I know there's been alot of talk about W3 dying after SC2 comes out (sometime mid-July?), and how map/mod makers will migrate to SC2 due to the unholy, leakless power of its editor, but frankly, after seeing the thing in action, I'm disappointed...
Sure, it's leakless (at least that's what they say), and you can customize just about anything, and the terrain tools are pretty and allow you to blend different tiles together seamlessly, but the data fields, the bread and butter of any editor, is insanely overcomplicated and cumbersome!
Granted, it wasn't easy to newcomers to get into W3 triggering, but just about anyone could play with the unit palette and easily customize heroes/units. To do more advanced things, you needed to learn triggering, but Blizz was smart enough to include GUI as a crutch/stepping stone. With this, people could make progress at their own pace, and it was damn fun! I remember how awesome it was learning to make heroes, then tweaking Storm Bolts and Command Auras, and finally, triggering, dummy units, etc. But with SC2 Edit, the thing just throws a brick in your face - it's like trying to learn friggin' AutoCAD (I had less trouble with ACAD than SC2 Edit, I shit you not)!
They kept yapping on and on how SC2 Edit will allow an extreme level of customization, but it seems that in their quest to do this, they actually f**cked up pretty badly - now it's impossible to do simple things like make unit copies/adjustments without modifying 10,000 different fields, which requires basically (re)testing the map 500x since most of the data fields have an almost arcane level of complexity to them... and don't get me started on the whole "actor" mechanic... yuck! :thdown:
What's the old proverb; "Don't fix it if it ain't broke!"?
I know this is just the beta version, but Blizz has never actively supported their editors (in fact, this is their policy), and it might just happen that we'll get stuck with the present version at launch. Unless they completely overhaul and fix the problems, I'm staying with W3. Sure, I'll play the SC2 Terran campaign, but after I get that out of my system, I'm going back to W3 mapping...
/end rant
Discuss?
Sure, it's leakless (at least that's what they say), and you can customize just about anything, and the terrain tools are pretty and allow you to blend different tiles together seamlessly, but the data fields, the bread and butter of any editor, is insanely overcomplicated and cumbersome!
Granted, it wasn't easy to newcomers to get into W3 triggering, but just about anyone could play with the unit palette and easily customize heroes/units. To do more advanced things, you needed to learn triggering, but Blizz was smart enough to include GUI as a crutch/stepping stone. With this, people could make progress at their own pace, and it was damn fun! I remember how awesome it was learning to make heroes, then tweaking Storm Bolts and Command Auras, and finally, triggering, dummy units, etc. But with SC2 Edit, the thing just throws a brick in your face - it's like trying to learn friggin' AutoCAD (I had less trouble with ACAD than SC2 Edit, I shit you not)!
They kept yapping on and on how SC2 Edit will allow an extreme level of customization, but it seems that in their quest to do this, they actually f**cked up pretty badly - now it's impossible to do simple things like make unit copies/adjustments without modifying 10,000 different fields, which requires basically (re)testing the map 500x since most of the data fields have an almost arcane level of complexity to them... and don't get me started on the whole "actor" mechanic... yuck! :thdown:
What's the old proverb; "Don't fix it if it ain't broke!"?
I know this is just the beta version, but Blizz has never actively supported their editors (in fact, this is their policy), and it might just happen that we'll get stuck with the present version at launch. Unless they completely overhaul and fix the problems, I'm staying with W3. Sure, I'll play the SC2 Terran campaign, but after I get that out of my system, I'm going back to W3 mapping...
/end rant
Discuss?