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Raising Awareness To 1.5 Melee
We have all been waiting for Starcraft 2's patch 1.5; the patch that would blow us all off our chairs in excitement for all of the new editor features, and the brand new custom game solution - the Arcade. You can now browse a big selection of custom maps using the Arcade's many options and filters, such as category, top played, top rated, newest, open games and fun or not. However, with 1.5, melee maps have now been moved to a seperate subsection, hidden deep inside the "Starcraft" section. And along with that, melee maps have gotten none of the new features that custom games got with the patch. This means, that melee map developers are now struggling even more with getting their maps seen and played.
I, among many others, am unhappy with these changes, and is now trying to raise awareness to Blizzard.
Our best shot at raising awareness, is to refuse to use the melee section, and instead publish our maps to the Arcade. If everyone contributes to this movement, Blizzard will soon know, and hopefully consider future changes.
In order to make this a sucess, we will need to flood a single category with melee maps, rather than multiple categories. And we will be using the "Strategy" category. Partly because it fits, and partly because it is a low-populated category. In this way, we will hurt the least UMS developers, and reach our audience the best. Perfect!
How do I participate?
You will need to follow these steps to publish your map to the Arcade.
1. Go to Map -> Map Options and enable "Arcade Map".
2. Go to Map -> Game Variants.
Select "Strategy" from the Genre dropdown. Uncheck "Use Default Variants", and add a new variant. This will be whats seen in the "Mode" dropdown on the Game Info page. In the "Game Type" tab, set the mode to Custom and add this information:
Name: 1v1
Description: Melee
Go to the "Player Attributes" tab, and set "Teams" to 1 v 1.
If your 1v1 map has more than 2 spawns, go to "Game Attributes" and set "Locked Alliances" to Value: Yes and Access: Locked. Then go to "Player Attributes" and set the "Team" of player 1 and 2 to Team 1 and Team 2 respectively. Please note that this technique may not work on some computers after patch 1.5.
If you want to add a 2v2 mode, create a new variant and repeat this step, skipping the above note.
3. Go to Map -> Arcade Info.
This is the Arcade's paradise. You can add all kinds of information and images.
+ Show Spoiler [Browser] ++ Show Spoiler [Overview] ++ Show Spoiler [Instructions] +
4. Publish
5. Update your TeamLiquid thread
You should put the folllowing in your thread, to indicate where your map can be found.
Uploaded to [EU] in Arcade (Strategy)
I hope that you will support this movement; we're doing this for the future of melee map development!
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As a side note - maybe use the standard melee maps for melee maps during development and the -WIP suffix in the map name, for playtesting sessions.
If we all use the strategy category, however, the open games list (arcade - open games - strategy category) it will be full of melee maps. Or full of ESV melee maps.
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On August 05 2012 06:38 Meltage wrote:
As a side note - maybe use the standard melee maps for melee maps during development and the -WIP suffix in the map name, for playtesting sessions.
If we all use the strategy category, however, the open games list (arcade - open games - strategy category) it will be full of melee maps. Or full of ESV melee maps.
And this list will exclude Blizzard maps
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Actually, aside from trying to garner attention, having a section of specifically custom melee maps would be pretty cool considering how fun it can be to try all kinds of original, innovative maps that usually get buried in Blizzard maps. Good luck with this.
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The arcade features are really sweet for showcasing a map's interesting features. I fully agree that Blizzard should be supporting melee maps in the same way directly. This has my support, I commend you for leading the way, good sir 
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This sounds like a good idea. I've never tried, but couldn't you also publish something in 2 places? (change the name slightly or whatever). I guess this could be an issue if you have a ton of maps and are encroaching on your upload size limit. But one could buy another account if one had the necessary funds.
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Since the whole game of publishing has been changed, I've wiped my published catalog clean. Since it's 1 of the 2 of my maps being used for the Mapper's Monthly tournament, I've decided to make Megafossil my first map to be tailored to the new interface. Check it out:
+ Show Spoiler +
It is, of course, under strategy. I think the extra room for detail and presentation can go a long way to showcasing a map, in addition to threads here on TL.
