Blizzard's released a patch for the wildly successful and immensely popular StarCraft II, and boy was it generous. More than a simple game update, Patch 2.1 introduces a slew of features and tweaks, and unlocks much of the game's content to players using the free StarCraft II Starter Edition. And for all the would-be modders out there, one of the best sets of modding tools just got even better.
First off, the patch opens up StarCraft II's entire Arcade mode and extensive library of user-created custom games, and makes all three races – the Terran, the Zerg and the Protoss, for you n00bs – fully accessible to all players. Previously, Starter Edition players were limited only to the handful of Blizzard-created custom games, with only the humanoid Terrans at their command. What's more, Blizzard has released its full suite of art tools – the very same tools used by StarCraft II's developers – allowing modders to create art, models, and animations that are better than ever.
These tools, all of which are absolutely free (download here), allow hardcore players to craft entirely new units and structures with personal textures and animations. It's a big leap forward for the legions of players who mod the wildly popular game. The current version, Heart of the Swarm, sold more than 1.1 million copies within 48 hours of its launch last March.
Unlike most games, StarCraft II comes with a robust suite of modding tools that, more than just swapping textures or changing a UI element here and there, allow talented designers to fundamentally change the mechanics of the game. Though StarCraft II is a real-time strategy game, mods created within its engine can take all manner of forms, such as a side-scrolling action-adventure platformer or a tabletop-style card game. One ambitious modder has even created StarCraft Universe, a MMO-style role-playing game that plays like a galactic version of World of Warcraft.
With the addition of the art tools, modders can create even more and better content. StarCraft II producer Jordan Womack says the art tools – a set of plugins and scripts for the 3D modeling and rendering software 3ds Max 2011 – are the link between your raw assets and the game engine. Rather than being limited to the existing assets available in the original modding tools, the tools allow modders to take custom textures and images created in Photoshop and custom models, animations, particle systems and other things rendered in 3ds Max and make them function in-game.
"These tools are going to be a big upgrade for people," Womack said in a – video update. "This is the solution we use internally on the StarCraft team to get our art from source images into the game. And now it's available to content creators."
To help modders use the tools, Blizzard released a pile of documentation and tutorials explaining how to get everything up and running.
Another nice feature in Patch 2.1 is the addition of a new system called "extension mods," a sort of custom-game skin that can be applied to standard multiplayer maps. Instead of custom games that use a unique set of rules being tied to a particular map, such as the popular "Big Game Hunters," those rules can now be applied to any map players like.
This is particularly cool for custom games such as "Starbow," a recent mod that changes StarCraft II's rules, units, abilities, and even mechanics such as how the game handles unit pathfinding to be more like StarCraft: Brood War, the expansion pack for the original StarCraft which is considered by many to be a superior competitive real time strategy game than StarCraft II itself. Up until now, Starbow was limited to being only playable on the single map its rules were tied to. With the addition of extension mods, those rules can be applied to any map, making it much easier for something such as organizing a full tournament using the altered game rules and mechanics.
