Heroes of The Storm Editor

[Laiev]

So, I'll start this with a little and short story. Last year, I bought the Blizzcon Virtual Ticket, but I haven't time to watch it (was working), so I missed a lot (probably 80-90%) of the new things.

Yesterday I was trying to extract the musics from Heroes (of The Storm), but them I saw something that catch me...

I'll just leave here two pieces (the entire file is too large -.-) of files based on the editor of Starcraft II and Heroes.

Starcraft

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<EditorCategories>
    <category name="ObjectType">
        <value>Unit</value>
        <value>Structure</value>
        <value>Resource</value>
        <value>Projectile</value>
        <value>Destructible</value>
        <value>Character</value>
        <value>Set</value>
        <value>Prop</value>
        <value>Item</value>
        <value>Hero</value>
        <value>Other</value>
        <value>Shape</value>
    </category>
    <category name="FieldType">
        <value>Ability</value>
        <value>Art</value>
        <value>Combat</value>
        <value>Data</value>
        <value>Editor</value>
        <value>Movement</value>
        <value>Pathing</value>
        <value>Sound</value>
        <value>Stats</value>
        <value>Techtree</value>
        <value>Effect</value>
        <value>CommandCard</value>
        <value>Cost</value>
        <value>AI</value>
        <value>Behavior</value>
        <value>Unit</value>
        <value>Weapon</value>
        <value>UI</value>
        <value>Search</value>
        <value>Target</value>
        <value>Hosting</value>
        <value>Animation</value>
        <value>Event</value>
        <value>Actor</value>
        <value>Attachment</value>
        <value>Properties</value>
        <value>Validator</value>
        <value>Upgrade</value>
        <value>Resource</value>
        <value>Camera</value>
        <value>Texture</value>
        <value>Basic</value>
        <value>Physics</value>
        <value>Dupe</value>
        <value>Placement</value>
        <value>Visual</value>
    </category>
    <category name="Race">
        <value>Terran</value>
        <value>Zerg</value>
        <value>Protoss</value>
        <value>Neutral</value>
        <value>Critter</value>
        <value>Creep</value>
    </category>

Heroes

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<EditorCategories>
    <category name="ObjectType">
        <value>Unit</value>
        <value>Structure</value>
        <value>Resource</value>
        <value>Projectile</value>
        <value>Destructible</value>
        <value>Character</value>
        <value>Set</value>
        <value>Prop</value>
        <value>Item</value>
        <value>Hero</value>
        <value>Other</value>
        <value>Shape</value>
    </category>
    <category name="FieldType">
        <value>Ability</value>
        <value>Art</value>
        <value>Combat</value>
        <value>Data</value>
        <value>Editor</value>
        <value>Movement</value>
        <value>Pathing</value>
        <value>Sound</value>
        <value>Stats</value>
        <value>Techtree</value>
        <value>Effect</value>
        <value>CommandCard</value>
        <value>Cost</value>
        <value>AI</value>
        <value>Behavior</value>
        <value>Unit</value>
        <value>Weapon</value>
        <value>UI</value>
        <value>Search</value>
        <value>Target</value>
        <value>Hosting</value>
        <value>Animation</value>
        <value>Event</value>
        <value>Actor</value>
        <value>Attachment</value>
        <value>Properties</value>
        <value>Validator</value>
        <value>Upgrade</value>
        <value>Resource</value>
        <value>Camera</value>
        <value>Texture</value>
        <value>Basic</value>
        <value>Physics</value>
        <value>Dupe</value>
        <value>Placement</value>
        <value>Visual</value>
        <value>Campaign</value>
        <value>Hero</value>
    </category>
    <category name="Race">
        <value>Terran</value>
        <value>Zerg</value>
        <value>Protoss</value>
        <value>Neutral</value>
        <value>Human</value>
        <value>Undead</value>
        <value>Orc</value>
        <value>NightElf</value>
        <value>Naga</value>
        <value>Critter</value>
        <value>Creep</value>
    </category>

My point is, Blizzard is changing the editor (we hope for better...) to support hero directly (obvious, Heroes is based on hero, not unit as Starcraft). But lets take a look here:

    <category name="Race">
        <value>Terran</value>
        <value>Zerg</value>
        <value>Protoss</value>
        <value>Neutral</value>
        <value>Human</value>
        <value>Undead</value>
        <value>Orc</value>
        <value>NightElf</value>
        <value>Naga</value>
        <value>Critter</value>
        <value>Creep</value>
    </category>

Terran, Zerg, Protoss, Neutral, ok till here everything is from Starcraft as well, but wait, Human, Undead, Orc, NightElf, Naga, Blizzard is really implementing more models them usual?