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I'm not sure that this would be very effective, seeing how active melee players tend to stick to either the ladder page, or the generic customs page (to search for a common tournament map for 1vs1, etc). The majority of the people who frequent the arcade don't care about melee maps. You might have some luck sticking new maps into the 1vs1 Peepmode map rotation, though, since you DO see a strangely high number of below-diamond players there, despite it being melee.
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On August 05 2012 09:58 Ooshmagoosh wrote:
I'm not sure that this would be very effective, seeing how active melee players tend to stick to either the ladder page, or the generic customs page (to search for a common tournament map for 1vs1, etc). The majority of the people who frequent the arcade don't care about melee maps. You might have some luck sticking new maps into the 1vs1 Peepmode map rotation, though, since you DO see a strangely high number of below-diamond players there, despite it being melee.
The whole point of this is to make players
Who wants to try out new melee maps go to the arcade rather than going to the custom "starcraft" section and get flooded with blizz maps, hopefully this will in the end force blizz to give melee map makers a better choice!
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Keep the maps rolling in! We've already got quite a few maps on EU
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Great idea you have there! Added my humble 2v2 map aswell (Processing plant)
If this threat gets more attention over time maybe you should send it to blizzard to make them more aware of the problem.
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Updated step 2 to include 1v1 maps with multiple spawn scenarios.
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Is this a rally to get 1v1 (and team games) maps to open custom games list?
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On August 08 2012 02:34 nucLeaRTV wrote:
Is this a rally to get 1v1 (and team games) maps to open custom games list?
It's an attempt to bring the melee map community in line with the UMS community feature-wise. I see no reason to cut all of the nice stuff for melee.
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Yeah, melee maps definitely need a boost in popularity.
Only way you can get your map played is by inviting friends or people from channels and playing them in private. Only few melee maps are popular and being played, most of them are blizzard so no chance for mapping community.
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I've just tried to address the subject in the EU forums on battlenet as I have no NA account. The only threat that seemed to be fitting (it was created by a blizzard admin) never got any reply from an admin. It actually is 7 or 8 pages of people showing real issues with the editor and arcade system, in a mostly objective and manner way, but no replies.
I felt like blizzard put up a wall and said" hey! Maybe there's someone behind that wall, maybe he's even listening, maybe your claims will be heard in the dev departement but for sure no one is going to answer! So go ahead and say what you have to say..."
I'm not the ranting type but this made me upset. I didn't post it on battlenet because there was only a wall with maybe someone sitting behind it!
So yes please someone do that, tell them the arcade mode needs a melee section. I dont see any reason why there shouldn't be one, they did great work on the other custom games they just somehow oversaw it?!
/rant
*edit: rage typos 
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On August 08 2012 05:35 Bobnoble wrote:I've just tried to address the subject in the EU forums on battlenet as I have no NA account. The only threat that seemed to be fitting (it was created by a blizzard admin) never got any reply from an admin. It actually is 7 or 8 pages of people showing real issues with the editor and arcade system, in a mostly objective and manner way, but no replies. I felt like blizzart put up a wall and said" hey! Maybe there's someone behind that wall, maybe he's even listening, maybe your claims will be heard in the dev departement but for sure no one is going to answer! So go ahead and say what you have to say..." I'm not the ranting type but this made me upset. I didn't post it on battlenet because there was only a wall with maybe someone sitting behind it! So yes please someone do that, tell them the arcade mode needs a melee section. I dont see any reason why there shouldn't be one, they did great work on the other custom games they just somehow oversaw it?! /rant
The EU forums are completely barren. A blue post is a rare ocassion there.
Although I already talked to Blizzard, posting in that thread as well wouldn't hurt.
edit: Also added examples of arcade map pages in the OP.
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I'm having trouble setting an Obs after using this method. How can I do that?
