StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Razzy »

It doesn't sound like the restrictions posted here are going to have a major effect on custom single-player campaigns, but external TC's or big mods are another issue. Poop. Makes me glad I decided to stick with SC for my campaign.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Razzy wrote: It doesn't sound like the restrictions posted here are going to have a major effect on custom single-player campaigns, but external TC's or big mods are another issue. Poop. Makes me glad I decided to stick with SC for my campaign.
For a very specific aspect, it's custom single-player campaigns that pay the most the price because authors that would hope to post it on Blizzard servers for more publicity and ease of transfer is pretty much denied in advance unless they scrap all imported files for a "Blizzard" downloadable version OR to have a dummy publicity map with a download map link for their real campaign file.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by IskatuMesk »

Bluzzard has bombed out sc2's custom content in nearly as severely as ZuxxeZ bombed out E2160's custom content. The only difference is that in sc2 you can still access the editor, for what good it does you!
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Master Jademus Sreg »

Xenon wrote: This is ruining any motivation to work on my project. Why should I even bother if it's going to be totally subject to unreasonable search and censorship?
This.

I began work on a story before the release of patch 13. Map development has been coming along smoothly, but suddenly I am derailed by these content filters. How am I to tell a thoughtful, thoroughly dark, and engaging story if it is neutered?

I intend for my protagonist to contemplate various things, like the existence of God. The protagonist, coming from the position of a lone survivor on a world amidst rampaging Zerg, might wonder what this says about a God, that, if it exists, it should allow such terrible things. An in-game-universe treatment of mature themes and topics; this is what I had intended. Blizzard's prejudgement? No. Can I include one of several possible endings where the protagonist commits suicide, a reasonable final, fatal act of defiance against a hostile universe and an uncaring (or non-existent) God? Blizzard: No.

As the owner and operator of the platform, I acknowledge it is their right to regulate content. They don't owe me or anyone else anything. However, I merely seek here to give voice to my disappointment. I am undecided as to whether I should cancel my preorder, or hope as earnestly as my probably-doomed protagonist.
Last edited by Anonymous on Sun May 23, 2010 12:17 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by WB »

Money talks. Honestly, I still see CE of WotLK all over the place. Not like itll be limited quantities.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Marco »

What's with all the whining?  While map publishing may be a more 'official' way of doing things, campaigns, mods, and total conversions can still be distributed the old fashioned way.  Stories can still be told any way you want.  The 10mb limit is obviously there for bandwidth concerns, because many people will load their map up with AC/DC music or maybe even pirated episodes of Law and Order or whatever people watch.

The more technology evolves, so too does the sense of entitlement among our youth.  We who have been around know that there will always be a way to work around problems, because we had to, because we needed to.  With the way some people talk around here, I'm really wondering who will stick to their guns in the end and not purchase or play StarCraft II in protest for their concerns.  My guess is, not a single person.  We'll get the defiant, "I'll pirate their stupid game, cause I aint paying for that shit" comments, and that'll be that.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Xelxiuz »

So if I'm getting this straight, it's not possible to host a map on battle.net without that map being published? What about just your own party/lobby or invitation only? Something like DOTA is 6.8 mb atm and rising, I can't see how 10/20 mbs could fit quality custom maps that push the limit, no matter how compressed/streamlined they made the features.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by UntamedLoli »

Marco wrote: What's with all the whining?  While map publishing may be a more 'official' way of doing things, campaigns, mods, and total conversions can still be distributed the old fashioned way.  Stories can still be told any way you want.  The 10mb limit is obviously there for bandwidth concerns, because many people will load their map up with AC/DC music or maybe even pirated episodes of Law and Order or whatever people watch.

The more technology evolves, so too does the sense of entitlement among our youth.  We who have been around know that there will always be a way to work around problems, because we had to, because we needed to.  With the way some people talk around here, I'm really wondering who will stick to their guns in the end and not purchase or play StarCraft II in protest for their concerns.  My guess is, not a single person.  We'll get the defiant, "I'll pirate their stupid game, cause I aint paying for that shit" comments, and that'll be that.
If you hadn't noticed it's because you CANNOT play a map over battle.net officially without it being published.

