EPTI do not like Sc2. - Page 7
| Blogs > IskatuMesk |
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Vasoline73
United States7751 Posts
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SchOOl_VicTIm
Greece2394 Posts
Upon launching sc2 for the first time I didn't know where to even begin pointing out things that I felt were done poorly, especially compared to BW. All those things you're pointing out like poor voice acting, bad unit choices, flashy gimmicky stuff all over etc. and so much more feel like a major step back from BW - a 12 year old game. Something made me want to start making a list of all things one by one and make a post in a forum somewhere, hoping some guy at blizzard would see it and listen and they would go back and start working on things again.. but much as I've loved BW over all these years, I can not find the strength or the will to make me want to do that. And at the end of the day, wtf do I know right? Thankfully, you, a guy who can say he knows what he's talking about, take the time and write this wonderful lengthy post that hopefully will be read by blizzard and make some guys blush and hopefully again, they'll go back and rework on some things and try to save whatever can be saved at this point. Good job writing all this, and I hope you keep finding outlets for your creativity in the future whether it's sc2 or not. | ||
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ohN
United States1075 Posts
I didn't know sc2/wc3's editors aren't as great as they seem to be. | ||
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Ner0
United States131 Posts
 http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=24630623479&sid=5000&pageNo=2 | ||
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
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alffla
Hong Kong20321 Posts
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
I'll try to locate it and post a response when I have it available. | ||
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alffla
Hong Kong20321 Posts
sucks that broodwarai is gone now, what happened?  is the isaktumesk meant for vs human play because its under teh "AI vs AI" category | ||
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
http://www.gameproc.com/meskstuff/BWAILauncher.rar Running the main exe will yield this screen. ![[image loading]](http://img709.imageshack.us/img709/2221/22654030.jpg) Click the dropdown menu on the top and set to BWAIWar (AI vs AI). This will set the script selection to use these scripts out of the specific package, which contains my two major updated scripts; one for Protoss, called Mighty Crusader, and ZAPOC, for Zerg, which stands for Zerg Apocalypse. Selecting these in the menu and pressing "Play!" will launch Starcraft and temporarily "patch" the game during this session. When you exit the game it will revert to normal unless you again use the Launcher. This is the way with all mods in Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft - they require third party programs to globally modify the game. Yes, globally - you can now play any melee, FFA, or TvB game versus the AI and the standard melee AI will be replaced with those you've selected. Do not have Starcraft, Staredit, or anything like that running when launching. If both players are running the mod you can both play on battle.net. It is to be noted that ZAPOC and Mighty Crusader are Cheating AI Killers. That is to say they were built to kill other cheating AI's. They were NOT created with the BWAPI project - they cannot micro or do anything fancy like that. This is the same scripting method that people used since 2000. A new notes, - You cannot play with multiples of these AI's because they will encounter what is called multithread clashing. Starcraft has a global AI multithread limit. Many of these AI's make extensive usage of multithreads, especially Ashara's AI's and my Protoss. Sometimes this can be bad enough that when you load an AI vs AI replay (which is how we tested them; replays don't record AI actions so changes to the AI are reflected in replays! :D) both AI's will encounter considerable slowness and often cease to function at all. - You'll need to play on a map with large main bases. BGH, for example, is far too small. ZAPOC will attempt to build around 40-60 hatcheries in its main base. On a small map, especially with elevations, I cannot predict what kind of hilarity will result or if the AI will just break entirely. Feel free to ask any questions. /e Your current version is highly unlikely to contain either of my new scripts as they specifically have the names Mighty Crusader and Zerg Apocalypse or ZAPOC. That probably contains my old RequiemD AI which isn't nearly as good (but would still give average players an ok challenge as long as it doesn't break, which unfortunately which Starcraft AI happens a lot from hardcoded issues). | ||
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alffla
Hong Kong20321 Posts
lol wow i just played tvz python vs zapoc 2.0 or something and i got raped twice -_- haha first hydralisk wave tehn mutas then hydralurker whne i just managed to secure my natural haha. | ||
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
That was the genius of this script. In AI vs AI you can't depend on micro, the game becomes extremely different. Scouts are viable - I used scouts in Mighty Crusader to hard counter zerg air, for example, as Devourers are necessary for the zerg to deal efficiently with Protoss air. ZAPOC takes advantage of hatcheries. Lots, and lots, and lots of hatcheries, and insane tech speed and aggression. There is virtually no way I can improve it any further without going into BWAPI C++ modifications, but those are outside my league. | ||
