I've been watching Game of Thrones on HBO recently, and I'm a huge fan of their intro. One of the first things I thought of when I saw it was that it reminded of StarCraft somewhat.
I had some free time earlier this weekend, and figured I'd try my hand at a custom map in the StarCraft II Editor to try and recreate a similar feel (if not look).
No post-processing was done beyond converting the Fraps video to something Youtube likes. All effects were done within StarCraft via the editor.
The camera movement is jerkier than I'd like, but it was my first time with the editor so... live and learn, I guess.
Here's the custom map in case anyone else wants to run it locally: GameOfThrones.SC2Map
To do, open up the SC2Map file in the editor and choose to test the document. Note that you'll probably need to set things pretty high. Specifically, iirc, depth of field effects are only applied when post-proecessing is set to Ultra.
My computer (or specifically, my hard drives) weren't fast enough to keep up with the required ultra settings. So if anyone else wants to upload a smoother version somewhere, go for it :D
Screenshots
It's easy to overlook some of the really nice visuals that the SC2 engine is capable of creating. Here're some screenshots straight from the editor:
Wow, man this is pretty awesome. Like not only did you do a great job with (btw i thought the camera felt fine, not really jerky at all), but I'm really impressed with the SC2 map editor.
thanks for sharing it. really really liked it! Would be cool to see some more stuff if you continue to play around with this style!
Wow what looked really nice. What would be really cool if you could include the exact same battles, but also having a sort of First-Person view of the thing, like you're a marine or zealot. You could probably pull it off by simply watching each battle unfold a few times, and finding out which units survive 'till the end, then putting the camera in their heads
On May 09 2011 00:01 bITt.mAN wrote: Wow what looked really nice. What would be really cool if you could include the exact same battles, but also having a sort of First-Person view of the thing, like you're a marine or zealot. You could probably pull it off by simply watching each battle unfold a few times, and finding out which units survive 'till the end, then putting the camera in their heads
I've been thinking about doing a first person-ish picture series of what a unit might be seeing during the average game. You know. Marines staring up at collosus. Marauders looking at phoenixes while lifted. Lings staring at a depot wall. Banelings staring at dirt while burrowed. Etc, etc.
I'll play around with the editor some more and see if I can get good enough to get those shots.
very nice. just disappointed that nukes and mothership didnt make an appearance. also unclumping the units might it look bettr for some of the battles.
On May 09 2011 01:14 OopsOopsBaby wrote: very nice. just disappointed that nukes and mothership didnt make an appearance.
There was a mothership in that last battle with the collosus and ultralisks, though it was probably hard to see.
As for nukes, I tried (you can even see a single ghost in the final battle in the top right corner), but after spending 45 minutes trying to script a ghost so that it launches a nuke, I gave up :p
whoa, sick! how long did that take you to put together? how much of the fighting is scripted vs ai amoving? (e.g. I saw scripted storms in one screenshot)
On May 09 2011 01:18 tarpman wrote: whoa, sick! how long did that take you to put together? how much of the fighting is scripted vs ai amoving? (e.g. I saw scripted storms in one screenshot)
A little over 2 hours of playing around with the editor trying out random stuff and then about another 2 hours to actually place the units/buildings, set up the triggers, and capture via fraps and upload.
Battles that just involved groups of units a-moving into each other are pretty straightfoward to set up. Using any kind of special ability makes it more complicated (for example, you have to tell units where to fire the storm or fungal).
There might be a better way to script special abilities, but I'm not familiar enough with the editor to know.
On May 09 2011 00:04 thedz wrote: I've been thinking about doing a first person-ish picture series of what a unit might be seeing during the average game. You know. Marines staring up at collosus. Marauders looking at phoenixes while lifted. Lings staring at a depot wall. Banelings staring at dirt while burrowed. Etc, etc.
I'll play around with the editor some more and see if I can get good enough to get those shots.
OMG that would be soooooo awesome if you could do that... seriuosly, i'm so impressed by this. Really thought this was cool and that it deserves more attention
You should read the books they are unbelivably awesome. I haven't watched the show yet. I'm sure it's good but usually TV Shows have a way of ruining my book series' that I read.
Wow that was really cool. The Game of Thrones intro music allways give me shivers so I sat freezing through the entire thing. Very well done, the effects are splendid.
You need to zoom in and out and change the pitch (yaw whatever) like they do. Some of the coolest parts about GOT intro is birdseye view. And have more stuff constructing/raising/transforming. Otherwise cool.
