Would multiplayer mapmaking be something that Blizzard will ever add?

[TheGoldenGoblin]

Hi!

With the new 1.29 patch alot of new stuff has been added. I still would like natives to get key pressing like "W" "A" "S" "D" but other than that I'm very happy for what they have done.

Anyways lets get to the point. There is some newer games with mapmaking that allows multiple players to make a map at once, Golf It for an example. I wonder if this would be something that Blizzard might add in the future or if it's maby to hard and not worth the work for them? I have wanted this feature for a really long time, for example when me and two friends were working on a map together only one person could work on it at a time. It would be great and really fun to be able to work together, like one person working on terrain and one on triggers for example.

What's your thoughts on this?

 

[Lizreu]

It would be nice, but my personal thoughts on this is that it won't get implemented due to the amount of work required.

Unlike WC3, WorldEdit:
* Doesn't have any built-in networking
* Doesn't have any kind of lobby system or another feature to facilitate joining
* Is buggy and slow enough to frustrate people worldwide even when they work with it alone
Fixing and adding that alone would amount to a formiddable amount of work.

WorldEdit has a lot of room for quality of life improvements, and IMO any kind of network support should be the last thing on that list.
But it would be definitely nice.

 

[EredarArbeiterYU]

"multiplayer mapmaking" is a weird way of phrasing it. Simultaneous Multi-editor is the word combination you are looking for here.

 

[TheGoldenGoblin]

It would be nice, but my personal thoughts on this is that it won't get implemented due to the amount of work required.

Unlike WC3, WorldEdit:
* Doesn't have any built-in networking
* Doesn't have any kind of lobby system or another feature to facilitate joining
* Is buggy and slow enough to frustrate people worldwide even when they work with it alone
Fixing and adding that alone would amount to a formiddable amount of work.

WorldEdit has a lot of room for quality of life improvements, and IMO any kind of network support should be the last thing on that list.
But it would be definitely nice.

I agree that there is alot of stuff that is more important. But I wonder how much work is actually needed to make it work. Do they have that in sc2?

"multiplayer mapmaking" is a weird way of phrasing it. Simultaneous Multi-editor is the word combination you are looking for here.

Thank you, I was very confused on how to phrase it haha

 

[Leubast]

Your best bet, at this time, is to host your map file on some online storage and allow who you want to work on it to access it. Just make sure you don't both work on it at the same time and overwrite each other's changes.

 

[TheGoldenGoblin]

Yeah I know, we have been using google drive and made sure that we always upload the map and changed the version name of it. But it would still be nice to be able to see what your friend is making and building things and develop ideas together as you work.

 

[Xonok]

How about using something like teamviewer so you both are effectively using the same computer? It provides some of the benefits.You can see what the other is doing although it's not truly parallel.

 

[actboy168]

This is a good question. I have been working to solve this problem. The biggest obstacle to collaborating with people on editing maps is synchronizing data. This problem in the field of software development, there are many mature solutions, such as git, svn, perforce. But they are version management tools based on visual text, and most of Warcraft 3's map files are binary files based on proprietary protocols. So I wrote a tool that allows maps to be converted between w3x and visual text.
So you just use this tool to generate the w3x file each time you edit the map, then use the tool to convert it to the file you submitted to git / svn / p4 after editing. Next I will integrate it into the editor, you can use visual text just as you would with w3x.

The tool:
GitHub - syj2010syj/w3x2lni

This is the map using this tool:
GitHub - actboy168/MoeHero: 我的英雄不可能那么萌

 

[TheGoldenGoblin]

I don't really understand how it helps with more people working on a map at once? You still can't see what the other guy is doing? I guess you can somehow save the file and just easily import it to your friend without disruppting their current work? Or maybe I missunderstood.

 

[Chaosy]

There are obvious benefits it this worked flawlessly.
One could do terrain while the other coded for example.

That is made possible with wurst already though.

 

[TheGoldenGoblin]

Oh really? Is wurst possible with the new patch tho?

 

[Chaosy]

I think it works with everything that is not on the PTR. @Frotty probably knows.

Though wurst does not achieve it flawlessly. Wurst code is written in a VS code, a third party editor the code is then injected into the map on demand.
In practice this means that I can code on an old version of the map for testing things and when I get the new terrain the code will automatically transfer without any extra work on my side.

It wont let you see while the other is working, but it enables productivity.

 

[TheGoldenGoblin]

But that means you can easily send it over to your friend so that he can import it and get all the code while working and I could get his terrain. That is still alot better than having to copy paste everything.

 

[Chaosy]

Well.. one solution would be to have a wurst project on google drive so each time your terrain friend saves it you will be able to inject code into it.
That would PROBABLY work very well since you do not need to send the map between eachother that way.

 

[actboy168]

I don't really understand how it helps with more people working on a map at once? You still can't see what the other guy is doing? I guess you can somehow save the file and just easily import it to your friend without disruppting their current work? Or maybe I missunderstood.

I don't know if you know Github, maybe you can go learn it. Github provides a complete multiplayer solution for writing visual text. All I do is let you manage and write w3x files with Github, or some other similar solution.
Unlike Wurst, this is a complete solution for w3x files, not just scripts. It includes triggers, scripts, object editor data, map configuration, map import files, and more.

 

[Chaosy]

Ehhhh no.
Good luck having two pepple terraining at the same time.
Coding at the same time is possible if you plan very well to avoid code conflict upon pushing.
Not to mention that you cannot see what the other person is doing live either

Github is good but not flawless
To be fair wurst does not fix this either
But I did not advertise it as perfect

 

[Lizreu]

Github provides a complete multiplayer solution for writing visual text.

That's not exactly it. GitHub is a version control system. It's not a "multiplayer solution for writing visual text" - that'd be something like Google Docs.

Your tools would still be very useful to make GitHub work with .w3x files since it seems to convert them into text, but the fact that its' in chinese is probably going to keep most people away from even trying it. At least here on Hive.

 

[actboy168]

I'm sorry, I'm just sharing the workflow I'm using. If you don‘t agree, I don’t intend to convince you. My example map has six authors and the tool works very well. My friend even used it in a dozen or so people's team, it is still perfect.
Language is a problem, but I think documentation is a more important problem. Because this tool does not need to run in the GUI. The language and documentation are all in my plan. Of course, if anyone is interested in this tool, you are welcome to provide pull request.