StarCraft II Q&A batches/22

We have our second part of our Map Maker Series, in which I have dug up some answers to one of our most popular Map Maker questions regarding Warcraft III's Defense of the Ancient Mod. Furthermore, our 'Superfly Father of ScumEdit Programmer by Day Ninja by Night,' Brett Wood and Lead Designer Dustin Browder has answered a few of our community map maker questions.

Chat with Devs: One of the most popular questions we get when it comes to creating UMS (User Map Settings) games or mods is: Will there be a DotA for StarCraft II? For those who are not familiar, DotA (Defense of the Ancients), is a popular UMS game created for Warcraft III. StarCraft compared to Warcraft III, does not focus on heroes as much, and heroes or units do not have the same experience gaining mechanic as Warcraft III, making it difficult to imagine how a game like DotA could be reproduced for StarCraft. Nonetheless, after chatting it up with our devs, we found out the ability to allow heroes and units to gain experience is built into the Map Editor, though it will not likely be in single player or standard multiplayer. In addition, those units can also be toggled to have the ability to carry an inventory, which is also a characteristic needed in UMS maps such as DotA. With those two additions, we can rest assured that our clever community modders can handle the rest in creating some awesome custom games.

As always, feel free to give the Devs and I a w00t if your enjoying these Q&As!

---StarCraft II Q&A - Batch 22: Map Maker Series---

1) Will you finally be able to mix and match terrain types instead of being stuck on jungle, twilight, etc?

[Dustin Browder] Yes terrain texture is mixable now. Also tilesets are also mixable. [Brett Wood] Essentially, you can define your own tileset in the editor, something that wasnt really supported even in Warcraft III.

2) Will the new StarCraft II Map Editor support text coloring, unit coloring, player "12" (i.e. neutral player) units?

[Dustin Browder] Yes, all of these features will be supported.

3) Will maps be larger than 256x256?

[Brett Wood] The maximum map size will still be 256x256, and we have no plans to increase that.

4) Will the new map editor support locking maps? People hate losing credit for a map.

[Dustin Browder] Yes, we are planning to support this feature. We hope that this feature will give the modding community more incentive to create their own original maps.

5) Will the new map editor support "square" terrain building as well?

[Dustin Browder] Yes. In the editor, users can adjust the footprint of buildings to whatever shape and size they like.

End of Transmission

I've been following closely on the QA testing of the new editor too, and it definitely offers many possibilities to create new mods and build off of previously made ones. I'll chat with Brett to get more details about these features for our next Map Maker Series Batch down the line.

It was already mentioned in previous threads, but I want to remind everyone that many of the old StarCraft units that are not in StarCraft II Multiplayer will be available to use in the new editor.

Also to those in the US, have a happy Thanksgiving!