind waiting a while for a good thing, and while some of the campaigns that were previously offered on the website are no longer offered on the forums, I'm sure they're still around in the old website's code and will be uploaded once the update is finished. But SEN is just...gone. It's as if a Protoss Mothership had warped in and sucked the whole darn thing into a black hole.  :o

I never had much contact with SME, but I know that they appear to be down, too. And this has been going on for weeks. As someone who - thanks to concerns that, due to SC2 not including heroes in its final build, the Use Map Settings possibilities for that game will be sorely lacking - has just recently taken up not only map-editing but also more detailed modification (strings and hexidecimals are fuuuun  :)), the loss of any modding resource is a severe blow. I'm still floundering in hex-editing, and while I've experience with minor modifications to many other games, the complexity of modifying SC really has me worried. Oh, the tutorials, the explanations, they're all incredibly helpful - as are all the tools and utilities - but there has undeniably been information lost due to the apparent collapse of SME and SEN.

I'm just barely getting the ground under my feet with Starcraft modding, and I've probably only got a summer or two left to do something phenomenal with it. I'm worried that I might not have time, with everything else in my life. I hope that's not true.

Can someone help me? Enlighten me as to the fate of SEN and SME...Stormcoast is a help, a big help, and the people here at CC, I'm sure, could be too. Even SA is likely a valuable resource - but I always, always, went to SEN when I had questions, and it was through SEN that I learned so much of what I now utilize.

Help me, staff and users of Campaign Creations. You're my only hope!
EDIT: I admit, I've seen trickier games to modify, but modifying Starcraft is complex to me. Admittedly, I get the feeling that if I just sat down and devoted a day or two to it, I'd get immeasurably better (That seems to be how anything at all works with me), but for now, it all seems hopelessly complex.  :P

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 2:53 pm
by IskatuMesk
SME has been "dead" for years and years. The staff have never done anything remotely productive in the site's existence and I wouldn't be surprised if they finally pulled the plug since they were paying for wasted space. Yet, I still doubt that their downtime was intentional... they were the kind of people to cling on power until the bitter end.

I have no idea why SEN would be down.

Heh, and modding SC isn't in any way complex.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 3:59 pm
by Lavarinth
Says the master of modding. To me- It's too much to look at at once. I prefer to go about other portions of SC such as mapping and triggering and have others do the coding.

SME has been silent for some time. Long, long ago, a function was called secretly to bring many well respected sites into one unison mother-site. Those being Star Alliance, Campaign Creations, and Sovereign Modding Empire to my knowledge. Others may have been included, but I'm not too sure. With Star Alliance being the "top" site at the time, having taken in GameProc, which took in Ancilla Editing Network, they had a complete set of projects at their disposal. The only problem was they didn't capitalize. Some were lost, others left elsewhere. When this began to happen, we had a meeting. The "great" icons of the sites were all there. I somehow managed to squeeze in as a representative, and thanks to knowing majority of the iconic figures. Eventually, it all fell apart. Many were for, few were against, then the tide would shift completely back and forth. As far as I knew, SME was doing it to give their projects a decent place to live, while the rest just wanted a simpler community. SME was very silent during these times, and in the end, their silence knocked them out of our meetings, and soon after Star Alliance and Campaign Creations seceded and went back to doing things on their own accord. Star Alliance is still working to overcome their own problems while Campaign Creations went through a feast of leader-figures in few months and eventually, my being there by all their sides led me here. Steps away from a new launch, it'll be back soon. Same with Star Alliance. SME on the other hand, their voices aren't really being heard, or they simple aren't there.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 4:05 pm
by IskatuMesk
When SME was founded it managed to inherit rights to distributing all of the discontinued Camsys tools, which is where 90% of its content comes from. It had a few people who had some ideas they tossed around, but nothing really got done. DarkWizzard made a MG converter for 1.10, went on to make the sloppiest and buggiest UI imagineable, then had a big temper tantrum and ended SME's productive days.

As far as modding is concerned, no matter how you look at it, SC is easy and simple to mod. Everything is handed to you in a logical fashion and the only real thing you need to deal with is unusual limitations and frustrations regarding incompatibilities and bugs. Compared to real modding, SC is very forgiving and carefree.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 7:53 pm
by Kaoru
I do appreciate all of this backstory. Quite honestly - to someone who's always been a part of Battle.net, and mostly a part of the map-making and role-playing scene there, as opposed to the map-making scene here - it's fascinating to hear about all of this, even though, obviously, many of the terms and individuals are alien to me.

But that still doesn't explain why SEN is down. Or is it? Can any of you - can anyone - access it? I attest that I cannot.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 8:48 pm
by IskatuMesk
I tried both SME and SEN for the heck of it and neither of them work for me.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:13 pm
by Kaoru
Thank God! Then it's not just me. ...So, do you know where I can get Stargraft? I managed to track down the Vision2x patch (On the CC archive-site), and I have it, but I can't run it without Stargraft. And trying to run it directly makes the game implode upon itself. Violently.