The only way you can even get around it right now is everyone you are playing with replacing the map after joining the lobby which we shouldn't have to do, what was wrong with even being capable of hosting maps locally?

Now we are at the mercy of Blizzard in what we can even play, if someone decides to delete one of their limited amount of maps in favor of something else guess what?

You can't play it anymore, especially if it was a locked map.

EDIT: The way Blizzard is nowadays that only backdoor around map hosting will get patched out.
Last edited by UntamedLoli on Sun May 23, 2010 5:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Ricky_Honejasi »

Yeah, that was the same relative response as HKS' that I was about to post.

Also I tried something : Made a 32x8 map, just changed a race thingy or two, saved. On drive, it takes 23 KB then publish it privately ... 500 KB.

As if total published size wasn't a big issue enough.

EDIT : At this point, I believe they integrated the current patch data into the map for publishing which I find it ridiculous since if they did bother to keep different patch versions, they should point to those MPQs instead.

EDIT 2 : Posted about it : http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=25026434248&sid=5000
Last edited by Ricky_Honejasi on Sun May 23, 2010 6:39 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Mucky »

Marco wrote: What's with all the whining?  While map publishing may be a more 'official' way of doing things, campaigns, mods, and total conversions can still be distributed the old fashioned way.  Stories can still be told any way you want.  The 10mb limit is obviously there for bandwidth concerns, because many people will load their map up with AC/DC music or maybe even pirated episodes of Law and Order or whatever people watch.

The more technology evolves, so too does the sense of entitlement among our youth.  We who have been around know that there will always be a way to work around problems, because we had to, because we needed to.  With the way some people talk around here, I'm really wondering who will stick to their guns in the end and not purchase or play StarCraft II in protest for their concerns.  My guess is, not a single person.  We'll get the defiant, "I'll pirate their stupid game, cause I aint paying for that shit" comments, and that'll be that.
[imgwh 256x224]http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/8413/facepalmss.png[/imgwh]

Really Desler, it shouldn't surprise me that you're defending Blizzard.

Let's try putting some things in perspective. The latest DotA is 6.8 megabytes, as Xelxiuz already pointed out. Aside from the 3rd party sounds (they don't account for much; DotA at one point was 1.5 megabytes), everything in the map is its own generated content. Content being heroes, items, spells, triggers/scripts, and terrain. So, if a map such as DotA were published, that's already more than half of the uploader's alotted space gone. By the way, keep in mind that I'm talking about a WC3 map; SC2 maps will no doubt be larger.

Granted, IceFrog doesn't manage any other projects, so he wouldn't be too concerned. How about the hypothetical person, MegaMurderMan? MegaMurderMan manages two 6 MB projects, so in order for him to publish both maps unedited, he'd need a friend to publish one under their account. Alternatively, MegaMurderMan would have to cut content out to publish both maps. Then if he ever wanted to start a third project, he couldn't do that.

Next, we have the other hypothetical person, Scientist. Scientist has been churning out melee maps since the editor came out. He has, let's say eight. I like eight. Eight is a nice number. Out of these eight maps, Scientist would only be able to publish five of them, and his other three would be tossed to the backburner. Scientist would then be stuck on maintaining these five maps, never being able to start a new one.

This is going to put a severe dent in the custom map-making community because it restricts what people can do in their own maps, and how many maps for that matter. Blizzard wanted to be more accommodating towards map authors, so what gives? And then there's the censorship, disallowing maps containing the words "god", "suicide", and "blow" from being published. This is overlooking the fact that suicide is something (HERPA DERP) the Banelings do. None of this would be an issue if Blizzard would allow for the old method of people hosting maps locally with their own bandwidth.

How do we go from being able to host as many maps as we want with an 8mb limit each to only being able to host 5 maps with a 10mb limit total? Oh, it's a change. I guess that means it's good. Do you know what else would be a change? Me putting a bullet in my head.

