After a weekend of forum updates and modifications, IskatuMesk and Lavarinth sit down to chat about the upcoming StarCraft II expansion, Heart of the Swarm, as well as some additional features coming up and released in relations to StarCraft II; including the StarCraft II model exporter for 3D Studio Max, the updates to the StarCraft II editor including the cutscene tool, and the overall storyline and trailers released so far.
You call this a podcast? Not once was I referenced derisively! On my birthday, no less! Feh!
Game-Rendered Cinematics: I completely agree. Unless Blizzard planned to give players some sort of camera control, there is absolutely no point in taxing their system with something that could have been pre-rendered. Any other kind of activity, such as the object-clicking interaction, could still be done with pre-rendered graphics, as 1998's Starcraft 1's starting menu demonstrates perfectly.
StarTools: Every time I hear about how long it has taken for Blizzard to release usable tools and plugins, I regret a little more having stayed to watch the Battle.net 2.0 and SC2 Editor panels at BlizzCon '09 when I could have met in person and got an autograph from freakin' Tricia Helfer! Gah! To think several times I seriously considered projects for SC2, only for Blizzard to half-ass its support.
Given the increasing complexity of making something like a total conversion in today's games, creators must ask themselves: Why do a mod at all when professional tools are freely available nowadays to make your very own game?
Yep, that's why there's no really big projects for sc2. Everyone with the talent to do big things with it moved on to the UDK and such long ago. Modding new games is extremely unfriendly, and sc2 doesn't even support mods to begin with. There's very little going in the favor of custom content producers these days, unless you're looking to nickle and dime people off of dota 2.
Did you know, according to Valve, there are companies who make hats for TF2 that rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars? From hats. In TF2. This is purely take-home royalties, with Valve's sizable cut taken out.
Today, TF2 peaked at 47,094 concurrent players online. Let's round that up to 50k and assume that's the average. Hats sell for $5-$10. As a creator, you could model five hats to give yourself a wide appeal. If you sell 2k of each hat, which is just 4% of the concurrent players taking an interest in one, you've grossed $100,000.
Dota 2 peaked at 257,875 concurrent players today, and it's still in closed beta.
Hercanic wrote:Did you know, according to Valve, there are companies who make hats for TF2 that rake in hundreds of thousands of dollars? From hats. In TF2. This is purely take-home royalties, with Valve's sizable cut taken out.
Dota 2 will be insane.
Betcha it's one of those Fancy Hats Facilities floating all around Confed airspace...
GnaReffotsirk wrote:So, startools, and now that HoTS is out, a new patch for WoL is available. Does it come with Startools (exporter) or do I have to get HoTS to have it?
I don't want to buy HoTS just for Startools they promised should come with WoL.
Lose your hopes. It's obvious they'll want to attach that tool with HotS to enforce sales.
Obvious for me at least. When you see what greed does to people, you get very little surprised over the eons...
How I became a troll in a single post (And you can too!!! ): link
We already have startools. If they pull a hots-only release (extremely unlikely) then I'll just give you it myself.
I don't think Falchion knows how 3d exporters work, or how the recursive engine sc2 updates with works, either. This kind of thing is nearly impossible to make tied to an expansion. There's no way they can enforce that.
I mean, I guess they could go through the effort of forcing everyone to redownload wol/hots with some obscure game-breaking format change and make the exporter only work for hots variants. But something tells me that sc2's 3d formats are all based on third party formats and they lack the technical skill to do that in the first place.
GnaReffotsirk wrote:So, startools, and now that HoTS is out, a new patch for WoL is available. Does it come with Startools (exporter) or do I have to get HoTS to have it?
I don't want to buy HoTS just for Startools they promised should come with WoL.
The exporter should be free and supplied publicly without WoL, as Isk was saying.
GnaReffotsirk wrote:So, startools, and now that HoTS is out, a new patch for WoL is available. Does it come with Startools (exporter) or do I have to get HoTS to have it?
I don't want to buy HoTS just for Startools they promised should come with WoL.
The exporter should be free and supplied publicly without WoL, as Isk was saying.
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