Staredit Network

Hurray!

I think ZephyrTC is already starting it?

You'll probably have to contact him

Only because I made an issue out of it. Everyone else would have giggled a little and walked away if not.

Anyway, a guy named Stwong on samods.org agreed(?) to do a test of changing the precedence order of mpqs in Starcraft, though by how he replied I don't know when or if exactly he really intends to do it. I don't know whether he's reliable or not, either.

As for getting started, I can't do much programming myself on account of time and resources... that is unless you can wait until I finish 3 of my other major projects first. I can help with logistics, but you guys are gonna be the ones to have to do the actual work. This won't just happen out of thin air though, so someone's gonna have to volunteer to do it (Zephyr hasn't replied yet, and frankly I don't know how good he is or anything).

I'll leave that part up to you guys.

Conversations about the possibility of this program popped up everywhere in the past two weeks. Personally, I denounced the idea as obscenely difficult and something that only a madman would attempt. I see we have several of those, so such a far-fetched idea might end up being plausible. Best of luck to the madmen who tackle the idea.

If you hadn't I sure as hell would have sometime within the next couple months.

So who are the people that are supposedly involved in this?

ZephyrTC is supposed to be the one starting this project but I can't see to find him...

I am definately not enough in the field of programming to start this kind of a project

I doubt this will greatly revolutionize SC,


The game is old... accept that first.

Then accept the fact that WC3 has these "mod" abilities already.

You can basically change EVERYTHING in the game...

But look at it..

Its not even a big thing in WC3.

So you can change everything... har har... but what use is it?

Rarely have I seen a game in WC3, where the "modded" units were a necessity.

Sure, you have a few more "nifty" things to do to the unit... but whats the point?

With the current engine that SC has, you can literally do everything (aside from changing sprites, pathways, tech trees, animations).

Theres no need for a revolution.






Then again, lets look at the benefits of this program should it be created.

It would allow for us to do some pretty insane things...

But at what cost?

We would have to relearn a whole new system of modifying maps.

Heck, what about the intensive programming codes that you would need to know?


Most people today can barely run SF... how do you expect them to run this upcoming program?

Also, look at the map size. If you are planning to put the whole mod onto the map, wouldn't the map's size skyrocket into infinity?

Im as patient as the next guy, but waiting 2 hours to dl a map? Forget that.

Heck, people are already unwiling to dl a 200kb map.

What about compatibility? Mac users to Windows? Will there be complications between that? How about the programming that is required to sync both the Mac Os and the Windows Os?


Im not saying its a bad idea... im also not saying its a good idea...

Just saying... is it really worth it?




AS A NOTE:
Although I don't know much about coding and programming, I am very skilled in marketing and production management. I also have graphic design capabilities. I can be of some help to this project, should you permit that is.

Well, thats what an Automoder is for, and mod files arent that big, unless you change the whole game...

of course mac and windows will work, you just have to write one program for windows and the other for mac...but then make them compatable..

and if you cant even make maps, you cant do mods...duh? cause you wont know the balance, what special abilities, what you can cloak...the list goes on and on.

You know, I bet most people are talking about the UMS possibilites of this. But I'm also thinking of the melee possibilities. People will basically be able to make their own version of melee. People in Starcraft vanilla can even play with broodwar units. The possibilities are endless once this program gets out there.

If it ever does...

This is getting too big to be a 3rd party program.

Blizzard will surely invervene should it evolve to modding regular melee games.

I can imagine it now...

9999hp 9999att workers gogo! gg.

lol, but then if it were liek that, no one would bother playing it.


that means in the program, it should show a list of mods, so that way you wont keep joing crappy games(1 hp marines and 100000 hp SCVs)

I am. After my next map, I plan to retire from formal mapping for SC (unless Blizz gets off their asses with their next PC SC game). But old as it is, as I said earlier, it has one of the biggest fan bases of any game I know. Almost everyone has heard of Starcraft, and though not everyone still plays it, it wouldn't be hard for people to return to it if there was a reason to. Most people have moved on only because they figure they've "seen it all" by now, and not so much because of its age. Adding a new twist to things would indeed bring in new people.


Modding for W3 involves programming and 3d, which arn't very "player" level skills. SC is a 2d game, and has no formal programming features to it (if that makes sense), so a lot of it is right within people's grasp. I don't think it would be as unpopular as you think.


I wouldn't be cancelling A&O for SC if that were true.


Not if you don't want to. Appending mod data is as easy as drag and dropping mod files into the map through winmpq. This could be things as simple as small cursor images and sounds to whole tilesets or unit data. Plus with memory-based modding, a lot of the current limits of modding could be circumvented, and even some new stuff might be possible that we haven't discovered yet.


Like you said (later in the post), you haven't done any real programming. How would you know that?

Short answer: You wouldn't.


Um, double click the executable?


Well lets look at it this way: Current map files contain usually only map data and a few wav files. The larger ones are mostly due to the wav files. If an auto-modder works by memory, and we've established that you can put ANY file into an mpq, whats to say you couldn't put things like, oh I dunno, mp3 files instead of wavs? That could actually decrease file size, if utilized properly.

As for mod data, graphics arn't typically as weighty as things like wavs, so I'm not worried about that. Other non-graphics mod data for units and tech trees and stuff would be mere text files, which when compressed in the mpq would amount to very little as well.

In other words, you'd really have to try to make your map inordinately large.


Well that would be the only thing I can't answer. Most people I know use windows, and I guess that goes the same for the bnet population as well, so I don't think it would be a huge loss if it didn't work. Though I doubt that it COULDN'T work, if someone had the skills.

