My general goal going into this is to maximize my understanding of the SC2 data editor and minimize the triggering. From there I'll have a much better idea of how to create Twilight 2 or whatever I do (including the possibility of saying "screw this I'm not working with this horribly designed editor anymore"). To that extent this might not be the most fancy map you've ever played - but that's ok, neither was Exodus and it was still quite fun. This will not be a long drawn-out project, I'm mapping out all the base content I want to go in first, and then at the end I'll probably add a little bit more and that's it.
So week #1 was all about pre-planning the content. Which quickly became impossible since I needed to know the limits of the galaxy editor, so it became more of a week of learning about the editor. And a week of constant "WTF WOULD YOU DESIGN IT THAT WAY?!". Examples:
- Only 3 terrain cliff heights allowed. Ok, I get there are some complexities in making it more then that. Good news, it was solved in wc3. And sc1. It can't be that hard to copy-paste it into sc2.
- Hero attributes. Kinda cool that they're built in and customizable. Implimentation is kinda akward but I get that. But they seem pretty powerless beyond some basic buff attributes - including some really bad side effects. For instance, if you create an attribute that increases spellpower by 1 damage per point, then use the default psi-storm spell, it increases the damage by 1 point per tick resultin gin a total of 10 damage or so instead of 1. There are ways around it, but the most logical way which ALMOST exists, doesn't (a bonus damage scaling modifier on the damage exists, but only if you key it to specific unit types like Biological, and nothing that's just a generic always occurs modifier)
- Similarly, spell levels. Abilities can have multiple levels, that's pretty normal. Except to have it change stats you have to duplicate all the effects/behaviors/etc. on a per level basis. Using psi-storm as an example, you'd have to replicate about 4 effects, 1 of which has a different number and the other 3 being identical except pointing to the entry that has that number.
Content planning is still a work in progress. The main thing is laying out how the heroes will evolve. I'm trying to have enough variety that it feels like players have suffiicent customization over they're heroes, but so far I'm not sure I'm there (it seems likely you can experience all the abilities on a hero within 2-3 plays of that hero, which feels a bit low). The exact way this will work is still dependant on me figuring out the best way around the built in limits, or just better organization of what I have to work with.
DarnYak