So, the SCII beta ended, snatching a good portion of SEN away with it as more and more people delete BW from their computer and vow to never open or install it again, in favor of playing with SC2 and its far more powerful Galaxy Editor. Still, there remains few who continue to dedicate substantial effort towards BW mapping, out of necessity, habit, nostalgia, or obligation to finish popular projects in fear that they may turn to vaporware. But how should we distinguish BW mappers from SC2 mappers and Nullers? After all, SEN's original status as a Brood War site coupled with the decision to integrate SC2 into the forums has created a profound schism: as if the community of mappers has been split into completely dichotomous groups.

The once flourishing UMS Assistance and Map Showcase forums have turned into desolate wastelands, save for the few persistant Temple Siege threads. I expect a small resurgence of interest in BW mapping for the duration of the time that the beta is taken offline, but most of it would evaporate away with the release of SC2. Few people would deliberately stick with creating content for an 8-bit game in the 2010s, after all, if they had access to much better.

As one of the people who still want to work on SC1 out of familiarity, nostalgia, and personal interest in pushing the turing tarpit of an SC engine to its limits, I feel a sense of loss with the community's BW side disappearing. We know that BW will live; there are still people playing Counter Strike and Quake. But a zombie BW section on SEN would evoke an image of a dead entity, the stagnant threads serving as epitaphs for the gravestone that marks the passing of
BW.



Just who, in this crowd of SC2 fanatics, still wants to work on BW?

Identify yourself and discuss.



Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 7 2010, 11:20 pm by Aristocrat.

Ah... the new lower class.

It is against the rules to advertise clans outside of your sig and title. I'd report the topic but my cellphone won't let me D:

Wasn't there a topic for the Coup D'etat coalition before? ;o

Search is gone... But I remember that there was one.

I daresay it got deleted. I never saw it, at least.

Hm... that's unfortunate. If I remove clan references can I keep this thread? It is a valid effort to get all the BW mappers together.

Probably. I think the rule is to stop people signing up just to advertise, so you may be allowed to keep it anyway.

From http://www.staredit.net/?faq=2
Advertising

• Do not solicit commercial or personal products, scams, chain letters, clan recruitments, marketing, or games (ie, outwar) for your personal gain.
  
• You are allowed to include links to your website in the proper places such as your profile, signature, and the Creative Works forum.
  

Despite the Coup D'etat being a clan made by staff and whatnot, it was deleted because it was against the SEN rules. If you remove all references to a clan in this thread, that would be fine, but then what purpose would this thread serve? No matter what, you'd be advertising something that may be bending or breaking that rule. Sorry.

I will keep this open for the rest of the day in case you do come up with a different use for it. Otherwise it'll disappear, too.

EDIT:
As a side note, there will be an overhaul of the clans on SEN upon SC2's release. We'll be going back to the idea that your clan has to be a legitimate group on StarCraft or StarCraft 2 to warrant a "clan" on SEN.

I still map BW, because I'm a sexbeast like that.

Lower class? More like old school bro.

Times change, there's not much we can do about it. It happens to all games and it eventually was going to happen to Starcraft, even though it took 12 years and I don't think I know of any game that this has a fairly big active player-base after so much time.

Take a look at the Warcraft and Diablo series. A lot of people played D1 back in the day, then almost all of them moved to D2 & D2:LoD. Sure, you still have a few guys playing D1, but it's just about that, the nostalgia. You can't really play D1 on a day-to-day basis like you did before because there's not as much people out there. Same goes for the Warcraft series, how many people still play WC2? Not much since they moved to both SC and WC3. WC3 is still going as strong as SC in terms to daily gameplay, since it's a 2003 game and WoW is a completely different genre, so most RTS players stayed in WC3 and WoW does have a monthly pay plan which a lot of people would rather play for free.

You also have compatibility issues as the game gets older and older. Remember back in the early days (Win XP had just come out) when you just installed SC and played? Now you have to set-up system privileges, fix the in-game color issue and a few other adjustments to actually get to play the game. A lot of the average people either aren't up to the task of fixing these problems or don't know how to fix it, so they just move on. Look at WC2, now that's a hassle to play since it's a DOS game. You'd have to emulate a DOS OS in order to play the game, which is not an easy feat by itself, even for experienced people.

So yeah, SC:BW is still a great game, but all games will inevitably come to an end. When SC2 hits the shelves, you'll notice a big difference on battle.net. Then since the community is small, more and more people will start leaving since there aren't as many people online. Sure, there would still be people, but it will not be the same. Instead of using the SC engine to it's fullest extent, like you said, which I believe we did back in about 2004, why don't we work on what kind of new games we can make with SC2? There's a whole bunch of new gaming possibilities and that first person perspective can really bring out a whole lot of new ideas which couldn't even be imagined with the WC3 editor, let alone the SC editor.