I see...

So it is a good program after all.

I will wait for its launch.

The program won't work unless everyone playing has it. I don't think it would be possible to unsuspectingly join a melee game like that.

But if it allowed people to exploit ladder, however...

Ya know.... There should be forums that auto refresh when a post is made, maybe in a different frame from the post, that allows for you to post AND view new posts.



And what I said about the opening SF,

Many people had big problems running the program due to complications.

I wasn' talking about executing the file.






Need any help on this project?

Whatever help this project needs will be voluntary from anyone who can give it. I don't have my programming up to par to do this, not to mention I'm tied up at the moment, so I won't be the one making it. I'm the wrong person to ask.

If you want to go ahead and start it, be my guest. I think Zephyr ditched, by his lack of replies. Even if he hasn't, I don't know whether he knows anything about real programming or not, so I don't suggest counting on him. The only other people I know who would be able to do something like this have all given me their assorted excuses as to why they can't/won't, so I guess this is still open to anyone who wants the challenge.

I doubt it too, and we all doubt it. Where did we say it would revolutionize SC?


Nope. Modifying maps will be done the same way, modding will just be an extra addition. If you don't know how to mod, then you won't have to.


There are no programming skills required to modify almost every file that are in the Starcraft MPQs.


Everyone I know can run SF(aside from macintosh users). The program is more of a hack/tool to read modded files from maps. Now think of all the "Starcraft hacks" that people run when they play their little comp stomping games.


A whole mod does not require the modification of every single file. Map sizes will not change much from the current ones. If the person knows how to mod, then the modded map sizes will stay relatively low. Maps now should be around 50 or less kb. The "modified map" will probably only add 100-200kb max if the person knows what he's doing.


Some programs are made specifically for macs, some are made specifically for PCs. This program would be designed for the PC user. Unless you can get a mac programmer to "port" it, then it would be PC only.


It's worth it as long as we, the SEN community, can use it.


I realize Tux already cleared that up a little, but I just wanted to reply with my own part.

Well, all that has to be done is port it to mac to make it work between PC and MAC users. The program modifies the SC data, SC engine synchronizes the new data. It's that simple...

What I want to know is if this project gets a team of like let's say a dozen people that know what they are doing, how long will it take to create something like this?

The thing is, how long does it take to get started?

Too long. Forget about it. I don't plan to do A&O anymore anyway, so there's no point (for me, anyway).

I don't think anyone cares enough, anyway.

Don't want to read all of that (1st time I bothered looking at this "Automod")
If its allready somewhere in here, too bad.

Why not make like some injected dll file (hacks to that, and they work properly...). Make so it does all the detecting and sending to other files and stuff.

If you are asking why we can't make the AutoMod, a .dll, we can.

Hi I'm supertoast!
While I may be pretty much a noob here on staredit.net, I am by no means a noob in both the starcraft community and some areas of the mapping community. After reading through this thread, and doing some thinking about the possibility of an automoder I came up with a few points

-About Devoloupment
1) To get the project started, I beleive it's crucial to go to other starcraft related sites (mapping, modding, hacking, etc...) to try and recruit people who have experiance in this type of hacking/modding/programing. By other sites I mean places like blizzhackers, bwhacks, and sites for starcraft mods that are still being worked on - Starcraft Team Fortress; and this is just to name a few.

2) Once we come up with a solid group of people who are dedicated to doing this task, I also think it would be wise to then contact blizzard and try to start some conversation with them about the possibility of creating a third-party automodder. This is probably one of the most important things to, because even if we were to get a team of develoupers together, all it would take is blizzard getting mad at the whole project and that would be it.

-About the AutoModer itself
1) One thing that would probably have to happen to have blizzard allow an automodder on b.net would be that it could not mod ladder games and maybe not even mod melee games. This is also a part were blizzard's support would be very nice. If blizzard supports the program it could be possible to have a seperate game type for automod games.
2) If it doesn't have it's own game type, it might still be possible to differentiate an automodder game from a regular game. My idea was that games made with a mod could show up a different color in the games list menu. I'm not sure if this would be possible, but I think it would be an effective way to show automod games.
3) To actually mod the game, I think it would be useful to use the countdown as a game is starting. As far as I know, the countdown occurs at pretty much the same time on every machine regardless of computer speed and/or lag, so this would give a good set of values to use to sync the different loads. This can also be used to deal with the issue of having to remod back to normal starcraft. because it would go something like this.
5 - Load any mod files in the map
4 - Load patch mpq
3 - etc....
This would allow then all the files to be patched on each machine at the same time, and if there are no mod files in the map, it would just reset the files to the normal starcraft ones. I'm not positive if you can actually make it work like this, but this seems like the best way I thought up to do it.

-About the programs usefulness
I personally think this program would be a great asset to the starcraft community. The possibilities are virtually limitless to what you can do with it and it would allow the mapmaking community to reach new levels in there maps. I don't see it wouldn't be possible to even make whole campaigns within a single map. Since a map file is basically an mpq, with the right editing you could turn it into a multiplayer campaign with multiple maps, custom sounds, and whatever else you could think of. The only limit we would have to deal with is the filesize involved. The avergae battle.net user would not nessecarily get the full benefits of things like these custom campaigns, because they would be to large to download on battle.net, but if you look at some of todays top quality maps, that is already the case. It still comes back to the fact that people like us here would receive the full benefit of this since we would be able to download these large map files with relative ease.