StarCraft 2 Articles
Dustin Browder Interview
4th Jul 2008 05:28 PM GMT | Leord | 0 comments
Coverage WWI 2008 >> Dustin Browder Interview
The modding scene has quite decreased in the last year. There was some really cool mods which made new units and things like that. Now the modding community is just looking at the Project Revolution mod from WarCraft III that converts Warcraft III to StarCraft I. So when will the Starcraft II editor become available to modders?
Dustin: I don't know yet, it'll certainly be shipped with the game but I don't know the answer to whether it will be earlier. That would be cool though.
The WarCraft III map editor is pretty involved and it can be daunting for anyone who doesn't know programming and stuff. Is that something you are aware of?
Dustin: It's definitely going to be a trade off between usability and power. Anything that seems more powerful is ultimately going to be a little bit more daunting. I know that it's pretty easy, I've done it myself with little to no training at all, I just jumped into the WarCraft III editor and made multiplayer maps and that's easy. That's sort of the basic level we expect players to be able to do to a certain degree, with a little messing around they can eventually do up a map.
Advanced mods are going to be advanced and we can do whatever we can to make them easy for people to do, but the end of the day if you want to do some crazy stuff, you're going to have to make a little bit of effort. That's what separates the great modders from the not-so-great modders.
Will there be that same level of skill required to make that same type of conversion?
Dustin: I don't know for sure, but I guess, let me put it this way. I don't know that a full conversion like that really is going to be easy. I don't want to promise that. I mean, it's not really a full conversion but it's a lot of work. So we're definitely going to do what we can to make it easier, but still if you're going to make a really complicated mod, then it's going to be a complicated mod. That's how it's going to work.
Concerning 3D graphics, what's tools do you need? In StarCraft it was just using paint and opening it and just adding new units. What 3D do you consider for modders? Will you be giving your own editor for the graphics?
Dustin: I think we may ship the art tools but you still have to have a 3D program, there's no way around that. And you can check with Samwise and Chris in terms of what format we support and that sort of thing, I don't really know the details on that but we'll see.
We're also going to include a lot of the art into the game that we're not using in the multiplayer experience so we'll include some of the old units that didn't make the cut for the multiplayer so they can be used as well and anything else lying around. You get the idea. If it wasn't good enough for StarCraft II then we'll put that in the editor so you can still have access to it.
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