Everyone remember Blizzcon 2013 Starcraft Panel:

Orc Models

So, is Blizzard redoing Warcraft models for Heroes Editor? Since it is strange (we're talking about Blizzard, nothing is strange enough) to add editor race for something that you'll never see. Hopefully Lady Vashj, Maiev, Tyrande, Illidan .

I don't know if someone already talked about it, if so, I'm sorry for redoing it, but it really excite me .

Also the video showing the alpha-of-alpha with editor and some assets:

 

[Ezekiel12]

Can you clarify the situation of HotS and sc2? It is a mod, isn't it? Why don't they use the sc2 Galaxy Editor? Or do they use an improved version?

 

[Laiev]

Heroes starts at Starcraft (2010), them Blizzard moved it outside the Starcraft, making it a stand alone game.

But still, Heroes uses a improved copy of Starcraft engine.

So basically it isn't a mod anymore. But because of the same engine, it probably would be a waste of work if they just delete the editor, like, Starcraft already have the editor, why Heroes shouldn't have it too, same engine, same game, everything is already implemented, just change the assets (models, icons, textures, etc).

 

[BlinkBoy]

Heroes starts at Starcraft (2010), them Blizzard moved it outside the Starcraft, making it a stand alone game.

But still, Heroes uses a improved copy of Starcraft engine.

So basically it isn't a mod anymore. But because of the same engine, it probably would be a waste of work if they just delete the editor, like, Starcraft already have the editor, why Heroes shouldn't have it too, same engine, same game, everything is already implemented, just change the assets (models, icons, textures, etc).

They mentioned that Heroes of the Storm and Sc2 LotV share the same engine but are stand-alone products both of them. This means that both games share common updates.

Also a representative from Blizzard China said that LotV will add all of the wc3 units. It's highly probable that what you are seeing there belongs to LotV and not Heroes (there's some LotV data leaked into Heroes like we all knew LotV had a mission of retaking Aiur before blizzcon) (I tried looking for the source, but couldn't find it, they also mentioned it in a private interview during blizzcon about the arcade).

Heroes of the storm does have an editor but it's likely to be a lot like Sc2 Editor. Not sure if they will add a module to dumb down the data editor to be more friendly.

 

[Laiev]

So basically every improvement they did on Heroes Engine is going to be in LotV too? Good to know, the delay response for the game will improve a lot .

About the 'all of the wc3 units', I'm confuse, really, makes more sense to do so in Heroes, since Heroes is more Warcraft'ish them Starcraft, but there's a problem at all, if both of them are the same engine and same everything, including the editor, this make no sense to 'separate the game'.

Also the Heroes has a inactive button named Community (probably future Arcade?).

Except if Blizzard are going to implement the editor on the AppData itself, and not exclusively on Starcraft or Heroes, so the Editor can be used either with Heroes or Starcraft.

 

[BlinkBoy]

So basically every improvement they did on Heroes Engine is going to be in LotV too? Good to know, the delay response for the game will improve a lot .

About the 'all of the wc3 units', I'm confuse, really, makes more sense to do so in Heroes, since Heroes is more Warcraft'ish them Starcraft, but there's a problem at all, if both of them are the same engine and same everything, including the editor, this make no sense to 'separate the game'.

Also the Heroes has a inactive button named Community (probably future Arcade?).

Except if Blizzard are going to implement the editor on the AppData itself, and not exclusively on Starcraft or Heroes, so the Editor can be used either with Heroes or Starcraft.

We are not sure how both games will interact.

About latency, they talked a bit about TPS/FPS latency and they said it won't happen because the game is optimized for RTS and implementing that would mean a LOT of work on the engine to support both modes.

Now, Heroes will certainly get wc3 units eventualy if they decide to make Wc3 battlegrounds. Right now they are working on a Diablo battleground, but time will tell when they decide to do a wc3 battleground.

 

[Laiev]

Not the latency itself, the Starcraft has a large delay between your command and the response of the engine. At the start of Alpha in Heroes, Blizzard cleared some files and changed something inside the engine that allow better response, is nothing related to the latency or frames per seconds.

Is a difference like the responde of the animation of each aspect, including the velocity of the game, like how League of Legends is against Dota 2, Dota 2 seens to be more 'heavy' because the engine handle it more slowly, and not instantly.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Not the latency itself, the Starcraft has a large delay between your command and the response of the engine. At the start of Alpha in Heroes, Blizzard cleared some files and changed something inside the engine that allow better response, is nothing related to the latency or frames per seconds.

Is a difference like the responde of the animation of each aspect, including the velocity of the game, like how League of Legends is against Dota 2, Dota 2 seens to be more 'heavy' because the engine handle it more slowly, and not instantly.

I see what you mean. It's probable they added that in.

About Dota 2, it doewsn't surprise me. Dota 2 is based on Source Engine which basicly never had an RTS engine.

