EPTThen one tossed a rock.
Then the other, another rock. But this rock had a reddish tint, the other was black.
So I picked up a rock next to me and threw it. It was white.
We noticed what we did, and - as if one mind - we put three twigs in the ground arranged in a triangle. We gathered 3 white rocks, 3 black rocks, and 3 red rocks. In each set of three there was a small, medium, and large sized rock. The goal was to toss your rocks and get as close to the middle as possible. The closest player would get 5 points, and for each rock in the triangle, you gained an additional point. We started by throwing each set of three rocks at once, but we decided it would add more to the game if we each had three turns, starting with our smallest rock and finishing with the largest. This worked, but then we realized that the last player to throw had the advantage, since he threw last and had the best opportunity to knock out other players' rocks. So we knew that there needed to be 3 rounds, with each player throwing first.
And so our game was born. It was similar to many others, but it was ours.
When I was in grade five, as a final send-off party we all went to my teacher's house. When we congregated in the basement, my teacher's son was at his computer. Shamelessly, my teacher introduced us to him, and said that his son was building a game from scratch. I had no idea what this meant at the time. Building a game 'from scratch' made no sense to me. The game was a simple paintball game. You moved your character with the arrows along a top-down grid and fired projectiles at enemies. There were simple art assets, grass growing and paintball splats, objects to collide with, and three different character models.
When it was time to go upstairs, I made sure that I was the last one going up, so that I could catch a glimpse at the name of the program. I don't remember it now, but whatever it was, when I got home I downloaded it immediately. I understood nothing. My enthusiasm was gone.
Later, in my Brood War days, I would hang around Clan MC. It was a channel for mappers, and I met some really cool people back then. But I was really young, then, and I knew nothing about programming. I would play lots of customs, but when I made them, they broke quickly because I didn't actually know how the trigger editor worked (even though I thought I did - I was always right and it was always broken, of course). I found my niche in MC by creating terrains and audio assets, and this was good enough for me.
On and off I tried to create games. None of them ever worked. When the World Editor came out, I was bewildered. I was still young, and I had no idea what a string or an asset was. Working with data seemed like a mystical concept.
And then Starcraft 2 Beta came and we got our first look at the Galaxy Editor. I was now in university and I was thrilled to finally complete my goal of making a game, for myself. Again, I was stumped. This looked even more bizarre than the World Editor. This was the last straw. I gave up my hope of ever doing anything.
But this summer, I enrolled in a distance education course. Intro Computer Science. We studied Jscript and finally I learned what strings are, dialogs, while and for loops, references, etc etc.
Enter my experience on the beach with the two campers. Suddenly, a flurry of activity hit my brain! I really loved snipers. But it was attempted already in SC2, and it didn't really take. If I could just find a way to change it - slightly - and give it more the feel of a MOBA by having different classes and mechanics, I could do something different!
So I did. And it was hard. Probably the hardest thing I've done outside of my university program. And I did it for fun, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I want to take this opportunity to thank the following people from the SC2Mapster community for their help. They answered my questions when I was desperate, and allowed me to make my map - to fulfill a childhood dream.
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Keuken531
magnificence7
OneTwoSC
DrSuperEvil
magnificence7
OneTwoSC
DrSuperEvil
The map isn't exactly done, but it's released and is in beta. But, quite frankly, I don't really care if you play it or not. As of now, my brother and I will play it 1v1 before we launch into laddering on 2v2. And that's good enough for me.
