StarCraft 2 Editor vs Warcraft 3 Editor

General Discussion
1

Warcraft 3 and StarCraft 1 were games that I used the editor a lot on. There were lots of sweet things you could do with the editor.

StarCraft 2’s editor was amazingly powerful, but it took too long to do anything, and you had to jump through a lot of unnecessary hoops to do things that should have been taken care of automatically. Here’s a simple example:

if I want to make a custom unit, I do this (in Warcraft 3):

  1. Click the unit in the unit editor
  2. Hold ctrl and press C
  3. Hold control and press V
  4. A FULLY FUNCTIONAL UNIT WITH NO MODIFICATIONS NEEDED has now been created. You can place this unit on the map anywhere you want. Or just use it in your game as is. No need to reconnect actors, weapons, etc. IT JUST WORKS

In StarCraft 2, that doesn’t work. You have to jump through many hoops just to get a single duplicate unit working. Here’s a video detailing some of the process (it’s for custom models, but the process is the same):

Warning: it’s not as easy as the 4 step process above.

xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJuWMslrDRg

Pls make the editor amazing like the SC2 editor, but not at the expense of how easy it is to use the War3 editor.

2

I agree that the SC2 editor was an effort to do anything. However, there were no limits as there were in the WC3 editor due to UI buttons that “hid” functionality. With that being said, I would disagree with an automation.

To your point, if there were perhaps a “tool” to “template” that would assist with creating units, weapons, ect… that may be something more acceptable.

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3

The Warcraft 3 editor did take care of many things automatically, which was awesome and really sped things up and lowered barriers to entry. I don’t see why this automation cannot coexist with what you want in the new editor though.

I wasn’t asking for the new editor to restrict what we could do (or to hide the ability for players to change things), but I don’t see a reason why the four step process I mentioned above shouldn’t exist in the new editor.

If someone wanted to edit the weapons, etc. of a unit after it was duplicated, why not? By all means let the players go ahead and edit all that stuff on units after they are duplicated, but please don’t make it so players have to reattach all those actors, etc. just to get a basic unit working. Here’s a proposed process to explain what I mean for the new WarCraft 3 editor:

  1. Click the unit in the unit editor
  2. Hold ctrl and press C
  3. Hold control and press V
  4. A FULLY FUNCTIONAL EXACT DUPLICATE UNIT WITH NO MODIFICATIONS NEEDED has now been created. You can place this unit on the map anywhere you want. Or just use it in your game as is. No need to reconnect actors, weapons, etc. IT JUST WORKS
  5. Edit actors, weapons, etc. IF YOU WANT AFTERWARDS to make an even more awesome unit. Also just do the normal War3 editor stuff like changing hp, etc. easily
4

I think you are failing to understand that there is already a copy unit feature in the SC2 editor. If you copy a unit properly, you won’t need to reattach everything.

5

I didn’t say you had to reattach everything (or at least I didn’t mean to). The easiest way that I ever found to duplicate a unit is in that video I linked in the OP. And even in that video, you still have to reattach some stuff. Ugh, and who knows what a nightmare making a duplicate Heart of The Swarm Kerrigan would be.

What made the War3 editor so great was that it was powerful and easy to use. I’m all for making the War3 editor even more versatile, but I think ease of use is something that is extremely important and wasn’t prioritized enough when the SC2 editor was made.

6

I agree, WC3 editor is powerful, but also severely limites. If you want to be extra creative you need to know the programming language, and even then there are some hard coded limits that just cant be worked around.

I had an idea for a spell that changes a units armor type (ie grant Heavy Amor type) but you cant do that on the fly because armor type is baked into units. You would have to create a new unit and do funky swaps, and I dont think there is a way to redefine the armor type system with your own parameters through the editor.

SC2 kinda lets you do anything because all the parameters are open. Its a pain to use, but thats the price of having all options open.

7

The best way would be to have a “Standard” mode, which 100% mimics the exact same system we have in the editor now (but perhaps with some improvements in UI design) but to also have an “Expert” mode which has the full access of an editor like SC2 at the expense of ease of access.

Though having detailed, knowledgeable tutorials from Blizzard (in the form of videos, perhaps, or even an in-editor set of tutorials) would help as well.

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8

I’ve worked long with SC2 editor too although not most advanced user. There are a lot of fields that are never touched such as majority of Actor fields, Model fields, lots of Effects fields, also I find it funny how a continuous work with the data edior makes tabs switch, the window minimize and after a logn time the editor can even crash cause too much memory. I think war3 editor will not have that huge number of useless fields that almost no one uses. And I use the Detail mode, not Table mode. Table mode that is like war3’s showed some fields that you cannot see well in Detail mode, overall too much data.

9

Well, don’t worry. Reforged will have the same editor, but it’s just made more powerful and some features added to it, but in its core, it’s still the same editor. With Reforged it’s going to look more like the third-party modifications, that have been made to WorldEdit in the past. All those features will be integrated into the official editor and there’s no need to download those fan-made editors anymore.