I know that Stargraft, as a creation of Camelot Systems, is almost exclusively available on SME - which appears down - but...well, do you know anywhere else I can get it?

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 10:56 pm
by IskatuMesk
What do you even need stargraft for? Unless you're modding 1.10 like I used to do. I have no idea where else you'd get it if SEN and SME are down. The SC community isn't exactly teeming with life. Or is alive at all. In fact, I'd consider it grave moss by now.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sat Jun 02, 2007 11:32 pm
by Kaoru
I have about four versions of Starcraft on my machine, right now. 1.07, 1.09, 1.11( or 1.12b, I'm not sure), and 1.15. I mostly need Stargraft to make use of already-created patches - for creating my own things, I'm sure other tools will be enough. Besides, the Starcraft scene is experiencing a revival as of recently - if you haven't noticed by how many people have shown back up here. And, if I don't miss my figures, there's an average of about (at least) 20,000 more people on Battle.net every day, as opposed to how many there were before the announcement of SC2. That number seems to be rising, as well.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 12:11 am
by IskatuMesk
I'm referring to the modding scene. People are showing up here for the promise of SC2, not to revive sc1 modding. As far as the days where I was in my prime - where big TC's were the spotlight of the modding community, they are long forgotten.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 3:19 am
by Meta
Apparently the Staredit.net host closed the site due to unpaid bills. Really really sad, as it was the last big SC modding site, and in fact the biggest SC modding site I'd ever saw. I had topics about my campaigns there, and the amount of feedback I got was really impressive. That showed me how their community was big, and willing to play mods.

There's a site up though, called Maplantis. It almost looks like a replacement to Staredit.net. Hell, even some of Woodenfire's terrain is there. ;D http://194.169.192.166/index.php?pg=forum

About SME, sincerely, it's been 3 years since I've accessed that site.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 8:00 am
by Taeradun
hehehe I last accessed SME a few days ago after the SC2 launch, pretty much just to post on their forums "lolz SME is still around" So something's happened in the last week or so ???

And I've just taken over as new Star Alliance webmaster, and as Lav said we're going through a relaunch at the moment like CC is - I just got the new site system going a few minutes ago - hahaha Lav, SA wins - although while we did get the CMS up and running first, it hasn't had much actual content put on it so far so it doesn't really count just yet ;D

Yeah and I'm still hopeful that we can draw our sites closer together, but when the likely resurgence happens with the release of SC2 and both our sites get more active anyway, I have no doubt there'll still be plenty of friendly community crossover and news posts about each other's projects and stuff :D

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:13 am
by Kaoru
Mr. Meta wrote: Apparently the Staredit.net host closed the site due to unpaid bills. Really really sad, as it was the last big SC modding site, and in fact the biggest SC modding site I'd ever saw. I had topics about my campaigns there, and the amount of feedback I got was really impressive. That showed me how their community was big, and willing to play mods.

There's a site up though, called Maplantis. It almost looks like a replacement to Staredit.net. Hell, even some of Woodenfire's terrain is there. ;D http://194.169.192.166/index.php?pg=forum

About SME, sincerely, it's been 3 years since I've accessed that site.
...
...
I...
...wow.
That's...
...Does anyone know if the content of the site was saved when it was closed down? I mean...
...Geez. There was so much there...
Don't mind me. I'm just...rather shellshocked.

Incidentally...I know what you mean, my dear Doctor, but I do believe you're at least partially wrong. True - it's been announced that Blizzard's including a map editor - but it's also been announced that Blizzard isn't going to include any types of hero units in the game. When people find this out - the map-makers, the mod-makers, the patch-makers - they will do one of three things. A. They will stick around for SC2 anyhow, B. They will get disappointed and leave, or C. They will come back to modding SC1.

...Of course, they might also decide to D. Firebomb Blizzard's offices, but we can hope they don't. Anyhow...
Thanks for the information, fellows. ...SEN's gone. ...God...

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 10:56 am
by IskatuMesk
Uh... only wc3 had any heroes, and if SC2 is indeed a fully-flushed LUA system, coding in a hero system won't be hard.

I don't think you grasp just what you can do with the Havoc engine and LUA.

Let's put it this way.

Do you want SC2 to be an FPS? An RPG? A flight simulator? It could be done with LUA, and fancied up with havoc.

Do you want the AI to have a profile system and personalities based on a randomized personality? I intend to do that for RequiemX.

Wc3/Sc1 is so incredibly vastly limited to what a real engine is capable of doing. Having a functional EXP system right off the bat is the last thing you're going to be worried about.

Re: Sovereign Modding Empire, Staredit Network, and...

Posted: Sun Jun 03, 2007 2:02 pm
by wibod
Uh Mesk Blizzard says the language is a proprietary scripting language based on C.