 

[Laiev]

So only time will say, but Blizzard lie (again as always) about the orc models coming at the StarCraft II Editor some time in 2014.

 

[Deleted member 219079]

Warcraft 4 confirmed!!

 

[Laiev]

Warcraft 4 confirmed!!

Not yet .

As someone said (outside Hive), Warcraft IV MAYBE will be made at 2018-2020, till then we hope it.

 

[Gismo359]

Not yet .

As someone said (outside Hive), Warcraft IV MAYBE will be made at 2018-2020, till then we hope it.

Warcraft IV MAYBE will be made at 2018-2020

MAYBE ... 2018-2020

ಠ_ಠ

Oh, com'on Blizzard!

 

[Dr Super Good]

Heroes of the Storm is spin-off of StarCraft II. It uses the same scripting language (Galaxy) with a few modifications (pre-compiled files?), it uses the same data editor as SC2. It even started out as a SC2 mod and was included by mistake in one of the SC2 patches long ago.

It is hardly a secret that it is a modification of SC2. All the models would work as-is in SC2 if not for the strict checking and default to fail that model loading does. It is pretty obvious that it has an editor as well since it was based on StarCraft II which has an editor.

The big question is if many of the Heroes of the Storm modifications eventually get back ported to StarCraft II Legacy of the Void. Leaked data and comments are encouraging that this will happen but until then we are stuck unable to use the models without porting them.

Now, Heroes will certainly get wc3 units eventualy if they decide to make Wc3 battlegrounds. Right now they are working on a Diablo battleground, but time will tell when they decide to do a wc3 battleground.

I have no idea what you are talking about. It has 4 Warcraft themed ones already... The actual issue was that it had no StarCraft or Diablo themed battlegrounds.

 

[BlinkBoy]

I have no idea what you are talking about. It has 4 Warcraft themed ones already... The actual issue was that it had no StarCraft or Diablo themed battlegrounds.

LargeImage

Heaven vs Hell. Diablo based battleground, shown at blizzcon.

Also current battleground aren't really warcraft they are just medieval.

 

[Laiev]

Oh, com'on Blizzard!

It ever WC4 becomes a fact. I'll not be surprised if it didn't happen. Why you're still surprised?

The big question is if many of the Heroes of the Storm modifications eventually get back ported to StarCraft II Legacy of the Void. Leaked data and comments are encouraging that this will happen but until then we are stuck unable to use the models without porting them.

We hope so, Blizzard said that Legacy will extremely change how Starcraft are.

Heaven vs Hell. Diablo based battleground, shown at blizzcon.

Also current battleground aren't really warcraft they are just medieval.

Heaven vs Hell is not early to be launched, it is just a concept art, not ever a tease yet.

Also What Dr was saying is because Starcraft (Sci-Fi), Diablo (Medieval), Warcraft (Magic Medieval), each game of Blizzard has a distinct style, and right now most of the battlegrounds are Magic Medieval, so it remember Warcraft.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Heaven vs Hell. Diablo based battleground, shown at blizzcon.

Yes but it is not in the game yet.

Also current battleground aren't really warcraft they are just medieval.

They look very Warcraft to me. Everything from the dragon statues to plant theme fits Warcraft. Even the ghost pirate reeks of Warcraft. It certainly does not involve ancient Xel Naga artefacts or demons of any kind.

It is also like how most of the hero roaster is from Warcraft. Heck they have even thrown in joke characters like Brightwing, a Murlock, a rocking Tauren (E.T.C.) and Li Li (who is meant to be related to Chen Stormstout but is just a kid) in to fill the Warcraft roaster. StarCraft has a reasonable number of representatives but still very little in comparison (almost all minor characters are missing such as Swann, Stetman, Dekahn, Stokov, etc). The Diablo roaster is absolutely minuscule with only 6 heroes (half the main characters are missing, and only 2 evils are currently featured).

In short, there is no shortage of Warcraft content.

On a lesser note they are staying true to Warcraft 3 even. Valla, the nephalim Demon Hunter receives a phone call from "Darkness" who dialled the wrong number. And Illidan/Arthras are in contact with Darkness via other means.

The dialog is excessively well done. It puts Diablo III and StarCraft II to shame even. Little details like Illidan yelling "No... WHAT HAVE I DONE!" when you kill "Tyranda" (however she is spelt) are just the tip. Anubarak compliments Ziagra on her legs at the start of the battle. Tychus exclaims "I must have zoned out there... Was that a Panda?" when killing Li Li.

The "pissed" quotes are a gold mine of amusement. The Diablo III Barbarian has one "Death by snusnu", a knock at Futurama. The Diablo III Witch Doctor asks for his cain and you get the Diablo II sound of Deckard Cain. Murdin explains how if your favourite Blizzard character dies chances are he will come back to life in an expansion. Nova rants how everyone talks about Kerrigan. Tychus drops his cigar in his suit. Tassadar argues over StarCraft II Protoss not having classic units. Abuthur creates a non-viable creature. Azmodan comments on having to write journals.

