A suggestion petition to blizzard

I will be sending blizzard a suggestion inquiry from the modding world of it's war3 community. If you agree with the suggestions post your name and I will add it to the list of signitures who agree. It might be best to use your battle.net acount name and tell me which server (USeast, USWest, etc.). If you have any aditional realistic suggestions please add them.
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This is a compilation of war3 modders desires and suggestions for the upcoming expasion pack editor.

NOTE: Whenever the ability to achieve the idea by .mpq file manipulation is mentioned, it's mentioned to show why not let us do something we already can only alot easier.

Add the abilty to detect a units z on the map. Such an ability would further increase the moding communities RPG making and FPS conversions.

Fix the strange glitch that doesn't show up imported custom units when importing unit stats. As of now you have to import the stats and then open another map and then reopen the map you imported to to see the custom units.

The ability to detect where a players cursor is during gameplay. With this, the amount a modding for any game type could greatly be increased.

The ability to detect when a cheat has been typed. As of now when you use the chat message event and try it for a cheat it goes undetected. The general sensus of mapmakers is that when a cheat is entered it is automaticaly answered from the game and the chat message never appears. There are in fact numerous mapmakers who feel thier game would be better experianced without the use of certain cheats especially ones that reveal the entire map thereby revealing parts that were not ment to be found. Also there are many ideas of custom cheat codes and though they may be edited through the mpq files or by creating a chat message event it would be helpful to create your own cheats in some cases.

Change the unit editor to allow the easy creation of a hero based off of a non-hero unit. As of now we must either use a 3rd party program or spend a lengthy amount of time changing the stats of a custom hero to equal that of the non-hero unit.

Change the cliff height settings to reach hieghts greater than 2. As of now a modder must resort to mpq manipulation to create a steep cliff.

Change the action "select unit" to work for player. Therefor "Make Player x select unit x" This has appeared numerous times on modding forums throughout the community.

Allow for dialog buttons to easily detect which player pressed which button. There is as of now a method to do this using custom text techniques but it is a lengthy process that most mappers are unaware of.

Allow for larger sized units, understanding that blizzard created the limitation to prevent memory and processor overusage. We should be given at least the oportunity to see how far we can mod. As of now an mpq manipulation also allows us to do this as well.

Easy custom splash and fade screens. Without mpq manipulation no modder can created a much desired custom look. Plus custom fade screens allow for unimited modding during the game and could be used for story telling reasons or for any displaying action.

Bump up the custom unit limitations, preferable to unlimited. A very well modded map may often involve multitudes of custom units. With mpq manipulation we can break the barrier.

The ability to remove the pathingmap texture that comes with a building. For example if you wanted to make a merchant look like a person you'd change the merchant shop model to whatever. However that new merchant must now always appear on a texture.tga which looks unruly at times. This change would also help those with desires of flying buildings or many other effects.

A number of the more advanced modders would like to see bitwise operators. We want a xor funtion etc.

The ability to detect a player pressing a key and then letting go of that key would be highly demanded. As of now your game only detects when a person presses a key once and even that is inexcessable from the editor. Anyone working on either a great RPG or trying to create a FPS conversion would greatly appreciate this ability.

An online game cache that is stored locally would be most useful for implanting in many game types.

Names of people who would like to see these changes:

XenoZyne@USEast
earth-fury@USeast/USwest
Spectralist@Azeroth/USeast
FyreDaug@USEast
baby_batchoy@USWest
S.I.N.@USEast
Thy4-War@US East
DS-NE@USWest
RightField@Northrend
DarkAssassin_13@USEast/ Azeroth
Dead-Inside@Europe
tWiStAr@Lordaeron/USwest

add earth-fury@useast&uswest to the list of people wanting those changes =-p

Petitions don't work with Blizzard. I tried many times.

This will not budge blizzard, however all of these changes could be incorperated into my own mod, currently MPQ modding is the only way to go.

You can go ahead and add FyreDaug@USEast or email: [email protected]

I hate to disagree but the one I did for what they needed to improve upon the starcraft editor for war3's editor worked rather well. In it was suggestions for written scripts (JASS), variables, advanced unit editor, colorcoded regions(or locations), a general object warehouse whats now known as the object manager. And many other suggestions. Actually I have the original petition before it was sighned and things were added let me post that here. Ok so a few things didn't happen but blizzard gave there reasons.

