Hi. I hope I'm not breaking any rules by asking a general question like this. I tried to find some rules and guidelines but I couldn't.

I'm hoping someone could help me figure out how to get started or caught up in the current age of Brood War modding. Most of the tutorials I've looked at are outdated or the links are broken. I did a little bit of modding about 15 years ago (I recognize some of you), but never finished anything. After all these years, I'd like to pick it up again and try to make something I can play with my gaming friends. The problem is, StarCraft 1 and its modding scene appear to have changed quite a lot since then. I have the PyMS installed and still remember how to use most of those tools. I have used Firegraft in the past. I spent a few hours researching GPTP and I plan on learning C++

Where I'm getting lost is with SC:R not having stardat.mpq for me to access. I have read up a bit about Samase but I'm not sure if I should use Samase to make a mod that works with SC:R, or if I should install older version of BW and mod that. What are the advantages/disadvantages to one or the other? From what I understand, Samase doesn't allow the exe edits found in Firegraft. Are Firegraft edits made obsolete by GPTP? Does GPTP work with Samase?

Thanks in advance

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jan 30 2022, 2:08 am by SubFocus.

Welcome!

Let me start by answering the simple questions first:

- FireGraft EXE edits are not compatible with Samase.
- EXE edits are made obsolete by GPTP.
- GPTP is only for SC 1.16.1.


As for the advantages and disadvantages, the way I see it is as follows:

Remastered Advantages:
- Wider audience
- Easier to play games, since you can just hop on current Battle.net rather than mucking with private servers or LAN
- You get to play with the fancy new lighting effects and graphics

Remastered Disadvantages:
- No access to GPTP
- RM Graphics format is more complicated than GRPs
- Still being actively patched, so occasionally tools will break until updated. (Although I think we're not likely to get too many more patches at this point.


1.16.1 Advantages:
- Easily the biggest one is GPTP - injecting custom C++ code means you're essentially freed from any limitations when it comes to designing custom abilities or unit behaviours.
- Stable and extremely well-known codebase.
- Large database of pre-existing custom assets, simpler file formats to work with.
- Some tools are more developed

1.16.1 Disadvantages:
- Palette + graphical limitations
- Smaller audience
- Harder to play games


There are a number of people still actively modding both versions, so it really comes down to what you're interested in. Personally I stick solely to 1.16.1 because the kinds of mods I like to make rely heavily on GPTP.

If you're interested, I'd recommend stopping by the SEN Discord - it's a little more active than the forums and some of the RM modders there would be better able to speak to the state of SC:R modding.

Hello and welcome.
At this point I would take SC:R over 1.16. Samase is being actively developed (and so are the three essential plugins), and new features are being added all the time. Some of those would make my old sorry modding self 20 years ago green with envy. Besides, even though the plugins are (last I checked) compatible with 1.16, Samase is not, and many features are exclusive to it.

Editing graphics in SC:R is a pain, that is true. Since I'm not doing very much of that, I'm getting a free pass. It is different for different people, of course.

GPTP is good, I guess, but as someone who can't code worth jack, I imagine I would not have been able to use it anyway, only cribbing off other people's work or hoping to find someone capable and willing to help. I guess I'm unique (as in, uniquely bad) in this regard here. Besides, how much deep changes to the way SC works you need? Both cases are YMMV.

For my purposes, Firegraft EXE edits not being available is not a deal breaker, especially since some things they do can be subbed for by MTL and the new data editor with its extended format (which I'm not using for an unrelated reason).

All the SC data can be accessed from the game's CASC files much in the same way you would do with old good MPQs, except there's just one repository that is updated with patching and you don't need to worry about accidentally getting an outdated version by - say - grabbing a file from BROODAT.MPQ when there's a newer iteration available in PATCH_RT.MPQ