And please, spare us your lecture about entitlement. You're right about the company not owing us anything. But you'd think that they would be willing to listen to concerns from people who would otherwise be customers. I'm not going to pirate SC2, because that would defeat the purpose of me abstaining. If Blizzard ever turns around on their bone-headed decisions, great, I'll buy it then. Until then, I'll be looking at other games coming out. Such as this. And this.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Mr. »

Actually, Mucky, the total size limit for an account is 20 MB.  The total size limit for a single map is 10 MB.  So you could have two 10 MB maps, or five 4 MB maps.  I completely agree with your post, though, that it it absurdly retarded, even with those numbers.








However, I'm still buying Starcraft II.  I'm getting more and more worried, the longer the beta goes on, that I'm going to be disappointed by it, but I'm still going to get it.  Especially after all of the flailing around that I was doing with people on battle net the past couple days.  It's been pretty awful.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Marco »

I'm glad you're voting by abstaining, it shows me that you're really concerned about your point of view.  I wonder how many others speaking here though have the strength of character to make such a choice.

I'd suggest to many here that there are creative workarounds with everything.  If you want to talk about 'suicide' or 'god', you may refer to them differently.  Suicide can be taking ones own life, seppuku, or something maybe even more creatively and poetically phrased.  God may be referred to as the supreme being, the almighty, or whatever.  Censors or filters are usually signs of ignorance, even though part of the reason they are there is to protect the younglings, but a bit of thought and these things quickly lose their relevance.

How many maps in WC3 without custom sounds or other enhancements would be above 10mb?  My guess is less than 1%, if even at that.  The maps of SC2 shouldn't be that much larger, and if they are, my guess is that Blizzard would eventually concede to larger file sizes if the community demand were both reasonable and plentiful.  We aren't talking about an unreasonable company who never listens to their community.  Community involvement in games used to be nill, and I think Blizzard was actually one of the pioneers in that area.  Now that we're on the other side of the fence, it's so easy to forget just how far we've come.

Restrictions are never a good thing when it comes to creativity.  However, as far as restrictions goes, these at least seem reasonable enough to cater to the majority.  They aren't going to break peoples vision, although they may require them to take different approaches.  And while they may not be optimal or even desirable, they are certainly not the proverbial silver bullet for the majority of the map making community out there.  I didn't play a ton of WC3, but I can't really think of a single map I ever played on Battle.net that would of been crushed by the restrictions.

To be clear, I don't mind people calling Blizzard out or challenging them.  That is how change happens  It's the hypocritical whining and the sense of entitlement I feel some people project, making things out to be the biggest deal in the world or the wrongest of wrongs, and then still going about purchasing or playing their game.  Taking a stand against injustice (or perceived injustice) shows strong character.  I suppose its just disappointing to see a few people in our community who will trash something they otherwise realistically have very little to complain about.  Perfection seems to be demanded.  But at the end of the day, those same people will still be playing the shit out of the game, likely complaining all the way.  You have my respect though Mucky.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Master Jademus Sreg »

I, too, am annoyed by the whining and the claims of entitlement; after reading topics on the battlenet forums, I find this composition of expression to be majority. It warrants mention that not all complaints are accompanied by unreasonable demands. I would not mention my problem with censorship unless I thought it a valid criticism, nor would I discuss my indecision unless it were subject to serious consideration.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Mucky »

Interesting. Thanks for the props.

What really concerns me the most is the censorship. A word like "suicide" isn't even questionable for an audience older than 13 years. And many other words like "blow" are being censored completely without context. "We're going to blow up this asteroid." Oh, oops.
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Re: StarCraft II Map Publishing - A Primer

Post by Thalraxal »

Mucky wrote: Interesting. Thanks for the props.

What really concerns me the most is the censorship. A word like "suicide" isn't even questionable for an audience older than 13 years. And many other words like "blow" are being censored completely without context. "We're going to blow up this asteroid." Oh, oops.
Yeah, I'm really surprised that Blizzard just didn't throw on a "Game experience may change during online play" disclaimer and call it a day instead.
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