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Suggestions for Warcraft 3 compiled from the general starcraft modding community.

1)The ability to preset alliances prior to multiplay, such as during the pregame screen starcraft has.

2)Make it so alliances may not be broken during gameplay.

3)Friendly fire(from spells) an optional choice of host.

4)In the map editor allow for placed units to be moved instead of deleted and remade. [Check]

5)Ability to copy various parts of one map onto another(such as the terrain, locations, and triggers) [Check]

6)Abilty to in a campaign return to a map at the same time as when you left it. (If you played a map and then entered a building in it or cave, you could then load back the previous scenario where you left off.) [check game cache]

7)Ability to adjust all aspects of the units including whats spells they can use and what there range is. [check]

8)Preset commands for units such as when a unit finishes building something it then goes to a pre chosen command like mine. This could work for any unit like move here then attack to here. [kind of with rally points]

9)Ability to create passworded maps that only the creator could open so it wouldn't be tampered with and numerous altered versins of your map released. [blizzard still never liked the idea]

10)Multiple sound formats such as .wav and MPQ. [check]

11)Ability to hand type scripts, base code triggers for modding programers. [check jass]

12)Easier locations. (Color coded and databased) [check]

13)Database for all object in the the map including trigggers and sounds. [check]

14)Aditional units that are editor only found. [check easter eggs and dragonhawk the flying pointless guy]

Desire to see these changes:
Xenozyne

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So you tell me if it worked or if it was all a big coincidence.

Can easily be acheived using GetLocalPlayer and the function call SyncSelections(). and using UMSE it can be done in GUI with 1 trigger as custom text with just "call SyncSelections()" and after a forced selection change just execute that trigger, very simple


Any unit can be a shop , take a footman, set his movement speed to 0, add to the "items sold", give him select hero, and he is a shop with no "splat". (its not a pathing map, those can be removed from any unit"

and i highly doubt that blizzard will make any of these changes just to make editing a little easier. The only reason we have what we have is they used the bulk of it in thier campaigns.

I understand your suggestions. These suggestions however were ment to help the community do as much as possible without the use of any 3rd party programs or if possible the use of custom text. As for the pathing question I didn't mean for it to be specific for the merchant. Also unless I'm mistaken you cannot set a units movement speed to 0. Some have complained about the texture for purposes such as flying building or "building" a moving unit, such as a golem. However I can understand the misconception and will change it to be more general.

Also in response to the "most of them are used in the campaigns." remark, if you open up thier maps you will notice nearly a large majority of variables, reals, actionas, etc. that are never utilized once.

you can make a units movespeed to 0, i have done it many times to make shops out of normal units

I can see where you are comming from with these changes, but look at it from blizzards point of view, why would they waiste manpower, time, and money adding all this stuff to alow a small group of the wc3 population to edit a little better when the bulk of the population doesnt need these changes...

they wont do it, sorry

Perhaps you should check what editor you are using and see if it's 3rd party. Because the editor that comes with warcraft does not allow for unit speeds of 0.

Also feel free to have your doubts but perhaps you should have read the post about the old petition. Blizzard cares and they understand that a number of thier buyers are buying simply to mod not to play the game.

hi

Put me down for this. Oh and the spell editor for FT is guaranteed to be in there right?

EDIT: baby_batchoy@USWest

It's interesting but I fail to see the necessity of some of the additions that you want made. The prinicples behind modding a game are to extend it further then what is normally accessible. Take away all these little niches and there's no point. I know that's a pretty pathetic way to state what I'm trying to say but I have to agree with Dakan in a certain sense.

Sorry.

~kharma

I doubt a petiton to increase the modding abilites will pass, At the current time i think we are sadly forced to use 3rd party programs at our own risk, I have to agree with Dakan in this case.

PS: Please refrain from creating multiple threads one's who want to see will look in the certain forum or be interested by the link in your signature.

It would appear there are a number of unbelievers here so perhaps it would be best to take this to another forum. I told you it worked before and I feel they will take this in to consideration. I'll leave this here for now and hope that some of you change your minds.