StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 55

[MattII]

Never having played WC3, what's that stats thing they're referring to in 4.?

[Hamshank]

I'm not sure which was stupider, question 6 on a map converter or question 7 on windowed mode.

[Kimera757]

Cool idea. Im a big fan of hold-out and evac missions and Id like to see each race/caimpaign get at least one.

Not me!

Never having played WC3, what's that stats thing they're referring to in 4.?

Heroes get three stats; Strength, Agility and Intelligence.

Strength modifies hit points and regeneration rates. (All Warcraft III units regenerate, unless they have a good reason not to; eg most mechanical and undead units do not regenerate without assistance. Please note that undead heroes do regenerate.)

Agility modifies rate of fire and armor.

Intelligence modifies mana capacity and mana regeneration rate. (Yes, you can modify that stat in Warcraft III. None of this waiting three minutes before Tassadar can do anything.)

And each hero has a "primary stat" (one of those three) that determines damage. For instance, a hero like the paladin uses Strength (since he hits things with a hammer), a ranger uses Agility (since she's shooting things with a bow) and a spellcaster uses Intelligence (since they're blasting things with spells).

Stats increase with each level; usually a hero gains more in their primary stat than in other stats, but sometimes things get a bit weird (dreadlords use strength as their primary stat, but their intelligence grows about as quickly since they have really good spells; therefore they need mana to spend said spells).

In practice, each hero usually has a weak stat. For instance, heavily armored paladins have low Agility (but a decent Int, since they need mana to cast Healing Light), while Illidan has a fairly low Strength (his primary is Agility, but he has high Int since he has lot of mana-sapping abilities).

[Gradius]

EH? The way it converts is by simply making a new map in sc2 using everything from the old map in sc1. It doesnt convert 2d image into 3d image, but rather takes note of the location of say, minerals, then places those minerals as their 3d version in sc2. All you really need is data that shows where what is placed, what it is, and what needs to be placed in that spot.

That's the easy part. Of more difficulty is converting the terrain, which requires knowledge of the complicated ISOM part of the SC map format - which even today is only understood by Blizz employees and SuicidalInsanity (the creator of SCMDraft). "Square" terrain would be handled differently as well. All this then needs to be converted into SC2 terrain (which I doubt is easy).

Then you have to convert triggers, which wouldn't be that difficult, but requires alot of manual work, and isn't even guaranteed to succeed because of all the random new changes (new damage system, unit speeds, 2d to 3d, even game bugs/exploits). These things would break any map which depends on them (of which there are alot of). You might even be forced to recreate the original game with all of its idiosyncrasies to even begin building this converter. And throughout this whole process you have to dig through the StarCraft .chk file of a map, which is a pain because it's heavily compressed.

[The_Blade]

I agree with Gradius. And it's not only the complicated SC map format, but the way SC2 maps are created.

Tiles or areas with diffent levels ----> 3D model based map

[supersonic]

7. I'm just going to assume that you will have some sort of window mode in StarCraft II. But I was wondering if you're going to implement a windowed mode like the one that World of Warcraft has? You know where you can maximize the window, removing the borders and enabling fullscreen mode yet providing easy access to the desktop.
You will be able to select both windowed and full-screen windowed modes from the options menu.

Serious the best thing I've heard about SC2 in a long time, I dunno if anyone has played WoW or even in max windowed mode, but that's the BEST option ever conceived.

I'm not sure which was stupider, question 6 on a map converter or question 7 on windowed mode.

Obviously you have never used the option ;]

[pure.Wasted]

Not me!

Come again?

[Kimera757]

Come again?

I'm not a fan of hold-out missions.

[pure.Wasted]

I'm not a fan of hold-out missions.

This much I gathered.

Becaaaause?

[Kimera757]

This much I gathered.

Becaaaause?

I'd rather have a mission where you can conduct offense. Too many regular missions turn into indefinite duration hold-outs anyway, where you just turtle until you can build up a force large enough to crush the enemy.

As a result, a hold-out seems like just any other mission, except for cutting off the exciting ending part.

I played two Forsaken missions in Warcraft III recently (Frozen Throne campaign). In one, Sylvanas was rebelling against the dreadlords. There were all kinds of creeps scattered over the maps that she and her banshees could "steal" to use against the enemy. Too bad I hardly got to steal any, since anytime I sent her away from the base, another wave of enemies would come, and I'd have to send her and the banshees back to defeat them. Too much like a hold-out; I ended up missing most of the cool features in the map, at least until I could build up an attack force large enough to crush two of the three enemy bases. Compare to a mission that came a bit later, where the enemy was asleep for seven minutes, and I could raid the enemy as much as I liked, and in short being required to be on the offensive rather than the defensive for an important part of the mission. (That was probably a bad explanation. It was like True Colors but with more micro.)

A lot of RTS missions are either "stay in your base until you've built X units" or "crush ridiculously large enemy base with 4 Citadels of Adun for no explainable reason". I'd like something new and cool, thanks.