“We removed the potholders,” says gameplay engineer Dan Reid.
"I'm sorry, what? - asks his colleague Zach Metcalfe. "Maybe you wanted to say we rolled up our sleeves?"
“I mean it’s easy to get burned now, but it’s much more comfortable to work,” explains Reed.
They are discussing the latest update to Overwatch's Workshop , an in-game script editor that allows players to create their own game modes. In this update (which is already available on the PTR ), not only will there be new battlegrounds, tools and various improvements, but also a limitation will be removed, which was intended to protect authors from errors that could lead to the termination of the game client. This is the essence of the next update to the "Workshop": more options, fewer restrictions and as a result, as Reed and Metcalfe hope, even cooler creations.
Reed and Metcalfe have a special passion for The Workshop, which derives much from their personal experiences. Reed is a longtime Blizzard employee who has been on the Overwatch team since the beginning. He was one of the first engineers to support the development of Workshop in 2017. He has been playing the piano all his life, but in college he realized that he spends most of his free time making games and switched from studying music theory to programming.
Metcalfe has a slightly different story. In his youth, he played tennis seriously and participated in a number of tournaments in the UK from a prestigious academy. He joined Blizzard in 2018 and soon became involved in supporting The Workshop.
“Tennis requires the perfect balance between agility, physical strength and strategic thinking,” says Metcalfe. - When you start to 'feel the game', it is like hypnosis. I think I was able to transfer that focus and dedication from tennis to my engineering career. "
Like Reed, Metcalfe has a passion for challenging disciplines and is always pleased to hear that players have the same fun learning the nuances of The Workshop. Although not all reviews have been positive. The better the authors mastered the toolbox, the more feedback they received, and Reed and Metcalfe scrutinized them closely. Each new feature in the latest update is based on these feedback.
“We listened to everything that annoys them and thought: this is really annoying. And they fixed everything, ”Reed says.
Custom Game Battlegrounds are a great example of this. Reed and Metcalfe were amazed at how far players were willing to go to find the right environment for their battlefields.
“Many popular modes take place outside of the normal battlefield,” Metcalfe says. "For example, on the rooftops in Havana, because it is an open, flat space suitable for arena-style battles - but usually you can't get there."
To simplify matters, Reed and Metcalfe have teamed up with the Overwatch Battlegrounds team to bring content creators three new Battlegrounds specifically for Custom Game: Room, Island, and Field. "Room" is a closed room 40x40 m. "Island" is of the same size, but is not limited either by walls or ceilings. And the "Field" is a huge empty plain of 900x900 m - in fact, the largest battlefield in Overwatch.
Many content authors were hindered by the lack of such a convenient programming tool as subroutines. Reed and Metcalfe added them in the update. As they explain, subroutines are essentially separate functions that can be executed independently of other parts of the script. Without them, authors were often forced to use risky workarounds that increased the complexity and size of the scripts.
“In the past, you had to either duplicate the same scripts over and over again, or create awkward rules that were triggered under certain conditions,” explains Metcalfe.
For example, sometimes authors created a rule that was executed when a variable changed its value from "false" to "true". After executing the action, the variable changed its value back.
"Doing it like that ... was pretty frustrating," Reed admits.
"Now they have routines," Metcalfe adds, "and players can easily strip out certain sections of the game's logic and activate them as needed."
Working in the "Workshop" without routines is very annoying. The engineers explain that they felt this annoyance too, and that is what inspired them to make all these innovations, including the script diagnostic panel that tells authors how close they are to the maximum script size. This function makes it easier to foresee situations when the script will not be accepted by the "Workshop". The developers hope that such tools will make scripting easier.
"We've been fascinated by everything that players have come up with before," Metcalfe says, "so we're really curious about what's coming with all the new tools and improvements."
This belief in the Workshop community has inspired other changes as well: for example, loops no longer need to be preceded by a Wait action. While this limitation reduced the likelihood of creating an infinite loop that would cause the client to t
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