That's an amazing video :O But what really blew my mind was some of the screens you took. Wow, it really is easy to overlook what the engine is capable of, they're beautiful.
On May 09 2011 01:52 Archerofaiur wrote: You need to zoom in and out and change the pitch (yaw whatever) like they do. Some of the coolest parts about GOT intro is birdseye view. And have more stuff constructing/raising/transforming. Otherwise cool.
I totally agree. This video is great but to get a little bit more of the spirit from GOT, maybe a few warp-in battles, bases being floated in, or expansions being constructed all at the same time.
This is awesome. The below isn't all correct, but it would look cool.
If you took white/black terran(Starks), blue terran(riverlords), yellow protoss(lannisters), pink zerg(outlaws), red protoss(kings landing), green terran(stannis's fleet) and then took Crossfire(it's slim from top to bottom like westeros) and had Winterfell in the North(terrans in game) being sieged by a ton of yellow protoss, namely collosuss(lannisters).
Then it Zooms down to the riverlands(middle of the map) with protoss(lannister) fighting a ton of terrans(riverlords) with zerg(outlaws) fighting some lannister forces.
A final zoom to Kings Landing where a ton of red cannons/stalkers/archons/voidrays/pheonix are fighting a lot lot of banshee/viking/bc/medivac/marine/marauder.
It would be similar to your current presentation, but now it tells a story of war across a land. Ideally a custom map style like westeros would be best, but I realize that requires way more work then just using a current map.
You...Are amazing, Blizz should hire you for cinematic work using the map editor and release promotions with it. Great Great job and hope you enjoy your spotlight! It is VERY well deserved! :D
this is awesome. very, very nice work. the game of thrones intro is IMO already one of the best in TV history, and it just goes so perfectly with something as epic as Starcraft
This is incredibly awesome! I even watched the Game of Thrones intro for comparison and all I have to say . . . well done! I would love to see something like this as an intro to a starcraft league :D
Very nicely done. This would make one hell of an intro for a tournament or something ^^ If you ever DO get around to first person views, a line of marines being attacked by chargelots would be really cool
On May 09 2011 03:35 xenogis wrote: Looks really cool, you should try adding anti-aliasing, idk about everyone else but all the jagged messy edges are ugly to me
The purpose of it is to match the Game of Thrones Intro. Great Job OP. If I could've imagined a Game of Thrones intro for SC2 that would be it.
On May 09 2011 04:58 Killcycle wrote: This is awesome, however it feels a bit too bright.
I have to agree, though more on a contrast angle. The glint and glare sometimes took my eyes from where I thought they should be. There were many parts there when I found my self taken back at how great it looked. Good job overall.
The one thing I noticed was that the protoss had really bad storm placement. He kept storming the ramp and killing his own zealots instead of killing the MnMnM ball right below it.
On May 09 2011 04:58 Killcycle wrote: This is awesome, however it feels a bit too bright.
I have to agree, though more on a contrast angle. The glint and glare sometimes took my eyes from where I thought they should be. There were many parts there when I found my self taken back at how great it looked. Good job overall.
woa, i think this might be (depending on how you see it) the best "coustom" map i've ever seen, atleast the most enertaining i've seen done in the map editor, Good job, indeed.
Whoaaa, that was pretty. A bit too glaring at times but I really liked watching the SC2 battles from that perspective, it was an awesome feeling, amazing work!
Really cool, I'm surprised all of that was possible without any other program. I wonder if Blizzard would be able to implement more controls over things like that for spectators. Generally it wouldn't be very useful, but creating promos for tournaments would be easier and look really slick. Good stuff.
This looks terrific! I've tried sc2 on ultra settings, but it didn't look anywhere near as impressive as your video and the screenshots. Can the game actually look that stunning with a monster computer?
Amazing work. I love the show, and the song has been in my head for the past week, so seeing such a great interpretation applied to SC2 really hit the spot. Thanks for the great work and for sharing it with us all. We're not worthy!
Can the focus area be less tight in the video? It works fine for the stills, but I think it might make the video a bit more easy to watch if more stuff was in focus. Just a tiny bit more.
I'm a little confused about the look of the units the details are so sharp on those screen shots. They look like real models. How does that look so much more real than when I play the game on ultra settings?
You definitely captured a similar feel. Very impressive work and great job! Now the question is whether or not people will want you to do some trailers for other stuff.