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On August 12 2012 05:01 Gfire wrote:
I'm having trouble setting an Obs after using this method. How can I do that?
I am aware of that, and is working hard to solve it. I'll let you know when I figured it out!
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Yes, this patch was meant exclusively for the Custom modded games that will die out long before the competitive community even draws near its last breath.
Custom games leave a very sour taste in my mouth. If I wanted to play some TD game I'd go to some flash game sites and play that garbage. But, whatever. Some people like playing it, and all the power to them. In BW some of those games were pretty cute. And by cute, I mean naked celebrity pictures made on pylons.
But the fact that Blizzard shoved melee's to the dark back corner with the dunce cap, the one thing that really makes SC2 stick out as a competitive, sport really saddens me.
I support this effort! Keep it up!
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This was my initial thought with the arcade patch. Popular games would get attention and melee maps, which nobody ever makes public, get no love. I'm not surprised that the map developers for melee are having a hard time getting exposure for their work, but I'm definitely a bit pissed off about it.
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Just the other day I was trying to find some melee maps I saw in this forum, and it was way too difficult. So this sounds like a good idea
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On August 13 2012 14:56 PauseBreak wrote:
Yes, this patch was meant exclusively for the Custom modded games that will die out long before the competitive community even draws near its last breath.
Custom games leave a very sour taste in my mouth. If I wanted to play some TD game I'd go to some flash game sites and play that garbage. But, whatever. Some people like playing it, and all the power to them. In BW some of those games were pretty cute. And by cute, I mean naked celebrity pictures made on pylons.
But the fact that Blizzard shoved melee's to the dark back corner with the dunce cap, the one thing that really makes SC2 stick out as a competitive, sport really saddens me.
I support this effort! Keep it up!
On August 13 2012 18:16 dUTtrOACh wrote:
This was my initial thought with the arcade patch. Popular games would get attention and melee maps, which nobody ever makes public, get no love. I'm not surprised that the map developers for melee are having a hard time getting exposure for their work, but I'm definitely a bit pissed off about it.
On August 13 2012 18:30 Visage814 wrote:Just the other day I was trying to find some melee maps I saw in this forum, and it was way too difficult. So this sounds like a good idea
On August 13 2012 20:55 Barrin wrote:
I too was trying to find some melee maps the other day, way too difficult.
I approve - they shouldn't have shafted melee map makers like this.
Exactly. And this combined with a horrible search function makes it impossible to find any maps at all.
Thanks for your support all
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Updated OP with a new technique, that should allow players to observe 1v1 maps with multiple spawns, as well as a 5th step.
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On August 13 2012 14:56 PauseBreak wrote:
Yes, this patch was meant exclusively for the Custom modded games that will die out long before the competitive community even draws near its last breath.
Custom games leave a very sour taste in my mouth. If I wanted to play some TD game I'd go to some flash game sites and play that garbage. But, whatever. Some people like playing it, and all the power to them. In BW some of those games were pretty cute. And by cute, I mean naked celebrity pictures made on pylons.
Emmm..... Dota ?
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It's not working. It lights up the "make spectator" and "make referee" options but clicking them does nothing. I also can't drag a player from one team to the other.
I can adjust some things so I can drag the players but then it turns off the spectators.
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On August 14 2012 23:54 Gfire wrote:
It's not working. It lights up the "make spectator" and "make referee" options but clicking them does nothing. I also can't drag a player from one team to the other.
I can adjust some things so I can drag the players but then it turns off the spectators.
Kinda hard for me to test this atm, as I am one of those who are unable to use this technique (blame blizzard for that), but I'll keep trying.
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I don't understand your post PauseBreak. For this post I fired up ICCUP and about 15% of the games were UMS. There's nothing wrong with custom games, people enjoy them even on a server that focuses on competitive play.
I thought the point of the thread was to add a option for melee map makers that were quietly shunted to the side in favor of UMS, not that UMS is dum and lamezors.