My plan is to finish ONE SC1 map and move on forever. I feel like If I didn't finish anything it would be a complete waste, so yes. I'm still mapping on SC1.

My plan is not to give a shit about the delineation between communities. I don't see myself stopping BW mapping if I feel like making a map.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jun 8 2010, 4:51 am by Tuxedo-Templar.

Devlin, the purpose of this thread besides creating a clan is to hear the opinion of others about SC1 mapping and see how many will still actually map. As evident by my post because I wouldn't join the clan anyway since I prefer being clanless.

You forget, that SC1's gameplay is very clean and efficient where SC2 is just fancy. I sometimes find it hard to distinguish or even see units when there's other stuff around because it can be hidden in a shadow or superimposed by some flashy weapon effect.
Also SC1 has more interesting abilities which probably can be emulated with galaxy editor, but in "standard games" they are not.
And the most important reason is, SC1 doesn't strain my computer. My GFX doesn't start to blare for cool air when playing it and when I want to quickly switch back to windows I don't have to wait full 2 minutes until Windows is done with memory swapping.

In short, SC1 is perfect for playing short, fun games to pass your time, while still chatting with friends outside SC and what not.
When you start SC2 you're better off to do nothing else for the time you play it. At least for me with my moderate hardware.

Those are the reasons I still play SC1. And still playing SC1 is the reason why I will occasionally map for SC1 too. Mainly improving existing maps - mine or those from others, as I have always done.
Besides I always loved SC1 mapping for its simplicity. Despite how many people are rambling about it, SC1 mapping is incredibly powerful compared to how simple it is to use. Everyone can make a SC1 map. Not so sure about SC2 mapping. I can see people getting overwhelmed by the possibilities or just end up only using a fraction.

Oh and about the Win7-problem argument. I'm still using Windows XP so I don't know how difficult it is in Win7. However when I move on to Win7 I will surely have a dual-boot scenario with Windows XP and thus avoid those problems entirely.

Don't recommend doing that. The only problem I had in 7 that I didn't in XP is permissions, meaning I had to configure it to always "Run as admin". Not worth it.

Windows 7 is definitely a substantial improvement over XP, and its performance is actually not shit on older computers. The software compatibility issues I have experienced with it are remedied quickly by multi-booting compatible OSs as needed(XP, 98, etc.).

Nude has a very good point about the cleaner gameplay; I sorted that under "nostalgia" when I wrote it but I miss the ability to do pixel-precise maneuvers. SC1 micro is on a completely different level from SC2 micro.

Nude, if you get Win7 Ultimate you can run XP programs virtualised within Win7 itself. Doesn't work for games that require 3D graphics, but SC1 doesn't so it should work fine.

SC2's gameplay is just as clean and efficient, especially if you lower your settings.
Get a new computer. I'm playing SC2 on a laptop and it's fine.

SC2 is the same as SC, but better. The only thing that sucks right now is bnet 0.2.

It's okay to favor simplicity, but you're just using it as an excuse to cover up for your inability to use the new more powerful editor.

SC2 gameplay is just too... simple. No fluid unit movements and pixel-accurate unit control is possible to the same extent as it was in BW.

Walling in BW required skill; it required players to know the unit and building sizes to create "perfect" walls, especially for zerg players. In SC2 all you have to do is slap two buildings together and you have a everything-tight wall. No thought or intelligence required. Micromanagement helped; you could do moving shot, backward/forward micro with mutalisks to minimize damage and remove the aspect of acceleration, as well as stacking for the purpose of controlling units. Microing units like that in SC2 just makes you take more damage and deal less than if you just a-moved.

Auto split, auto surround, smartcasting, etc. all remove elements of skill from the game. People actually want to play skilled players from time to time, you know, not rock-paper-scissors with the complete inability to scout the enemy base.


Galaxy Editor is to SCMDraft as Autodesk Maya is to 3DSMax. The interface is retarded but it accomplishes much more. Why don't you see 100% of the population using Maya? Because some people actually like using 3DSMax. Same reason why people might choose to keep mapping in BW.

Actually it was a clan advertisement prior to Aristocrat editing the first post to (basically) remove the clan advertisement, which is against SEN's rules.

And I agree with this completely. I don't think there will be a rift among SEN members at all.

You're just making excuses to cover up for your inability to learn the new editor. The interface is not retarded if you know what you're doing. People can like simple and easier to use things, but you have to look at the reasons why they like them. Most of the time it's just an excuse, because they lack the skill to appreciate the more complex things.