Creating a medieval-themed SC2 RPG - what would it take?

[Zwiebelchen]

I haven't looked much into SC2 modding over the last years; only recently since they announced the HD remakes of all WC3 unit models, I became interested in this again.


The question is: how would the demand for a quality SC2 fantasy RPG be? Are there lots of comparable projects?

Also, what would it actually take to make such an ambitious project real? What would be the limits?
Obviously, collecting enough art assets to support such an idea would be a pain in the ass. Especially as those art assets need to be externalized as mods, in order to keep the map file small.

My idea here would be to convert the Sword & Stone and B²M highres models into .m3, (which obviously would be a tremendous amount of slave work, but at least we have a huge library of all kinds of environmental doodads then). With some Gimp skills, it shouldn't be hard to create normal and specular maps aswell (good thing theres a filter for that in GIMP) to improve the visual quality of them. There's some nice freebie programs that allow to automate the creation of normal and specular maps.

Once this is done, there is another problem: missing SFX models to fit a medieval theme. There's only so much you can do without proper fire, ice or lightning effects or buff arts. I don't know yet how to fix this, though.


Setting up a general game engine using the Galaxy script code shouldn't be hard. After all, it's way more powerful than JASS.

The data editor will be a pain in the ass, though. While it only takes a couple of seconds to create new creeps or items in WC3, everything will be tedious in the SC2 data editor.
What would be a typical, "modern" SC2 approach to do this? Is it actually recommended to create (virtual) items via script instead of actual object data? After all, adding a line of text usually is faster than clicking through abstract GUI layers.


Basicly, I'm struggling the most with imagining a possible time-effective workflow to create monsters and items.

Can someone, who knows about the current state of SC2 modding give me examples how workflows for all these topics would look like? Before I check out if the SC2 editor is fun enough for me to convert and create an ambitious project, I need to know if the SC2 editor actually benefits me in terms of the "time in, content out" formula.
JASS and LUA allowed me to mass-produce and create new content with just a couple of script lines. I have horror-visions of endlessly clicking through the data editor GUI in order to create a single item...

 

[LordDz]

In the Data Editor, you can go to View->XML view, then you get it all in text. If that helps a bit.
Make sure you enable View->XML Syntax Highlight too.
Display "Object list as tree" helps too.
The Data editor will take some time to learn yes, it's a bit cubersome in that part.

But once you go into the Trigger editor.. You can have functions, local variables and trigger libraries. Functions works as a trigger that you can insert things to when you call it.
Zergling Spawn(10, RaptorType) will spawn 10 Zerglings of RaptorType

And you can go to Data-> View Script, which I assume works the same as a text editor, if you don't want to work with the GUI.

I wish you good luck!

 

[Zwiebelchen]

Watching object data in XML won't help with the nesting of object data, though. The issue with the data editor isn't exactly the GUI, it's that everything cross-references something else, which also needs to be edited most of the time.

I wish there was something like the node editor in blender, which shows relations between objects in a mind-map format.

So basicly, when creating a unit or item, every field that references something else has a line attached to it that pops up a second window to directly edit the reference:

While it seems complicated at first, it's really useful as you can instantly see how everything relates to each other and what affects what. Also, you have everything under your control on one screen without tabbing around.

 

[Nebuli]

It would certainly take a lot of work to do what you are hoping, and there are certainly issues that you would need to face. However, one which may be greater than any that you listed is the limited map size in SC2. Unlike Wc3, it does not seem that one can create a map greater than the editor's default size limits. It has been tried many times in the past, but always runs into major problems. The fact of the matter is that the engine itself does not support maps above a certain size. This would face you with the dilemma of how to allow for a large game world.

If you are making a single-player game, this problem is fairly easy to fix by simply creating multiple different maps and linking them as the campaign does. This can be done by setting the next map to whichever you wish to load next and then ending the game. You can then use a mod file to store all of the data and triggers between different maps, and using bank files to store any necessary information across the different map instances.

Unfortunately, this method does not work in multiplayer, which leaves you without many options. You could opt to still use this method, but not allowing the player to change maps while in-game, and instead selecting different maps in Battle.net. This is, however, a clunky solution at best. One alternative is to "load" different maps in-game using actors. Such a system is possible, but has some pitfalls. The heightmap cannot be changed with script, but you can create actors which distort the terrain and can create the appearance of height differences. This can work reasonably well, but one problem is that the engine does not register these height differences according to the distorted height, but rather according to the heights of the heightmap. Terrain textures also cannot be changed with script, and a workaround would be needed for them.

The lack of medieval special effects may be somewhat resolved once Legacy of the Void is released. From what we have seen, LotV uses exactly the same engine as Heroes of the Storm. It would not be entirely unreasonable to think that they may release HotS's assets to be used in LotV.

As for items, it is not uncommon for items to be handled purely through script rather than through the data editor. You would have more flexibility with your own custom item system, and it would certainly be easier to work with.

As for units, there is unfortunately no easy script solution as with items. You will be stuck using the data editor. The data editor isn't COMPLETELY awful once you get used to it and know the routine for creating a new unit, actor, effect, etc. That said, it is still more time-consuming than the object editor. For better or for worse, the data editor is focused more on allowing complex creations than ease of use.

All this said, I would be very much interested in seeing what you could come up with in SC2. Gaia's Retaliation was easily my favorite RPG in Wc3, and you are clearly a very skilled mapmaker who could go far in SC2, especially with LotV right around the corner.