How does it work?

[Bugz]

How does starcraft even work?, i know that warcraft uses jass? but what about sc?, and leaks?..

 

[Adiktuz]

Its called galaxy I guess... and from what I've heard, leaks is not much of a prob on SC2 (or not a problem at all)...

 

[Bugz]

Lol yeh starcraft.. just wondered if it leaked.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Obviously if you code badly you can still make leaks. Things like nulling locals or having to destroy locations are a thing of the past though. Additionally strings do not leak.

Apparently you still get engine leaks so performance can degrade after killing tens of thousands of units, but few maps need that.

 

[Bugz]

So what about something like jass? is it used in galaxy? or a new kind?

 

[Dr Super Good]

SC2 uses a scripting language called galaxy which Blizzard made for SC2. The major difference is that JASS was interpreted by an interperter in WC3 while galaxy uses bytecode in a virtual machine.

Thus the languages are quite different in how they behave. Ofcourse both obey the same basic behaviour of any programming language.

Galaxy script is much like C code. A lot of C constructs are not available however.

Galaxy does not support pointers (it did during the beta but was removed before the editor was added).
Galaxy does support most C bitwise opperators (unlike jass which supported none).
Galaxy is type safe and so can not be made to support dynamic allocation of scripting resources (like variables or structs).

 

[Bugz]

Alright thanks, any cinematic stuff made yet?

 

[Dr Super Good]

any cinematic stuff made yet?

What do you mean by this?

You can easilly set up cinimatic cameras in SC2. Additionally, game timing in near 100% accurate (to nearest game frame) so sequential procedures using waits between them is no problem and will not mess up your cinimatic timing. I guess if you are using the same type of cinimatic opperation repetitivly you could define custom functions to reduce procedural coupling.

 

[Bugz]

I ment if someone has made a cinematic yet, and great. I can't wait to start making sc2 cinematics

 

[Dr Super Good]

Blizzard has made cinimatics for their campaign. Additionally some maps have basic cinimatics at the start or end.

The camera and lighting is very different from WC3. Be aware that for a good cinimatic you will need to accomidate everyone who has the game on ultra.

Effects supports by SC2 that were alien to WC3.
Field of View (angle that the camera can see, capable of 10 to 120 degrees (1/3 of a omni camera) view)
Depth of Field (blur stuff in the distance to give a feel of focuse).
Near, far and shadow clipping (performance).
Realistic shadows with customizable light direction.
HDR lighting
Changable lighting at any time
Ability to lipsync portraits (no idea how this is done atm)

 

[Bugz]

Sounds so awesome