Side note: whoooooo for making it to kotaku! Congratulations
On May 10 2011 01:41 Antedelerium wrote: You definitely captured a similar feel. Very impressive work and great job! Now the question is whether or not people will want you to do some trailers for other stuff.
Side note: whoooooo for making it to kotaku! Congratulations
hopefully they will, this is great work. GJ and keep it up
Also what's with the ambient sounds enabled in the background that's almost as loud as the music? All I hear is a bunch of birds chirping aside from the music, which really ruins the experience.
The DOF effects could be improved a bit more.... The cut-off looks way too sharp and/or the effect is too strong. In fact, I don't see how anyone could consider the amount of cut-off in the DOF to be acceptable, it looks rather ridiculous. Brightness is close to fine I guess, but also seems a bit too much.
Anyway, aside from those problems, it's a nice job.
I am amazed at how many people don't know about the custom lighting/effects that can be run in SC2. did they not even play the campaign or what? There's also so many videos on youtube that showcase these sort of effects in custom maps— they haven't seen any of them?
Personally, one of my favorite showcases doesn't even use much custom lighting effects; the quality is in the content — anyone can spend half an hour changing the DoF and lighting, but it takes a lot more work to set up a cool-looking environment.
On May 08 2011 23:24 thedz wrote: My computer (or specifically, my hard drives) weren't fast enough to keep up with the required ultra settings.
While a hard drive can potentially be a factor in recording video speed, it would not be a factor as to why it wouldn't record fast at ultra SC2 settings, it would be due CPU and GPU bottleneck.
On May 09 2011 18:10 Tobberoth wrote: Amazing. Could the game be playable while looking like that? (Obviously, the blur would need to be toned down hardcore, but still)
Yes, it can. Thing is you don't see strong lighting effects much in custom maps because it doesn't work well with people who don't have their graphics settings set high, which is probably the majority (or at least a large proportion) of players. That said, I think it's a bit strange how little it is used nonetheless, certainly seems underused.
You should re-create the actual board game map from the opening. Then modify the build times to re-create the buildings "coming to life", and then you can include the pan over shot to the kingdom across the sea. And you can use an archon and modify that to re-create the opening logo against a black background in the corner of the map before doing a zoom out fly over zoom in effect (with labels included).
On May 09 2011 18:10 Tobberoth wrote: Amazing. Could the game be playable while looking like that? (Obviously, the blur would need to be toned down hardcore, but still)
Yes, it can. Thing is you don't see strong lighting effects much in custom maps because it doesn't work well with people who don't have their graphics settings set high, which is probably the majority (or at least a large proportion) of players. That said, I think it's a bit strange how little it is used nonetheless, certainly seems underused.
I'm quite ignorant on the topic so this might be a stupid question:
does this mean lights/camera-effects are built within a map and that the only way to see the game like is, while playing, would be creating a map that makes use of those lights/camera-effects? This is not something that can be set "client side" then (regardless of map)?
this is awesome. i think the up-rated comments on the youtube couldn't be any truer: "If the IPL, NASL, or hell GOMtv doesn't hire you to do a version of this for an opening they are crazy."
On May 09 2011 18:10 Tobberoth wrote: Amazing. Could the game be playable while looking like that? (Obviously, the blur would need to be toned down hardcore, but still)
Yes, it can. Thing is you don't see strong lighting effects much in custom maps because it doesn't work well with people who don't have their graphics settings set high, which is probably the majority (or at least a large proportion) of players. That said, I think it's a bit strange how little it is used nonetheless, certainly seems underused.
I'm quite ignorant on the topic so this might be a stupid question:
does this mean lights/camera-effects are built within a map and that the only way to see the game like is, while playing, would be creating a map that makes use of those lights/camera-effects? This is not something that can be set "client side" then (regardless of map)?
It's a combination of both. Certain effects require the client's graphic settings to be set a minimum level of quality. For example, depth of field blurring only happens if the client post processing is set to "Ultra".
But setting it to "Ultra" won't do anything if the map itself doesn't use depth of field.
gives me nerdchills but you could make it even more epic (have no idea how hard it is though) with like more of viewing a base being built, more gosu stuff, workers transfering and getting killed on a row, blink micro, marines beeing picked up when surrounded by banelings (marine micro vs banelings aswell) banelings drop and an end with big battle between all races ending with nukes, carpetstorm and banelingsdrops.
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