New Map/Tilesets - Art Direction?

[The_Blade]

IIRC the "Cliff Glacier" doodads work like really detailed cliffs, but they demand a lot of graphic power.

[ragnarok]

IIRC the "Cliff Glacier" doodads work like really detailed cliffs, but they demand a lot of graphic power.

How much power we talking here?

[The_Blade]

I really do not know how much they take from your processing. However, within the melee community there is a strong discipline on aesthetics. Any doodad with interactions with terrain or dynamic shadows are more demanding on resources. There's few public information about what tools Blizzard really has for mapping, but blue posts suggests they have a lot more than the updated editors we have. Some Blizzard employees have made design articles on their own sites, but everything else is still sealed tight within the company.

Psione made this post earlier this year.

It's a basic guideline on what gets cut or changed while doing melee performance tests.

Back on the "Cliff Glacier" doodads:

They are not exactly bad individually, but they fuck up big time when you consider other things like: amount of units, total map doodads, lights, and visual lag sources. They are just volatile in that way. When making maps, some times even terraining can fuck up big time (Not sure if this was fixed by the new terraining introduced a patch ago, but before you could stack layers of terrain "accidentaly" and FPS dropped hard). That's how dedicated learning can be with the galactic editor.

So far they look pretty; but by the time you realize you have a doodad capacity on your map, you just don't know what to remove.

Without Blizzard feedback we do not know if the problem is somewhere in the doodad or the engine.

An example of unusual frustrations happened to the WC3 to SC2 modder. IIRC Trees fucked up visual lag, because he had 10k+ units on the map at the same time (in order to duplicate the wood resource).

[ragnarok]

Ok I see. Sorry I almost never check TL, that's all.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

This is basically one of the few things I've liked about Blizzard, some sexy ass tilesets.

[ragnarok]

This is basically one of the few things I've liked about Blizzard, some sexy ass tilesets.

Which tileset is your fav so far, Stratos?

[KaiserStratosTygo]

Which tileset is your fav so far, Stratos?

That Jungle one, I think it was called "Endion" or something.

[Sheliek]

I've always loved Blizzard's art team, honestly. They do good stuff, even if the terrans are all jacked. Whatever, it's no worse an art style than any other.

TW: UNPOPULAR OPINION

The more I analyze the story, the less I hate it, too. Could've been executed better, and it's a bit cliche, but it's good, especially for an RTS. Brood War's still better.

[ragnarok]

That Jungle one, I think it was called "Endion" or something.

It's a very good one. Let's just hope the mission for that tileset won't be a crap one.

[KaiserStratosTygo]

I've always loved Blizzard's art team, honestly. They do good stuff, even if the terrans are all jacked. Whatever, it's no worse an art style than any other.

TW: UNPOPULAR OPINION

The more I analyze the story, the less I hate it, too. Could've been executed better, and it's a bit cliche, but it's good, especially for an RTS. Brood War's still better.

The exact opposite for me (except BW is indeed better)

The less I though about it the less problems I had, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the writing team didn't understand "complex" or "nuanced" and the more pissed off I got.

but that's just me.

We all can probably agree that whoever's in charge of Map tilesets needs to be making DA BIG BUX