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A blue post from Blizzard recently went up talking about how they're looking into officially supporting mod features in the future even though they acknowledge that the patch breaks the current unofficial modding system.
I wanted to hop on to speak to this issue a bit, as it’s certainly something our team cares a good deal about. As some of you may know, we’ve been preparing a big update to StarCraft II (patch 1.5) that will introduce a number of welcomed features to the client -- one of which is the ability for us to stream content updates to the game. This will allow for quicker access to a play session (removing the need to wait for patches to fully complete) and remove the need to repair your client files, as they’ll be constantly kept up to date automatically.
One of the unfortunate side effects of streaming is that mods that alter the StarCraft II archive files will no longer function, including color-clarity mods, custom Battle.net background mods, and more. Although these types of archive modifications go against our EULA and can also be used to spread malicious viruses or Trojans, we do understand the merit of many of these features. With the color-clarity issue specifically we actually have a few people on the team who are affected by color-blindness.
The development team is looking into options now to support color clarity and customized backgrounds as well as some of the other mod features. We believe that in the long run, it's best for us to provide an option like stronger team colors within the game, as opposed to an externally modded solution that we can't explicitly support.
We’ll keep the community updated on our progress and appreciate your continued feedback.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6233033364?page=2#23
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I have this feeling that it won't be as good as what we had.
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Sadly control > user experience for Blizzard these days. Wish they were more like Valve 'the community can take this and run with it.'
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On August 01 2012 11:31 0neder wrote:
Sadly control > user experience for Blizzard these days. Wish they were more like Valve 'the community can take this and run with it.'
Right on the money. Everything is about control to them.
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I can no longer play with korean sounds by replacing the enUS.sc2assets file with the korean one anymore. It just redownloads the english one and replaces it every time.
So sad =(
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I'm going to miss my KR sounds....:/ dunno if I wanna play sc2 now.
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On August 01 2012 14:50 Leeto wrote:
I can no longer play with korean sounds by replacing the enUS.sc2assets file with the korean one anymore. It just redownloads the english one and replaces it every time.
So sad =(
It's tragic. I don't understand why blizz can't just implement this and give us a choice of languages for the units. How hard can that be, honestly?!
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Wow who gives a fuck about waiting for patches to download. Go troll facebook for half a minute and it'll be done. The gained benefit is nowhere close to the cost of modding. That's a horrible excuse and they need to try harder.
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On August 01 2012 09:19 Karawasa wrote:Show nested quote +On July 25 2012 12:30 Existor wrote:
I've tested some time ago patch 1.5.0 "Arcade Beta", and it's not just an interface patch. It reworks game client with new streaming system, that check EVERY ingame file, including renamed and overlaped files. This is so fucking annoying. I used to be able to delete the campaigns folder and save 4+ GB...now I can't.
the "fun" fact is that their shitty message tell you its clearing your game client to improve it and save you disk space blablabla...
so honest with their messages, as always....
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No more BW sounds T_T...its just not the same
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Blizz just wants 100 % control. Destroys all mods and replaces it with...NOTHING. They are "working" on a color mod (let's see when that gets out).
It took TWO yrs to get the UI in a better shape, and still the Dota2 UI beats it by miles...
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On August 01 2012 15:02 Megaliskuu wrote:
No more BW sounds T_T...its just not the same
I feel your pain bro... *_*
It just isnt...the same  ((((
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On August 01 2012 15:42 SoniC_eu wrote:
Blizz just wants 100 % control. Destroys all mods and replaces it with...NOTHING. They are "working" on a color mod (let's see when that gets out).
It took TWO yrs to get the UI in a better shape, and still the Dota2 UI beats it by miles...
Different games in different genres with release dates 2+ years apart.
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On August 01 2012 15:02 Megaliskuu wrote:
No more BW sounds T_T...its just not the same
My will to play is dying. I want BW or KR sounds back...
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The new MPQ's have a file inside them which goes by the name *region*-md5.lst
This file contains a few bytes at the start, followed by an md5 hash of each file inside the MPQ excluding the attributes and the listfile. However this file (from what I have currently tried) is encrypted, so hopefully someone will come through with the file specification and tell us all how to change those MD5 hashes.
The main problem with this is if the md5.lst file is hashed itself inside the game's executable. I'm working on trying to figure out this file 
Edit:
Looking inside the s2-21029-22342-x86-Win-enUS file inside the /Temp/1.5Migration/Installer Tome 1.MPQ with an MPQ editor, it contains a few .lst files which are readable, and the one I was really looking into was installerpatch.lst, which contains a series of what looks like MD5 hashes of files, in unencrypted format.
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On August 01 2012 15:42 SoniC_eu wrote:
Blizz just wants 100 % control. Destroys all mods and replaces it with...NOTHING. They are "working" on a color mod (let's see when that gets out).
It took TWO yrs to get the UI in a better shape, and still the Dota2 UI beats it by miles...
It's not really about control. They're struggling to find ways to curb the rampant hacking on ladder, so they just used an emergency blanket solution with unfortunate drawbacks.
If this works, then people will be happy and accept this as collateral damage.
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This streaming system has been standard for all Blizzard games since the release of Cataclysm, I think. I will miss Stronger Team Colours though
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On August 01 2012 16:06 Megaman703 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 01 2012 15:42 SoniC_eu wrote:
Blizz just wants 100 % control. Destroys all mods and replaces it with...NOTHING. They are "working" on a color mod (let's see when that gets out).
It took TWO yrs to get the UI in a better shape, and still the Dota2 UI beats it by miles... It's not really about control. They're struggling to find ways to curb the rampant hacking on ladder, so they just used an emergency blanket solution with unfortunate drawbacks. If this works, then people will be happy and accept this as collateral damage.
This is not really to do with hacking, as hacking does not include modification of MPQ files, but more to improve their streaming service. You might not have noticed, but the new client does not include a repair tool. That tool is now launched at startup before the actual program, but for it to not be horrendously slow like before, they added hashes of each file inside the MPQ to the MPQ itself, which the rehash of the file is matched against.
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On the one hand, it's really sad for the modding scence, on the other hand, I must say that every mod I've tried wasn't that big improvement of my gaming experience. I tried "stronger team colors", and even though it's nice to have neon banelings, most of the zerg buildings look like shit. I also can't really understand why I should use bw sounds in sc2, but I know that some people seem to have a need to customize their game.
Conclusion: Sad for the modders, irrelevant for me.
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On August 01 2012 17:39 virpi wrote:
On the one hand, it's really sad for the modding scence, on the other hand, I must say that every mod I've tried wasn't that big improvement of my gaming experience. I tried "stronger team colors", and even though it's nice to have neon banelings, most of the zerg buildings look like shit. I also can't really understand why I should use bw sounds in sc2, but I know that some people seem to have a need to customize their game.
Conclusion: Sad for the modders, irrelevant for me.
the cosmetic look is an extra benefit of STC...the main purpose imo was to be able to easily differentiate between units, especially in mirror matchups.
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EPT
