SC2 Level Designer employment

[Storamin]

http://www.blizzard.com/jobopp/level-designer.shtml

Hmm... Darnyak? Can you bring forth an AoS to ship with SC2?

[kinguvspaz]

Good use of doodads and terrain texture to make the map look organic and esthetically pleasing
--they spelled aesthetically wrong

Well organized and bug free triggers
--Lol, bug free triggers

butttt, I say go for it, and if you don't get it, it just proves to us that blizzard is conspiring against you and EotA in general, those fuckers

[AlienFromBeyond]

If he could get EotA to qualify for the map requirements (as in, make it not buggy and unbalanced), I would definitely say go for it.

[Emufarmers]

Good use of doodads and terrain texture to make the map look organic and esthetically pleasing
--they spelled aesthetically wrong

Æ or ae can be shortened to e in English, you know. I hadn't seen it done with that word before, but that doesn't make it wrong.

Well organized and bug free triggers
--Lol, bug free triggers

Eh? Granted, I would have hyphenated "well organized" and "bug free," but...

I like that they don't include a formal education/experience requirement: A lot of companies would demand someone with a degree and years of industry experience. Nice to see a company judging at least partially by the quality of the submitted work, and not merely by background. Plus, once Yak works on StarCraft II, he shall get us all copies!

[Storamin]

If he could get EotA to qualify for the map requirements (as in, make it not buggy and unbalanced), I would definitely say go for it.

Ouch... now that's a low blow.

[kinguvspaz]

Well organized and bug free triggers
--Lol, bug free triggers

Eh? Granted, I would have hyphenated "well organized" and "bug free," but...

I was talking about the map with that one, not anything to do with Blizzard

[FutatsuNoOmoi]

Or Blizzard could make a bug free trigger making system. I will agree with Yak, Jass is garbage. And hopefully they will use a different language. There's a strong possibility of Lua.

[mianmian]

Just here to forward my theory, that Yak is actually a developper on WoW.

A couple points.

1. A lot of ideas in Eota are in WoW, and have been in Eota first, so hmmm.... (ex: Geyser)

2. Yak is gone on "RL" stuff, as they announce a new WoW Xpac, dunno its a coincidence...?

[Tehw00tz]

You forgot to add that Yak is Batman, mian, that also explains for the 'rl stuff'.
Not to mention Kart Rider.

[FutatsuNoOmoi]

If Yak has to compete with MilleniumArmy for a position, I feel sorry for Yak. ^_^

[AlienFromBeyond]

If he could get EotA to qualify for the map requirements (as in, make it not buggy and unbalanced), I would definitely say go for it.

Ouch... now that's a low blow.

Well it's true. UD are horribly unbalanced compared to the other factions, partly because they're still buggy to some degree.

[mianmian]

Lately ive been finidng UD on the weak side...

Anyway, whos MilleniumArmy?

[Kibiyama]

Or Blizzard could make a bug free trigger making system. I will agree with Yak, Jass is garbage. And hopefully they will use a different language. There's a strong possibility of Lua.

Using Lua doesn't magically prevent memory leaks; it's still making calls into the C++ code. Even if the calls don't necessarily leak, there are still cases where combining certain calls might leak memory. Of course, what probably causes most of the leaks we see in the first place is that Blizz's calls are being used in ways they hadn't anticipated. A more powerful language would definitely help with that.

What would definitely help is if they used managed memory so that memory leaks are impossible. Moving the engine to C# is probably unreasonable, but I don't think tacking on a garbage collector for C++ is. That's assuming Blizzard is actually trying to change with the times and not just releasing Warcraft 3.1...

[DarnYak]

What would definitely help is if they used managed memory so that memory leaks are impossible.

This is one of my biggest gripes with jass, and why i'm highly concerned with what they've said about sc2 development: scripting is suppose to be simpler and faster to develop then the raw code, but when you have to track down memory leaks and shit it gets very close to just working with the base language.

Further, there's no mechanism to actualy track memory leaks and such to even find out where the errors are originating from. Most, if not all, real languages provide a mechanism to do this: wc3, on the other hand, mostly assumes that wc3 trigger maps will never become so large that memory will be an issue - most of wc3 features are built around this assumption really. Have they learnt that maps will try to push the limits for sc2? I dont know, but I really fucking hope so.

