As was brought up here I would only add that it doesn't need to be as powerful as the War3 editor. The Starcraft 1 editor is good enough to start with. There's no need to make it easy to make your own assets, anyone can do that if they can model or code, and I'm sure there will be a huge library on Steamworks and elsewhere. The killer feature is the ability to easily repurpose the existing assets for new games. That means: (1) a map painter (2) a location/trigger system (3) a unit wizard that lets you modify unit names, stats, abilities, their place in the techtree, but not necessarily models and animations. Some cool new features could be letting several players edit a map simultaneously online like a Google Doc, and visual trigger scripting (yes please!!!) If I may play "backseat developer" for a moment (right, as if I ever do anything else! ) it seems like a good idea after the game ships would be to assign some artists and Howard to an awesome post-launch cinematic trailer, and some coders to an editor like this. So what do you think?
I think Blizzard's map editor is an entirely new pitch. It is a game development engine that puts other game development engines to shame. It did take 5+ years to make Starcraft 2, after all.
No offense but did you even read my post? I'm talking Starcraft 1 level functionality not Starcraft 2.
Developing beginner friendly modding tools isnt something that can be done quickly. Better make the game moddable for advanced modders first. Blizzard probably had a team working on those editors that was as big as the whole Uber-team, if not larger xD
The game plays on a random map generator. So making maps should be beyond easy, because you will be doing it every time you play. I would expect that making scenarios (Placing enemy units on the map to fight single player style) would also be extremely easy to do. As for the triggers and such, I'll leave others to answer for that.
Pfft... try a magnetised needle and a steady hand. But the main two options seem to be having the map access scripts to run or having a basic script editor. I believe i heard someone say (not about this) "Sounds like a job for the modding community".
right on bro (posting from telnet) I'd trust you on that, if you could show me some community made tools for TA or Supcom that come close to Blizzard's in terms of accessibility. The way I see it you would still have the full featured modding environment, just with an optional less powerful, more accessible "editor" shell. Rather than trying and failing, like Starcraft 2, to cram a full set of mod tools into an accessible interface, PA modding would work on two levels: (1) An editor as simple or simpler than the Starcraft 1 editor, with no coding required, just super duper idiot-proof (visual?) trigger scripting... (2) ...But which plugs straight into a coding environment based on Lua, Python or whatever they go with, and which in the end is a lot more powerful than even the Starcraft 2 editor.
Game first, modding tools later. But ultimately yeah, you'd want modding (at least part of it) to be as easy as possible.
The sounds like a job for the modding community is something Mavor says about a lot of things (I don't think he's ever said it about this specifically). Not sure this has come up in this thread but from all the discussions the current editor is going to be HTML pages that the modders will have open access to. Of course I would love them to put in that script editor for us, hell I'm sure we all would, but if they release a tool that would imply a that level of professional integrity that it has been tested and works well. Also one reason blizzard can do those editors is because they build them as tools to make the campaigns out of. Because PA doesn't have a campaign Uber have no need to build a map script development tool. In short, I don't think they should spend their time on this unless they have the time to spare, which i doubt they will.
Shhhh! I doubt letting that to modders is such a good idea. While there were quite big mods for SupCom, such a tool wasn't developed there. Even more, Spring don't have such integrated editor after years of development and advances. So yes, such an editor would be a great thing (I am assuming that it wouldn't have the many arbitrary limitation of the Blizzard ones), it would be a tremendous help for new modders, and yes if anyone do it it will have to be Uber. But the problem is that building such an editor would be lots of work, that Uber may simply not have the resources for in addition to the game itself.
As well as the procedural maps, mavorsrants.com suggests that the engine can also load 3d objects as maps. Obviously there will be certain format requirements and such, and I have no doubt uber will release the necessary specs. But at this stage, it appears your average copy of (free) blender will suffice as a map editor if you want more than the procedurally generated worlds. As such, the modding community will no doubt quickly release templates and various assets that can be used to generate maps quickly and easily. Triggers and scripting, however, is another kettle of fish, but without knowing the capabilities, it's probably a bit too early to speculate. I expect notepad will always be an option though
I would have thought a Modding API would be more appropriate than a Map Editor? Since my limited experience with Modding Minecraft and reading/listening to mod developers.
Like an easy unit importer / modifier with functionality to add groups of units into folders that get compressed into a single mod?
