What's inside

This project is a set of tools that will allow you to directly get started in the map making process. Everything has been packed up so you just have to edit Galaxy and XML files without worrying about all the tricks required to launch the modified map.

File Editing

A map is only a set of files stored in a folder (a MPQ). It is not user friendly to edit the file, open the MPQ, add the file inside, close the MPQ, launch the game for each minor change. This is why everything has been automated. You just have to edit the files and all the work is done behin the scenes.

Here is the process done by launch_map.bat:

Insert all the files in the right place of the map MPQ
Compact the map MPQ so it does not get huge size
Run the game with the map and the good patch.sc2asset

Galaxy Libs

Galaxy by default is missing a lof of debugging abilities. If you want to display a simple string you have to write about 60 characters. And if you want to display a non-string you have to write your own conversion function. In order to make this easier, a debug library has been added.

Debug Utilities: d("String"), db(true), dp(point), dg(unitgroup) ...

Also, useful Galaxy programming idioms are featured:

Command handling: React to user message
Game loop: A script executed every X seconds
End of game: Show a proper Victory message
Unit control: Full control over units bypassing the AI

Lapin's Galaxy Syntax Validator

The current implementation of Starcraft II Galaxy does not give much error messages. This is why lapin syntax validator is giving precious informations such as the error line number and a description of what went wrong.

XML Editing

The way Starcraft II loads the XML files is the following. It first loads the base file (located in patch.sc2assets or base.sc2assets) and then the file located in the map. If the same node appears twice in the two files, the normal attributes are being updated but the Array attributes are being appended at the end. This causes a lot of troubles because you can't update the previous ones.

In order to fix this, we added blank XML files inside the patch.sc2assets, therefore only your nodes will be loaded. Also, there is an ingame check to warn you if the patch.sc2assets is missing.

How to use

Installation

Extract the zip file anywhere you want
Copy "Starcraft II Beta/Versions/Base13891/" to "Starcraft II Beta/Versions/Base10000/"
Copy "Tutorial/Export/patch.SC2Archive" to "Starcraft II Beta/Versions/Base10000/patch.SC2Archive"
Run "Tutorial/launch_map.bat"
Set the game into windowed mode
You should see a map with 4 drones and one of them is yours

Develop

Edit the files located in "Tutorial/Files/"
Run "Tutorial/launch_map.bat"
Enjoy

Publish

Edit the file "Tutorial/Export/README.txt"
Zip the folder "Tutorial/Export"
Share it among your friends :)

Thanks

Lapin for his Galaxy Syntax Validator
Ladik for the MPQ Editor and the several improvement he made for it at my request

Tutorial - How to get started