As for using C# for sc2 development, its certainly not impossible, or nessairly that hard, but i think their primary motivation is to have a gui trigger system such as sc1 and wc3 has, and that's seems to require using an in house scripting language (although I dont feel that's nessarily true, but it may be harder to use say lua instead of jass or whatnot)

Further, most bugs in EotA are due in large part to uncertiany exactly how wc3 does some things, and some difficult in getting it to do what you intend for it. Most memory leaks left are pretty obscure to find (ie, the tree destruction memory leak I found not too long ago), and some bugs I will never understand and just have to make work arounds (why did meteor swarm stop stunning, why?!). Hell, most real bugs aren't really do to my actions, such as the emberwraith crash, or the aero perma hold on ember, both those things are entirely taking place inside the wc3 engine itself and I have to go out of my way to interrupt it from happening. This isn't to say I dont have my own share of bugs i caused, but they tend to be pretty damn minor, if annoying. I'm skeptical that they would demand purely bug free triggers in a map as large as EotA though, becuase anything this large and relatively stable that still manages to work, and is built IN JASS, is (in my opinion) a miracle in itself.

DarnYak

[Storamin]

Do you plan on submitting it? It was one of the spotlighted maps after all... so they have to know you exist.

To be honest, the only map I can think of that would trump it would be notd: am. That map took some serious work... but it is not the work of just one person slaving away like eota is.

And as for the trigger system and code. Their stance is to make it so that anyone can pick up the editor and start making their own map. If somebody does that, then they can learn the basics of that which can segue them into using code.

On the other hand, you end up waiting years for maps like Notd: am / eota to come out and put excess strain of them... essentially stunting warcraft 3 maps to... dota.

[Fierach]

Just so you all know, I was in on the developement of NotD: AM

NotD: AM, in my opinion, is a spinoff of the the original NotD map made by Clan FM. When they discontinued the map, we at the NotD community took it upon ourselves to hack into it and continue it.

We (By we meaning a select group of programmers and the rest of us were playing support, bug-testing, etc) were working on NotD:2, when Azazel, basically created his own NotD map, named NotD: Pies.

It was pretty good, it took many concepts from NotD:2, basically he did it first, on his own away from the others.

Now this part, I don't understand, but there was a huge falling out in the community between those who were with Azazel and those who wanted to continue on with the original NotD2 plan, because NotD: AM was missing that dark, touch that the NotD veterans loved.

And so NotD: Pie splintered off and became the successfult NotD: AM it is now. Oh, and it IS built in JASS to the best of my knowledge.

[Furion]

I think age of myths could also compete with notda or eota
and i like the atmosphere of notda, its pretty good almost like a movie

[Storamin]

Just so you all know, I was in on the developement of NotD: AM

NotD: AM, in my opinion, is a spinoff of the the original NotD map made by Clan FM. When they discontinued the map, we at the NotD community took it upon ourselves to hack into it and continue it.

We (By we meaning a select group of programmers and the rest of us were playing support, bug-testing, etc) were working on NotD:2, when Azazel, basically created his own NotD map, named NotD: Pies.

It was pretty good, it took many concepts from NotD:2, basically he did it first, on his own away from the others.

Now this part, I don't understand, but there was a huge falling out in the community between those who were with Azazel and those who wanted to continue on with the original NotD2 plan, because NotD: AM was missing that dark, touch that the NotD veterans loved.

And so NotD: Pie splintered off and became the successfult NotD: AM it is now. Oh, and it IS built in JASS to the best of my knowledge.

thank you for the awesome, yet exceedingly extraneous, information.

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

thanks for giving a backhanded compliment to a post actually containing content ... fm made some great maps, I really miss them leaving the scene. TFT incompatibility with their fmvh 3.0 project really broke that clan's back =[

I definitely think Yak should apply, he has done wonders with EOTA, and Jass in general. Mind, if you worked from within the company, you could personally be responsible for them turning out higher quality custom mapping tools... we would all owe you infinite debts of gratitude.

But otherwise, don't be a pussy, send them a resume.

[Perhaps]

What would definently help is custom mangement of memory made by the map. Possibly for security measures, create memory sectors (Like Virtual Memory) designated for the current map which will be the only memory that the map's "memory management" can access, to prevent people from "going outside the box." So at least the map maker can attempt correct whatever flaws that exist.

MilleniumArmy has a lot of hit maps on Starcraft. Creative map maker really.

[Kibiyama]

What would definently help is custom mangement of memory made by the map. Possibly for security measures, create memory sectors (Like Virtual Memory) designated for the current map which will be the only memory that the map's "memory management" can access, to prevent people from "going outside the box." So at least the map maker can attempt correct whatever flaws that exist.

MilleniumArmy has a lot of hit maps on Starcraft. Creative map maker really.

http://d-e-f-i-n-i-t-e-l-y.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory

The rest of this post is beyond repair.