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So, I didn't read all of the patch notes yet but it appears that everything that was a custom melee map before, if it hasn't been re-published since the 1.5.0 patch, has been dumped into the "Other" category in the arcade. I found my first map on page 19 (road not taken) and passed a number of other maps along the way (like Timetwister's Haven's Lagoon RE 0.2 on page 16 -- on page 21 are 5 ESL IEM maps at the time of this post).
Sorry if I'm late to the party but I just got my game patched yesterday. Anyway, despite being in the arcade, none of these maps have any of the arcade features enabled -- you do not even see the default mini-map overview image anymore.
However, it does not seem like a whole lot of people have re-published their maps at all, much less under the Strategy section. It even seems like some people have just re-published as melee maps (winparkprime, MLG, others -- it's hard to browse these as has been mentioned...).
Is there a point or question from these observations? Well, I'm not sure yet... I guess it seems like this movement hasn't really picked up much yet, and I was wondering if more people plan on doing this and just haven't yet, or don't care, or what. Or is the process of getting it just right to be arcade ready just that much more time consuming that people are still in the process of it?
+ Show Spoiler [me being dumb] +Also, since I've been patched I've only played on one of my maps a few times, but it seems like it doesn't want to wait for everyone to be ready once all of the slots have been filled like in a custom melee game. It also seems like it doesn't want to let you change the mode, like restricting a 2v2 map to 1v1 or FFA. I assume these things can be modified in the editor but I've never messed with these settings before. Is there anything tricky about it in the editor, particularly if you are going to publish it to the arcade using the OP's recommendation? Wow, I probably just should have clicked around a bit more... the auto-play on game fill is when you use "play" vs. "create private game" which waits for you to hit start. I can't believe I answered my own question just as soon as I finished typing. :/
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I may have found a bug in publishing to the arcade, but it could very well have to do with something else in my map file. I just published my first map using the instructions here: Tektroid. I just played a couple of test games an I noticed that at the Fleet Beacon the upgrades were flux vanes and grav catapult. Also the khydrian amulet was available at the templar archieves. I'm pretty sure I didn't miss a patch where they reintroduced these upgrades -- I just got patched to 1.5.2 before I published. Anyone else experiencing this? Is there some dependancy I need to change in the map, or some setting to fix? Or is this something that just happens when you publish an otherwise melee map to the arcade?
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Wait. Why are you "hurting" UMS developers? I understand what you're trying to do but that's not the best way to put things.
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All you guys do is modify the terrain. That is not UMS. You do not belong in the Arcade.
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@ Karawasa -- Well unless Blizz f'ed up when transferring my maps over to the new system, they all exist in the Arcade under the Other category. But as I said it does not look like it is the case that Blizz just messed up with my maps since many other maps were transferred there as well even though they are melee maps.
Furthermore, there are often times things that mappers do to modify their maps to get it to work outside of the norm of a Blizzard defined "Melee" map, even though the intention is for it to still be a melee map. Technically these *are* UMS maps. I have at least one map that is intended for melee but has some custom triggers in it.
That being said and back on topic -- I still do not know how to get my new maps to be published like the maps that were converted over by Blizz in the whole patching process. I just tried quite a few things and my new map is either being published to the arcade with all of the costs / timings / etc. of multiplayer at release, or it is being published with all the other melee maps where it is very difficult to find and does not take advantage of all of the nice new promotional features of the arcade. Has anyone figured out anything on this?
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On August 22 2012 17:38 HypertonicHydroponic wrote:
That being said and back on topic -- I still do not know how to get my new maps to be published like the maps that were converted over by Blizz in the whole patching process. I just tried quite a few things and my new map is either being published to the arcade with all of the costs / timings / etc. of multiplayer at release, or it is being published with all the other melee maps where it is very difficult to find and does not take advantage of all of the nice new promotional features of the arcade. Has anyone figured out anything on this?
