The following is the transcription of the StarCraft II Gameplay Panel, though it generally deals more with the Galaxy Editor:
In StarCraft II, we’re taking a lot of the same ideas from our previous games and pushing these gameplay ideas but really expanding on them and making them as deep as we possibly can. Between our story mode spaces, we can see a lot more of the story than we could in any of our previous games. StarCraft II has more story, deeper characters, more choices, and unique missions. Each mission has its own meta-game that forces you to stretch your abilities as a commander.
Mining Your Own Business:
This is a mission where Tosh calls up Raynor and he says, “I have a contract but it’s really hard to do and there’s Zerg. I need your help.” Each game is unique. The goal is to harvest 5,000 minerals. You are faced with decision of building SCVs, defending, and leaving to high-ground. You have to play chicken in the environment.
There are two distinct types of Redstone cliffs: man-made and natural. This is not something that the graphics artists made for us. The new water tools are no longer locked to the cliff level. This is what we did for the “Mining Your Own Business” mission. You can just open up a map and start spraying random stuff. New lighting editor sets apart the look. You can create custom light, it’s not determined by the artists. You can create any crazy custom worlds you want.
Evacuation of Agria:
There is a character named Dr. Hanson and she is calling Raynor for help. You choose how to win. You could build up a squad to defend against the Zerg. We show you map of where truck is going to go; you can plan tactics before you go on mission.
Alpha texture blending is in the editor. In old games everything, is all tile based. But with what we have now, you can blend textures together and no two parts of the map will look the same. The way you want to paint the map and how it will look is the way you want. You can create roads in the editor. It’s not an art asset: you can do it on the fly. You can change how dense or sparse grass can be.
Mods
StarCraft II has a more powerful editor than we’ve ever seen before. DoTA and Tower Defesne, for example, were made by our fans and they are played by hundreds of thousands of players. Studios are trying to figure out how to take advantage of this game type. All kinds of games are based on genres created by our fans.
Hard-working folks can receive money from players. The quality of the games we will be playing in the upcoming years will be insane. Mod-makers have gotten jobs all around the industry from our editors.
Here’s a few examples created by our devs without too much time:
Uberlisk: a custom unit that has spine crawlers on his back and can destroy ground itself. It creates a huge explosion.
FPS game: Nova is running around and you can control a keyboard. You can go inside a building, do whatever. You can go underground in SC2.
Lost Viking Game: A Viking plays a Gradius/Demonstar style game.
There is not a lot of limits to what players will be able to do with this engine. Who can say what will happen when Battle.net 2.0 and the editor gets into the hands of you, the users.
Q&A
Q: Any plans for group collaboration on maps?
A: Yes, there are plans to give modders and artists products and share it with other people. You can import triggers so a person can work on a different part of a map.
Q: Any plans to stop map stealing?
A: We haven’t locked down on what our exact plans are. But we are going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for it to steal from you, the mod maker.
Q: To what extent can the UI be customized?
A: We asked for lots of extra things. We’ve tried to give you as many UI customization tools as you can. One of the things we’ve added is an item system, which we don’t need, but it’s useful for modders so we’ve added it anyway.
Q: How will hero system be more flexible?
A: You can do same things as in WarCraft III? The data editor is extremely powerful.
Q: Will it be possible to adjust armor?
A: Yes, we’ve made it possible to be able to reproduce armor systems of past games.
Q: Has StarCraft 2 has been pushed back because of battle.net?
A: Well, it wasn’t just battle.net. We knew we wanted to work on the game longer. As developers we want you guys to play this game ASAP, but we saw a bunch of things in the campaign that we wanted to make better. So really, the delay started with battle.net, but we saw lots of things we could do better to make this game meet your expectations. The delay has been a blessing for us.
Q: Will there be a way to save your characters?
A: We do have support for what we’re calling banks. Basically you can store info on your local system, any kind of info you want to store.
Q: Any possibility to record shoutcasting in replays?
A: Not in shipped version of the game, but it’s a great idea for e-sports. There’s alot of technical details to be discussing and we might implement it in patches.
Q: Can you load multiple maps at once?
A: We supported it in WarCraft III as “campaigns” and we are looking to support it for StarCraft II. Don’t know if it will be in ship.
Q: Will you be contacting your map makers because you track their quality?
A: Yes. Battle.net will show us who made the maps and who authored it. We’ll have access to the map-maker’s account. And yes, we’ve been doing this for years.
Q: Will we see this third-person perspective in any of the actual single player missions? Will editor be in beta?
A: I don’t know if we will include the third person thing in the game. It requires lots of teaching. We are trying to get people used to RTS gameplay in the single player, let alone third-person gameplay. We are planning to ship the beta in the editor. It probably won’t be in day one, but it will be there.
Q: Is there going to be any content filtering for uploading maps? Or is it wide open for everything?
A: Not sure yet, but our plan is to have a rating system where players flag the map and our staff comes by to confirm and the person will be warned/banned.
Q: Can you play a map as a beta or demo map?
A: We are still discussing this.
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