[Perhaps]

    What's interesting is you took the time to correct my mispelling of "definitely," but didn't take the time to correct my "Status Inflictions" thread, that it should be "Status Afflictions," since Inflictions, isn't even a word. On top of that, in the sense that I meant for the effect of positive and negative, that doesn't even work, it should be "Status Effects." Elaborate this phenomenon, so that I may understand why you pick the lesser of flaws to correct.

[Kibiyama]

There's a website for definitely; and you underlined it. You also talked about virtual memory and memory managers but didn't seem to possess clear knowledge of either. In the other thread, I could get what you were saying and that was more important than any shortcomings in your spelling or grammar. After reading it again a few times, I get what you're saying here, now. So, on to that:

They already do that, essentially. The only way to do anything in the game is through their API, which checks conditions and executes code behind the scenes to make sure you don't fuck anything up. (which is still possible) Trouble is, it's a high-level wrapper around a lot of low-level functions, so you don't know precisely what it's doing, which makes a lot of problems when you try to do something the API doesn't provide a specific function for. They give you the wall, rather than the bricks. Which is nice if you're looking to make a house. But it's problematic if you want to make anything else.

What might help is if they gave designers the bricks and the walls. From what I can tell, they sort of tried to do that with wc3's map editor -- the GUI editor provides a nice set of walls, and the text IDE lets you build your own. It just wasn't designed to build anything other than walls. It's at this point that the metaphor breaks down and I have to say: It'd be really nice if Blizz used a managed language so the fuck-ups in their scripting API don't translate into fuck-ups in the games that use it.

[DarnYak]

As kibi said, they more or less already keep map memory self contained. That's not the problem.

The problem is a complete lack of information availible. Most things are obvious, ie you create a point you need to delete a point. Most maps clean these obvious things up and never have to go beyond that because wc3 does fine with leaks below certain threshholds. Some things are less obvious, for instance a point getting created that you dont know's getting created, but at least you can find it by following the code trail into the blizzard provided jass files.

The real problem lies in the things where they aren't explained and there isn't any way to verify it yourself. For instance, if I give a unit an ability through triggers, when that unit is removed from the map does it automaticly delete the abilities, or am i suppose to manualy delete the abilities myself before removing the unit from existance? Issues like these potentialy number in the thousands, testing individual cases is possible but there's too many possibilities to really tackle it accurately. I've even heard once that a special graphic effect was causing a memory leak, and it was completley caused by an internal bug in blizzard's rendering code.

And guesing where these things could be are no more then guesses. You can't ask it, "are there any units floating out there in memory that should have been deleted but weren't?". You COULD, in theory, becuase the game never fails to keep track of them, but they just aren't exposed to jass and thus you dont even have the debugging tools to check the state of the game's memory. I did trip across a tool/hack that did this for a small scope of wc3's memory (locations, groups, dont remember what else) but there was basicly none found in my short tests. I think it was just one that would leak like 1 group every minute or so, not enough to cause any real issues and it was fixed for 1.11e.

DarnYak

[BLUEPOWERVAN]

As kibi said, they more or less already keep map memory self contained. That's not the problem.

The problem is a complete lack of information availible. Most things are obvious, ie you create a point you need to delete a point. Most maps clean these obvious things up and never have to go beyond that because wc3 does fine with leaks below certain threshholds. Some things are less obvious, for instance a point getting created that you dont know's getting created, but at least you can find it by following the code trail into the blizzard provided jass files.

The real problem lies in the things where they aren't explained and there isn't any way to verify it yourself. For instance, if I give a unit an ability through triggers, when that unit is removed from the map does it automaticly delete the abilities, or am i suppose to manualy delete the abilities myself before removing the unit from existance? Issues like these potentialy number in the thousands, testing individual cases is possible but there's too many possibilities to really tackle it accurately. I've even heard once that a special graphic effect was causing a memory leak, and it was completley caused by an internal bug in blizzard's rendering code.

And guesing where these things could be are no more then guesses. You can't ask it, "are there any units floating out there in memory that should have been deleted but weren't?". You COULD, in theory, becuase the game never fails to keep track of them, but they just aren't exposed to jass and thus you dont even have the debugging tools to check the state of the game's memory. I did trip across a tool/hack that did this for a small scope of wc3's memory (locations, groups, dont remember what else) but there was basicly none found in my short tests. I think it was just one that would leak like 1 group every minute or so, not enough to cause any real issues and it was fixed for 1.11e.

DarnYak

So did you apply yet?