It's not map-specific, it's a but related to the arcade. I think it happens depending on how you create the game. It's been a known issue since the patch came out. Nothing mappers can do about it afaik.
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On August 22 2012 23:28 Gfire wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2012 17:38 HypertonicHydroponic wrote:
That being said and back on topic -- I still do not know how to get my new maps to be published like the maps that were converted over by Blizz in the whole patching process. I just tried quite a few things and my new map is either being published to the arcade with all of the costs / timings / etc. of multiplayer at release, or it is being published with all the other melee maps where it is very difficult to find and does not take advantage of all of the nice new promotional features of the arcade. Has anyone figured out anything on this? It's not map-specific, it's a but related to the arcade. I think it happens depending on how you create the game. It's been a known issue since the patch came out. Nothing mappers can do about it afaik.
Do you have an example of an Arcade published map that plays both with the current melee patch and the day zero patching? If so, do you know the settings of how it was published -- the game variant, etc.? With my newly published map I've tried creating games privately, 1v1, 2v2, co-op, then the same thing with the "play" button, and they all seem to be using day zero patching, but with my other maps it seems to just use the current patching (and despite being in the arcade under the Other section, the genre says "Melee"). I'm about to just publish to Melee since that seems to be the only way to guarantee the current melee patching to be applied. It's a shame, since the features of the arcade are so nice.
EDIT: Actually, I think I may have gotten this figured out now. I added the dependancy ("Add Standard..." button) for "Liberty Multi (Mod)" which says in the description that it has "Data related to game balance changes for Wings of Liberty multiplayer melee games". I don't know if others were doing this already or something else but this is seeming to work for me.
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In 1.5.0, the Arcade dramatically changed the way players find games to play. Now we’re bringing a lot of the same tools that help make finding Arcade games easy to the StarCraft melee map Custom Game section.
For example, you can now find Open Games, Bookmarks, and Recently Played on the left side of the interface, the same way you would in Arcade. You can also sort the maps by Top Played, Top Rated, Up & Coming, and Newest.
Maps in the Custom Game screen will also now have a Game Info dialog like their Arcade counterparts. Mapmakers can add screenshots, include patch notes, and outline details on map strategy, while players will be able to rate and review the maps they play.
Please note: The Game Info dialog for Custom Game maps did not make it in time for the very next major beta patch, but you should see it in a major beta patch in the weeks to come.
Source: Heart of the Swarm UI Update
We did it, folks.
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On October 20 2012 01:10 ScorpSCII wrote:Show nested quote +In 1.5.0, the Arcade dramatically changed the way players find games to play. Now we’re bringing a lot of the same tools that help make finding Arcade games easy to the StarCraft melee map Custom Game section.
For example, you can now find Open Games, Bookmarks, and Recently Played on the left side of the interface, the same way you would in Arcade. You can also sort the maps by Top Played, Top Rated, Up & Coming, and Newest.
Maps in the Custom Game screen will also now have a Game Info dialog like their Arcade counterparts. Mapmakers can add screenshots, include patch notes, and outline details on map strategy, while players will be able to rate and review the maps they play.
Please note: The Game Info dialog for Custom Game maps did not make it in time for the very next major beta patch, but you should see it in a major beta patch in the weeks to come. Source: Heart of the Swarm UI UpdateWe did it, folks.
One of my favourite features coming in HotS, along with the MUCH better UI overall, going back to the classic Blizzard style of menu lists and windows over a clean background scene. Makes it far more flexible to adjust menus as appropriate, rather than having a fixed, global box UI that everything must go into/fill out.
+ Show Spoiler [Old Blizzard menus] +
EDIT: Some people might ask "why didn't they do this in the first place?!" Settle down, now. They tried a different direction, originally hiring on an XBOX live UI designer, and it just didn't pan out. Classic case of "don't try to re-invent the wheel", but don't fault them for wanting to try and give players a new kind of experience. My only concerns/frustrations were that they might try to stick with it, but this UI announcement has quelled all of that.
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