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Random()
Kyrgyz Republic1462 Posts
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omeg
Poland19 Posts
Anyway, for a game still in beta, there are already insane mod POCs. I remain optimistic. | ||
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
On May 10 2010 21:05 Random() wrote: I have just one question - you're obviously talented and very patient, so why don't you make your own RTS engine, with good editor, blackjack and hookers? A couple of people have asked this and usually the answer would be obvious but I can see why it isn't so I'll explain. Making a mod and making an entirely new engine are very different things. The reason you make mods is because you lack the (years) of time needed to exercise extreme programming talent. 99.9% of the time modders who think they can make their own games never get past conceptual stages. I know many who have tried and all have failed. Yeah, in some cases people can go on to make their own games - like Dwarf Fortress - but I'm not a programmer. I did a little bit of tinkering with JASS in wc3 but that was mostly editing existing stuff and everything starcraft-related is totally not even close to real programming. The closest thing would be using the UE3 SDK or waiting for Project Offset, but again, I'm not a programmer, I can't do any of those things. I wish I could. Understand the projects I'd be looking to create in sc2 will already be multi-year investments just because of asset creation. That is why I want the editor to be more fluid and user-friendly so it doesn't make my work a living hell like wc3 did. I can see why it's not that easy to use - It'd easy to use with time, make no doubt. It's that it's irritating and time consuming to use because values in the data editor are scattered all over the place with no sense of consistency or direction. The difficulty is derived from the user interface and vagueness of functions, not necessarily the editor itself. An editor need not be difficult to turn people away from it, it needs only a poor ui and sloppy management - something Blizzard's pretty good at. Since I messed with the XML files and talked a lot with my friend while we were playing the AO conceptual mod he made I already understand a lot of how the game works with units. No one has ever told me wc3's editor was hard to use (outside of triggering and JASS ofc, but even I was getting into those, and I have major learning disabilities), but a good quote from a SME member is: "Wc3 hands you everything in a way that makes the game totally uninteresting to mod." No, a game that's hard to really get into is Supreme Commander or Homeworld 2. The latter's weapon files are text files that basically an arrangement of numbers you have to reference and count using an external web page to figure out what the hell is what. Supreme Commander is all around a colossal mess. There is a key difference between depth and projection. While sc2's editor does offer depth it does not offer projection, a way of portraying this depth in a cohesive and fluid manner. What sc2's editor doesn't have is projection. What it has is laziness and probably a good degree of incompletion. Point in case - ![[image loading]](http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/5246/ea1g.jpg) ^ Unit description value. ![[image loading]](http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/908/ea2r.jpg) ^ Through sophisticated photoshopping I have pointed out the haphazard mess that is the unit armor, health, and shields, all of which are separated each other with random attributes because it's listing in alphabetical order and for some reason all of these stats do not have the stat prefix. No, the problem here is not depth or complexity. The problem is the layout and exclusively the layout. | ||
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Hesmyrr
Canada5776 Posts
As for modding, although I am simply a mapper whose greatest extent was simply making UMS maps and have no knowledge of the coding, I have to agree on your points. Even if the editor has great functionality, it's effectiveness can be severely punished by poor interface. Inconvenient interface will definitely cause future modders more frustration and time than necessary. Also, I believe having easy to use interface will encourage greater creativity and longitivty by allowing more pool of users into dap their hands into modding. In civilzation games, spite of not knowing much about computers, I have been able to make some mods cartered to my interests exactly because of it's easier to use interface- I know I definitely would have lost my patience to do so if the data editor had been more difficult to use, and I am concerned when SC2 is released that data editor will stay in current situation which will discourage such casual modders like me from using it. | ||
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mykyoyo
United States33 Posts
It's nice to see that the launcher got hosted somewhere. It's funny seeing my AI scripts in there. I'm such a hack! Launcher seems to be missing Python25.dll. That's weird. Actually, maybe it's not - Does Windows 7 freak out if that's in there? | ||
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IskatuMesk
Canada969 Posts
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MidnightGladius
China1214 Posts
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[DUF]MethodMan
Germany1716 Posts
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ShaperofDreams
Canada2492 Posts
 .Good luck with all of your endeavors! | ||
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