 

[Laiev]

Currently Blizzard is doing a very well job with Heroes, lets admit, at least with graphics, textures and sounds.

At Blizzcon they said Starcraft II has about 80 sound per character, and Heroes has about 300. Definitely Blizzard is trying to make Heroes as fun ever.

 

[Deathcom3s]

Blizzard would do very well to make the SC2 (or HotS) Editor more friendly. Don't remove any features, but make the level of entry much lower. I personally don't have any issues with the SC2 editor, but that's because I'm accustomed to other game engines/development tools such as UE4, UDK, Unity, etc.

But I would say the single biggest hindrance to modding in SC2 is the fact that, when compared to WC3, the Editor is just a bit too complex for the absolute novice. It's more difficult to jump in and start messing around, which I would wager is how 95% of us here on the site got started with WC3. The SC2 Editor is extremely powerful, which isn't a problem, but it poses a problem to new developers who are just getting started.

 

[Laiev]

I talked about it with a friend yesterday, I said the same thing, too powerful but too complex to learn from nothing (like most of people here did with Warcraft 3).

At some files inside the Heroes, I notice another thing (is nothing related to the thread, this is why I didn't say anything), Blizzard is changing the editor to make more sense. For example, I remember something about the tabs are currently less tabs but each tab now has more things, some configuration is directly in some object.

Lets be honest, Button tab (a example) can be done directly on ability/unit tab, you need to change a tab, load ALL files in that tab, just to change 5-8 lines of code? Meh

 

[Dr Super Good]

The issue is that the editor is more like triggering is a limping horse (Galaxy) than a race horse (what Galaxy could have been). Sure it may not be a car (C/C++) but it could be a horse.

Little dumb things like the lack of int type casts, the lack of a short type, the lack of array lookups accepting bytes as an index. Shifts modulating the amount by 32. No static references (they could so easily added a "global pointer" type which only accepts references to globals). They also lack many string functions such as character lookup or ASCII lookup, hex output generation etc.

 

[Laiev]

The issue is that the editor is more like triggering is a limping horse (Galaxy) than a race horse (what Galaxy could have been). Sure it may not be a car (C/C++) but it could be a horse.

Little dumb things like the lack of int type casts, the lack of a short type, the lack of array lookups accepting bytes as an index. Shifts modulating the amount by 32. No static references (they could so easily added a "global pointer" type which only accepts references to globals). They also lack many string functions such as character lookup or ASCII lookup, hex output generation etc.

I don't get your point. Ok, lets be honest, Starcraft Editor is not so powerful and complete as it could be, but definitely it do what should do (Warcraft logics? Blizzard's programmers).

No matter how much it improve, no matter how much the editor change to better, implement everything you said, there ALWAYS be someone claiming for more, blaming Blizzard because they didn't add function X, modification Y, etc.

 

[Deathcom3s]

The issue is that the editor is more like triggering is a limping horse (Galaxy) than a race horse (what Galaxy could have been). Sure it may not be a car (C/C++) but it could be a horse.

Little dumb things like the lack of int type casts, the lack of a short type, the lack of array lookups accepting bytes as an index. Shifts modulating the amount by 32. No static references (they could so easily added a "global pointer" type which only accepts references to globals). They also lack many string functions such as character lookup or ASCII lookup, hex output generation etc.

Certainly a very valid point, and I agree 100%.

However, the problem is that so many people are unable to even get to a point where they begin to notice shortcomings such as that. That's simply because they're overwhelmed with too much complexity all at once, and eventually give up. Or, they just prefer to stay and play in the shallow water where everything is comfortable and familiar. The problem is that growth, learning and progress stagnate in that kind of environment.

 

[BlinkBoy]

Certainly a very valid point, and I agree 100%.

However, the problem is that so many people are unable to even get to a point where they begin to notice shortcomings such as that. That's simply because they're overwhelmed with too much complexity all at once, and eventually give up. Or, they just prefer to stay and play in the shallow water where everything is comfortable and familiar. The problem is that growth, learning and progress stagnate in that kind of environment.

well man those functions not even exist in wc3. Maybe that's way too deep for galaxy.

 

[Dr Super Good]

well man those functions not even exist in wc3. Maybe that's way too deep for galaxy.

JASS was like a limping dog if Galaxy was a limping horse. JASS did not even have bitshifts (at least Galaxy does to some extent!).

The issue is that they seem to have gone most of the way, but not all the way. There is no valid reason why shifts should be modulus 32. There is no reason why explicit type casts are not supported when you can use a local variable to implicitly type cast.